My dear friend, let me tell you a story

In 2016, I moved to Singapore.

I didn't know it then, but I had just moved to one of the most unforgiving cities in the world in terms of quality.

Singapore doesn't do average. It doesn't do almost. It doesn't do 'good enough'. You feel it in everything — the food, the service, the products on the shelves. The bar is just different there. Relentlessly different.

Over the years, like everyone, I explored its shopping scene. Stores I had never heard of. Brands I couldn't pronounce. Fabrics I didn't know existed. I tried everything. 

And somewhere across fitting rooms in Orchard Road, parcels from brands I'd discovered online, recommendations from friends, I found pieces I loved. The kind where you know exactly where it is in your wardrobe. The kind where, if your house were on fire, you'd grab it on the way out.

We all have those pieces. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Things that earn a permanent place in your life. Things you don't replace — you protect. I had found several of those in Singapore. Across garments, shoes, accessories, and, more importantly, lingerie. 

We had just come back from India. Two weeks. Enough shopping to embarrass us both.

Two days later, my husband walked into the bedroom to find me surrounded by bras. New ones. Just arrived. He looked at me. Looked at the pile. Looked back at me. "We just spent two weeks in India. You shopped every single day. And you still had to order bras the moment we landed?" He wasn't wrong. I just hadn't thought about why. Until that moment.

And then he said something I couldn't stop thinking about.

"Everything in this world is made for women. Clothes. Skincare. Makeup. Accessories. Remove women from the equation — half the world goes bankrupt."

He said it like a joke.

And I kept thinking — if that's actually true, if the whole world is fighting for a woman's attention and loyalty — why has nobody won it in the one category she wears every single day? She knows her favourite cleanser. She knows which brand makes her jeans feel right. She has opinions — strong ones — about everything from her kajal to her kadai. But her bra? She just buys whatever fits. I am talking in the context of Indian women.

Every time I travelled back to Singapore from India, my bag was full. Snacks, my mother makes them that you can't find anywhere else. Dresses from my favourite new-age brands. Hand-crafted shoes. Indian brands I genuinely love — products I would recommend to anyone, things that made me proud to say — yes, this is from India.

But I had never once packed an Indian bra. Not once. In ten years.

That realisation sat with me differently from the others. 

And I thought — if I, someone who has spent years actively searching, trying every brand, ordering parcel after parcel, travelling across countries looking for better, then, just maybe, that was something I could do something about.

That, my friend, was the beginning of MONTSAE.