Karen Hoisington began her appreciation for design and elegance growing up as the daughter of one of Singapore’s prominent artists of the 1960s, Vincent Hoisington. Her mother, Agnes, a retired school principal of Raffles Girls and Anderson Girls School amongst others in the 1970s, inspired a great fashion sense and so was an early inspiration for Karen. One of her earliest recollection was a polka-dotted Kelly that her mother carried. Recently, a similar bag was given too her by a good friend, and that triggered a quest to collect vintage bags as part-fashion, part-product design and part-engineering.

Running her own branding company, Datum Branding, Karen has created a number of trendsetting brands for high fashion and lifestyle clients like CK Tangs, Club 21, and Asia Pacific Breweries amongst others. Recently appointed an adjunct lecturer at Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Design, she finds great joy in sharing her on-going experiences as a global brand designer and an appreciation of vintage bags as examples of fashion and design to students in Industrial Design.

Growing up in the UK from the age of 16, Karen appreciates fine antiques doing some studies in History of Art and the art of repairing fine bone china. She has owned 3 vintage MG classic sports cars and raced in them in the 1980s and 1990s.