Lost and hungry on the catwalk of fame
It was a dark, rainy night. Outside the tent where the opening of the Singapore Fashion Festival was to be held were beautiful people and their equally skinny designer umbrellas.
As I walked into the tent – I had sneaked into the VIP section, thanks to a stealth invitation – I watched the beautiful, skinny people dressed in the latest fashions sipping champagne. The only people eating was me, and me.
The food came in little spoons. (This wasn’t the World Gourmet Summit which is next week.) I hadn’t had dinner and was tempted to finish off all the 30 spoons in one tray but thought that would be construed as uncouth and greedy.
Opening the annual festival was Hong Kong designer, Vivienne Tam. I like her clothes which are a blend of east and west, although I have never actually owned one.
I was in the second front row, not bad seats for a fashion ignoramus. Across the catwalk, I saw “celebrities” in the front row. Jimmy Choo, the Penang-boy-made-good, who is a household name in shoes except that he doesn’t own the name anymore.
There was Dick Lee, Singapore’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber, dressed in very casual but expensive chic – jeans and T-shirt. Next to him was celebrity hairstylist David Gan.
This man intrigues me. He cuts hair for the likes to Zhang Ziyi yet nobody’s ever seen his hair because he wears a cap wherever he goes.
I have to confess, fashion confounds me. It seems to me more baloney than one could possibly eat in a lifetime.
Not that any of the models in the Vivienne Tam show looked like they ate anything like baloney.
I was hoping I’d see more lifelike models after the decision by Madrid Fashion Week to ban models under BMI (Body Mass Index) of 18 and the deaths of two Uruguayan model sisters who reportedly died of malnutrition within six months of each other.
But some of these models were as flat as the washboard my grandmother used to beat clothes on when she was doing her laundry.
Of course, all the clothes look good on them. Which is the point, I suppose. They are but mere props on which beautiful clothes are to be hung.
Talking about hung, did you know that Mr World will soon be held in Sanya, Hainan? The advertising has been telling women around the world that this is where “the man of your dreams” will be crowned.
I am not sure that my father, who left Hainan to escape starvation all those years ago, would have ever, in his wildest dreams, thought an army of well-built hunks would come to his home island, strut around in their tight crotch-hugging briefs, flex their muscles and compete for a title which if not give world peace, then lots of eye candy.
Now how can I get a second row seat at that event?
Catch up with more of Yeoh Siew Hoon at www.TheTransitCafe.com
Ian Jarrett
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