Let’s Talk Singaporean Style
w curator Seah Li Yi
Last week, I chatted with to-be Lasalle graduate, Seah Li Yi, about Apparently, a curation of 360 garments from 60 Singaporean women. I’ll let her define what it means to her. But if fashion has any relevance to what’s been happening in Singapore and elsewhere in the world recently, this conversation has certainly illuminated for me its many factors. Otherwise (and arguably more sensitively today), I hope you take Singaporean “style” as its many meanings: culture, psychographics, approach to expression.
So far, have we been thinking (and speaking) with our heads, hearts or…?
M: Tell me about Apparently.
LY: It’s a publication archiving 21st century clothing. I collected 360 garments from 60 women between 16 to 35 across the five regions of Singapore. Studying Fashion Media and Industries, I was able to use my interest in curation and exhibits to explore fashion issues and opinions.
As someone who feels very Singaporean, everything in school felt very westernised. There were studies on Asian culture, but none I could relate to and little I could find about Singapore; which is why most of my school projects have been “Singaporean”.
M: That’s quite a contrarian interest to have, at least compared to my fashion friends—many have run from it, you seem to want to run towards it.
LY: Most of my peers feel Singapore fashion scene is dead. It’s not as glamorous and pretty as in Western countries. We are lacking in many ways, so I wanted my project to help change perspectives. It’s not our choice, but we can do more as fashion practitioners.
M: Tell me more about this annoyance fashion people have about Singapore.
LY: I was business trained before entering Lasalle, where I got a culture shock. Friends outside school who wanted to start fashion business consulted me to know more about the scene. It’s saturated by blogshops, and while you don’t need to have a fashion background to start a business, you should at least research and understand what “fashion” is before selling trends.
Apparently was directed at them. Fashion has become meaningless self-expression because everyone’s wearing the same thing.
M: If it’s self-expression, then maybe that unintentionally expresses who Singaporeans are. I want to get back to this oversaturation of Western fashion in Singapore, and trying to express our culture to combat that. Was it difficult?
LY: Very. I was never trained in curation. I asked myself, What am I doing? My lecturers did ask why I collected garments that were so “uninteresting”. But I disagreed; they told me people’s personalities. Sure, they weren’t “good-looking” like luxury fashion, but why should that stop me?
It was a struggle, proving my point: uninteresting things can be interesting too.
We’re always trying to find Singaporean identity. We don’t have national costumes. I wanted to find out if we really have no fashion culture, and my project proved that. We’re practical, we don’t care if our clothes look fancy. We want pockets, to wear things everywhere.
M: Did you have to convince yourself that normal things can be beautiful?
LY: I needed a lot of convincing. *laughs* It was difficult, comparing with my peers’ work. Because my project was so “normal”, not pretty, it looked different. I felt so alone!
M: Was this your original FYP idea?
LY: FYP was an open brief. At first I didn’t know what I was doing, initially wanted to talk about digital media ruining our lives and how we need silence, to move away from these nasty things. The process of fashion is unglamorous, and I wanted to hold a real lens for outsiders to understand the industry better.
M: There’s this idea of exposing the other side. How did the idea of exploring Singaporean women’s wardrobes come about?
LY: For my dissertation, I went into 5 women’s houses, asked them to share why they bought, liked the pieces in their wardrobes. While my personal observation was that every Singaporean woman has a look, the women I interviewed had very different wardrobes.
For Apparently, I came up with a method assuming what women should have in their wardrobes: a dress, t-shirt, pair of socks, pants, sweater, top. To contribute to my archive, I asked women to submit: if you could only live with these 6 garments for the rest of your life, what would they be?
M: I don’t think people often have conversations about their wardrobes. What were you trying to glean from your conversations with the 5 women?
LY: I wanted to find out if Singaporeans really didn’t care about fashion. Most of them complained that Singapore only “produces” the same thing—printed t-shirts, rip-offs of each other, etc.—and that they can’t find anything to buy in-store, so they’d rather shop online. One of them only had t-shirts and shorts in her wardrobe. Another, who’s muslim, would find ways to dress more “fashionably” in spite of religious modestly.
M: It seems some care more than others. For them, why was there a gap between the desire to self express versus how they actually looked?
LY: I think it’s social norms what we consider “appropriate”. In my experience, people see a “gap” between themselves and fashion kids/people. We can be seen as snobbish for expressing ourselves.
M: Why did you decide to use this curatorial approach—collect the same type of 6 garments from 60 women—for Apparently?
LY: That was more of a creative idea, imagining someone looking through my (and other peoples’) wardrobe/s and identifying me if I were dead. My hypothesis was that every women owned and would choose these 6 garments.
I was wrong. Some didn’t choose dresses, some didn’t wear socks, or t-shirts. They said if I wanted their identity, they should be allowed to choose which 6 things. They went against instructions. Okay, sure.
M: Were you trying to prove a point or find out if something was true?
LY: Finding the truth. The most common response when I asked for their contribution was, I’m not very fashionable—can I really contribute to it? It really revealed Singaporeans’ perceptions of fashion. I felt kind of sad.
M: Reminds me of Emily Weiss of Glossier, who started Into The Gloss and column Top Shelf interviewing celebrities and non beauty “experts” about their beauty and skincare routine. Many of the women felt the brands they used weren’t glamorous or didn’t adhere to some Korean 12-step process, and felt embarrassed by that.
Do you think your contributors expected you to expected to send them “glamorous” things?
LY: They tried to pick up more presentable things. I told them not to filter their picks, even if they were worn/torn. They did that.
M: Were you able to create characters based off their garments?
LY: Someone submitted everything black. Someone submitted all well-known brands. Someone submitted t-shirts with quotes that made no sense. I tried to split the women by where they lived across Singapore’s 5 regions, but it was too different to define.
M: Why women?
LY: It’s the more saturated market, there’s more choice. I thought it might provide more insight.
M: Do Singaporean women dress for themselves?
LY: For our generation, surely.
M: What about asian conservatism?
LY: There’s this pattern of women dressing “their age”. This seems to be changing with time.
M: How about overall Singaporean culture informing style?
LY: I was aimlessly looking for some idea of a Singapore “identity”. Flipping through my family photo albums, in the 80s men wore the same polo tee and pants, women wore similar dresses.
I scrolled through Instagram. Gen Z’ers all wore crop tops, and probably wide-leg pants. I feel like as Singaporeans we’re very protected, with regards to what’s portrayed in media in the past. There’s always a “correct” way, we’re spoon-fed how to do things.
No one dares to be different. We’re a collectivist society. Is something presentable, can I wear it a lot? I think a lot of us shop by trends, for Instagram.
M: It seems protection has some negative side effects. It conjures fear of self-expression, and fashion is one of the most instant way to identify that.
LY: Fashion as a vehicle to communicate.
M: That’s so sad! *laughs* How do you think the insights you have gathered can help designers and Singaporean consumers approach fashion differently?
LY: I’ve not seen, even good fashion designers, exploring their roots as Singaporeans. I wanted to prove a point—you’re not wrong that Singapore’s fashion scene is ugly and uninteresting.
But we can also be inspired by the opinions of Singaporeans towards fashion, and their wardrobes. Hopefully Apparently can be an springboard for that.
M: You want Apparently to be a valid alternative to looking elsewhere, but you’ve also said, it is what it is. How can we be inspired by an uninspiring culture?
LY: I hope fashion designers can challenge, transform that thought.
M: Neither creators and consumers seem to want to give in. “Creators” who “have” are blogshops, the far extreme of that concept, i.e. selling out. How can move the conversation to the middle rather than one of the extremes?
LY: I don’t have the solution. I’d like businesses and consumers to have conversations with each other.
M: Is your curation an optimistic view of our culture?
LY: Optimistic, I’m very proud of it. It’s not glittery, but it still says a lot.
M: Plans moving forward.
LY: I’m trying to get Apparently published. I’m interested in curation, not just in fashion, but on design and art as a whole.
