In May 2026, Bijon Projects took part in Boutiques Singapore for the first time.
I had been to Boutiques before, both as a visitor and helping another brand, so having Bijon there had always been something I wanted to experience for myself.
Boutiques felt particularly suited to what I wanted Bijon to become. The people who shop there tend to be intentional about what they buy. There is an appreciation for independent brands, the people behind them and the stories that make a product worth owning.
For a brand built around garments inspired by fictional worlds, that mattered.
It was also a personal milestone, something that began as a project from my bedroom was suddenly sharing a marketplace with independent brands from Singapore and around the region at one of the country's biggest shopping events.
And going into it, I was incredibly nervous.
TAKING BIJON OUTSIDE OF ITS USUAL WORLD
Most of Bijon's previous physical events had some connection to fandom or pop culture.
Boutiques was different.
People were not necessarily arriving because they loved anime, manga, games or any particular fictional world. They were there because they liked discovering clothes, objects and independent brands.
That made the weekend an important test.
Could someone who knew nothing about the original inspiration still pick up a Bijon garment and want to wear it?
I was curious to find out, but also unsure about how the brand would fit into the environment.
A considerable amount of time, money and effort had gone into getting there. When the event first opened and it took a while before people began stepping into our space, every quiet minute felt significantly longer than it probably was.
BUILDING THE BOOTH WITH WHAT WE HAD
Being a small independent brand meant working with the resources already around me.
A lot of the booth fixtures had been built by my dad for previous Bijon events and were reused for Boutiques. Rather than rebuilding everything, we adapted them to the new space.
One of the main additions was a large illuminated Bijon sign carrying the line:
INSPIRED BY FICTIONAL WORLDS
For the first time, someone could walk past the booth without knowing anything about Bijon and immediately understand the starting point of the brand.
At the front were three pieces being introduced at Boutiques: the Truly Strong Waffle Henley, Musashi Cozy Jacket and Evergarden Lace Polo.
They sat alongside pieces from the Outlaw Collection and the Captain Jacket.
The plan was simple: let the garments introduce themselves first, and let the fictional references reveal themselves afterwards.
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG TWO DAYS BEFORE AN EVENT
Of course, not everything went according to plan.
The Truly Strong Waffle Henleys arrived only two days before Boutiques.
Every single one had the wrong buttons.
The buttons were not what had been approved, and the workmanship around them was poor enough that I did not feel comfortable selling the garments as they were.
This was supposed to be one of the pieces launching exclusively at the event.
Instead of pretending nothing was wrong, I posted about the situation and converted the Henley into an event preorder.
It was not how I imagined introducing the piece, but it became part of the reality of running a small clothing brand. Production does not always arrive perfectly. Sometimes the best decision is simply to be transparent and find another way forward.
Unexpectedly, the preorder still became one of the strongest performers of the weekend.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE WEEKEND
The sales mattered, but they are not what I remember most clearly.
I remember the conversations.
Existing Bijon customers came down just to visit the booth. Some thanked me for what I was creating and told me that the brand felt different from what they normally saw.
That was strange to hear in the best possible way.
There was Solomon and Esther, with Esther even including Bijon on her own map of Boutiques brands to visit.
Serin came by and we ended up having a long conversation about anime, eventually giving me another series to add to my watchlist: Witch Hat Atelier.
Don and Nov visited specifically because they were fans of Red Dead Redemption and had discovered Bijon through the Outlaw Collection.
Russell and Beth came down after Russell had been following the brand.
Then there were Kim and Weiqian, who we spent so much time talking to that a conversation at a booth eventually became a friendship.
There were many more interactions like these throughout the weekend.
Customers suggested fictional worlds they hoped Bijon would explore next. People compared references. Some tried something on because they knew exactly what inspired it, while others only discovered the story after liking the garment.
The booth gradually became less about selling clothes and more about sharing the things that made us care about them in the first place.
WHAT BOUTIQUES TAUGHT ME
Boutiques changed the way I thought about physical retail.
Online, someone encounters Bijon through a screen. At an event, I can watch someone run their hand across a fabric, inspect an embroidery, try on three different sizes or ask why a tiny detail exists.
You learn very quickly what matters to people.
The weekend reinforced the importance of fit, fabric and wearability, particularly for a Singapore audience.
It also showed me that the story behind a piece still matters.
People wanted to know why something looked the way it did. They wanted to hear about the characters, scenes and worlds behind the garments.
The two things were not competing with each other.
A garment could be practical and still have something deeper behind it.
One of the clearest examples was the response to the Outlaw Denim pieces, which eventually contributed to the decision to revisit the jorts in another colourway.
MORE THAN A MARKETPLACE
By the end of Boutiques, the nervousness I felt on the first morning had been replaced by something completely different.
Fulfilment is probably the best word for it.
There was something difficult to describe about looking around the booth at the end of the weekend and thinking about all the conversations that had happened there.
Bijon started as a creative experiment from my bedroom.
For three days, this small project occupied a physical space of its own.
Looking back, I wish I had taken even more photos, but there's always next time.