ENTREPRENEURS

How Singapore brand Aupen took the fashion world by storm: founder Nicholas Tan explains the creation of instant ‘It’ bag the Nirvana – which boasts fans including Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé

STORY GLORIA TSO

May 24 , 2025

Aupen founder Nicholas Tan stayed out of the spotlight at first and let the Nirvana bag quietly do its thing. Now the secret is out. Photo: Handout

Founder Nicholas Tan reveals how he used word of mouth to create an ‘if you know, you know’ buzz around his brand, and evolved Aupen into the mouse that roared

It’s nearly 8pm on a Saturday night when I suddenly realise what the hype surrounding Aupen – the viral Singaporean bag brand that counts Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo among its fans – is all about. Upstairs on the second floor of an intimate, albeit crowded, restaurant, I plop an Aupen purse down on a tiny dinner table, immediately taken aback by how it sits perfectly upright and looks so visually arresting in the process – built to stand up as much as it is built to stand out. Subtle but seductive – attracting attention without really asking for it.

Early fan Taylor Swift carries Aupen’s Nirvana bag as she and Travis Kelce depart an SNL party in New York City, in October 2023. Photo: GC Images

That’s exactly as Nicholas Tan, only recently revealed to be the brains behind the brand, would have it. When I first started seeing Aupen’s arm candy on A-listers two years ago, no one even knew it was a Singaporean brand, let alone who its enigmatic founder might be. Since Aupen’s official launch in late 2022, details surrounding both the brand and its founder’s identity have been kept top secret. This is presumably to drum up interest in the bags themselves, but it also makes a point about what kind of brand Aupen is – in essence, one that generates buzz because it doesn’t try to. Quiet marketing for quiet luxury, so to speak, operating solely on the basis of word of mouth, social media sleuths and the “if you know, you know” mentality.


Just a few days prior I had the opportunity to meet with Tan in Hong Kong to find out more about the man behind the mystery and discuss Aupen’s meteoric rise to “It bag” brand status. “We wanted to create a silhouette that would be timeless and not focused on having logos,” he tells me casually, looking as cool and effortless as the bags themselves. “Something simple and sleek, such that if a girl was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, she could just pop this on and make the entire … outfit immediately stand out.”

Early fan Taylor Swift carries Aupen’s NirvaNirvana bag in ash by Aupen. Photo: Handoutna bag as she and Travis Kelce depart an SNL party in New York City, in October 2023. Photo: GC Images

You can’t put someone like Tan in a box. The former national swimmer for Singapore is tall, strikingly handsome and could easily pass for a model – yet another vocation Tan has dabbled in over the years – but surprisingly has no formal design training. In other words, he’s completely unlike what many people had in mind for a brand so low-key and reserved, and also not the first person who’d come to mind when thinking of a fashion brand founder. That’s perfectly OK with Tan, who appears content with and even excited to be doing things differently, proving people wrong, and setting new expectations for what a bag brand – and a proudly Singaporean one, at that – should do.

One of the golden charms that counterbalance the asymmetrical shape of the Nirvana bag. Photo: Handout

“When we design our bags, we want them to be sculptural,” he says, slinging Aupen’s signature Nirvana bag – made in an asymmetrical shape with a golden, detachable charm acting as a counterweight on the slimmer end – over his shoulder. “This is a little different from some bags that are crossbody, or just completely collapse. When you put it on the table, you can put it next to your coffee and take a photo.”


It’s this kind of storytelling through silhouettes that first gave the brand near-instant global recognition – Tan proudly claims that all of Aupen’s celebrity endorsements are purely organic, not paid for – and has helped make it a success in a segment usually dominated by the Louis Vuittons and Chanels of the world.

Tate McRae and Olivia Rodrigo, toting an Aupen bag, leave the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles after a Lakers game. Photo: Flash/Backgrid

“When I started I sent Aupen to everyone I knew,” Tan laughs, pointing out how Western countries and celebrities – not Singaporean or Asian KOLs – first made Aupen famous. “I do think it has to do with the openness of the West – how they are more open to new ideas and brands.” Tan, who studied biology at Harvard, agrees that his time in the US allowed him to ponder and explore different career paths, fostering an ambitious mindset that led him to believe that anything and everything was possible.


Even to this day, you’re more likely to find an Aupen bag in the wild on the streets of New York than in Singapore. Compared to a lot of brands that talk up their roots, Aupen – with its vaguely European-sounding name (actually a portmanteau of “authentic” and “open”) – could have passed for a French brand for all we knew. That was by design, says Tan; however, shunning the brand’s origins was never the intention. In fact, it was quite the opposite: to prove that something universally desirable across East and West could originate from such a tiny Asian country – if only the bag could speak for itself without preconceptions of where it might be from.

Beyoncé with her Aupen bag. Photo: Handout

Similarly, Tan says he took time under the guise of anonymity to learn the ropes of the business inside and out before choosing to step into the spotlight as Aupen’s founder. And working tirelessly behind the scenes to future-proof the business has proved fortuitous, Tan and his team having cracked down on a counterfeit ring making copycat bags out of China’s Guangdong province just last year.


“We had planned for that scenario,” he says. “A lot of artists feel they’re an artist and maybe that’s not part of their scope, or what they need to be responsible for. But today with so many ways to replicate an artist’s work, [including] artificial intelligence, it’s important across any industry to own the intellectual property on day one.”


Though Tan never graduated from design school – or business school, for that matter – he possesses a certain je ne sais quoi: an intuitive understanding of how fashion operates, as well as the business acumen needed to succeed in such a cutthroat industry. I chalk it up to a successful career of defying expectations, especially in a society with as stiff a reputation as Singapore, changing course with confidence several times over and trusting his gut along the way – an unorthodox journey that has benefited him in the long run.


Tan spent his foundational years working in e-commerce, becoming one of the earliest team members at what is now Shopee, before launching East Ocean, a brand incubator in Singapore. At the latter, he gained important experience and exposure, as he liaised for Western brands aiming to expand into Singapore. From there, Tan was able to identify a gap in the market – for a bag brand with unique design sensibilities.

The increasingly ubiquitous Aupen: accompanying Lady Gaga to a party in Venice for the movie Joker. Photo: Cobra Team/Backgrid Advertisement

Now the tables have turned as Aupen seeks to bridge the gap with the backing of the biggest of the Western giants, LVMH, in a partnership announced just last year. The brand produces its goods with the help of some of the world’s top luxury suppliers endorsed by LVMH’s Metiers d’Art division. Among them, Tanneries Roux, which Tan says produces handbag leather for the likes of Hermès and Berluti, now works with Aupen, as well as Jade Groupe, which produces the brand’s signature charms out of Paris.


“Because of the LVMH partnership, I spend a lot of time in Paris,” Tan muses, reflecting on the rewarding lessons learned from his new partners – covering everything from quality control to global supply chains. “A lot of people carry Louis Vuitton, Chanel. I hope that in the future people in Asian cities will be proud that Aupen is Asian, with a fully Asian team – to have something that the West also carries, but was born in Asia.”

The Nirvana Deluxe by Aupen. Photo: Handout

Though Tan hopes his story will encourage young creatives in Singapore and across Asia to think bigger, dream bigger and pursue those dreams on a global scale, it’s not lost on me that there’s a hard-working tenacity to his formula for success, paired with meticulous attention to detail, which can only be described as Singaporean. He is tight-lipped about any new product launches or future categories he plans to expand into, but assures me that the arrival of any Aupen product will be carefully thought through, tailored down to the centimetre, before being released out into the world.


Not that it’s an easy time to get anything new off the ground anyway. Asked about the current luxury downturn – not to mention the constant threat of US tariffs which have upended production cycles globally and thrown independent brands in particular into a frenzy – Tan emphasises how the implosion of it all only stands to benefit Aupen, which strives for that tricky balance between affordability and exclusivity in its designs.

Dress it up or dress it down: Lucy Liu personifies elegance – and tops off her look with an Aupen bag. Photo: Handout

“It’s perfect timing. What we’ve done, what we are building today and what we deliver to the customer is the future of luxury.” He is, however, reluctant to pigeon-hole Aupen as an affordable luxury brand: Nirvana bags currently retail on the brand’s site for anywhere between US$350 and US$450 – preferring to sharpen its positioning as a luxury competitor instead, furthering its commitment to high-quality design and continuing to carve out space in different markets around the world.


Is visionary leadership to thank for Aupen’s smash success? “The level’s set quite high for the team,” Tan admits, saying he credits his small but mighty team’s underdog mentality and nimble approach for getting his vision across the line thus far. “I wouldn’t sum it down to one moment,” he says of Aupen’s journey. “Really, it was the consistent work of being seen – visibility – to slowly, slowly chip away at public consciousness.”

Not only beautiful, but surprisingly roomy too. Photo: Handout

Tan says that thanks to the brand’s time-tested foundations, Aupen will be more than just a viral flash in the pan. Even as a girl who wasn’t all that into bags to begin with, I’m inclined to agree. More than just a Singapore success story, the entrepreneur has, in the span of three short years, turned Aupen into a global movement that’s only just getting started.


It’s anybody’s guess what comes next for Tan. “I’m keeping an open mind,” he says with a sly grin.