In the (Crocodile) Skin: London Newcomer Ethan Koh’s Bag Line Has Bite by Sarah Mower

Ethan Koh is possibly London’s most unlikely fashion student ever to be stressing over his final dissertation at the London College of Fashion. He’s the dapper Singaporean boy who can be spotted—and often is—walking to school across Mayfair with his books on the economics of luxury poking out of a matte charcoal gray holdall which he designed from the high-grade hides of three Louisiana alligators.

It’s these bags that are turning the heads of women who can spot a top-grade exotic (like Nile croc) from a natty alligator skin at 50 paces. “One day I was walking past the Connaught hotel carrying my turquoise crocodile tote, and a lady stopped and asked me ‘Where did you get that?’ ” Koh recalls with  grin. “I told her I make them. So she invited me over to look in her wardrobe, and I made her something to match her clothes. I didn’t realize she was royal until much later.”

Koh’s precocious ability to design, make, and automatically attract the clientele for his super-luxurious Ethan K bags—a bespoke business he began when he was 22—springs from the fact that he’s been training since he was practically a baby. He’s the fourth-generation son of the Heng Long International family in Singapore, highly specialized precious skin tanners, who supply alligator, crocodile, and other exotic skins to Hermès and Prada. “I was working on the selection team grading skins as a teenager when the artisans came in from Prada,” Koh said. “It’s just like grading diamonds. No two crocs are alike, and you have to match them, so really the art of purchasing is for a connoisseur.”

After managing to getting a stint at Hermès in Paris under his belt (in order to observe how bags are made and sold) he came to London to study. “Then I borrowed £3000 from my dad and decided to try to launch my own small line, buying from him at the same rate as anyone else, after finding a factory in Italy to hand-make them.”

Word about what this young, amusing boy does has spread amongst the cognoscenti, lunch by lunch, clutch by clutch. Now Koh says he’s managing orders for 30 bags at a time, for which his clients pay £6000 each, and half of it up front. If that sounds stratospheric on an ordinary mortal income, well, yes it is. But Koh is already flying at a level where the women he academically describes as “High Net Worth Individuals” who know their Birkins from their Bottegas in intimate detail. So what are they seeking from young Ethan K? “Oh, my clients are trend-setters,” he said “ They want turquoise, green, and purple—all the fashion colors! It’s like going into a candy shop for them. And it’s good that I am able to advise them there, on the spot, with their clothes. What I am, I think, is a bag couturier!”