SINGAPORE — When Yiqing Yin showed her gentle, beautifully crafted collection under the banner of Haute Couture Fashion Week here this month, she was, to a certain extent, going “home.”

The Chinese-born, Paris-based designer was one of a handful of experimental designers, high on handwork, who were picked to show their creations in Singapore at the beginning of December. The country’s vibrant high-rise city is the only place in the East that has held formal showings of French haute couture collections.

For Ms. Yin, this was a challenging moment — not least because she never expects to return to her birth country and has made her home in Europe. But she feels a visceral sense of the importance of showing her work in the Far East.

Three other designers in the group — Christophe Josse, Alexis Mabille and Gustavo Lins — were in Singapore for the second time, defying suggestions that this initiative is focused on promoting couture, rather than selling it to clients.