How did you get started in the fashion industry?
Hear from the key figures and players who shaped Singapore’s fashion industry.
Rizal Ahyar
Fashion show producerTranscript
“I've always been in entertainment since I was very, very young. Since my kindergarten, I used to do TV programmes. My first ever official job. I remember, on a very strange Sunday morning, somebody spotted me. I was at my grandmother's place and my uncle's neighbour who was in the – it was called RTS at that time – Radio Television Singapore, sort of spotted me and asked me to audition for something. And when I went I found out, I had a small role on a radio Sunday Wara. I was the voice of a kid in some drama. And then after that, I started doing a TV commercial for a cough mixture for an Indonesian brand. And then after that, I started doing regular children's radio and TV shows. So those were my… I mean, they were not regular, but at one point we were going on and off. So that was that.
At the same time, I took up music lessons all the way. Somehow, during my secondary school days, I also did part-time work, like – I can't remember the brand but – imagine something like Casio. They used to have all these pre-synthesiser days. They used to have all these mini keyboards that they would sell. And I would be working part-time performing on them at shopping malls on the weekends, just for extra income, you know?
I never really sort of planned to get into this. When I was about to leave school, one of the things that happened was last minute, I got exempted from NS (National Service). And when that happened, everything kind of changed while I was trying to sort of... I was hanging around, I was offered this job by my previous company, and when they offered the job, it sounded very interesting. I mean, I already got to know people through my late teenage years. I mean, some of these people were already in the fashion industry. And they were players. And I mean, we got to know them socially. So I actually, during that period, I was offered to do the job to join one of the show, events... That company was specifically a fashion show events company. And I thought, wow, that sounded exciting. And since I thought I didn't have to go to National Service, I made a very brave decision to give it a try. I mean, even if I didn't like it, I can still continue to further my studies, because most of my schoolmates and my college mates were in NS. So I thought, you know, do it for fun. But when I started doing it, I got sort of hooked on to it. And it was, I mean, the first few months, things got very successful. And eventually, before I knew it, I was with a company for eight and a half years. Only after that I sort of ventured on my own.
That very first big company that I joined was called Runway Productions. Actually one of my bosses was Dick Lee, he and another partner Alan Koh. Alan Koh was also during that period, when I joined them, he was the president of SODA, the fashion designers' association. So that was how the connection was and I started doing all kinds of things for them. I mean, I was doing very well, I was very excited, and it was completely an unexpected challenge and change in my life, but I thought it was something that I could do. So that's how I caught on to it. And of course, along the way, I mean, you try to learn things and so on.
I'm one of those people that didn't necessarily go for the mass, you know, things that were mainstream, I mean, like, things that were a little bit quirky always kind of appealed to me, because I grew up in an entertainment industry. It was always about performing in front of the crowds, making sure that you look good, you know, I mean, it's all about being there, being at the moment, and fashion always has its place somewhere. So, I mean, that was always something that even when you don't think about it, it's there. You know, but of course, when you study it and you acknowledge it, you discover more.
Specifically about fashion, to really fully understand it, I think you need to enjoy it and appreciate it. And I think when you enjoy fashion as well, it's not just about what you see in magazine pages and so on, I think also that you need to appreciate the history of it all, you know, and I mean, I think it's also to do with my educational background. I mean, I appreciate the situation of the world, the current affairs, the history, you know, and in many, many ways, all these things are connected. So, actually, if you sort of step back, there are many things that you can connect the dots and the situation of the world affects the style of the fashion, the economics of the world, you know, pop culture. I mean, there are so many factors that always change and fashion is a way of showing these moments and the situation, the extravagance, the antagonism, I mean, whatever it may be, you know, it is all connected. It is a reflection of the people and the times. And I think that to understand it and to appreciate it is fairly important and then of course to live it. So it was one of the things that I enjoyed always.
As I grew up in my teenage years, it was the 80s. It was also the start of the MTV generation. That itself created a platform for you to to have your eyes open up together with the music, you know, you're suddenly brought into this whole dimension of how music can correlate with fashion and how, you know, in the 80s there were many tracks from the punk rock to the new wave to the alternatives to the post-disco. Suddenly there was from let's say, even the 70s disco, this became so many other options. I mean, it was interesting how things had just expanded. I mean, through the music also you discover the fashion, like I said, music videos, of course you look at magazines, you look at... I mean, in my younger days, I wasn't so sure about Singapore fashion, it was more about what I see around the world. And of course from the fashion capitals lah. As I got into the industry of course I discovered more and more about Singaporean fashion, Asian fashion, and so on.”
Pat Kraal
ModelTranscript
“Hi, I'm Pat Kraal, top model in the 1980s. Top Model because I did go abroad to work and I did do a lot of shows in Paris. Well, actually, because of my height, I'm 178, it really wasn't easy growing up in Singapore being my height. As a teenager, I was already, I think, at 14, I was already my height. I remember going after school, you know, the big school holiday in December, and then going back to school in January, and I was like, from primary to secondary, I was like, 'What happened to everyone? Why is everyone so short?' So I kind of shot up in the two months. And 178, so I mean, you know, with my height and all I think, my height and my build, I was thinking, why not try modelling because some of my friends were already models. So they also like, you know, pushed me and said, Why don't you become a model, so, okay I'll just try. It was either that or kindergarten teacher. I always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher because I love kids. So I could have been a kindergarten teacher instead, I think.
I remember my dad, when I told my dad, I want to be... because my friend asked me to join the agencies. 'Oh no! You're not going to be a model! No, no way.’ I said, 'Okay.' In the end, he's the one who gave in and he's the one who found I think he had, maybe, because he was a journalist, David Kraal, maybe you know him? In the end, he's the one who said, 'Okay, I found you an agency, you join this agency.’ So that's why I joined Mannequin. And when I started making a name for myself, he's like, 'Wow! So proud!' Then he's like, 'Oh this is my daughter!' You know, typical parents. Directly after school, I didn't even complete my A levels because I was like…
See I actually joined Mannequin, but I didn't have any jobs because I think they thought I was too tall. And then a friend of mine asked me to join Carrie's, my secondary classmate. And she was my height. So she said, 'Pat, why don't you join? You'll be working all the time.' So I joined and the next day, it was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, jobs every day, every day every day. So there was no looking back. In this time, I don't think that many people actually wanted to be a model, like now every Tom, Dick, and Harry or every girl wants to be a model. They think it's such an easy– I mean, it was hard work, but it was fun doing it. We had fun doing it. It wasn't considered work. It was more just getting paid to do something I really love. And I think at that time, really not many people wanted to be a model.
In the agencies, you had to sit for the classes before you could work, actually. So it was a small classroom with a big catwalk in the middle, big podium. And not big I mean it was probably 25 metre square ballroom with chairs all around. And then there was a podium in the middle with a T, a T-shaped podium. So we would go on the podium with our heels and actually the teacher, which was always an ex-model or model at the time would teach us. We all had to pay attention, look, and then one by one they would make us walk and correct us.
They teach you deportment, how to walk on a catwalk, how to, like social etiquette, how to behave, how to eat properly, how to hold yourself, how to, like, how to pose, because when you walk you had to do the half-turn, full- turn, quarter-turn, how to open a jacket, how to where to place your hands, how to use your… how to put your hands in the pocket, how to pose for pictures. You do learn a lot.
First fashion show I think it was Mandarin Hotel ballroom. I was very new and I think I had never even done a fashion show before. Graduated from the modelling courses at Mannequin and at Carrie's. No, no, no, I did fashion shows but never a big fashion show. And of course there were fittings and rehearsals and all that. First fashion show, very scary, all the policemen around because of the jewellery.
So I did go to Paris to try my luck because another friend of mine, Hanis, you know, Hanis? She was working in Paris, and we were best friends at the time. So she said, 'Yeah, you have to come, you have to come. The work is so good and you're paid so much more.' So I did try. I did try for like one season. But I was in my early 20s, 21 or something, but I hated it because it was snowing the first time I arrived, it was winter, and I missed home and the food and I didn't speak French at all. I was like, 'Okay, I'll do one season just to prove to everyone that okay, you said I can work there. And I worked there and I'm just coming home. I'm gonna stay in Singapore now.' They said, 'Oh, no!' When I came back, they're like, 'Oh, you work so well. You're so silly. Why don't you go back?' I said, 'No, I hated it, it was so snowy, it was so lonely, and it was so horrible.' In the end I went back and I'm still here after 30-something years.
Actually, when I first went to Paris, I went to Givenchy, just to say hello, because I didn't have an agency, didn't have any... only knew my friend. And she had a fitting at Givenchy, so she's like, 'Pat! Pat! Come with me.' I said, 'Sure.' So I went there. I said, 'Hi, Mr. G.' We used to call them Mr. G. And he's like, 'Oh, who's this girl? He said, 'I want her to work, sir.' He said, 'Can you start straight away?’ I was like, 'Sure!' You know, everyone goes to Paris to find an agency first and then they will send you for castings. I did it the other way around. I went to a designer, got hired, and then had to find an agency.
So after Givenchy, I went for casting at Jean-Louis Scherrer, and I was working for, I don't know, Chanel, Pierre Balmain, Cardin, who else? I can't remember. Then I went one day for casting at Jean-Louis Scherrer, and then they said, 'Oh, would you like to be our house model?' Because I was a house model for Givenchy, and a house model is a model that does all the pre-fittings, the fittings for the show, so they make the clothes on you. And I was like, 'Sure.' And there was no house model at that time. So they said, 'Yeah, you're the perfect fit. Would you like to?' And I was like, 'Sure, let me see a contract first.' You know? So I remember sitting, like, overnight with the guy who was in charge of the models, because he was all in French, so he was trying to explain the whole contract to me, and I said, 'No, no, I want this, this, this,' and then they gave me what I wanted. So I worked actually exclusively because being a house model, I had no time to do any other shows or any other fittings. But I was happy. I was really happy there. I was even paid... because I managed to get paid for one year when I was actually working for six months.”
Brandon Barker
Fashion show producer and former model Transcript
“Hi, my name is Brandon Barker. I work as a designer. I produce events around the world.
After Sec Four, you go into National Service. And by the time I got into National Service, I had already started modelling. I never realised what I wanted to do and sort of went along with what was expected of me. All the opportunities that I got were actually offered to me and that's how I discovered that I wanted to do them.
I never considered modelling. I was asked to do it for Metro, I then went away, never saw the results of that shoot, I don't know how it was used. So when I come back to Singapore, I get contacted by Carrie to model for her, but I had not considered modelling up to that point. And it was a real surprise to me, and so I went in, saw her, signed the thing and never regretted it.
I was a full-time model. I would have been either doing National Service, or alternatively, in university at the time, but work-wise I was just modelling, I continue university for about two years, modelling as well. But what happens is that I'm actually not concentrating on my university enough. And I then decide that I will make the choice. And I actually choose to do university. And I've got a contract to do a whole series of shoots with the Hyatt Hotel in Southeast Asia. The first shoot's in Singapore and clashes with a university lecture. And I decide that I will not do the shoot and I lose the whole project. And I go to university and they cancel the lecture. And I never go back to university.
I start off as a model and then begin to find myself slipping into other roles that needed people to do them. Back in the 70s, there weren't a lot of people doing a lot of the work. There were more models than anything else. But show producers, stylists, art directors, there were nobody doing that, or not as many people doing that. I found myself in those roles as well. Even though, at 16 or 17 years old, all I wanted to do was model. I wanted to be on the catwalk more than anything else.
With photography, when they needed a stylist, I wouldn't be able to be the model. They would bring me in as a stylist as opposed to the model. I would have loved to have been the model. The same thing happens in show production and walking the runway. Till this day, I love to walk the runway, I love to be in front of an audience. But I'm always working backstage, I'm on a technical desk where people are not seeing the magic that we are creating, but just to be on the runway again, and having somebody creating the magic around me, is what I truly, truly would love to do. Commercially, I would have loved to be the model rather than the makeup artist, I would have rather been the model rather than the stylist. I would have rather been the person in front of the camera rather than lighting the model. And what I found was that all the other work that I did ate into the fact that I wanted to be a model.
I started in 1974 and I go on for a really, really long time. My career has really extended purely because I do lots of other things, which is why I know a lot of the models from later on. So I would have worked with people back in the 70s like Janine Siniscal, Kim Im, and then would have continued working up to the 2000s with people like Sheila Sim and I got to know all of them.
It was very exciting to me because it was just at the time when I was going to fashion shows. I was going to events and fashion shows at the time and beginning to realise that there were all these people about. I didn't know any of them at the time, but would get to know him and become really good friends with them later on. I used to really enjoy watching the shows and going to the events and getting dressed up to go to the events, but I never considered myself as doing it. I would be, say, going to an event at a hotel or something and there would be a fashion show going on there. And for me, that was a good enough reason to go to the event.
I would watch these shows purely for the purposes of entertainment. I would then go to shows because at the time there used to be shows on the swimming pool of the Goodwood Park Hotel and they would bring in foreign fashion shows. The early designers out of England. Some of the shows that I saw they were really, like, spectacular and really pleasurable to go to. It wasn't for me, it wasn't to go and meet people or anything like that, it was just to go and watch the show. For some reason the very first time I went to the Goodwood Park Hotel show, I was with Tina Tan, the model, who went on to owning a boutique and Gianni Versace and all of that. I felt like one of the youngest people there. I don't know if that really was the case, but it was really exciting. It was wonderful to go to. It was a really exciting thing. And it was so long ago and I was so young that I actually had to speak to Margaret Khoo Goodwood Park Hotel and ask her about the shows on the swimming pool that they had and where people sat and watched the shows and all that. Later on. I go on to do a show, one of the major shows in 1978, with Man and His Woman boutique, and it's on the platform of the Goodwood Park Hotel. And it's one of the things that I remember ever because I had seen the shows when I wasn't doing them and went on to actually doing them.
I joined Carrie Models Agency, within the first year, I'm already choreographing shows. I do actually say to Carrie later on, 'You know, I was so young at the time, like 19 years old, how do you take a 19-year-old and be so confident as to make them choreograph a fashion show?
With no experience, nothing, and how do you actually see that the person is able to do it? You know, why did you ask me to do that?' And she actually wasn't able to answer and she said, 'Brandon, I was 22 at the time.' But she seems so old to me. She seems so old and so experienced, and she also said, because we become really good friends, and she said, 'All those years, why didn't you include me in the stuff that you were doing?' And I was like, 'You were the owner or the agency. I couldn't let you know what I was up to.'
First show, it was for Polaroid sunglasses. I was with Carrie Models, it was produced through Carrie Models. It was on the catwalk at the Hyatt Hotel in Singapore. I remember the music, I remember everything about it. The first song of that thing was Tina Charles' 'I love to love' and another song that was in it was Queen's, 'We are the Champions.' I can name maybe three or four of the models that were in. It's it was really a very, very big deal for me because I remember it all. And it was the first thing that I started doing. And it was then that I realised that to be able to do it, I needed to learn lighting, I needed to learn sound. There was a lot that I needed to learn.
To learn lighting, I would go and work in the sound rooms of all the hotels where I would go and offer my services and say, 'Can I come and help you out?' And then I would then watch what was going on and learn how to light, how lighting worked. I even did it at the Tropicana in the sound room.
It was a wonderful thing because later on I would know all the people in all the sound rooms and I would be able to go, say, into the Hyatt Hotel and watch a fashion show or Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 performing in the ballroom of the Hyatt hotel but in the sound room. I go into doing shows and shows were much longer at that time and that Polaroid show was one of the first shorter shows that ran for no more than 15 or 20 minutes.
Challenges that I face 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.”