Shop the Mad Chinaman’s wardrobe: Why musician Dick Lee is auctioning off his prized silk shirts

SINGAPORE – Singaporean musician and national treasure Dick Lee is auctioning off a part of his wardrobe.

Just like the rest of us, Cultural Medallion recipients need to declutter too.

His tradition of “offloading” his wardrobe every Chinese New Year started almost 15 years ago, Lee – who turns 70 in August – tells The Straits Times in a Zoom interview.

Every first day of CNY, the fashionista and his three brothers host an open house in their family home. Friends and family would show up with red packets stuffed with cash to shop his unwanted stash – “full of good designer stuff not worth to donate”.

But lately, it has become a chore. Naturally, the most affordable pieces priced under $50 went in a flash. What was left were the pricier things. It was also hard to hold a garage sale while entertaining.

In 2025, Lee ran it on an honour system with a QR code – which still ended up fairly chaotic.

A friend introduced him to Singapore-based auction house Hotlotz to do the grunt work for him.

The 11-year-old company holds weekly online auctions of curated items ranging from Asian porcelain to designer handbags, fine art and more. Customers can bid on items online and visit its showroom at 28 Jalan Kilang Barat to assess the goods in person.

“If not for them, I would have dragged everything down to the family home again this year,” Lee says.

Mad deals

It is no secret the singer-songwriter is a lover of fashion. He shops a lot for shows and balls and loves clothes, quips the former fashion designer, who showed up to this interview in a blue-and-white Maison Kitsune shirt and a splashy Zoom background.

Yet he parts with these pieces just as easily, describing himself as unsentimental and “quite mercenary”. “Things are just things. If I haven’t worn it in the past one to two years, it’s out. The most precious are my manuscripts, lyric books and scripts – which I donated to the National Library Board.”

For the Hotlotz capsule sale named Mad Chinaman: The Dick Lee Collection, after his 1989 album The Mad Chinaman, bidders can expect more than 100 pieces of “mostly colourful shirts” lovingly pried from his closet. The auction on hotlotz.com ends on March 17.

Of this is a standout selection of fuchsia items from the 2022 Valentino Pink PP Collection. “I went mad and bought everything there was in that colour: belts, jackets, suits, shoes,” says Lee. He wore the whole pink look once for a party, save for a completely unworn wool jacket.

The religious follower of fashion shows loves designer wares and buys them online, trawling independent sites like Cettire for current-season bargains marked down 20 to 30 per cent.

An ardent Versace collector, he also has a soft spot for vintage silk shirts designed by the Italian designer himself in the 1990s. They hold sentimental value. Gianni Versace first began releasing his iconic heavily patterned silk shirts in the early 1990s, around the same time Lee was in Japan pursuing his music career.

“I love prints. I used to buy and wear his shirts onstage when performing in Japan.”

After the designer was murdered in 1997, Lee began collecting his shirts – starting with the ones he used to own, “which were ruined by my sweat”. These have added up to an 80-strong collection of Versace silk today, from which Lee handpicked 12 – mostly newer season ones – to part with. Bids start at $100.

Besides Versace, there are also Dolce&Gabbana and Casablanca shirts that add to the explosion of prints.

Bags include a Louis Vuitton x Pharrell Williams “Nano Steamer” backpack (from $1,500), a Prada carry-on (from $300) and a Dior x Kaws saddle bag (from $600); while his mostly size 43 shoes include Bottega Veneta slides (from $80) and Proenza Schouler Birkenstocks (from $80).

It was hard for him to let go of some pieces, he says, but lately, he has been feeling the pressure to start dressing his age.

“You don’t want to look like mutton dressed as lamb,” he jokes. “I’m a bit conflicted – some people say dress your age, others say wear what you want. But sometimes I wonder if it’s too much when I look in the mirror, especially as I’m getting older. I don’t want to look like some eccentric old guy.”

Fashionista’s legacy

There is weight in the garments owned by one of Singapore’s fashion icons. Lee is often credited with being a seminal figure who drove the country’s fashion scene in the 1980s.

He started designing when he was 16 for his mother’s boutique Midteen, which offered clothes for children up to 12 years old.

In 1982, he shipped off to study fashion in London, the fashion capital of the time. When he returned to Singapore, he found that local designers were “nowhere to be seen”. Many were designing for in-house labels and not under their own name.

He opened his own boutique called Ping Pong. Full of colourful, sporty-chic pieces, it was “a bit Benetton, a bit like Esprit”. “A bit ahead of its time,” adds Lee.

With a business partner, he also launched an events company producing fashion shows, Runway Productions. He kept busy with stints as a partner in modelling agency Carrie Models, fashion editor of Female magazine, and display director for department store Tangs.

In 1985, Lee rallied a group of designers to start SODA (Society of Designing Arts) and convinced Tangs to sponsor a group show. More importantly, the deal included selling the collection in-store for a month. That was the first time local designers had their own names on a label in a department store.

A few annual shows followed, and by 1986, designers were starting to thrive on their own merit.

It was also a recession year, and malls were full of empty shop units, he recalls. With his business partner, Lee approached the landlord of Delfi Orchard with a pitch: to open a marketplace for Singapore designers.

This would become the career-launching Hemispheres that many who grew up in the 1980s will remember for its convivial atmosphere and as a third space for the fashion community.

“It didn’t charge us rent but took commission. It was quite a landmark, because all the young designers – who didn’t have their own stores and needed a place – went there,” he says.

Hemispheres was impactful but short-lived, just like Lee’s own eponymous fashion label stocked there. In 1987, the store closed.

Fresh off the success of Lee’s 1988 musical Beauty World, the multi-hyphenate left Singapore once more in the 1990s to pursue his burgeoning music career in Japan, where he stayed for a decade. When he came back in 2001, a lot of designers had established their names and opened shops on their own.

From then on, foreign brands began entering the market, and local designers found it harder to manufacture for cheap and compete. The then Singapore Textile and Garment Manufacturers Association, now called the Singapore Fashion Council, tried to bring designers overseas to do group shows abroad.

“They did try. But I think they’ve got it a bit wrong,” tuts Lee. “You have to look at what the world wants. Does the world want Asian fashion? Asian designers are not going to Paris and showing there.”

The last thing he did in the capacity of a fashion expert was to chair the 2011 Audi Fashion Festival Singapore. The buzz around it was unmatched, he sighs. Spice Girls’ pop star Victoria Beckham came, as did legendary designers Roberto Cavalli and Carolina Herrera. Lee sat next to Herrera at dinner.

A way forward

Because he declutters so frequently, Lee “sadly” does not own anything from a Singaporean designer any more.

Asked why he believes Singapore fashion cannot return to its pinnacle, he says that the mistake local designers are making is trying to compete with fast fashion. That is a lost cause. “I wear a lot of Zara because it looks so good and is so cheap; the store interiors are changing, everything looks high-end,” he confesses.

Local designers should be focusing their efforts on developing an underserved market for couture, he opines.

“Forget about doing mass things. One person that comes to mind that I still see people wear today at events is society dressmaker Frederick Lee, or Francis Cheong. When you have an event, you can’t go to Zara; you can go to Frederick Lee to get one-of-a-kind pieces.

“This is what I see happening in Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines – places that still have couturier worlds. If we develop that here, that’s how we can create that buzz again.”

His alternative proposal is for designers to leverage Singapore’s tropical heat and offer “bridge collections” like Cruise collections – summer clothes for elegant holidaying – that extend throughout Chinese New Year.

“We have all the artisanal designers around us, we should bring them to do a South-east Asia Cruise season,” he adds.

Would he ever return to designing himself?

Probably not. After a brief career revival in the 2000s – when he worked as creative director for womenswear designer Celia Loe, then for clothing label Island Shop in Tangs – he got busy with other projects.

The year 2002 was when he oversaw his first National Day Parade (NDP) as creative director, and the next 10 years were “quite game-changing”. He ran an ad agency, was a judge on local reality singing show Singapore Idol (2004 to 2009) – his “comeback into local consciousness” – and staged the musical Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress.

“When I came back from Japan, I was a bit lost – because my music career was kind of over. But having tried all those different things, I would encourage people not to stick to one thing if they can,” says the composer of the beloved 1998 NDP anthem Home, who has since steered five NDPs.

His newest position is creative director at immersive art theatre IMBA, run by home-grown edutainment and event company Hustle & Bustle. Lee hopes to develop original content for the immersive shows held at the theatre in Gardens by the Bay, which has ongoing exhibitions on artists David Hockney and Fernando Botero.

Lee also has his plate full with directing his interactive dinner show Fried Rice Paradise Makan Party, which returns in August. Before that, the arts lover will be involved in a show for the Singapore International Festival of Arts in May, which he declined to reveal more details for, and a concert at the Esplanade in July with Ding Yi Music Company.

One can probably expect to still see him in a well-made printed shirt then. Those he finds hard to part with forever.

“I want to dress elegantly but it’s so plain,” he laments. “I think I look nice in suits – but if I have to wear a suit, it will be orange.”

Info: Bidding for Mad Chinaman: The Dick Lee Collection runs till March 17, 6pm, at

hotlotz.com

. Viewings available at 28 Jalan Kilang Barat.