Design
14 March 2026
5 min read
Free T-shirt Diplomacy
Some research happens in boardrooms.
We prefer the street.
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Armed with a pile of Nala T-shirts, we headed into Chinatown with a very simple proposal for anyone who crossed our path: choose a shirt, put it on, let us film you for a moment, and you can keep it.
Instant participation.
Within minutes the pavement turned into a spontaneous fitting room. People were changing shirts, laughing, asking questions, and suddenly we had a little international cast standing right there in the middle of the street.
Some people recognised Nala immediately and were clearly longtime fans, which is always the nicest surprise. Others had never heard of us before but were curious enough to join the experiment.
And the mix of people was wonderful. Malaysians, of course, but also visitors from China, Denmark, Finland, Turkey and a few others we probably forgot to ask because everything was moving so quickly.
The universal truth was confirmed once again: when something is free, people become extremely cooperative. Cameras? No problem. A quick interview? Sure. A little walk down the street in your brand new shirt? Absolutely.
But what made it special was the warmth of it all. Nobody rushed off. People stayed, talked, laughed, and for a few minutes a simple T-shirt became a small bridge between strangers.
Everyone left with their shirt.
The T-shirts featured in this little street experiment come from our PUNQ T-shirt collection. PUNQ stands for Pattern, Unique, Nature and Quality, which pretty much sums up what we believe good design should carry.
And the good news is that you do not have to chase us down in Chinatown to get one.
The PUNQ T-shirts are available in all Nala stores in Singapore and Malaysia.
If you want to see the results of this very scientific street experiment, watch the episode this week. It turned out to be one of the most joyful ones we filmed.
