Fashion Crossings: Ink To Couture

by Anas Roshad

How does an ink artist, made it to the top of haute couture? Meet the brain behind the authentic idea of Royale Demure, Yap Sue Yii. Started young at the age of 13, showing her best talent and passion as an ink artist and her best skill of artsy tattoo, Sue Yii has been fond of the idea to express herself in art. Body art to be specific. The ink journey didn’t stop there when she begin to explore more on special effects makeup afterwards. Throughout the year, the girl who fell in love with ink, fell in love with the community and has been doing as much as possible to give back. She joined charity events by fundraising through Henna body art for 6 years and by the time she has learned about the people, she met her next journey to help young enthusiast designers out there pursuing their dream and give them a shot at launching their own fashion line. Hence, she founded Royale Demure.

The 26 years old, admire the work of Pat Liew, a Malaysian fashion mogul that turned her business into an international sensation and immediately declared the figure as her icon. She fell in love in fashion gradually as it is the nature of her job. Sue Yii took the road less traveled when she opt to start-up her own crowdfunding platform. Through this channel, her mission is to introduce independent designers, help realize their dream by getting their designs crowdfunded and made, and showing extraordinary talents to the world.

Of personal preference, she has always been a fan of dark art, the unconventional ways of translating arts to fashion. She played around not only with the idea, but the fabrics, the color and the media as well. She create, craft and play mix and match with her medias. Her favorite media to play with was mesh. It’s the bits and pieces that joined together for something beautiful at the end. She blended both worlds but manage to slip in the sweet girl concept along her designs.

“Fashion should be practical, comfortable and a mix of everything. That’s how it works for me.” –Sue Yii of Y.S.Y & Co.

Her kick-starters includes coffee of her choice and Nadia’s reminder (her personal assistant). She has also been admiring the successful businesswoman, Sophia Amoruso. Starting off from scratch and wielding nothing but all the knowledge in the business and hard work.  Sue Yiis’ essentials are rings. Lots and lots of rings, rings for the fingers and rings for the ears. She’s a fan of tassels earrings though.

Asking on her future planning for both Royale Demure and herself, she confidently saying to expand the brand and to explore all sorts of possibilities that she can achieve together with the company. Sue Yii is on her right track to sell more designs and utilizing the platform she founded. As a fashionpreneur herself, she believes she’s neither a trend follower nor the one who sets it. She dressed the way she felt for the day and as how she sees it truthful to her signature.

It has been a long journey of mixed feelings, similarly how she liked her designs to be. There is no right or wrong in fashion, always more room to explore and mistakes to be made and learn from and who knows, these mistakes are the new ideas for her upcoming collection. Go figure! 

RD Note: Her personal brand Y.S.Y & Co. has produced a number of designs and the campaigns has been successfully pledged by the community on http://www.royaledemure.com. Follow her story at @yapsueyii.