The customisable accessory brand Topologie debuts at Jewel with a compact retail footprint so cozy you’ll have to fight a small army just to reach the cashier

Topologie store at Jewel. Photo Chin Boh Kay

By Ray Zhang

Last June, as I was departing an out-of-office odyssey in Hong Kong, I chanced upon the Topologie store at the airport’s Terminal 1, near gate 35. Instead of the quiet shop typical of a departure zone, it was an unexpected swarm. The mainly mainland Chinese shoppers were filling their already occupied arms, not with just the brand’s famous cords, but with all manner of bags. Two days earlier, I witnessed the same frenzy at the Langham store in Mongkok, where I bought a cord to be used as a wrist strap, but ended as another dangly on my positively over-populated waist band of my Goldwin chinos. Four months later, in Bangkok, as I was strolling in the new and somewhat placid Central Park mall, there it was before me, an unmistakable Topologie store. Here, I bought the large ‘Bottle Sacoche’ that was part of a collaboration with the U.K. label Universal Works. After that, at their Hysan Place corner, I bought a ‘Macrame’ wrist strap. Yes, Topologie has that effect on visitors.

It was that specific, frenzied energy that I kept in mind when I finally traced the brand’s southward path to our World’s Best Airport (eye roll included). In fact. i felt a quiet, conspiratorial glee upon discovering that the brand had finally arrived. Why it has taken them this long to entice shoppers here is not clear, but their reception I learned and eventually saw has been nothing short of a frenzy. Sited on a finally-energised Level 1 of Jewel, a stone’s throw away from the cafe of their collaborator Maison Kitsune, Topologie’s belated entry is a constricted space under an escalator. I suspect the intent was cozy, but I was, frankly, a tad underwhelmed. The brand’s online communication, such as on Instagram, informed that it is a “pop-up”. Time Out Sg also confirmed that it’s the brand’s “first Singapore pop-up”. But we overheard a staffer telling a shopper that “it’s permanent”, and that a standalone Orchard flagship is imminent—though the location remains, happily, a mystery. When the inquirer commented that the present location is not too convenient, the chap laughingly replied, “it’s inconvenient also for staff!” Interestingly, this airport-adjacent store here is not Topologie Travellers, as it is in Hong Kong International Airport.

Topologie has a provenance not typical of Gorpcore-ish brands, but with a potential national identity problem, like a well-traveled diplomat who’s spent too much time in airport lounges and can’t quite remember which flag to salute. The label was co-founded by French and Japanese mountaineers Carlos Granon and Go Urano, and—to keep everyone delightfully guessing—it calls Hong Kong home, making the brand’s passport look more like a globetrotting itinerary than a fixed address. The allure of Topologie is in the French aesthetic paired with the Japanese eye for detail and beautiful utility that effectively yield a design mutt that somehow manages to make the sum feel like a universal language instead of just a shopping checklist. It has been a consistent presence in Hong Kong since its founding in 2018. Given that the brand originated there, it transitioned quite naturally from its initial conceptual and online roots into a physical retail presence, even confidently taking on Japan, the world capital of Gorpcore.

The design of the Jewel installment is identifiably Topologie, with the melange of greyish wood, metal fixtures, and the prominent orange box logo with the lowercase font arranged in a 90-degree clockwise rotation. But as the unceasing crowd appeared from nowhere, as if seeing light for the first time, the two aisles and perimeter spaces were barely enough to contain their aggressive enthusiasm. The frenzy of unbridled proximity made shopping a stress test of my social contract, which, frankly, expired somewhere between the entrance of the mall and The Coach Restaurant nearby. I also sensed that this was not the full range of merchandise and noticed that the collaborative items were not to be seen. Even the complete colour stories of their popular cords were not evident. But seeing how one can mix and match the products, and adding more to personalise the final item is a reminder that a blissful retail encounter is not, in fact, a mythological creature. It simply tends to inhabit locations, where the shoppers have not recently engaged in a full-contact scramble for clearance-rack inventory. I departed in a state of unmitigated—if worn out—delight. And with a wrist strap to accompany the paracord handle of an On tote I bought earlier.

Photos: Chin Boh Kay