Fashion Designer-Turned-Hawker: “I Don’t See This As An Unglam Job” - 8days Skip to main content

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Fashion Designer-Turned-Hawker: “I Don’t See This As An Unglam Job”

Covid-19 had disrupted his Shenzhen-based fashion biz.

Fashion Designer-Turned-Hawker: “I Don’t See This As An Unglam Job”

From 8am till the evening, six days a week, hawker Amos Ananda Yeo is on his feet frying piles of prawn and banana fritters, nian gao (sweet rice cake) and tapioca. The hot oil from the portable fryer, perched on a makeshift table, splatters on his hands. Faded burn scars dot his arms, and he looks visibly tired.

The 31-year-old had a much more comfy job just last year, as a fashion designer producing his own eponymous streetwear line in Shenzhen where he ran a studio and garment factory. Then Covid-19 happened, and his career came to a standstill. “There wasn’t much income at all, ’cos my projects and fashion shows were either postponed or cancelled,” he tells 8days.sg.

Leaving his Chinese staff to run his fashion business, Amos returned home to Singapore to tide through the pandemic. With help from his wife Laura Ooi, 32, a former flight attendant, he started a home-based biz called Hei Piah Family selling delish handmade prawn fritters. Business has been brisk enough that he decided to open a hawker stall to produce more fritters.

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