For the Love of Denim

Fahmy Ismail, founder of local denim brand Kerbside&Co, eschews following trends and fashion schedules, focusing instead on exacting quality standards

- Ethan Kan

At the Kerbside&Co store on North Bridge Road, you will find a trove of curiosities that will delight anyone with an appreciation for high‑quality garments. For self‑styled “denim heads” especially, it is a fashion heaven. Underneath a charming sloped ceiling are racks and shelves of denim jeans and jackets, alongside shirts, belts and bags, each one put together with fine stitches and sturdy buttons. In a quiet corner sit archival magazines, some of them in Japanese, documenting the visual history of denim.

Most curious of all is founder Fahmy Ismail, whose soft‑spoken demeanour conceals a wealth of knowledge about denim. If you point out his expertise, however, he would be quick to refute it. “There’s so much more to learn. I have just about enough [knowledge] to give what advice I’m able to dispense,” he says. “I’m not the authority on certain things.”