Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Tatler Singapore

TATLER HONG KONG On the cover this month is Tyson Yoshi, the Hong Kong rapper who has risen rapidly to fame with an approach to music that looks at some of life’s trickiest issues with honesty. He details his ascent from boarding school in the UK to finding his niche in an industry that has afforded him full control of his image and artistic integrity. TATLER INDONESIA Agita Pasaribu wants to prevent online harassment and help those who fall prey to it. She founded Bullyid, which uses AI to identify cyberbullying and other forms of harassment and domestic violence; combining education, law and psychology, the platform provides end-to-end services to victims, from information resources to anonymous reporting to legal and mental health support. In this issue, she talks about how…

ESTHER GOH A creative who tells stories through illustration, art direction and animation, Esther Goh’s ideas revolve around the human condition and are conceived as a response to her observations and experiences. She approaches her work with playful irony, often weaving together fiction and reality. She created this month’s Alphabet City feature (p.200). WEE KHIM Widely regarded as Singapore’s most famous fashion and celebrity photographer, Wee Khim has shot home‑grown celebrities such as Stefanie Sun and Zoe Tay as well as international stars including Gong Li and David Gandy. Crafting his pictures with a blend of light, composition, humour and wit, he has a unique ability to capture the beauty and personality of his subjects. This month, he trains his lens on our legendary cover star Betty Chen, the life…

What were you doing before launching Dignity Kitchen? I started my career as a shipyard worker in Singapore. I went to the UK to study and lived there for 12 years. I obtained a degree in engineering and an MSc in computer integrated manufacturing. Then I came back to Singapore in 1994 and worked for [what is now] PricewaterhouseCoopers. Later, I started my own management consultancy to develop businesses in China and India. I ran this business until 2006. What inspired you to launch Dignity Kitchen in Singapore in 2010? In Singapore, you don’t see beggars, homeless people or disabled people on the streets or in shopping malls. I realised there is another side of Singapore that people don’t want to know about. I started something called Dignity Day. I…

CELESTE BASAPA Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation First Circle Member Fundraising is like gold prospecting—it doesn’t matter where you find the nugget, it’s still precious. Likewise, it doesn’t matter how you get the charity dollar, whether it’s from a philanthropic donation or from people who pay for a glamorous good time [at a charity gala], it doesn’t lessen the value of the dollar. I am concerned about the well‑being of our planet, and I found a cause that resonates with me in the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. The planet, in its natural state, was a splendid place but mankind is not taking good care of it. Global warming has caused glaciers to melt, raising sea levels; deforestation becomes widespread; and animals are endangered because of selfish poachers.…

Back in the late 19th century, if you were an English tourist returning home after a stay in Paris, you would probably carry a Moynat trunk. In 1849, before Louis Vuitton and Goyard existed, Pauline Moynat, the only female trunk-maker at the time, founded the house in partnership with Octavia and François Coulembier. A creator of finely handcrafted luggage and travel goods, Moynat became known for designs suited to railway and automobile travel, as well as for its technological innovations, such as lightweight trunks and waterproof canvas. Now the French maison is opening new boutique in London at Harrods, and Tatler spoke to its creative director Nicholas Knightly a week before the opening. “We love the authenticity of the heritage, and that brings the quality,” says Knightly, the British designer…

As a tot, Sabrina Villard took her first steps in the Sahara desert, just south of Algeria. She did so while holding the hand of her great-grandmother, a Bedouin shaman—who are known in the region as Fugara—who she says lived to be 123 years old. “She is still with me every day, guiding me,” says Villard, who inherited and honed her skills as a shaman from her late great-grandmother. She keeps a photo of her on an altar surrounded by candles and flowers in the corner of her ceremony room, which occupies the second bedroom of her apartment on Robinson Road in Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels district. To this day, when faced with adversity or difficult decisions, a distinct tingle on her arm is a reassuring sign that her great-grandmother is…

ALL AT SEA The Superocean Automatic 44 is part of Breitling’s latest launch of dive watches. The collection reimagines the classic “Slow Motion” timepiece from the Sixties—originally designed for scuba divers. The bronze dial is coupled with a deep green rubber strap, comes with a screw-locked crown and is water-resistant down to 300m. At the heart of the timepiece is the Breitling 17—a self-winding mechanical movement that is COSC-certified and boasts a power reserve of 38 hours. FEELING BLUE The new, limited-edition Grand Seiko Spring Drive celebrates the 55th anniversary of the original 1967 44GS—a timepiece that defined the brand’s signature aesthetic. The blue dial mimics the night sky enveloping the mountains of Shinshu in Japan as seen from the watchmaker’s studio. Powered by the manually wound Spring Drive calibre…

Betty Chen has an incredible presence. She commands the room effortlessly and those in her orbit can’t seem to help but fawn over her—openly admiring everything from her immaculately coiffed hair to her infectious smile, and basking in her confident, calming aura. She is, in every sense of the word, a true matriarch—both a mother and a powerful leader. Think a real‑life Shang Su Yi, the revered grandmother, or ah ma, in Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. And yet, Chen is strikingly relatable. It is lunchtime when she arrives on set for this photo shoot. While we are used to extravagant requests here at Tatler, Chen’s lunch order is refreshingly simple: an egg and avocado croissant sandwich. After lunch, she enjoys being pampered: getting her hair and make‑up done, and…

Mei Mac’s latest role is a dream come true: Mei Kusakabe, the lead role in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage adaptation of one of her childhood favourites, Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 animation My Neighbour Totoro. The production, which features new orchestrations of Joe Hisaishi’s original score and has taken seven years to put together, will have its global premiere this month at the Barbican in London. The British actress believes the production couldn’t have come at a better time: for more than two years, the pandemic has plagued the world with grief and loss—themes that are also prevalent in Totoro, which portrays post-World War II rural Japan through the eyes of two children whose mother is ill. Mac, who turned 30 in July, now finds the animation a bittersweet experience. She…

How do you choose an appropriate theme to encapsulate 40 years of society, style and social impact? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself since taking over the reins of the magazine this year, and I’m pretty sure only one word is powerful enough to be equal to such a momentous occasion: legendary. Looking back on our covers and tag lines through the years—“Life. Extraordinary”; “The Spirit of High Society”—as well as the role that Tatler has played in chronicling and shaping Singapore’s social landscape (I believe we’re the only magazine that Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew has namechecked in his memoirs—look it up on page 288 of Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going), I was convinced I was right. And so we invited the incredible Betty Chen to…

“Going for a mammogram is not one of the most comfortable experiences that a woman goes through,” says breast surgeon Dr Tan Yah Yuen. “But a nice and conducive environment [might] help.” This is just one of the many factors that Dr Tan, a senior consultant at Solis Breast Care and Surgery Centre, felt could be done better in patient care. “We want to take away that environment of going to a huge radiology centre with all these other patients doing all sorts of scans,” says Dr Tan, who was previously in private practice at Mount Elizabeth Orchard. She shares how at the medical centre, when a patient required a mammogram, for example, she would send them to the radiology department, [where they would go] alongside patients from other clinics.…

| Introducing the Young Leaders on the Gen.T List | Devi Sahny is naturally curious. Ask her what she wants to know more about and she will have more than one answer. The founder of edtech start‑up Ascend Now is especially fascinated with education and can “spend hours reading up about pedagogies, instructional design and teaching soft skills at different ages”. But she does not keep the knowledge to herself; during her time at Georgetown University, she served as a teaching assistant for economics and philosophy, and in her senior year, ran a tutoring service teaching 23 of her peers. “It wasn’t a huge operation, but I loved the feeling when students or classmates improved in their classes,” she says. This sowed the seed for Ascend Now, which she started…

All her life, Christine Amour‑Levar has counted herself lucky. The French Swiss Filipina grew up in the Philippines surrounded by poverty, but her family was well‑off and she led a privileged life attending international schools in Manila. Athletic and competitive from a young age, she pursued her passion for sports and landed her dream job with Nike in the US doing international marketing. The job took her to various cities around the world and eventually brought her to Singapore, where the mother of four has been based since 2005. Shortly after leaving Nike, Amour‑Levar met her friend Valerie Boffy here, whom she credits for kick‑starting her philanthropy journey. In 2012, Boffy climbed the summit of Mount Everest, where she unfolded a banner in support of Women for Women International, a…

MAISON BLOSSOM Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele has made it hard to ignore romanticism in recent seasons. The new Gucci Décor collection, which draws inspiration from the physical and spiritual beauty of nature, offers a diverse range of floral homewares from medal candles to tableware. The campaign amps up the bucolic vibes, with photographer and art director Max Siedentopf setting up surreal yet playful scenes fit for Marie Antoinette. BRIGHT NEW STAR Following the appointment of Korean football star Son Heung-min, Burberry has welcomed another new ambassador, Thai actor and singer Bright Vachirawit, the first from Southeast Asia. The actor of the moment, best known for his leading roles in the award-winning series 2gether: The Series and F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers, appears in photos outfitted in the house’s black…

The femme fatale of Saint Laurent looks a little different this season. Under the helm of Anthony Vaccarello, the French luxury fashion brand has introduced a powerful vision of femininity that unabashedly taps into sex appeal, offering little black dresses with daring cutouts around the décolletage, and leather micro shorts paired with see‑through blouses that leave little to the imagination. For winter 2022, however, the Saint Laurent woman says less with skin and more with the suggestion of it. She is private, guarded—like the fashion brand’s founder Yves Saint Laurent, who kept an assortment of art deco objects in his Paris home that informs Vaccarello’s latest collection. Wrapped up in furs and seemingly gliding down the runway in sweeping silk gowns, the models at the Saint Laurent fashion show had…

Sleep is so essential and yet so elusive for many of us—particularly in major cities around Asia. A study conducted in 2021 by Sleepseeker, a UK bedding company, found that Singapore was the most sleep-deprived country in the world. In 2020, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that more than half of the city’s residents suffered from sleep deprivation, with respondents claiming to get just four hours of sleep per night on average. And a survey conducted by Sleep Cycle, a sleep tracking application, ranked the Philippines as the fourth most sleepless country in the world. Long story short, we’re tired. And who can blame us? The modern metropolitan lifestyle isn’t particularly conducive to a good night’s rest, and the pandemic has exacerbated the problem over the past two…

The Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar is back, and this year, Audemars Piguet has introduced its latest version in a shade of intense blue. The monotone 41mm case and bracelet are satin-brushed with the signature hand-finish of the skilled Le Brassus artisans. The timepiece turns up the heat (quite literally), as the ceramic can only acquire this colour at a temperature of 1,400 degrees Celsius. Beating within the watch is the self-winding calibre 5134. It continues the legacy of its predecessors with the soothing blue dial displaying the lunar cycle, month, week, day, date, hour and minute. Not even leap years confuse the all-knowing Perpetual Calendar—as long as the watch is wound regularly, it will run until the year 2100 without a hitch. SUSTAINABLY YOURS The new Gucci Dive collection is…

You started acting when you were a teenager—who empowered your decision to start your career so young, and what advice do you have for women following unconventional career paths? My mum made everything seem possible and she offered me the space to walk in the direction of my dreams without fear of rejection or abandonment. My parents believed in every aspect of walking that path. They still do. Words of advice? Keep going but be smart—you’re all you need. Tell us about how having children has changed your approach to work? I know I’ve instinctually made the choice to do less and choose one [movie] that’s fierce and totally fulfilling, so I can feel I’ve earnt time off with my kids. I want impact and commitment with work so I…

HERE WE GO AGAIN Start shaking that can of hair lacquer: an era of all-out glamour is edging out the dominance of the Y2K rehash. We’re talking power shoulders, and the return of waistlines and the bright colours of the Eighties. Think oversized blazers styled with short skirts, funky earrings and a lot of glitz. DARE TO BARE Designers have gone all-in on transparent constructions this season, conjuring ethereal mirages with diaphanous layering. Floorsweeping dresses made of silk organza and minimalist pieces in transparent silk-tulle fabric leave little to the imagination. Tone down the fairytale vibes by pairing floaty pieces with a power blazer or metallic boots. FINE AND DANDY The modern dandy has progressed from velvet suits and quirky bowties to a more inclusive and fluid look. Still shorthand…

GREGORY VAN CEO, Endowus When you have already charted a stellar career in investment banking at UBS and snagged a spot at Grab as part of the pioneering team that launched the firm’s digital payments services across Southeast Asia, jumping ship to establish your own start‑up could be quite the risk. “I was at an exciting place in a very exciting time managing six countries; it was a broad role with a lot of opportunities, so leaving Grab to start Endowus was a risk,” says Gregory Van, recollecting the year his life trajectory changed dramatically when he became an entrepreneur for the first time. In 2017, Van co‑founded Endowus with Samuel Rhee, ex‑chief executive officer and chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Asia. The former is now…

1 The Earrings Make like the star of the celebration when you don these precious ruby and diamond earrings from Tiffany & Co. 2 The Shoe Heat up the party with Alaïa’s iconic Bombe heel, which now comes in a fiery hue for that added edge. 3 The Watch The best way to mark a ruby anniversary? With Chanel’s limited‑edition J12 X‑Ray Red Edition Rouge, of course. 4 The Bag Have your (birthday) cake and eat it too—Judith Leiber’s blinged‑out strawberry shortcake clutch hits the sweet spot.…

I believe, without a doubt, that the good work a person does throughout their life can establish a legacy of generosity, kindness and social responsibility. From helping others who are less fortunate or in vulnerable positions, to heroic acts that inspire others, those who do good work throughout their lives establish a positive legacy that helps make life better for themselves and for others. One of the poignant stories that came out of 9/11 involved a former high school football hero named Tom Burnett. On that day, he was a passenger on board United Airlines Flight 93, which was hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks. As Burnett called his wife from the hijacked plane, he had already realised that two other hijacked planes had crashed into the World…

It’s not only his resemblance to the legendary designer that has the industry calling Charles de Vilmorin “the next Yves Saint Laurent”. Like that trailblazer, the fast-rising French star—who has been given an updated version of Saint Laurent’s soubriquet “le petit prince de la mode”—was put at the helm of a heritage fashion house while in his early 20s, leading the creative direction of Rochas this past year. De Vilmorin graduated from the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and launched his eponymous couture label on Instagram during the pandemic. Nobody could have foreseen the speed at which his career would take off: iconic designers Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Christian Lacroix praised his designs, which included psychedelic bomber jackets resembling the sculptures of French artist Niki de…

A decade of facial filters on photo-sharing apps has moved them from digital decoration to a cultural norm—but does this change in use mean a shift in mindset? The first foray into filters began as cartoonish masks of floppy-tongued pets that were used to make Snapchat selfies more playful. Then they became beautifying tools for editing photos on Instagram to make skin smoother, lips fuller and jaws slimmer. This phenomenon was developed into full-blown apps that are still popular, particularly on Chinese and South Korean social media. Several studies in recent years have pointed to the damage that social media can do to mental health due to the constant barrage of “perfect” bodies and faces—often created using filters. In 2020, an article in the JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery journal reported…

LARGER THAN LIFE Boucheron has reimagined its signature high jewellery collections with oversized versions of the designs. The Jack de Boucheron bracelet is one of the most versatile pieces. Made of yellow gold and with a pavé diamond clasp, it can be wrapped around the wrist, arm, neck, hair or waist to suit any ensemble and occasion. Boucheron Oversized Jack de Boucheron yellow gold wrap bracelet LINKED WITH LOVE Francesca Amfitheatrof, the artistic director of jewellery and watches for Louis Vuitton, has reinvented the maison’s Empreinte collection that was first launched in 2004. The interlinked double Empreinte bracelet in 18-karat pink gold and diamonds is a beautiful addition to the coveted collection. Louis Vuitton Double Empreinte bracelet in pink gold and diamonds VERY VERSATILE Thailand-based fine jewellery designers Kavant &…

THE RÉCIF NECKLACE The fiery brilliance of deep sea coral is the star of this piece, where the stones are arranged to look as if they are growing on a rope of glittering diamonds and emeralds. THE IWANA NECKLACE The green iguana’s textured skin serves as the inspiration for this geometric necklace featuring three cabochon‑cut Colombian emeralds brilliantly framed by diamonds and emeralds. THE YASIFAN RING A sketch of a shell in an old biology book was the Promethean spark for this majestic ring showcasing a vibrant tourmaline set off by angular combinations of rubies and diamonds. THE VIRIDIA RING Green diamond—the hottest gem of the moment—takes centre stage in this ring, studded with diamonds for good measure, that celebrates the beauty of natural geological crystallisations. THE RITUAL NECKLACE Inspired…

In the centuries-old world of watchmaking, Louis Vuitton is relatively new to the game. But when the French maison launched Tambour, its first luxury watch, in 2002, it was unlike any other. Bold and innovative, the Tambour featured a unique round case, sculpted from a block of metal, that evoked the shape of a drum with thick sides that flared out (hence the name, which means “drum” in French) as well as the now-signature applied horns. In the two decades since its debut, the Tambour has become a symbol of Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking prowess. Its multiple iterations stay true to the brand’s DNA, and showcase bold creativity, technological innovation and exceptional craftsmanship. To celebrate the momentous 20th birthday of this icon, Louis Vuitton has created an exclusive new model: the…

The holiday season is just around the corner and with that big family vacation planned, all that is left to do now is to pack the boldest, brightest threads for the ’gram—yes, even for your little ones. Whether you are taking them to Tivoli or Paris, the season’s jubilant prints and tactile finishes ensure that your entire brood will always be well dressed as the weather turns. These picks from the luxury children’s precinct at The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands will surely amp up the sartorial repertoires of your mini‑mes and transform every tarmac into a runway—wherever they may land. SHE’S ALL THAT From fabulous faux furs, to tweeds that tickle; to pretty parkas that beg to be hugged, and everywhere in between, The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands…

“Every orthodontist, podiatrist, whoever: everyone seems to be collecting [art],” says Korean American gallerist Esther Kim Varet of the mushrooming South Korean art scene. “It’s incredibly robust.” Varet opened a branch of her Los Angelesoriginated gallery, Various Small Fires (VSF), in Seoul in 2018, and was taken aback by the response it received. “I was anticipating a slow growth when I opened the space four years ago, but collecting has gone so mainstream in South Korea.” For Varet, establishing a presence in Seoul felt like a natural move: she spoke the language and was familiar with the city and its culture. Moreover, her programme lent itself well to cross-cultural collaboration, as it primarily features American and Korean contemporary artists—a solo exhibition featuring the work of US artist Diedrick Brackens is…

Asia is nothing if not diverse, a fact that is readily reflected in the panoply of alcoholic beverages both fermented and distilled that have arisen as a result of the variety of terrains, climates, cultures and culinary customs of its many regions. Indeed, the impact of Asia on the development of modern alcohol as we know it today can hardly be underestimated: it was in British India that the gin and tonic was invented, as both an antidote to the oppressive tropical climate as well as the constant threat of malaria (thanks to the presence of quinine in tonic water), which quickly spread to other Crown possessions across the world. Meanwhile, Batavia arrack, a distilled spirit originating from the Indonesian island of Java, is often cited as an influential forerunner…