When I was about 16 years of age, all my high school mates were getting accepted into college for their A-Levels after leaving BBGS, with plans to go abroad to further their studies - I was completely unprepared and was very left out. I did not come from a family with any resources.
I went to my father and told him I wanted to be a fashion designer, and all he said was, “Girl, with all the art training and exposure you received since you were a child, you can already be a fashion designer now, go study something that will equip you with skills to design everything you want to design in future..” Then one Thursday during a class with my Chinese calligraphy master Dr. Wong Kum Peng, he told me I have a knack at working with space and incepted the word ‘architecture’ in my mind. So I found an architecture school that didn’t require A-Levels and found a way to pay fees. My father clearly told me I will not become a full fledged architect if we depended on his income. I grew up aspiring to design everything under the sun.. Decades later, after designing luxury houses, hotels, restaurants, spas, kitchens, furniture, household objects, and creating my own line of heirloom jewellery while I appeared with my painting brush in many cities... I ended up wearing my own clothes for all my appearances. Over the last 30 years, I find inspiration from fashion and privately enjoyed curating my entire wardrobe the way I would if I was a couture house.. there are many long standing template classics that I stick to, simple stuff that I kept since my 20s and often reinvented. Of course once in a while I would impose my styles on close friends and redesign their image to help them get closer to whatever their life calling was. For so many years I have wanted to attend part time fashion school to put together with my own hands the top 10 signature designs of mine, but the guru refused to take me on unless I agreed to commit 3 months without catching a single international flight in between. Of course that was an impossible thing to ask of me.. BUT NOW.. This pandemic season gave me the time to set up a working space in Abundantia to answer this calling. Currently everything is produced based on my years of architectural musings with fabric, I am finally able to test out my theories on the sewing machines and I made my first 2 dresses myself recently (in the past I worked with skilled seamstresses).. My methods aren’t conventional by any seamstress standards, I make my clothes the way a sculptor works on clay.. Not sure where this journey will lead me, but I am having fun making more and more pretty samples to wear.. Some of these samples will be for sale at an Etsy shop named the Pink Yakuza. Sharing with the world soon.