BIBLIOASIA JAN – MAR 2017 Vol. 12 / Issue 04 / Feature
British, Australian and New Zealand expat counters behind them. Each fabric shop had springing up in Queenstown and Toa Payoh, wives would be dressed in foreign fashion long tables with bales of fabric". as well as in landed properties in private imports. These were only available from a Colour and prints galore! This must estates all over Singapore. handful of boutiques in Singapore. explain why the polymath creative director Standard tailoring charges then were Fashion entrepreneur Judith Chung, still exhibits a fondness for riotous prints $6 for a dress without lining, $12 with lin- who was a fashion reporter for The Sunday and colours in his dapper personal style. ing and $20 and above for tailoring with Times in the 1960s, still remembers one According to Metro’s Executive Chair- expensive materials like chiffon, lace, satin, owner of such an exclusive establishment: man, Wong Sioe Hong, her father Ong Tjoe silk and voile, as well as for long gowns. the arresting Doris Geddes, an Australian Kim thought it would be a smart move to A Singer or an Elna sewing machine was who ran The Little Shop at the Raffles Hotel be the only fashion retail shop surrounded not only indispensable to every household; from 1947 for 30 years. According to the 1967 by a row of wholesale fabric stores when it was also regarded as a prized family heir- Olson’s Orient Guide, her speciality was he founded his single-unit store on High loom – to be passed down the generations. “high fashion with an exotic touch” as she Street in 1957. He called it Metro, after his Just like the one Gloria Barker – wife of was a dressmaker as well as a retailer of first store in Indonesia, and he was proven Singapore's first Law Minister, the late E.W. “fine imports” from Asian craft to European right when he had to expand to the unit next Barker – inherited from her mother, accord- couture dresses. door to capitalise on his booming business. ing to her interior decorator son, Brandon. Geddes' shop had upped the ante for Wong recalls: “He was literally a one- Brandon Barker was a part-time 1960s Singapore tremendously in 1957 when Eliza- man show – owner, buyer, operator. It was model in the 1960s so his mother taught beth Taylor, who was visiting Singapore with a small store – only 8,000 sq ft. Metro was him how to cut and sew his own clothes. FASHION her third husband, film producer Mike Todd, the first department store to import fabrics Thanks to this, he was able to make Oxford wore a fitted strapless dress of Geddes’ own from the US. My father was the first to bring bags, those loosely fitted trousers with wide design to a Raffles Hotel dinner. According in lace from France and silk from Italy.” legs, for himself, when he found that those to a report in famoushotels.org, Taylor was In the 1960s, tailoring shops abounded made by professional tailors “never quite fit THE LEGACY OF overhead screaming at Geddes the day after in central Singapore, from Tiong Bahru to right”. Barker got so good at dressmaking, because the dress had split at the seams Tiverton Lane off Killiney Road. But many he could even sew gored skirts – a popular MADE-TO-MEASURE in the middle of dinner. Not one to lose her an enterprising home-based dressmaker fashion item back then – for his younger cool, Geddes had reportedly retorted: “You could also be found in the new HDB flats sister, Gillian, also a part-time model. should not have insisted on this dress, it was too small for you, I told you so!” (Right) Metro founder Ong Tjoe Kim at his Metro High The changing face of fashion in Tailor-made Street office in the mid- 1960s. Courtesy of Singa- Singapore is the subject of a new book For most Singapore-born ingenues and pore Press Holdings. their society matron mums, like Carol de (Below) The hustle and called Fashion Most Wanted. This extract bustle of Christmas shop- recalls how the advent of TV impacted Souza and her mother, made-to-measure ping at Metro High Street was the name of the game in the local fash- in 1962. Courtesy of Metro. new fashion trends in the 1960s. ion stakes. Their clothes-shopping routine would entail trooping to the grande dame of department stores in Singapore – Rob- insons at Raffles Place – for its McCall's and Butterick paper patterns. A trip to a bookshop or an Indian-run five-foot-way (pedestrian walkway) maga- zine stand could also arm one with maga- zines such as Burda, Lana Lobell, So-en, A model wearing a creation from Janilaine, one of Singapore’s most prominent made-to-measure clothing shops in the1960s. Courtesy of Singapore Press Holdings. Vogue or Women’s Weekly, just to name a few, with the best pictures of the new trends. Following that, the next stop would be High Street to dig through bales of materi- The neighbourhood dressmaker who She ought to know. From her teenage als at Aurora, Metro, Modern Silk Store and relied on paper patterns and her pedal- years until store-bought fashion became S.A. Majeed. If you still could not find the powered Singer sewing machine, the readily available in the 1970s, de Souza right fabric, there was also Chotirmalls or texacting Shanghainese tailor who draped had to rely on tailors for all her sartorial Peking Silk Store on adjacent North Bridge the body and crafted by hand, the Indian needs, from career clothes to her wedding Road. And People's Park in Chinatown, as tailor – immaculate in a crisp white shirt trousseau. And they never let her down. well as night markets all over Singapore, Fashion Most Wanted: Singapore’s Top and spotless dhoti – who arrived at your When she took all her Singapore-tailored where de Souza recalls that she and her Insider Secrets from the Past Five Decades was written by John de Souza, Cat Ong doorstep to take your measurements. outfits with her to Houston, Texas, where mother would always end up buying “bags and Tom Rao. All three authors cut their These were the “magicians of style” in she had moved to in 1981, “the cheongsams and bags of fabric – more than what we teeth on Singapore’s fashion scene in the Singapore half a century ago. from Mode-0-Day were always a hit with went looking for”. 1980s as writers and editors for The Straits Says retired personal assistant Carol the guys!” As a 10-year-old accompanying his Times as well as leading fashion and beauty de Souza: “They only needed to see a photo In the early 1950s, when the local 29-year-old tai tai mother Elizabeth Lee on magazines such as Her World, Elle and from Vogue or another magazine in order retail scene was still undeveloped, the her shopping trips in 1966, Dick Lee can still Marie Claire. They continue to keep a pulse to turn out a dress that looked exactly like various ethnic groups would don their own vividly recall that “the old Metro (High Street) on the ever evolving fashion scene today. the photo.” cultural garb, while the Eurasians and had fabric counters in front, and cosmetics
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London Calling mentation, thanks to a flourishing world the epicentre of the global youth-quake. economy and unimaginable breakthroughs So it was no wonder that the grooviest of Paris might have been the fashion capital – from the first man walking on the moon 1960s fashion boutiques – including the that used to dictate clothing trends to an to the invention of the Concorde and the “mini skirt" creator, Mary Quant's flagship adult audience, but musician and former world's first successful heart transplants. shop – were congregated there. disc jockey Vernon Cornelius says that Television was launched in Singapore in In 1966, Carnaby Street was splashed London became the 1960s youth capital 1963, and the first person to appear on on the cover of Time magazine, sealing of fashion. He remembers young people screen was Minister for Culture S. Raja- London’s credibility as the capital of cool. dressing up “according to what was going ratnam, who declared: “Tonight might Among the many Singaporeans who noted on and the music of the time”. well mark the start of a social and cultural Time’s report and were quick to flock there It signalled “the start of style con- revolution in our lives”. Indeed. was Alice Fu, who later became the first sciousness for Singaporeans”. Everyone One of the first types of programmes head buyer of Tangs (formerly C K Tang) wanted to imitate the hairstyles and look televised that evening was a variety show from 1982 to 1996. In the late 1960s, as a of musicians from Cliff Richard and The into which fashion and lifestyle elements secretary at a travel agency, she could get Shadows (neatly combed back hair, skinny would eventually be incorporated. Featured discounted air tickets to London. “So I took suits) to The Beatles (heavy fringes, Flower would be the young nation's first generation my mum to London. We told ourselves we Power caftans with beads) and The Rolling of homegrown fashion stars. had to see Carnaby Street, and we bought Stones (longish hair, psychedelic styles). Freelance hairstylist Francis Raquiza Mary Quant halter tops, chunky platform Youths became what he calls “free- who had trained under Roland Chow, shoes, high boots, and maxi dresses,” form and individualist in their dress, aping Singapore's most celebrated hairstylist- she recalls. [the West] in a sense, but not copying cum-fashion designer of that era, can Fu was inspired by her Carnaby Street exactly. We took ideas, sort of improvised never forget that as there was only black- experience of affordable fun fashion but something and made them our own”. But as and-white television then: “It was strange was put off in Singapore, having to visit The Ibrahim sisters (from left) Fatimah, Rabiah, Carol and Faith preparing for a lunchtime fashion show at the Island Ballroom of Hyatt Hotel in the late times were still tough in the days of a newly when (Roland) demonstrated and talked men's tailors like Kingsmen to make bell 1960s. Courtesy of Singapore Press Holdings. independent Singapore, he adds that most about what lipstick colour would match bottoms, Khemco’s for shirts and other young people like himself had to save for what colour dress – and everything on the assorted tailors for mod dresses, mini- weeks or months to array themselves in screen was black and white!” skirts and hot pants. She told herself, why Rabiah and Her Sisters Fashion Pioneer If Phila Mae Wong was ahead of her mod looks as a “sincere form of expressing In 1967, it was reported that 50 per- not open a shop with like-minded friends? time, it was because she had been trained our own identity”. cent of British women's fashion sold was So, together with two partners, Tan Beng If Ah Geok made “magic” creating Singa- The Ibrahim sisters were not the only by the best – her mother, none other than The Swinging Sixties was indeed a to the 15 to 19 age group. Carnaby Street, Yan, who later founded the Tyan fashion pore's earliest off-the-peg kaleidoscopic fashion beacons in a Singapore that was the indomitable Eunice Wong, who was time of youthful exuberance and experi- in London’s Soho district, was identified as group, and a girlfriend named Joanna, they 1960s styles from magazine pictures, experiencing a cultural awakening with a not only one of Singapore's successful launched the Saturday's Child fashion label. no one else was better at modelling and fervency to modernise, driven as it was by Grand Prix drivers of the 1960s, but also an “It was meant to emulate the ready- marketing such free-wheeling looks as a rapidly evolving socio-political climate. unstoppable one-woman entrepreneurial (Left) Roland Chow demonstrating his to-wear London look and we had to ‘design’ the decade’s most iconic pin-up girl, In a 2015 Straits Times report, archi- machine. In the 1950s, Phila Mae’s grand- hair creation “Incroyable”, a new short hair-do to go with shorter hemlines, all our own clothes – hipster pants, halter Rabiah Ibrahim. That is unless, of course, tect Tan Cheng Siong, who designed the father opened the Lee & Fletcher trading October 1958. Courtesy of Singapore tops, mini dresses – based on what we saw they were her equally fashionable and iconic conservation Pearl Bank Apart- company along Orchard Road (where the Press Holdings. in magazines. I remember we had the tailor famous sisters and partners, Carol, ments in 1976, said that even as a youth Concorde Hotel Singapore now stands). (Below) Two outfits from Roland from Trend moonlighting for us. Her name Fatimah and Faith. in the 1960s he had the awareness that Emulating her father, and always Chow’s summer collection, May 1966. Courtesy of Singapore Press Holdings. was Ah Geok,” she says. Faith Ibrahim put Singapore’s name Singapore had “always wanted very badly reflecting her impeccable taste and grasp on the international modelling scene when to be modern”. of the changing life and times, Eunice Wong she became Pierre Cardin's house model Modern would certainly have was to open her own chain of retail shops and was known as Anak in the late 1960s. described a young Phila Mae Wong when as soon as she came of age. Perhaps to After marrying the 13th Duke of Bedford, she was about to set off to the US for her help promote her father’s Elna sewing she became the respectable London-based university studies in 1961. In her teens, machines, she first opened two ready-made Lady Russell. she had already become a competitive and custom-tailored fashion boutiques in According to Rabiah Ibrahim, whose bowler, balance beam gymnast and one of Shaw Centre and at Fitzpatrick's supermar- father was a doctor, her siblings and herself Singapore's champion water skiers. As a ket (where the new wing of Paragon now “had travelled more than most of her peers, little girl, encouraged by her mother, she stands) and named them Elna Boutique. and never wanted to follow the crowd”. This would re-design all her dolls’ clothes so As hairstyles changed from bouffant “hel- was not confined to only their dress sense. that they would look more modern. mets” to sleek swingy, geometric styles, After becoming a mother of three sons, Before Wong could graduate from she also opened two hairdressing salons she still found the time and energy to run university, she became an associate buyer at High Street and in Cathay Building. her flourishing fashion empire of Trend for her mother’s fashion imports shop By 1965, realising that jeans were on boutiques for more than 20 years, guided by named Vanity Fair at Raffles Place, and even the cusp of becoming ubiquitous for the her sense of “adventure, creativity, glamour started her own boutique, The Look, within younger generation, Eunice Wong ventured and fun”, as she put it, in the 1991 annual her mother's store, promoting affordable into a unisex Jeans East West shop at 104 edition of Her World magazine. sportswear-inspired American brands as Orchard Road (near the Lee & Fletcher head At its most successful, there were also well as London's youthful Carnaby Street office at the Concorde Hotel) with her son, Trend shops in San Francisco and Hong style. In 1963, she explained to Her World Phila Mae's brother, Vincent. He used to Kong. By the 1980s, when she migrated to reporter Doreen Chee that “Paris fashion make his own tie-dye T-shirts to sell with Perth to become a Bible teacher and sold can be the very epitome of elegance but the California West brand of jeans that they her Trend business to fellow fashion entre- it is for the elite upper strata of society. stocked. “All his girlfriends were slaves,” preneur Chan Kheng Lin, it had become a American fashion is more practical and Eunice Wong recounts, “they'd do tie-dye 23-store, multi-million-dollar business. more saleable”. T-shirts for his shop. Their target market
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was rich kids who could afford to pay $30 In the Mood for Cheongsam (Right) Tangs cashiers at the start of their shift in for jeans at that time, it was a lot of money”. the late 1960s. Photo: Courtesy of Tangs. Still fresh with ideas, Eunice Wong The fashion revolution of the 1960s would (Below right) Former Grand Prix champion driver and fashion pioneer Eunice Wong and her favou- opened not one but two eponymous life- all but wipe out the appearance of tra- rite Triumph sports car, late 1950s. Courtesy of style and gift shops in Orchard Road. A ditional garments such as the sari and Phila Mae Wong. final home furnishings shop on Orchard sarong kebaya at events other than wed- Road – sandwiched between C K Tang and dings. But it was a completely different Fitzpatrick's, where the new Glamourette story with the cheongsam. gowns as well as cheongsams for a new designer boutique was opened by Siauw Phila Mae Wong's thrice-married generation of society ladies such as Paige Mie Sioe (more popularly known as Mrs aunt, the late Christina Lee – voted by Vogue Parker. She told The Straits Times that she Choong) in 1958 – helped to transform magazine as one of the most beautiful had two cheongsams tailored at Mode-0- Orchard Road from a laidback street of women in the world in 1965 – had a part Day in 2015: a red lace cheongsam for her sprawling cemeteries and fruit plantations to play in this. She was the youngest of the 40th birthday and a customised pink lace into Singapore's premier shopping haunt four beautiful daughters from the illustri- one for the Chinese Women's Association's over the course of the 1960s. ous Lee family while Phila Mae's mother, 100th Anniversary Charity Gala. Named after its fruit tree plantations Eunice, was her eldest sister. At the time For young career girls and the trendy and nurseries, Orchard Road was bor- when her looks were celebrated by Vogue, young scions of well-to-do Singapore fami- dered by monsoon drains that invariably Christina Lee was married to cinema mag- lies, the holy grail of 1960s fashion were overflowed into the roadways. This caused nate Loke Wan Tho and the celebrity couple Biba and Mary Quant of London. Quant is decades of flooding every Christmas, which was often captured in the headlines – he immortalised today as the originator of the coincided with the year-end monsoon in a sharply-tailored Western suit, she in miniskirt, while Barbara Hulanicki’s Biba rains, until its glitziest makeover in the a gorgeous cheongsam. fashion emporium on Kensington High noughties transformed it into the modern The 1960 hit Hollywood movie, The Street was dubbed the sexiest shop in the retail wonderland, with wide pedestrian World of Suzie Wong, starred Nancy Kwan world by London's Daily Mail newspaper. boulevards, that it is today. wearing a series of cheongsams with thigh- Today, Biba's signature style would be Back then, from Orange Grove Road high slits. The movie turned the actress into described as being a blend of Mary Quant's to Scotts Road, impressive expatriate an international pin-up girl, who quickly mod look with Laura Ashley's floral fashion homesteads used to alternate on both became known as the “Chinese Bardot”, and Topshop's edgy style. sides of the road. Facing the new three- in reference to the 1960s French screen storey C K Tang store – that had been siren Bridgette Bardot. Choong and Sons constructed in 1948 on a former nutmeg Together, the Asian cinema mogul's plantation – was the Tai Shan Ting Cem- stunningly beautiful wife and the Hollywood An appetite for modern 1960s fashion not etery (where Ngee Ann City and Wisma movie star-turned-sex symbol gave a fillip only spread among the women throughout Atria now stand). to the cheongsam, which has made it much Singapore, but to the men as well. Even After C K Tang was up and running, coveted by the stylish set, Western or Asian, kampung boys dressed like peacocks in fashion boutiques such as Antoinette and ever since. colourful fashion, with collarless jackets Buttons and Bows, stocking imports from With the advent of air-conditioning in and pants that flared over boots with high England and Europe, opened on Orchard Singapore, Christina Lee started to design heels, just like the girls. Shirts or ties be- to the next big thing – the trend for ready- Road too. Steadily thereafter, such retail her own Western-style coats, jackets and came vividly printed and lapels got more to-wear clothing. Fashion Most Wanted: Singapore’s Top In- and lifestyle “action” continued to sprout stoles to complement her cheongsams. exaggerated as trouser legs widened. Before long, Mr Choong was retailing sider Secrets from the Past Five Decades between Scotts Road and Killiney Road. Taking her cue from the sensational mini- Clothing became increasingly “unisex” jersey-knit men's shirts from the Parisian is published by Straits Times Press. The Equatorial Singapore obviously had skirt of the 1960s, and Roland Chow, who as men and women shopped at the same Montagut label at Caprice and Mrs Choong 160-page illustrated book retails for $35 enough numbers of the glamorous jet set had also designed a mini cheongsam, the boutiques for similar-looking items or had had brought in Biba, Bill Gibbs, Jean Muir (excluding GST) and is available at major living on its shores to have its own furrier hemlines of her own were fashionably them made by the same tailors. This is why and Mary Quant to Glamourette. However, bookshops and online bookshops such as shop Ali Joo, which used to be located in cropped at thigh level. when Siauw Mie Sioe’s husband Francis their younger son Jacob K.H. recalls that www.stpressbooks.com.sg and Amazon. the original Heeren Building at the cor- As for designer Thomas Wee, learn- Choong received a parcel of “flower power” it was when designers experimented with The book is also available for reference ner of Orchard and Cairnhill roads. Cozy ing how to make exquisite cheongsams ties from his eldest son K C, who was study- shiny new waterproof materials with a and loan at Lee Kong Chian Reference Corner Cafe nearby was where dating from his Shanghai-trained tailor mother ing in London in the 1960s, he decided to try futuristic look using PVC and Perspex to Library and branches of all public librar- couples went for Western meals. The at the age of 14 may have been his entry and sell them in his Caprice men's shop in create “Wet Look” fashion that his parents ies (Call no.: RSING 746.92095957 DES defunct Prince's Hotel Garni, just after into the world of dressmaking, but it was Ngee Ann Building on Orchard Road. found they had hit upon their bestsellers and 746.92095957 DES). Bideford Road, held afternoon tea dances a wedding gown that Thomas had created When they sold out, it was the sign that of the 1960s. for young people to rock and roll, jive and for his then supervisor’s wedding that led he and his wife needed to change their busi- cha-cha-cha the afternoon away. to his serendipitous switch from working ness from traditional tailoring to retailing At the spot where The Centrepoint as a pharmacy dispenser to becoming a off-the-peg fashion imports from leading References stands today was the popular Magnolia fashion boutique assistant. His first retail European brands of the day. In 1958, Mr and De Souza, J., Ong, C., & Rao, T. (2016). Fashion most Ruzita Zaki. (Interviewer). (1996, February 13; 1996, Milk Bar, where the baby boomers in posting was at Flair Boutique along Tanglin Mrs Choong – as the husband and wife team wanted: Singapore’s top insider secrets from the February 28). Oral history interview with Vernon The word “modern” aptly describes these cover Singapore were weaned on milkshakes, Road (where the St Regis is now). were better known as – had been prescient past five decades. Singapore: Straits Times Press Christopher Cornelius [Transcript of Recording No. girls, who were ahead of their time in the 1960s. Pte Ltd. Call no.: RSING 746.92095957 DES 001711, Reels 15, 16, 17]. Retrieved from National ice-cream sundaes and banana splits. The That was, Thomas points out, Singa- enough to close their Seasons Shanghai Lee, V. (2015, November 16). The Life interview with Lim Archives of Singapore website. From top: Sybil Schwencke, who went from current site of Orchard Central was once pore's original fashion street before it was tailoring shop in Middle Road to open being a flight hostess to a beauty guru; Phila Chong Keat. The Straits Times. Retrieved from Factiva. The Most Famous Hotels in the World. (1986–2016). Mae Wong, who inherited her love for fashion an open-air carpark that transformed overtaken by Orchard Road in the 1980s. Glamourette, the first luxury multi-brand Olson, H.S. (1967). Olson’s orient guide. Philadelphia, Raffles Hotel: Famous guests. Retrieved from The from her entrepreneurial mother; and Chan nightly into a kerosene-lit hawker centre A few doors away from Flair were House boutique in Singapore, at Fitzpatrick’s. They New York: J.B. Lippincott Company. Not available Most Famous Hotels in the World website. in NLB holdings. See Foon, who was arguably Singapore’s first with some of the most delicious local of Hilda and Mode-O-Day; the latter is already had an inkling that Orchard Road Singapore's own Twiggy Rabiah. (1991). In Her Powell, P.& Peel, L. (1988). 50s and 60s style. Grange World Annual 1991: 30 years of style (A special supermodel. All magazine covers courtesy of food fare. In 1978, it was closed down by still operating today within Tanglin Shop- would become fashion's most happening Singapore Press Holdings. Books, Quintet Publishing Ltd: Groovy Gear. Not anniversary issue). Singapore: Times Publishing. the government due to hygiene concerns. ping Centre, making wedding and evening street in Singapore, and were catching on available in NLB holdings. Call no.: RCLOS 052 HWA
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