> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.t-o-n-g.co/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Same friendship, bigger map. - URL: https://www.t-o-n-g.co/same-friendship-bigger-map/ - Published: 2026-10-31T16:38:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-05T15:57:40.000Z - Description: Nearly 30 years as friends, fifteen years of a shop, and one new start. - Author: TONG - Tags: The Page Georgina and Chiew Ling met at 17 and have been telling each other what is worth buying ever since. In 2010 that habit became Nana & Bird. The shop closed in 2024\. This November they start again, with TONG. ![Georgina and Chiew Ling seated side by side against an olive backdrop, both in black.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-d9e3912e-57fa-4187-800a-ea265c920caa.jpeg) Georgina and Chiew Ling, 2026 ### Nana & Bird January 1997, the first week of junior college. Seven friends and two nicknames that would end up above a shop door. **Georgina:** My friends got tired of saying Georgina. Three syllables is a mouthful, so one day they decided I was Nana. I loved it. Georgina always made me seem unapproachable. Nana felt warmer. **Chiew Ling:** Mine came with more drama. There was a whole bench of school bags, and a bird landed on mine. It helped that I am always chatty, loud, like a bird. It was meant to be. ***Do you remember the first time you spoke?*** **Chiew Ling:** It was a million years ago. We connected almost immediately in the first week of school. There were others in the group and there was always ease being around each other. **Georgina:** We connected over food, shopping and travelling. Mostly over things we couldn’t afford at that time, but loved anyway. ### A shared dream, 4,000km apart Before there was a shop, there was a rack by a staircase. **Chiew Ling:** At 21, we spent a month as event runners at a roadshow in Jurong Point. That was when we learnt we could work together and still have fun. Then came our first sale at Zouk’s weekend flea market, on a rack by the staircase. Then I left for Shanghai not long after graduation for close to ten years. In 2010, you both turned 30\. **Chiew Ling:** We wanted something of our own, and we wanted to do it together. I was still in Shanghai, so it started over emails and text. The first question was what we are actually good at. The honest answer was shopping. Our friends were always asking us about our outfits. And we thought, maybe we can make something out of that. **Georgina:** It did not feel difficult working together at all even though we were in different cities. There was a rhythm of things. We discussed plans over text, and I executed them on the ground. > “There is no better person to go into business with. Someone whom you have a genuine respect and commitment towards. Someone who inherently understands you. There was nothing more precious.” > – Georgina on building a business with a friend We started with no money, selling our own pre-loved pieces, vintage dresses from Shanghai markets. I’d never forget the first pop-up in my walk-up flat. Chiew Ling was in Shanghai so I was updating her whenever we made a sale or who showed up at the house. **Chiew Ling:** Our first lookbook was shot in Nana’s bedroom. The photographer was a contact who came through Nana’s ex-boss, whom we later partnered with when he started his own leather label. The models were amateurs, one of them was my colleague. One of our seven from junior college produced it. There was no budget for make-up, so the models were told to toss their hair over their faces. ![Nana & Bird’s first lookbook: a model in a white printed top and black leggings, carrying a patterned tote.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-b3d40b53-031b-4240-b334-2e5f68c11285.jpeg) ![Nana & Bird’s first lookbook: a model in a black cut-out top and long black skirt, hair caught mid-movement.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-37421475-85c3-4b2d-8ed4-b3da188d6acd.jpeg) **Nana & Bird’s first lookbook* There were so many who took a chance on us. **Chiew Ling:** The designers. New labels let us take their work on consignment when we didn't even have a shop. That still amazes me. They trusted two women with a flat. **Georgina:** Every stranger who came to the house meant we had reached beyond our friends. Discovery felt more organic and serendipitous. We also work hard at it, scouring markets for vintage, tracking down designers in their studios. **Chiew Ling:** I once spent two hours getting to a warehouse in Hackney Wick for one label: Emma Ware, who made jewellery from recycled tires and chain. When it finally arrived and went up on the rack, that small moment felt like everything. **Georgina:** Labels like Emma Ware and Building Block set the tone of our curation, and they brought in people who were in the know. Customers kept asking where we found it all. That question was the business. ### A bigger space but over time, a smaller ambition At one point, there were three shops in one neighbourhood, two day jobs and four young children. Then came the flagship on Yong Siak Street. **Georgina:** Womenswear first, homeware when we built our first homes, childrenswear when the children came, then skincare. The store’s curation evolved, mirroring our own lives. Our husbands were also involved. They were sent for coffee runs when their manual labour wasn't needed. And when the children came along, the husbands carried much of the load, spending time with our young ones. **Chiew Ling:** We decided to expand our Yong Siak Street store during Covid. It was an exhilarating feeling to build our flagship store. We had a bigger space but over time, a smaller ambition. Rent, staff and footfall were everyday worries. I was deciding out of fear, and fear only thinks about precautions. ![Nana & Bird’s flagship on Yong Siak Street, Tiong Bahru, with dark green window frames and clothes on rails inside.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-79c53dae-95dc-4c0f-9714-5d34fa1c667f.jpeg) **Yong Siak Street flagship* ### When did the joy go? **Georgina:** The beginning was the most organic, true to what we wanted and what we stood for. As we grew, we were balancing being genuine and passionate about the curation against what works commercially. That takes away some of the joy of why we started. Curation was our strength, so it was where we always retreated. But Nana & Bird never had to stay as a shop. It could have changed shape as we did. **Chiew Ling:** In 2015 we dressed twenty women for a style bookazine, something we had never done before. We should have done far more of that. We had the space, the product and the audience, and we were too busy getting through each month to use them. Towards the end, you both knew. **Georgina:** We knew we wanted to close, and I think we were both afraid to bring it up, even though the thought had been there for a while. We rarely disagree. When our views differ, we debate until we land somewhere that sits right with both of us. This one, neither of us wanted to start. When we finally did, it was liberating. Nana & Bird closed its Yong Siak Street shop in June 2024\. ![Entrance to the Nana & Bird flagship on Yong Siak Street, with a dark green door and a potted plant.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-0d6ccd52-585c-40ba-8649-620c8d185268.jpeg) **Goodbye, Yong Siak Street* **Georgina:** It was a whole mix of emotions. A deep sense of relief, and a very intense sadness, because it was our happy place. The one place we could simply be ourselves. I wonder now whether we should have done it sooner. **Chiew Ling:** Those last months weren't our best work. And I had spent years with a full-time job, a full-time side business and two small children. It was a necessary closure, so we could both do something completely different, something not about Nana & Bird. ### Seeing the world differently two years later **Chiew Ling:** I had the time to do things that previously I didn't have the headspace to think about or do. I started taking care of my body. Strength training, eating well, spending weekends with my children and time with people who mattered. **Georgina:** I tell my children to be bored, and I can't manage it myself. I completed an MBA and made myself meet new people. The more people I talked to, the more curious I got, and the “box” got bigger. Why hadn't we gone beyond Singapore? Who had stopped us? Nobody. There is a renewed clarity of how you view the world and how you want to interact with it. **Chiew Ling:** In 2010, taste came from being out in the world: cities, museums, observing how people dressed, where they ate. You formed your own perspective. These days so much of what we see looks the same. Everyone is wearing the same shoes with the same bag. That can’t be the limit of us. I started asking myself, why do I like what I like? Some of it is growing up in Singapore. And spending ten years in Shanghai, the influence of my husband who was raised between Hong Kong and Britain, and my daughters are growing up with East and West in them. I want them to keep both. **Georgina:** I look at the world now with more curiosity and less certainty. The more I learn, the less I know. My husband taught me to see work as an expression of love for a subject, not a ladder. I hold on to 留白, leaving white space: room for error, room for discovery. Not having the answer is fine. You ask someone who does. **Chiew Ling:** We're at a stage of life where we want to do something bold and big. **Georgina:** And something that lasts, though not in one fixed form. TONG may look quite different in ten years. We will keep reviewing it, and evolve how we show up. What stays the same is discovering new things to share, and sharing the stories of the people behind them. > “We are at a stage of our careers and life that we can take risks - be it a good or bad outcome. We don’t need to be constrained by ourselves by the little box that we draw for ourselves. We want to be vulnerable, and be ambitious. And find the feeling of discovering a new talent, learning something new or unlearning what we thought we knew.” > – Georgina and Chiew Ling ![Chiew Ling, in red, and Georgina talking on a white curved sofa.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-c151e6c1-54dc-434a-9577-6f649b29ee05.jpeg) **Chiew Ling (left) and Georgina, 2026* ### TONG **Chiew Ling:** The name came easily to us. 同 is in 同学 and 同伴: classmates, companions. It means doing things together, and sharing a sensibility. What we will share will be closer to a letter between friends than a feed. It will embody so much of how we came to know each other, and Nana & Bird’s journey which brought along a circle of designers, makers, customers and friends. If Nana & Bird were the friend you confided in… **Georgina:** TONG is that friend, and also the one who challenges you. We will go off tangent when exploring a topic and sometimes hit dead ends. That is how a point of view gets formed. And TONG is where we try to name something we have always felt deep down and never quite managed to say: what it means to see the world through an Asian eye. **Chiew Ling:** Every group of friends has one who does the homework. She has found the restaurant, read the book, met the maker, and she will tell you honestly whether it is for you. That is TONG. ![Bernard of World of Ode arranging quail-egg objects and aroma stones on a linen-covered table.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e7/e1/e7e1a462-10e9-44ef-b5f0-176a3a3470f7/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-8f533754-f136-430e-9932-ab9139eef4fd.jpeg) **ode, a maker from TONG’s first stories* ### In closing We don’t have all of TONG mapped out, and we won’t wait until we do. Start and keep learning. We are older now, with a clearer sense of what we won’t trade. What has changed is how we want to share. A closer look into the person behind the work, what they have learnt and why it might matter to you. We want to build layers to how we might understand and perceive the world around us. And pass on what we find the way friends always have: quietly, from one hand to another. If you have shopped with us at Nana & Bird, thank you. You are why we trust our curatorial eye enough to do this again. If you are new, welcome. It started with the two of us. 同 was always meant for more. — Georgina and Chiew Ling Meet them Georgina and Chiew Ling, in conversation · 4 min About TONG: TONG publishes long form stories each month at [t-o-n-g.co](http://t-o-n-g.co/?ref=t-o-n-g.co) and in a newsletter, about makers in fashion, design & objects, art, food, books, spaces, and beauty & wellness, worth knowing across Asia and beyond. Through the year, it hosts gatherings where readers meet those makers and see the work in person.