Law professor David Tan donates 82 designer jackets worth over $350k to S’pore’s National Collection

SINGAPORE – Few people in Singapore can claim to have even 20 jackets in their wardrobes.

Singaporean law professor and fashion collector David Tan has so many, he can afford to give away 80.

In what is considered the first and biggest donation of contemporary menswear to Singapore’s National Collection, the 56-year-old is donating 82 designer jackets to the National Museum of Singapore (NMS) and Asian Civilisations Museum.

While the valuation of his donation is kept private, he estimates its total original retail value to exceed $350,000.

It was partly so he could make room for more in his collection of over 320. Among them are lightly or never-worn pieces from fashion houses Comme des Garcons, Dolce&Gabbana and Dries Van Noten. Most were purchased first-hand in Singapore, Hong Kong and New York boutiques or via private concierge service on Farfetch.com.

Consider it spring cleaning for a cause.

It has always been a dream of his to donate his jackets to prestigious museums like the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, says Prof Tan, who before this had sold and donated jackets to the V&A and Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

He had the same aspirations for Singapore. In 2023, on his trip to Melbourne to hand over pieces to NGV, he asked NMS’ director Chung May Khuen along to see the Alexander McQueen: Mind Mythos Muse exhibition and how the local museum might stage a fashion exhibition in the future.

“Afterwards, we were chatting about how I want my jackets in a museum one day. I said, if you would do a show of my jackets, I’ll give you one-third of my collection. I flippantly said that, and she put out her hand and said ‘deal’,” he recalls to The Straits Times in amusement.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) professor hopes this donation will nudge NMS in the direction of The Met and V&A, in collecting from around the world. Nowadays, he sometimes buys jackets with the sole purpose of donating them.

“We’re so used to seeing women’s clothes as some form of art, but not menswear,” says Prof Tan, who in 2024 loaned 42 jackets from his prized collection to French-language school Alliance Francaise de Singapour for an exhibition called La Veste.

The show led to V&A taking an interest in him as a serious collector. They answered his cold e-mail offering a donation, and accepted five pieces in November 2025: among them a Burberry quilted gold trench, and a Louis Vuitton jacket with The Wizard Of Oz’s Dorothy on the front from the late designer Virgil Abloh’s debut collection for the French luxury brand.

Does it not pain him to part with these pricey pieces for free?

“I asked myself: Do I want cash in hand or to leave a legacy?” reflects Prof Tan, who has in the past sold several to museums overseas at a “market rate” for a few thousand dollars each. But he regretted those sales. When displayed, they did not bear a credit line with his name.

Museums are unlikely to buy fashion pieces in bulk, he adds, and he was worried they might lose out on important moments in men’s fashion.

“If I were to resell the pieces on platforms like Vestiaire Collective or The RealReal, they would be treated just as second-hand clothing. And I’m a bit precious about who wears them ultimately – because they’re like my children. You want to make sure your children are adopted by good homes.

“Here, I know they would be well conserved and displayed for the public.”

Collecting couture

NMS might not be the first museum that comes to mind when conceiving of a fashion museum in Singapore, but it has dabbled in the field in the past.

Ms Chung, for one, is regarded as the first fashion curator for the museum, introducing a fashion gallery in 2006 upon her appointment. That year, it collected some menswear and staged Stylo Mylo: A Selection Of Men’s Fashion In Singapore, showcasing three decades of men’s fashion in Singapore.

In 2012, she led the exhibition In The Mood For Cheongsam, which featured new research on the development and evolution of the garment in Singapore and Asia. NMS’ 2015 revamp also highlighted the changing role of women in the 20th century through fashion and dress, examining the modernisation of silhouettes and garment production in the Modern Colony gallery.

NMS has also previously collected couture – from vintage Balmain to Courreges and Yves Saint Laurent.

Prof Tan’s jackets will be part of the museum’s Design collection that it is developing, as one of the initiatives set out under the National Heritage Board’s Our SG Heritage Plan 2.0, to inspire young and/or aspiring design practitioners, according to NMS assistant curator Samuel Lee.

“The pieces donated by David are international and cosmopolitan in outlook, and provide a good overview of men’s fashion in the 21st century,” says Mr Lee, adding that there are plans to feature them in a 2027 exhibition.

Artworks and artefacts that enter the museum’s collection are assessed for their socio-historical significance as well as stylistic significance, he adds. The curatorial team made its selection with consideration of how the pieces exemplified certain house codes and designers, or if they were associated with a particularly significant year or collection – such as the move to digital runway presentations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Asked how international designers would fit into the larger direction of NMS, which has traditionally prioritised Singapore heritage, Ms Chung says that the donation aligns with the museum’s strategy of using popular culture to tell the Singapore story. Prof Tan’s pieces, for example, reflect a Singapore collector’s journey.

“We have always understood fashion to be an important medium for understanding society and culture. While the National Museum’s collection maintains a focus on Singapore, we recognise the importance of developing a collection that contextualises the international fashion system and Singapore’s embeddedness in the global design landscape,” she says.

“We are heartened to receive this generous donation, especially since it is uncommon for such a voluminous and valuable collection of contemporary fashion to be offered to a museum.”

Parting shots

A day after this interview, a team of gloved archival specialists arrive at Prof Tan’s condominium in Newton to gingerly wrap each jacket in acid-free tissue.

Encased individually in cardboard boxes, the garments will be taken to the Heritage Conservation Centre for a condition check. There, they will be documented, given special care for particular materials, and have loose sequins or threads restored.

There was a fleeting tinge of regret when he saw the empty hangers after the archivists left, admits Prof Tan, who had offered up to 100 jackets to the museum to choose from. “I go through waves of sentimentality, then I move on.”

Those that were particularly hard to part with include a red Dolce&Gabbana with exquisite black-piped embroidery. The look had been worn by one of his favourite sportsmen, two-time Olympic badminton champion Lin Dan from China in his namesake coffeetable book; Prof Tan himself wore it to a Tatler Ball in Singapore.

Others include a Balmain sported by K-pop boy band BTS member Jungkook while singing a cover of O Holy Night, Prof Tan’s favourite Christmas carol, at K-pop music festival SBS Gayo Daejeon; a floral Emporio Armani the late American actor Chadwick Boseman wore at the world premiere of the Marvel movie Black Panther (2018); and a Gucci in full wallaby fur that Prof Tan has never worn.

Unsurprisingly, the most ostentatious pieces, the hardest to wear in everyday settings, were some of the easiest to let go.

Conversely, the coat he has made the most memories with is a “boring” long black Prada number that he had worn on trips to London and the United States. “I was shocked NMS took it.”

The most sentimental piece, he adds, is an understated Dior he wore to his first book launch for his 2017 doctoral dissertation, The Commercial Appropriation Of Fame – which he still uses in his entertainment law course at NUS.

But with the new space in his closet, which fills an entire room in his two-bedroom apartment, he has been able to add more pieces.

His newest acquisitions include a baby pink jacket with a large detachable bow from the final runway collection of Kim Jones for Dior Men and a Comme des Garcons double blazer that, when buttoned up, looks like two blazers stacked atop each other.

His taste has become more abstract now that he collects with the aim of donating to museums.

“My friends have suggested, ‘Why don’t you put the jackets in your will to give to the museum after you pass?’ But then I don’t get to see them while I’m alive,” he reasons.

“I do want, while I’m alive, to be able to go to museums and see my jackets on display.

“There’s no jacket I would not give away.”