This year, Asian Civilisation Museum’s annual exhibition to salute Singaporean fashion design #SGFASHIONNOW is held in South Korea. Is the event, co-curated with students, ready to travel?

There is “one of Singapore most successful export” to host. Asian Civilisation Museum (ACM) has, therefore, no space to stage this year’s #SGFASHIONNOW, even in the tiny, first-floor Contemporary Gallery at the rear of the museum that, for the past two years, was designated to house #SGFASHIONNOW (the space is currently a mock-up of Andrew Gn’s Paris studio on the city’s rue de Temple in the Marais). While ACM welcomed Andrew Gn back on home turf, they have to send others not quite in the same league as Mr Gn elsewhere—specifically to Busan (pronounced pusan), the port city on the southeast tip of the Korean peninsula, some 325 kilometres from Seoul, and thereafter to the capital. Dubbed Runway Singapore this year, (possibly in lieu of a lack of a fashion week or similar on our island, or something fiercer, such as last year’s Architectural Drape), it is organised “in partnership” with the Korea Foundation (KF), the non-profit that, according to its website, “promote[s] proper awareness and understanding of Korea, and to enhance goodwill and friendship throughout the international community”.

#SGFAHIONNOW this year is, for the participants, a grander-than-before, two-city affair. It is unclear how many among the designers—27 of them, ACM happily announced—will be attending the exhibition in either city. One of them told SOTD that too much expense would be incurred to go all the way to South Korea ”just to witness one of my outfits put on show”. The event, proudly touted by ACM as “the largest showcase in the series”, is first held at Busan’s KF ASEAN Culture House in the Haeundae District and after that, at Central Seoul’s KF Gallery in Jung District, both venues run by the Korea Foundation. As with the first two editions, #SGFASHIONNOW is co-curated with selected fashion students from the resident school-to-support Lasalle College of the Arts, with patronage of the Singapore Fashion Council (SFC, the former Textile and Federation of Singapore [TaFF]), whose finalists from their annual design competition Singapore Stories are represented. As it appears for now, there is no accompanying e-book for the exhibition. The standalone #SGFASHIONNOW website has not benefitted from an update.

The usual suspects (from left): Stylemart’s Kavita Thulasidas, Harry Halim, and Baëlf Design

This is the first time since its inception in 2021 that SOTD isn’t attending #SGFASHIONNOW. But perhaps it does not matter. While it is regrettable that our city would not enjoy the “largest showcase” of its kind here (it is not known yet if ACM would consider staging Runway Singapore after the Andrew Gn exhibition ends next month), maybe nothing is truly missed. It appears that the event is this big because ACM has brought together pieces from the first two exhibitions (8 and 16 respectively) with others, presumably suggested by the students in their selling of curatorial ideas to ACM that may have amounted to the lamely-named Runway Singapore. That means that this installment in Seoul is really a conflation of 2021’s debut and last year’s puzzlingly-titled Architectural Drape. All-new exhibits are not crucial since this is for a country unexposed to Singaporean designs. We would, therefore, have seen Andrew Gn’s white fringed/caped gown (2021), Time Taken to Make A Dress’s degradé neo-qipao (2021) worn by Constance Lau at the Hollywood premier of Crazy Rich Asian, Thomas Wee’s one-seam dress (2022), Ashley Isham’s Mdm Gres-inspired gown, Studio HHFZ’s cartoonish cheongsam, and Latika Balachander’s hip-hop-flavoured stripey jacket (2022), just to identify a few.

As Singapore Fashion Council is involved, their Singapore Stories winners, too, have their pieces displayed, such as the work of John Max Goh (2021) and Kavita Thulasidas of Stylemart (2022). But, interestingly, nothing by the one-time Design Orchard darling Carol Chen (2020), who is rumoured to no longer be in SFC’s good graces (moreover, Ms Chen has returned to the US after her “Paris debut” and a small showing during the relaunch of Design Orchard last year) for reasons unknown. However proud ACM is of #SGFASHIONNOW, just two previous shows of modest scale are not quite sufficient for arriving at a persuasive definition of Singaporean style, let alone a captivating narrative that Singapore Stories purport to tell. It is not known why there can’t be a hiatus this year, if indeed space at the ACM is lacking. Or, why their curatorial finesse in fashion must always be on display—this time, together with walls plastered with posters to show what an attractive tourist destination our island is. Perhaps, ACM thinks that the South Koreans need to be acquainted with what we can offer because they can’t do better? Conversely, would the people who created K-pop say, like Blackpink sang in Pink Venom, ”makes no sense, you couldn’t get a dollar out of me”?

#SGFASHIONNOW 2023 runs from now to 29 October at the KF ASEAN Culture House, Busan, South Korea and from 21 November to 31 January 2024. Admissions at both venues are free. Photos: Korea Foundation