Transcript

“As a photo model, I did a lot of editorial work. But then what happens is that once I start becoming a show producer and becoming a stylist, and all the rest of it, that's where all my commercial work is with. So I'm doing commercials all the time, except I'm doing either print work or live commercial work. But I'm always a makeup artist, a stylist, a lighting person, a show producer, as opposed to the model. A lot of the modelling work I did was pure fashion, which is what I truly enjoy, which was in high fashion. 

I was learning, every single thing I would watch, I would learn. I would then go to see if I was in London, and I was watching a show in the West End, I started watching it from a technical point of view, in that I would actually get up and walk around to see where the light was coming from and stuff like that. And the whole experience of the show for me was much more than just the performance that was going on, it was the back-of-house technical that became very important to me, and to see how it was done. Watching lighting in the ‘70s coming from the front, where you worked with blackouts, and then later on where lighting begins to work with what you call white-outs. So rather than going to blackout, they would blind you. And then something could happen on stage. So it was working in a different way. And they were all different things that I was learning all the time.

In the early days, everyone just goes and works. None of us really do modelling classes. There probably was some teaching backstage. So my sister, my younger sister also signs on her Carrie's and for a while is not very successful. Because it was also important what we did on the catwalk in an interview situation, or in a casting situation. Because if you never got the job, you never walk the catwalk. So my sister was struggling with getting the jobs. So I basically taught her how to work the catwalk in that casting situation, what to do, how to prepare yourself for it, what to say. And once she got that she never looked back. She becomes very, very successful. What I do is that in the ‘70s, in the early part of modelling, I never considered that I would need a course even. I then go on to produce shows. But later on Carrie Models starts giving their models classes, and I teach those classes. So a lot of the successful models from Carrie's, the older models, we would go in and we would teach courses. The groups of people that we taught would have been 12 or 14. And out of that 12 or 14 may be one, if they were lucky, or two from each class might go on to be a model.

The photographer that I used to love to work with was Willy Tang, and I loved the way he photographed me. I was photographed by many, many, many, many different photographers, but I believed it was how they saw you. And I liked the way they saw me, it's like why liked their photography, I think. The other one that I really loved was Nick Kamis. What I saw of his work was, he used to photograph for the New Nation and things like that. There would be a Miss Singapore and I saw a picture of Deborah de Souza that he did who was the Miss Singapore in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s. And a really incredible shot and afterward I was always very happy to be photographed by Nick. And there's a whole series of pictures that he did of me that are really fantastic. There's a guy called Alvin Chia, I think, I'm not entirely certain about his surname and haven't had the opportunity to ask Linda Teo of Carrie's. And what he did is he used to photograph me all the time. He used to come into the agency and find young models and photograph them, so that 1970s model card, all are photographed by him.

Judith starts Man in His Woman in the early ‘70s. I actually start going as a customer to her shop in 1973, ‘74, something like that. And I go in as a customer and then become a model for Man and His Woman later on. I then become a show producer for Man and His Woman. I then become a visual merchandiser for Man and His Woman. And I actually worked with her for many, many, many years, and continue till this day. And what I always did is if I worked as a model, I would say, 'I want those clothes, don't pay me.' And I would get more for my buck. And they will give it to me at a different price. In other words, and I did this right through my career where people would give me stuff.

When I'm creating a show, I actually see the whole thing and hear the whole thing before it's happened. How the girls walk, what's going to go on, I've actually seen it in my brain, and then I try to make it happen. The first thing I would have always seen is the clothes but sometimes, in Singapore, we would be creating a show, but the clothes wouldn't arrive until the day before the show. And I practically wouldn't see it. I would see photographs or drawings of it. So the inspiration had to come from elsewhere. What we were doing at that time, is like people like me and Dick and all that we're not really seeing shows it was all coming from us. How we did it, I have absolutely no idea. I was doing a show like that I would always stretch myself because we were the Singaporean people coming in to do the show and we were producing the show. The client was probably Singaporean bringing in the clothes. And I always wanted these shows to stand out above everything else. 

There was a time when I was in the Philippines, the date can probably be worked out because it was the release of Carole King's album “Tapestry” (1971). And I saw this amazing, fantastic Filipino show. The clothes were Filipino, the models were Filipinos, and it was based on “Tapestry,” and it used the music of “Tapestry,” the year it was created. And I watched this show and this was one of the very, very earlier shows I saw that would inspire me for a very, very long time.

Show production was our role. So you decided what the run of clothes were, so that it told a story. And the music would tell the story as well. Show production, the visual lighting would tell a story as well. And then the models would be taught what they had to do for each time they were in a certain dress. And they may be on their own, they may be in a group or they may be doing a double. So there was a lot of stuff that went into all of this, how they walked fast, slow, exaggerated, not exaggerated all of that told the story.

I was never working on like a three-month, or, it was never that. I think, if anything, it was maybe in a two to three week period. Basically, I would be hired to do a show. I then start working with the company, with the designer. And I would go in and I would look at the entire collection that they wanted to show. I would then start putting them into a run for the show, of what would go into the show, what they wanted to show but also what I felt was right for the show. And I would then start creating it that way. They would then go through the process of casting all the models. And that could take a really long time. Getting the right people was never easy. Sometimes they would bring in models from abroad as well, which was, you know, even going back to the ‘70s that was already happening. But we were talking Malaysia, the Philippines, places like that. So there would be two things happening simultaneously: Getting the models, putting the clothes together. Once that happened, I will then create a run order, not exactly this dress, but this dress or there will be four dresses… the models would come in and fit it. I would then put the models in an order but would also be at the time creating the makeup look, the concept for the show, because each show had to be different all the time.

So when I started off in this row, I was called a choreographer. So the initial choreographer was brought in and the choreographer only decided how the models walked on the catwalk. The choreographer didn't actually have any input on the lineup of the clothes and that was all coming from the client and from somebody else, I begin to change that because I feel that I cannot produce a show that way.

It's not enough to get the whole thing done. The show had to be lit – and not lit by somebody else. It had to be my view of the show. So first of all, how the clothes came out and the lineup of the models and who the models were, were all are really important to me. And that's why I ended up being a show producer as opposed to a choreographer. But for me, it had to be from the very beginning. So, I needed to know what the invitation was looking like and had input into the invitation, because that's the first thing that the client sees. And then that would lead on to what you were going to see when you walk into the show. All of that was like, incredibly important to me. So it became a complete experience. It was almost like creating a show for the West End. And I took all of those things into account. But for a show that was only going out for half an hour, it could have been in a department store.

If I choreograph a show, I always cue it. And it just gives me control because I know what the music– I know the length of everything, and I have total control that way. I realised that even till today, I can judge how long it's going to take a girl to walk from backstage onto the stage out and back in.

When I did a show for Female Magazine for Marianne Pereira, Marianne had been in Paris, and she was trying to get the models to do choreography that she had imagined. And it was very exaggerated how they had to move, but it was all synced. And I saw that Marianne was having a really hard time getting the girls to understand what her vision was, and what she wanted. But I understood it from hearing her talk about it. And I said, 'Marianne, I believe that I can actually make it happen for you a lot easier, because I know how to teach it. I know how to make it happen. And I know the girls and what they are capable of, and I know what you want, and you're not seeming to get it over.' And you know what she said? 'Do it Brandon.' And I created her vision for her in a very, very short period of time in just that one-hour rehearsal that we had. And she was very, very thankful to me, and we go on to have a relationship with Female Magazine, and Marianne was the editor. And I did lots of work for them, both as stylist and creating the makeup and the hair for each picture.

We had to learn how to teach really quickly because there wasn't a lot of time. The greater the number of models, the more difficult it became. It didn't become easier for the choreographer, because we had to remember everything that everybody was doing for a 30 or 40-minute show.

At the time, music had to be mixed like DJs. So basically, we would have two decks, and we would decide, okay, this is the music for the first two minutes of the show. And then you would go into the next record playing. And basically it was fade onto the next track. And we were creating these tracks, I was never able to do it very well. And what I used to do was choose all the music I wanted. And then I ring up Dick Lee and say to Dick, 'Can I come over? And will you record this for me?' I would sit down with him, hand him all the records, and he would make the tape for me. And it was all on cassette tapes by this time. I remember that very much later on, I was doing a show for Link and Dick came to see it. The music was Broadway and he sat and he listened to it. And he said to me, 'Brandon, who mixed this tape for you?' Well, it wasn't tape, because we were working on CDs already. And I said, 'Dick, I did it.' And he said, 'But how did you do it? You were never that good at it.' And I said, 'Dick, we have computers nowadays and it's solved all those problems for me. 

The app that I'm using to mix music, it was called Mixmeister. I go on to hand it on to other choreographers in Singapore who are struggling to do it. I was doing a fashion show for AdHoc in Singapore. The fashion show was being held at the Polo Club and the stage was in the horse thing. People sat around in a circle. The stage was in the shape of America because AdHoc did American designers. The DJ that was mixing the music live for me didn't show up, or for some reason wasn't there. And I looked into the audience and Rizal was sitting there. And I said, 'Rizal, will you run this thing for me?' And he said yes. And he went and he did a perfect job. And at the end of it, I went and thanked him and I said, 'Rizal, thank you so much for doing this.' And Rizal said, 'Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you.' And that to me was just so wonderful. I didn't even realise it. 

On one occasion, there was a Missoni show that was going on in Singapore, and I really wanted to produce it or to be part of it, but I never got that opportunity. They chose somebody else. I went to the sound room to watch the show because I wanted to see the show. And in those days, the music was played reel to reel, it was tape, and the tape broke. And without thinking, I stepped up, took it off the rack, put it into the machine, spliced it and put it back on the rack and press the play button and suddenly realised it wasn't my job. Lisa Balia, who owned Missoni, was told about what happened and how it had come back online. And she actually thanked you very much for doing it.

So how light goes from one exposure to the next is also very important. So you have one girl on the catwalk, how she comes out and how she exits – so the lighting is working with that, the music is working with that, the movement is working with that, and then she has to go backstage get changed and come out as something else.

Say if a show ran for 20 minutes it might be in sections that are 16 dresses, 14 dresses, two dresses. And each time I would be creating stories for each of those exposures. But within each exposure, each 14 dresses, there would be 14 exposures. And I'd be working with models in groups or as single persons. And knowing what the models were capable of doing, I would be working with what their abilities were. So I could have a model that would be the greatest walk in the world. But to put her alone on the catwalk and just walked down it, she would have that extra factor to hold the attention of the room and give them incredible excitement just from her moving down the catwalk. So if she was there, I would actually build the show to a moment like that with her. The client would have their team working, who were the people that iron the clothes, hung them up. You would have backstage people, dressers. There were never that many models in a show that were maybe 10 or 12, we weren't working with 30 or 40, which is what you're doing today. Nowadays models only wear one outfit and walk the catwalk. In those days, it wasn't a case of three, you might be doing eight outfits or 10 outfits or 12 outfits. What we all learn as models to do is change at an incredible pace without anybody helping us. So I would actually be able to change in less than two minutes. And to be able to do it, it was just like a mad rush all the time. There was very little talking backstage, even at that time, because you couldn't. The only time I hear voice raised or whatever was when someone would need to be zipped up and there was nobody there. Because at the time, nobody really knew what they were doing. But it very, very quickly changes that you end up having one dresser to one model. And the number of changes start to drop, so that the model is maybe doing only four or five changes at a time.

Later on in life when I went on to become an art director-stylist on TV commercials in Singapore, I found that depending on what kind of performance was required, I would either choose an actress or a model. If I was doing something that required a lot of transformations, a model was better, because the model becomes the clothes whilst an actress doesn't. An actress becomes a character. And I've always found it easier, having been the model as well. Without even thinking of it, you put the clothes on us, we become the clothes.

I always dressed very fashionably. And I would go out with my friends and I would get comments about how I was dressed. But very quickly, they would realise that it was dressing appropriately for where you were going. I mean, I've always dressed to be looked at. Fashion is always how I wanted to be. But I've seen it go through generations of people from the ‘70s, my sisters, my mother, all their friends, and I don't know this is seeing it through my experience, but I've always seen it as people in Singapore wanting to be fashionable, wanting to be seen. It perhaps is today, it's all become very much more casual. I actually see it as something that Singapore embraced, when you see it from the view of National Day Parade and the costumes that went to it. And the people that designed those costumes that went into it. And at first it would have been at community centre level and all that, of course that changes over the years, but there was that element to it. 

The other thing was that my father was the chairman of the Singapore Olympic Council and Sports. So when they had the SEAP games in Singapore, it became very vital what the clothes the people that gave out the gifts and the prizes and all of that, you know, the girls that came with the trays that had all the medals on it, and the people that carried the sign thing, Malaysia, Indonesia. I saw him going through a huge design project to actually do all of these things. So to say that fashion was not considered is not, not, not true. People I knew always wore fashion and I didn't know that some the tai tais of that time, what they were wearing, that they were wearing Lanvin, they were wearing... you know? It was all really quite something very, very special. And we're talking when I begin to understand it and it's the ‘70s.”