Kassandra Lim Leaves Architecture Behind to Take Her Fashion Vision to London Fashion Week

After six years working in architecture, Kassandra Lim has taken a strikingly different route: building a career in fashion and presenting her work at London Fashion Week. The 34-year-old’s path has also included filmmaking, further study and the launch of her own label, according to Her World’s Career Confessions column. Lim worked with architecture firms including Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority before deciding in 2021 to pursue fashion. She spent two years on technical training and independent study, preparing for a place at fashion school. In 2023, she gained direct entry to the master’s programme in fashion design at London’s Royal College of Art. Her creative work had already crossed disciplines. In 2020, Lim’s first experimental short film, Season of Aeon, won Best Picture at the La Jolla Fashion Film Festival. She served in several roles on the project, including director, screenwriter, art director and set designer. The article describes film and fashion not as unrelated detours, but as different ways for her to bring ideas to life. That approach now informs El Khemie, the independent fashion label she established in 2025. At London Fashion Week, she presented a collection called Department of Nocturnal Affairs, inspired by Singapore’s demanding work culture and the hours people spend at the office after dark. The collection draws on familiar late-night details: leaving work well after the day is over, passing buildings with lights still on and making the journey home. Lim’s professional story is not a simple switch from one field to another; it is a series of decisions shaped by creative curiosity. As her account suggests, she did not need to follow a prescribed career timeline to connect her earlier experience with the work she wants to make now.