Singapore’s fashionable Magnificent Seven: Veteran designers reflect on their runway to success
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The 1980s era was dominated by a powerhouse group of designers who defined what was worn on the streets.
PHOTOS: NG SOR LUAN, SHINTARO TAY, COURTESY OF BOBBY CHNG, KELVIN CHNG, SHINTARO TAY, NG SOR LUAN, LIANHE ZAOBAO
SINGAPORE – Try as one might, it seems nothing can quite usurp the 1980s when one thinks of made-in-Singapore fashion.
Unanimously hailed as the country’s golden age of fashion, the decade is remembered for weekly tea shows and fashion shows; the opening of Hemispheres at Delfi Orchard, a multi-label store for rising young designers; and the setting up of Soda, the Society for Designing Arts (Fashion), the local designers’ association. Fashion activity was high and local shoppers supportive.
The era was also dominated by a powerhouse group of designers who defined what was worn on the streets. Bobby Chng, Esther Tay, Thomas Wee, Celia Loe, Kelvin Choo, Peter Kor and the late Tan Yoong were a new wave of Singaporean designers hand-picked by the then Trade Development Board (TDB) to help establish Singapore as a fashion centre.
They travelled regularly to shows in Paris, New York City, London and Tokyo, as part of “fashion missions” to build connections and gain exposure, on the dime of TDB.
The Straits Times nicknamed them The Magnificent Seven in a 1990 report on the Premier Designers Show, a local fashion show intended to set fashion trends in Singapore and beyond. The nickname stuck.
Although often referred to as a collective, each designer had his or her own legacy. Tan died in January 2017 at the age of 66 from a head injury during a fall.
In celebration of SG60, ST meets the remaining six designers for a catch-up on where they are now, and looks back at Tan’s career.
Womenswear-turned-uniform designer Esther Tay finds successor in her daughter
Veteran fashion designer Esther Tay (right) has found a successor for her uniform business: eldest daughter Melissa Chua, who is the company’s new business growth and sustainability director.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
She has been a uniform maker longer than a womenswear designer, but now and then, Esther Tay still longs for her glory days of fashion.
The 1990s were a blur of attending and exhibiting in shows in the world’s fashion capitals. It was priceless exposure and networking, and getting to learn other countries’ way of dress.
She was even invited to tea in the Paris home of former politician David Marshall, who was the first Singapore Ambassador to France.
“Uniforms are more stable, but there’s no more glamour,” says Tay ruefully.
Former ‘King of Jackets’ Thomas Wee says fans won’t let him retire
Not even a mini stroke can stop veteran couturier Thomas Wee from designing well into his 70s. Wearing his own design, the celebrated designer is launching new pieces in August.
ST PHOTO: SHINTARO TAY
Whether he is 17 or 77, Thomas Wee tells it like it is.
Young designers today lack a trained eye for details – in the sweep of a hemline, a sleeve drape, construction sans a single stitch, he says. “Trims and appliques are, if I may say, insecurity. Today’s designers cannot maintain a consistent silhouette.”
A Thomas Wee piece, on the other hand, is always simple yet recognisable. In his newest collection launching at multi-label store Dors in August, fans can look forward to unisex separates and billowy overshirts with collars crisp enough to cause a paper cut.
Department store darling Bobby Chng celebrates life in the face of cancer
Fashion designer Bobby Chng was behind many uniform designs for banks, airlines, hospitals and more.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BOBBY CHNG
Designer Bobby Chng misses the days when Singapore fashion designers were rock stars.
He would be recognised on the streets and given free entry to any club he wanted. In Hong Kong, a city he frequented monthly, he partied with celebrities and movie stars.
That was an era when everyone dressed up, recalls the 69-year-old fondly. Between the 1970s and 1990s, “everybody wore designer labels to go out”. His own uniform of choice was a well-cut shirt, pants, belt and bag – often in top-to-toe Prada, Gucci (the Tom Ford era, naturally), Dolce & Gabbana and Jean Paul Gaultier.
A household name to anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, Chng fell off the radar around the time he moved to China in his 40s, where he stayed until 2019 before returning to Singapore.
Unknown to most, he had been diagnosed with cancer of the bladder since he was 26.
Career woman’s outfitter Celia Loe wishes she had gone into cakes
Womenswear pioneer Celia Loe opened her first shop in Tanglin Shopping Centre – once part of the Tanglin fashion belt – in 1972. Now retired, she bakes, gyms and does beadwork.
ST PHOTO: KELVIN CHNG
By the early 2000s, womenswear pioneer Celia Loe had acquired a reputation for what could delicately be called matronly design.
Now 81 years old, retired and sporting blue eye shadow, she laughs off the charge. “Evergreen, more like,” she says.
On the one hand, she did have a mature market, the natural consequence of a famously loyal customer base that aged with her brand, she says. Consider that she began in the early 1970s, working out of a backroom at home, to kit out the then-newly minted class of working girls.
As girls became women and notions of urbanity shifted, Loe had slipped from the beefy power shoulders of the late 1980s and early 1990s she made her name on, into chiffon tops and more liberated dresses.
Kelvin Choo starts over with shirt brand after 25-year hiatus
Designer Kelvin Choo at Takashimaya, pictured with outfits from his new brand, SHRITS, on Aug 1.
ST PHOTO: SHINTARO TAY
He was a 27-year-old with no formal training when the Magnificent Seven was christened in 1990 – a stripling in the company of designers more than 10 years his senior.
Now 65, Kelvin Choo is starting over with his own brand after a 25-year hiatus. Only this time sans the public feting of his early career, the speed and ease of which he confesses was “a little awkward”.
In July, his comeback label, SHRITS, quietly entered department store Takashimaya Shopping Centre. His new line of women’s blouses is mostly pinstriped and classic, on the dressy side of casual.
He says: “It’s very me. I’ve always loved the shirt.”
At 75, master designer Peter Kor can’t stop, won’t stop
Designer Peter Kor quit his retirement to revive his namesake label, now stocked at multi-label retailer Dors.
ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN
The most reclusive of the Magnificent Seven group of elite designers, Peter Kor, tired of retirement fast.
He had attempted to give up the rag trade in 2021, after an unhappy partnership with his then-investor. But by close of 2023, he was back at the drawing board for another crack at the old game.
The 75-year-old’s resurrected namesake label is now stocked at multi-label retailer Dors, his clean lines and deft braiding of East and West sensibilities firmly intact.
It is, by Kor’s own admission, late in the day to sugarcoat things. Breaking into Mandarin, he says: “At my age, you no longer have a future, only a past. It’s pessimistic, but it is precisely when you don’t have enough time that you must give it your all till the end.”
In memory of late couture maestro Tan Yoong
The late fashion designer Tan Yoong is best remembered for his bridal gowns and orchid dresses in layered organza.
PHOTO: TNP FILE
Among his peers, Tan Yoong was an exacting designer who dressed Asean royalty and local blue bloods, and was something like the first among equals.
But Singapore’s foremost couturier of the 1980s to the 2000s – who died in 2017 from a fall at home at the age of 66 – is best remembered for his bridal gowns and orchid dresses in layered organza – a calling card – which can be traced to the Cattleya Collection for his then-label Tze in 1990.
He did it short, he did it puffy – under Tan’s watch, the bloom never seemed to wither. A 2009 number, in taffeta and duchesse satin, creates the illusion of the dress as giant flower.
