03-07-2025
Super Freak Boutique, run by co-founders of The Butter Factory, to close in end-July
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Super Freak Boutique co-owners Ritz Lim (left) and Bobby Luo at the store at Stamford Court on June 30.
SINGAPORE – Super Freak Boutique at Stamford Court, which trades in wackadoo attire and accessories, is set to shutter on July 24.
Opened in 2020 by Mr Bobby Luo and Mr Ritz Lim, co-founders of defunct nightclub The Butter Factory, the 187 sq ft space is known among adroit young dressers for its art markets' roster of edgy vendors. It also houses Mr Lim's hair salon.
The venue has hosted local and regional designers, musicians, artists and even a poet – the sort of restless creatives who, like Mr Luo, do not restrain themselves to one medium.
A DJ once started his set with a sewing machine, sampling the jerky rhythms of needle stitching cloth into a thumping beat. An arty designer turned archival local streetwear into quixotic items such as a tube top conjoined with a puffy bib and hood, and a jacket sewn into jeans.
Super Freak Boutique held its final market in May. For now, it will stay online and Mr Lim is eyeing freelance hairdressing.
Mr Luo, 54, speaking to The Straits Times without his media-shy 63-year-old partner, says: 'I guess I'm burnt out.'
The nightlife impresario, who in the 1990s designed sets at Zouk, still co-runs a stable of events, like queer hip-hop romp Baby Boy and baile funk bash Cvntessa. He says the boutique is 'not something that can be done on the side'.
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It is not for lack of trying. Super Freak Boutique is his third and most conservative go at retail since 2008.
He started online store Nightvision that year, then pivoted to multi-label boutique Super Space at Orchard Gateway in 2014. Both specialised in unorthodox labels not stocked anywhere else in Singapore, like brash Los Angeles streetwear brand Joyrich and the riotous tailoring of Britain's Agi & Sam.
When Super Space closed, after Mr Luo's then business partners bowed out in 2019 and their lease expired a year later, some leftover inventory went into Super Freak Boutique. But with floor space reduced to a modest corner, stock was whittled to smaller wares – kitschy shoes, fans and gifts, like the technicolour socks with winking queer slogans that are the shop's bestsellers.
Though the attenuated business model meant he almost broke even at Super Freak Boutique, Mr Luo's near-two-decade retail effort has cost him over $150,000 in losses. Yet, he had never entertained an exit till now.
Such is the 'DIY sensibility' of the club scene, he says. 'We try everything once and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You try till the end.'
With Mr Luo, all roads lead back to the dance floor, to the loud crush and chaos of the local 1990s counterculture from which he was born, he says.
From the jump, he intended for Nightvision to kit out partygoers on nights out. Mr Luo himself has made an art out of dressing for the club, preferring the high visibility of face-engulfing masks – like a disco ball with two slits for eyes – overstimulating colours, outre jackets, shrieking prints, absurdist costumes and sequinned shoulder pads.
At his most minimalist, he once appeared in nothing but a pair of blue Speedos, a chain necklace and a towering balloon silver star for a headpiece.
'I was decorating Zouk, so I started decorating myself,' says Mr Luo.
His legacy in Singapore's underground was cemented with the opening of The Butter Factory in 2006. The cartoonishly furnished space had presaged the current character toy boom. Its one-for-you, one-for-me set-up, with a big room for mainstream hip hop and a smaller den for the screwy sounds of electroclash, squared the circle of keeping the cult commercial.
By the time it closed in 2015, it had expanded to twice its original size.
Retail was not a detour from, but an extension of, the party, he says.
'Clubs are where culture gets tested. That's music, fashion, art. They're all intertwined. And it's a community where people can express themselves freely. At Super Freak, we were trying to capture that.'
Super Freak Boutique at Stamford Court, which trades in wackadoo attire and accessories, is set to shutter on July 24.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
The ad hoc art markets come to mind. Mr Luo and Mr Lim never made anything from them and sometimes absorbed the cost of utilities for night-time events.
'I just loved seeing all the creativity of the young people,' Mr Luo says.
The challenge for the boutique was keeping the books out of the red. He sees easy parallels between the retail, nightlife and food and beverage industries.
Woes like rental, manpower costs and keeping customers loyal are common across these sectors. Across industries, businesses are also moving towards a pop-up model, ditching a permanent base for roving set-ups, he says.
But Mr Luo, who with his Butter Factory co-founders had built a hideout that straddled the mainstream and fringe, still hankers for the magic of a physical space. Creating, recognising and craving such a place is 'in his blood', he adds.
'It's important to have a base to build community and see people expressing themselves.'
