The Importance Of Being Earn

HE'S THE POSTER BOY FOR THE LOCAL STREETWEAR ARENA AND CREDITED FOR BRINGING CULT FASHION LABELS INTO SINGAPORE. FRESH FROM HIS SUCCESS IN THE F&B AND NIGHTLIFE SCENE, EARN CHEN'S NEXT MOVE MAY BE HIS BIGGEST YET.

- Germaine Cheong

Strobe lights flash across the crowded room, leaping off neon-lit concrete walls and a sparkling disco ball that redirects rays onto the faces of patrons. The dance floor at Cherry Discotheque, which industry insiders refer to as a bright light rejuvenating the lack lustre local nightlife scene, is packed with happy feet shuffling and knees bouncing to heavy beats.

“Sha-Shabba Ranks, Sha-Sha-Shabba Ranks, Eight gold rings like I’m Sha-Shabba Ranks,” the millennial and Gen Z crowd chants along to the A$AP Ferg club anthem, a morse code that only the initiated will understand.

No one is more familiar with this language than the man who created the club, Earn Chen. Over the last 20 years, he’s built a business empire centred on youth culture. In the process, he has rewritten the codes of cool and redefined Singapore’s retail landscape with his luxe streetwear emporia and, more recently, the F&B and nightlife scene with his establishments. His newest collaboration, which is with London shopping temple Dover Street Market that resulted in a Singapore outfit (the latter stocks togs from Cherry’s fashion line and Chen’s own label The Salvages), is yet another feather in his cap – or headband, his preferred ornament of late.

“I’ve always been confident about what I like. I’ve never felt that I truly fit in anywhere. My work is a representation of the kind of world that I want to live in,” says Chen, who’s been working with Hypebeast.com, the foremost authority on streetwear and street culture, to rebrand itself. “These spaces are also my refuge. Thankfully, some people get it.”