Haute Homecoming

After building his fashion legacy over the better part of the past three decades, Paris-based Singaporean designer Andrew Gn reflects on the influence of his multicultural identity and how he intends to champion the next generation of Asian designers

- Pameyla Cambe

Well before he dressed some of the world's most powerful women or launched his namesake fashion brand in Paris, before he assisted the legendary French fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro, or even moved to London to study at the prestigious Central Saint Martins, Andrew Gn's initiation into fashion took place in a library.

Gn reveals that in his childhood home in Singapore, where he lived with his merchant father, homemaker mother and four siblings, "my dad kept a huge library of books. There were a lot of classical Chinese novels. We also had a lot of art books... My first time seeing Picasso was not in a museum, but in a book. The library was a universe of inspiration, housing his parents' collections of classical Chinese furniture, calligraphy, paintings and ceramics-obsessions that Gn would later share. It was also home to the Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, which provided Gn with what he says were his "earliest encounters of descriptions of fashion and true luxury".

Spending time in the library "was a great way to initiate my taste for beauty and for art," Gn tells Tatler by video call, while seated in front of a shelf in his Paris home lined with part of his own "library", which includes fashion books and pottery. "I never run out of inspiration because I have a very diversified and eclectic collection. I collect whatever I like. I follow my own instinct and my subconscious mind... It's about what I feel."

Gn's instincts have proven to be an abundant resource. Since opening his fashion house in 1996, the designer has produced more than 80 womenswear collections, each one a visual feast that marries myriad cultural references expressed through exquisite fabrics, rich colour and dramatic forms. Gn's maximalist tendencies are balanced by masterful craftsmanship; his use of pagoda shoulders, or crystal embellishments, or elaborate embroidery does not overwhelm so much as awe.