Raffles 1887
The story of Doris Geddes and The Little Shop
As Raffles prepares to launch its first online emporium of fashion, homewares, stationery and gifts in November 2026, we take a trip down memory lane to discover the origins of The Little Shop by Raffles. Our delve into the archives uncovers how the redoubtable Doris Geddes first opened The Little Shop at Raffles Singapore in 1947, epitomising the elegance and enchanted glamour at the heart of the Raffles experience.
ON the Singapore Heritage Board’s ‘Roots’ website there is a collection entitled ‘Items related to Doris Geddes’. This includes a green hand-stitched dress and a pair of gold shoes with matching handbag and earrings. An accompanying photograph shows a woman of a certain age flanked by three models in 1950s cocktail dresses. So who was Doris Geddes, and why is she featured on a website designed to showcase Singapore’s diverse culture and history?
A beautiful Australian socialite, Doris Geddes and her husband Leonard arrived in Singapore in the 1930s. Leonard had professional links to Warner Brothers, and they moved in cosmopolitan circles. Their marriage subsequently ended, and when the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1942, Geddes fled back to Australia.
After the war Geddes returned to Singapore and opened a small, refined boutique. In 1947 she moved her outlet to Raffles Hotel, with which she felt she – and her wares – had a great affinity. Newly renamed, The Little Shop was located where the East India Room stands today, a generous space that felt like a treasure trove, filled with items that reflected her refined taste and international outlook.
A strong, spirited character, Geddes was a skilled dressmaker with a keen eye for fashion. As well as stocking porcelain, jewellery and decorative ornaments sourced from around the globe, The Little Shop sold couture pieces imported from Europe, copies that she made herself and her own original creations, described by Olson’s Orient Guide in 1967 as “high fashion with an exotic touch”. The Little Shop soon became a destination in its own right, attracting international visitors and notable personalities, and for 30 years it was as quintessential a part of Raffles as The Long Bar.
Geddes loved a fashion show. A year after she opened The Little Shop she staged a charity fashion parade at Raffles to showcase Christian Dior’s opulent, post-war New Look collection. Pared back utilitarianism was out; nipped in waists and voluminous skirts were in. “Mrs Geddes feels that Singapore women will favour the ‘new look’ once they have been given a real opportunity of studying imported models,” reported The Straits Times. Indeed, several of those Singapore women took part in the parade and the paper accompanied its report with a photograph of one Mrs E Laidlaw Thomson, resplendent in a Dior design in black and gold taffeta.
By the time she served Elizabeth Taylor in 1957, Doris Geddes had earned a reputation as Southeast Asia’s leading couturier, dressing Hollywood royalty, global travellers and society figures such as the Sultana of Johor, and underscoring the cultural moment in post-war Singapore when Raffles was a crossroads for celebrity, fashion and cosmopolitan life. Her encounter with Taylor, who was staying at Raffles with her third husband, Mike Todd, did not go entirely smoothly when the tight, strapless number Taylor had purchased from The Little Shop split at the seams during a gala dinner. According to several reports, when the actress took up the matter with Geddes the following day, she was treated with characteristic firmness and a reminder she had been cautioned personally by Geddes about the fit. In matters fashion, La Geddes invariably had the last word.
"A woman with strong opinions, high standards and a deep sense of pride in her work and her space. She cared deeply about her shop and was very attentive to detail"
Leslie Danker, Mentor Historian at Raffles Singapore
Raffles Singapore’s legendary Mentor Historian, Leslie Danker, first met Doris Geddes when he joined Raffles in 1972. “She was quite elderly by then, but still very much a presence – a woman with strong opinions, high standards and a deep sense of pride in her work and her space,” he says. “She cared deeply about the upkeep of her shop and was very attentive to detail. From time to time, she would call me in to discuss improvements or concerns about the premises. In those days, without mobile phones, communication was rather charmingly old-fashioned and she would page me wherever I was in the hotel, and I would make my way to see her. She could be very persuasive, and those conversations often turned into long and lively exchanges.”
In 1978 the BBC interviewed Geddes as part of a programme about Raffles during the 1960s and 1970s. Recalling how regular guest Noel Coward “loved that very English undercurrent of nonsense that was always going on”, she described the hotel – and by extension The Little Shop – as “the centre of everything”.
Leslie Danker adds: “After her passing and the eventual closure of the shop, some of its contents were auctioned. I purchased a few porcelain cat figurines – pieces that remain dear to me, both as keepsakes of that era and as a reminder of my personal association with Doris.”
In 2025 UK-based Hawleys Auctioneers listed what it described as “The remaining stock of Doris Geddes’ Little Shop in Raffles Hotel Singapore”, including a Balenciaga model cocktail dress with ivory-boned under-bodice and skirt overlaid with green Chantilly lace and an opera coat in Malay Songket handloom silk… with plain shawl collar and lining in Thai silk. Other items bearing the rare Doris Geddes label can occasionally be found on online marketplaces. Doris Geddes may have closed her shop at Raffles Singapore nearly 50 years ago, but its lasting impact has been truly remarkable.
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