White zipped jacket; mini tulip skirt; bag with Bamboo-shaped top handle and closure; and printed silk twill carré, all from Gucci.

Enter Ghostboy

For Cheng, modelling laid the foundation, but it’s her foray into fashion design that’s sparked her most exciting transformation yet. Behold, Ghostboy, the label she co-founded with business partner David Han. “Ghostboy came into fruition purely out of interest to make clothes for myself,” she recalls. “Late 2019, I reached out to David asking him to teach me how to sew.” 

The project quickly snowballed. Friends and peers began to take notice of their upcycled designs, prompting the duo to officially launch Ghostboy (the name came from a Robotaki song). Equal parts bold and irreverent, Ghostboy’s subversive aesthetic—think provocative youth with a Y2K edge—reflects Cheng’s own dynamic personality and penchant for experimentation. “Ghostboy is about being hot, fun, iconic, and sometimes ironic,” she says.

Her role within the label is as varied as its pieces. A Finance graduate with no formal training in design, Cheng oversees everything from design input and brand marketing to bookkeeping and management, while also serving as the in-house fit model. “Contrary to popular belief, having a degree in Business does not prepare you to become a business owner,” she says. “We were making sales before we were even able to outline our business model or choose which platform we wanted to sell on. Because neither of us had any working experience prior, it was an uphill battle of figuring everything out on the go.” Starting Ghostboy just before a global pandemic didn’t help either. “Our biggest challenges in the past include managing production quality and timeliness, building a good team, and figuring out how to run a business on near-zero capital investment.”

Left: A-lined mini dress; bamboo motif choker; bamboo motif bracelet; leather fingerless driver gloves; Gucci Jackie small shoulder bag; high heel wedge mule, right: Dress; and Gucci Bamboo 1947 small top handle bag. All from Gucci.

That Pivotal Moment

Yet those early growing pains have led to noticeable rewards. At Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week last year, we were witness to that point in time when Ghostboy transformed from cool indie darling to an established, headline-making brand that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with fashion heavyweights. The Autumn/Winter ’24 runway collection, titled “SINK”, showed us that there was more to Ghostboy than its skin-baring “fashion anarchy” origin. Rebellious? Sure. But there was also confidence, growth, and sophistication.

Conceptually, “SINK” drew inspiration from the unsung sanctuary of nightclub bathrooms—a space that “captures the dichotomy between chaos and calm…where revellers retreat for a moment of sobriety and introspection.” It’s a theme that’s equal parts cheeky and poignant. “We tend to refer to a lot of party culture in our Autumn/Winter collections,” Cheng reveals. “Our design process typically begins with ‘what’s something I want to wear?’ and then narrowing down the types of detailing we want to incorporate into the collection to make it coherent.”