Singapore’s most-loved “couturier” celebrated his 60th birthday yesterday, with a fancy banquet, a two-tier cake, and heartfelt thanks to guests for being real-ish

In the glittering world of fashion, where even a sneeze can be styled, Frederick Lee’s birthday post on Facebook has gifted us a rare gem: “Thank you everyone for sparing out (sic) few minutes and sending me your unfeigned wishes.” A string of words so baroque it deserves its own runway. And a standing ovation for the marvelous use of the detail “unfeigned”. His guests must be thinking: Is he thanking us… or quietly accusing us of being fake the rest of the year? You have to admit that there is artisanal skill involved, just like placing gloves on a tailor dummy to fashion a gown. It was delicacy operating at its peak. To thank guests at a birthday bash for their ‘unfeigned’ regard appeared to imply that feigned ones are the norm. It’s atas gratitude with a concealed pocket of suspicion—a linguistic eyebrow raise.

“Thank you everyone for sparing out few minutes and sending me your unfeigned wishes” kept playing in our head, like a hummable chorus of a good song. It could even be a message our island delivers to the people on national day, sung to the tune of Home. But the phrasal verb “sparing out”, while a perfectly good, if unusual, Singlish term, is not quite standard English, not in fashion, not even in what a stand-in social media writer on deadline would compose. It is admirable how the intended sentiment—“thank you for taking few minutes”—so easily became an embroidery needle in a haystack of lost translations, somewhere between gratitude and grandiosity. “Sparing out” could be the result of spending too much time at thesaurus.com than dictionary.com, which spawned a couture Frankenstein, stitched together from half-remembered phrases and a desire to sound important grateful.

But the beautiful twist is the missing article, one that stood out like a shirt button unaccounted for. Mr Lee thanked his guests for their “few minutes” without the ‘a’. Articles in English are small words with massive egos. They’re as important as the difference between having ‘talent’ (the general, inherent ability) and being ‘a talent’ (meaning you are the whole show). “Few minutes” is, therefore, a talented choice as it subtly implies scarcity or a lack of, as if the guests barely had time to squeeze in a birthday wish—unfeigned no doubt—between fittings and facials. I have few minutes left, hurry up! It was not “a few minutes” generously spared; it was “few minutes” reluctantly parted with. The gratitude is gloriously tinged with grievance.

The immediate defence we hear coming is that the sentence is not loosely stitched, but quirky. Fashion needs quirkiness to be different, unique, and memorable. The designer’s texts do too. It’s his signature, a verbal ostentation as distinctive as his asymmetrical cascades of florals down the body. High fashion is wonderful that way: typos can be rebranded as intentional distortions and mispronunciations as accented affectations. A fashion designer is not only grateful; he has to sound grateful, in a way that feels emotionally rare, grammatically bespoke. Frederick Lee’s ornate “unfeigned” is not only a word; it’s a mood board. “Few minutes” isn’t rushed—it’s minimalist. And “sparing out” isn’t incorrect—it’s avant-garde. They form the sum of sincerity, and that is couture.

Screen shots: fredericklee/Facebook