The Cheah Wei Chun Interview
Former creative director of MPH Magazines Singapore (BluInc Media), now creative director of Clanhouse and DSTNCT on retaining sanity with success
M: Did you always want to work in fashion?
WC: I’m from Malaysia. I studied in New Zealand to be a graphic designer. In 1994, corporate design was booming, but no SG schools offered graphic design degrees. Expats like myself with degrees easily got high-paying jobs.
M: What were graphic designer requirements in 1994?
WC: Photoshop existed. InDesign didn’t. You were expected to use software, but digital was in infancy. The Mac came out when I was in university.
I worked on annual reports for DBS, Haw Par Corporation, Singapore Airlines, etc. On my fifth year, my design agency scored the prestigious SIA annual report job; before, all their accounts were hogged by Batey.
SIA weren’t the easiest clients.
We shared an office with MPH Magazines. They ran titles like Female, NÜYOU, etc. and contracted others for brands. The editor, who became GM, liked me. Her only way to afford me was to position me under the contracts team. By the time I joined, they’d moved into a warehouse. I heard monkeys. My first role was redesigning SilverKris, SIA’s in-flight magazine. I had to go to the SIA office monthly.
M: Agency vs magazine design.
WC: I thought being a hotshot corporate designer meant working for magazines would be no problem. Corporate design is subtractive, disciplined, about following client briefs. It produces fucking boring magazines.
At magazines, briefs are self-generated. We decide orange lingerie is in, make stories heard 1001 times interesting again. School didn’t prepare for me for it.
A joy of magazine publishing was that unlike annual reports, my parents could understand it. It connected me with the world. I led a seductive lifestyle.
I met Annemarie Iverson, the ex beauty and fashion news director at Liz Tilberis’ iconic Harper’s BAZAAR. Annemarie was now the editor of Seventeen. Compared to Singapore, where few people do many things, Seventeen had many people doing many things: model editors, marketing girls coordinating mall events across America, market editors wrapping up Paris and Milan fashion week trends to advertisers at tea parties, in anticipation for looks they’d require for upcoming shoots and stories.
In a year, I went from art director of one magazine to creative director of everything, >12 titles. It was my seventh year as a designer.
Female made shit loads of money with 500 pages a month. Edwin Ho, the art director who was previously from the original Vogue SG, seemed to have been offended by my promotion (or so I was told, this is unconfirmed!). He quit.
M: You said yes because you were offered the position.
WC: I showed leadership, was articulate. I revamped NÜYOU several times without speaking Mandarin and their masthead once, which has survived 20+ years later.
I was influenced by Vogue Japan when it launched, wanted to use Chinese vertically to distinguish it from English magazines. I saw it as avant-garde. Editors thought it was old fashioned.
M: You approached NÜYOU with fresh eyes.
WC: There was cultural “baggage”. Editors said a cover girl I liked looked like a mistress. What? Magazines taught me everything is symbolic.
When approaching Female, I thought the aspiration was Vogue. But Cosmo was exponentially the most popular magazine in US. Marie Claire was huge too. Not every girl needs to be in Chanel. What was the in-between Vogue and Cosmo, a look a mother could comprehend?
M: Were there set responsibilities among art directors, editors, photographers, stylists, etc.?
WC: It was organic, dependant on individual skill sets. But Singapore stylists then often had different agendas from magazines.
With August issues, it’s tradition to celebrate Singapore. One year, a leading stylist who was tight with Zoe Tay wanted a big spread featuring her in front of national monuments. We shot our cover in Wee Khim’s studio, then at night headed to Orchard Road for the spread shoot.
I noticed Zoe crying on a roadside bench. Mediacorp called: why were we forcing her to do the shoot? What? Her husband Phillip Chionh was going away on a long trip. She wanted to send him off. My poor editor had to write an apology letter to Mediacorp.
Once, we commissioned a spread from Chuando Tan. The images were gorgeous. But the model was half-naked, smoking a cigarette in many shots. We couldn’t print them by law! He also insisted to design spreads himself and attend press checks for his pages.
Pretty soon, we decided to style covers and shoots ourselves. When you’re outside fashion, styling seems exalted. But if you have knack, it can be picked up. Luckily, the first cover I styled did well.
For covers, we definitely featured full runway looks. Brands sent covers to Paris [etc.], who’d file them as justification for budget they’d spent on coverage. Who’d file a cover if we mixed competitors Chanel and Dior? We got away with mixing brands for spreads because we produced interesting images.
M: Even out of ego, did you find yourself building your reputation?
WC: A stylist’s self-perception is formed by what others say. Reputation is often built on eggshells. But I had a career in graphic design before fashion, wasn’t die-hard attached to it.
BluInc became known as a creative publisher. But SPH wanted to expand. Through Sunday evening TV news, I found out they’d bought us out.
After, the workplace became very bureaucratic. My days were filled with meetings, nights proper work. It wasn’t sustainable, why I studied design. I quit. But BluInc Malaysia had launched two Malay magazines that were doing well. I negotiated an informal contract being paid my former full-time salary as creative consultant for GLAM covers, did their covers and one spread per issue, flew to KL every month for over a decade. And started Clanhouse.
M: Did fashion make you feel out of touch with mainstream society?
WC: Fashion had a singular vision. Models “needed” to be skinny. Dark skin was “problematic”; though I tried to buck that stereotype.
M: With social, new seems to become old immediately. How do you keep up?
WC: Samples that ship to Asia tend to be runway looks no one wants. When it was my job, I looked at all the shows, down to non-advertisers, to try to reserve looks, key pieces.
Individual voices have always been celebrated in fashion, but social media celebrates uniqueness. At DSTNCT, I’ve brought structure but learnt to rely on young talent for ideas and a taste level closer to our target audiences.
Singaporean magazines never truly embraced Singaporean-ness, rarely produced original content. We lost relevance fast. Where print is dying everywhere, Singapore is dying faster.
Appetite for fashion imagery won’t stop. But fashion is morphing into something else. You can easily gain a following on social media posting archive BAZAAR or Italian Vogue covers and spreads. Post an image on social media from 20 years ago. It will come off fresh. Time collapses. I’ve forgotten whether I’ve bought the latest issues of magazines because covers are broken on social media before print is distributed for sale.
