Art of the designer

STEP into Yamin S in Jalan Maarof, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, and you can feel immediately that this is a boutique with a difference.

Located on the same stretch as other designer labels and high-end furniture shops, the two-storey bungalow is not filled with racks and racks of clothes. Instead, there are wooden and rattan furniture in the foyer, living room and even the living room upstairs.

It seems that boutique owner Mohamed Yamin wears many hats as fashion stylist, wedding planner and interior decorator. While he started his career as a designer, he thought it would be a strategic move to be involved in every aspect of the industry.

A friend told me once that I should be good in not only one area of the business as I may need something to fall back on. Realising that he was right, I studied furniture design and interior decoration. Then I worked as a wedding planner, he says.

I also learned that in this business, you can be in demand one day but not the next. I had the unfortunate experience of this after 28 years in this business.

Mohamed Yamin, who was born in Malang, East Java, went into designing after winning a fashion designing contest in Jakarta in 1986. It was not his original intention to be a fashion designer. He wanted to win so that he could pay for his art and design course. But when he won, he changed his mind.

He worked with a well-known kebaya designer, Prayudi, for two years and learned about designing and photography. After that, he did a two-year stint at Sari Ayu and was appointed as designer for Puteri Ayu. It was a good time. I made a name for myself in Indonesia and had a good life. Everyone there wanted a Yamin design, especially celebrities and the rich and famous, he says.

HUGE LOSS

But in 1989, he suffered a huge loss in the stock market. He was left with nothing and his clients abandoned him. Feeling rejected, he moved to Singapore where he set up a designing business with a local but the business was short-lived. After another short business deal in Johor Baru, he came to Kuala Lumpur in 1994 to work for a textile company.

After a while I decided it was time to learn new things. At that time, wedding planning was a new concept in Kuala Lumpur but it was already very popular in Indonesia. So I went back to Jakarta to learn the trade. It took me a year to learn everything about planning a wedding and, because part of the job was decoration, I thought it would be a natural move to extend the business to home decorating, he explained.

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Art of the designer