What were some of the challenges faced by the fashion industry during this time?
Hear from the key figures and players who shaped Singapore’s fashion industry.
Rizal Ahyar
Fashion show producerTranscript
“I think the challenges are more now than then. I think there were lesser guidelines and requirements. I mean, if we could pass through certain basic needs, we could go ahead. For example, just talking about Ngee Ann City, of course, we need to approve the ground guidelines, it needs to be engineer-endorsed, and so on, getting the blessings of Trade Development Board, or Tourism Board, we could actually go ahead, but here these days, there have many, many, many other requirements, you know, so I find it more complicated now. And actually, last time, we were using mainly, I mean, a lot of our models during the 1980s especially, they were all our Singaporean girls. It was easy for us to control because most of them here, but there are hardly any nowadays, there're very, very few models that are actually Singaporean. So the rest are all in and out of the country. So again, for us to find models is very hard, especially even now, you really work with the seasons, or you need to book them even more than before.”
Pat Kraal
ModelTranscript
“Seriously, no frustration, no challenges, I think I was very lucky. The only thing was not speaking French but nobody in the modelling industry spoke French because all the agencies, all the models, all spoke English so it wasn't the language. It was maybe just living abroad. For me that was the main challenge, being away from Singapore was for me the main challenge.”
Brandon Barker
Fashion show producer and former model Transcript
“In the very early years, I don't think it was positive. Thing about if you were a model, if you were putting yourself out on a catwalk, that wasn't a good thing. It was that Asian conservative thing. It was actually a problem in that not everybody, if you came from a good family, you wouldn't be… you may not be modelling. Or you may not be allowed to model, which is completely crazy, but these were different times. It's in the ‘70s, when people like myself and Dick Lee, and Tina, and all of these people get into it, where all the barriers come down all of a sudden, and nobody talks about it or thinks about it anymore. And models now I looked the way I always looked at them. When I saw a model on a catwalk I saw the talent, I saw what she was doing, I saw that [she was] selling the clothes. And I believe that that very much then becomes the case in Singapore. And it happens really, really quickly. I think the negative feeling would have been really just at the beginning, where people would question that the fact that I was in fashion was because there was something wrong with me. But that changes completely and people then look at you in a different way. And they begin to be able to see that there is more to what you were doing.
Challenges that I faced as a model in that I always looked very young. I would be rejected for jobs because I didn't look old enough. I also found that the industry was very small. People had their views of you, and you may not be anything like that. We were not judged purely on our ability. It was also your reputation, what people want, you know, it wasn't in my opinion, cold professionalism, which is what I love. It's only much later on in life that when I was say, working in Paris or something and I was choreographing a show with very young people that I realised that these young people came in with no judgments about what they were seeing or hearing. They judged you entirely on what you are giving them, so it was more on my ability.”