Singapore-based fashion designer Apple Lau has launched a niche brand, Aomorie, which stands out as the city-state’s first to use coffee leather—a vegan material infused with recycled coffee grounds—in its products. Founded in May 2024, the brand reflects Lau’s commitment to restoring the tactile experience in fashion amid an increasingly digital shopping landscape.

Despite being a caffeine abstainer, Lau, 28, has embraced coffee as the central inspiration and material for her line. Coffee leather, a soft, black-hued fabric made from bamboo fiber, plant-based polymers, and water-based resin, was discovered by Lau at Intertextile Shanghai, one of the largest global fabric trade shows. It combines sustainability with a distinctive texture and subtle coffee scent, aligning with her emphasis on craftsmanship and materiality.

Aomorie’s initial offering was the Coffee Leather Jacket, priced at $300, introduced as a classic wardrobe staple rather than a conventional biker-style jacket. Lau chose the jacket as her first garment despite Singapore’s tropical climate, citing the material’s qualities and the relative simplicity of constructing a jacket compared to other tailored items. Developing the jacket took six months of trial and error, with Lau navigating production processes independently, leveraging skills learned through electives and online tutorials.

The brand’s commercial breakthrough came with the launch of the Bloom pleated bags, introduced in November 2025 during the Boutiques shopping event. These hand-pleated totes, priced between $135 and $195, take advantage of coffee leather’s lightweight and flexible nature, enabling intricate accordion-like folds not feasible with traditional leather. The bags’ name references the initial blooming stage of coffee brewing, where hot water releases trapped gases from the grounds, a metaphor reflecting both the design and material inspiration.

Aomorie’s product range has since expanded to include scrunchies, pouches, and variations of the Bloom bags in two sizes and five colors. While coffee leather is exclusively used for black items due to its color and cost—approximately double that of typical vegan leather—other colors utilize vegan polyurethane leather. The limited scale of production, with batches of 10 to 15 pieces per design and color, illustrates the challenges of mass manufacturing this novel material.

Since its commercial debut, Aomorie has conducted multiple pop-ups locally and overseas, including a fair in Bangkok. The brand is preparing a new collection for a year-end launch and is exploring cooling fabrics for future apparel lines. Aomorie will also announce its first physical retail partner in October.

Although the business is yet to turn a profit, Lau remains optimistic, describing her experience as one of anticipation despite financial uncertainties. She invested $10,000 to establish Aomorie and manages the brand entirely on her own, from design to customer engagement, underscoring the entrepreneurial challenges faced by emerging fashion labels.

Aomorie represents a fusion of sustainability, craftsmanship, and innovation as it carves a new niche in Singapore’s fashion scene by reimagining coffee—a ubiquitous commodity—as a source of material creativity.