Handle With Care

Madeline Hing is the designer behind homegrown label, ssdslsns, which puts out intricate and fragile knitwear. She speaks to Vogue Singapore about clothes, creating and letting life inspire.

- CARMEN SIN

It is one of life’s finely tuned ironies that the bedroom should be both a girl’s first sanctuary and her first prison. Madeline Hing, 20, knows this well. Two years ago—on a pandemic-mandated gap year—she found herself fresh out of school with nowhere to go and began to fidget with yarn. With one whim, a switch was flipped. The room took on the gaiety so friendly to that shy and illusive spirit—the imagination— and sent her fingers flying. Within months, she had picked up knitting, crochet, weaving and felting. The brand was by-the-by. “I just wanted to document the stuff I made [on Instagram],” she says, expression unruffled, “then people started asking if I was selling.”