In the Vitrine

Episode 50: Or the one where we do a vodcast! We talk about our visit to the new(-ish) permanent Fashion and Textiles Gallery at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, and what we learnt from our tour with curator Jackie Yoong. From the evolving motifs on the imperial robe to the changing cut of the qipao to the contrast between shoes worn by Han and Manchu women, we give you our highlights...

Episode 49: Reading Vogue Singapore The highly anticipated launch of Vogue Singapore has caused a flurry of excitement in the local fashion community. We look at the issue through the lens of fashion historians: decades from now, how will its contents reflect what's going on today? And at present, how does it inspire readers? We discuss the challenges of building upon the Vogue legacy and straddli...

Episode 48: What is the allure of shopping on AliExpress and Taobao? From scouring the platforms to procuring trendy items at wholesale prices, the digitalisation of shopping has created direct links between the producers and factories direct to consumers. For enterprising individuals, this has also provided the opportunity to flip products to eager consumers who are willing to pay more for well-c...

Episode 47: What is it about logos that we love? From Calvin Kleins to Chanel to Gucci, we dig beneath the surface of names and monograms to figure out why people shell out the big bucks to be branded, so to speak. From Dapper Dan’s pioneering sartorial ways to the rise of cult streetwear labels such as Supreme, we think about how logos can by turns be used for establishing one’s status to making...

Episode 46: Hanging out IRL with friends since the pandemic has taken on new meaning! A recent outing to the new gallery ART NOW at Raffles Hotel offered the material for this episode, where we talk about students’ final-year projects on display, the challenges of mounting a fashion-meets-art exhibition, and recent fashion-meets-technology wearables that we have encountered, such as for the Samsun...

Episode 45: Spurred by a rerun of “The Teenage Textbook” (1998) on Netflix, we discuss the uniform and how it is experienced and viewed by the wearer as well as the observer. Do all Thai students wear the same uniform and what is it about the Japanese schoolgirl uniform that has propelled it to both fame and infamy in popular culture? Will we move to gender-neutral school uniforms before long? We...

Happy 55th Birthday, Singapore! Episode 44: What’s in national dress? For Singapore, this is a question that has evaded a satisfactory answer since we became independent in 1965. Do we privilege the cheongsam, the sarong kebaya or the sari? And what about dress for men? We talk about the difficulties of making a national dress that ticks all the boxes in a port-city that has embraced immigrants fr...

Hello! A Tribute to Kansai Yamamoto Episode 43: We say goodbye to Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto, who from the early 1970s offered over-the-top theatrical designs in the spirit of basara, encouraging freestyle dressing with an emphasis on stylish extravagance. We marvel at his stadium-sized traveling fashion show, Kansai Super Show such as Hello! Russia in 1993 and subsequently in Vietn...

Episode 42: In this episode of In the Vitrine (ITV!), we talk about Music Television (MTV) and how it has given us important ideas about identity and dress. Did "video kill the radio star", as the first MTV music video by The Buggles purported in its title in 1981? How have visual realisations of songs encouraged experimentation with one's identity, and in what important ways have the music and fa...

Episode 41: We talk about intimates, from corsets to the Wonderbra to bralettes. How have history and popular culture factored into our decisions for what to wear underneath our clothes? We also explore the persistent innerwear-as-outerwear trend in fashion as inspired by and memorialised in the music industry, remembering Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour conical bra designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier,...

Episode 40: The 2020 Singapore General Election is upon us, and the candidates have 10 days to campaign. They have been putting out content online, as well as going from door to door to speak with voters. We scrutinise the role that dress plays in the optics of it all, inspired by a satirical response by @AWAREsingapore that questioned how an @AsiaOne article took to describing female politician's...

Episode 39: We talk about the wonderful projects of our graduating students from the Diploma in Fashion, BA(Hons) Fashion Design and Textiles and BA(Hons) Fashion Media and Industries programmes at LASALLE College of the Arts, discussing them under four broad categories: inclusivity/diversity, Singaporeanness and other localities, retrofuturism and creative sustainability. Congratulations to the #...

Episode 38: As we move to "Phase 2" in Singapore, we think about what fashion will be like after lockdown. The uncertainties persist, but we are reassured by the points in Vanessa Friedman's essay "This Is Not the End of Fashion" in The New York Times. In addition, Dani talks about her presentation "Making Replicas: Open Source Resources and the Potential for Remote Fashion Research' in the aptly...

Episode 37: Lenne Chai is a photographer and director who has been based in New York for the past year and a half, and is now back in Singapore in 'lockdown' due to the COVID19 pandemic. Lenne is known for dreamy, female-centric and romantic photography with a beautiful eye for composition and whimsy. We ask her about shooting AI influencer Lil Miquela, putting Singapore on the cover of Grazia Cro...

Episode 36: Fashion houses are innovating (or making do?) to create visuals to continue selling their products in a time of social distancing. From taking selfies to working in a team over FaceTime, we discuss the pros, cons and longevity of these new modes of working that have produced the #GucciTheRitual series of at-home portraits and the Bella Hadid for Jacquemus Spring 2020 campaign, among ot...

Episode 35: We speak about Ryan Murphy's miniseries "Hollywood" on Netflix that tells a revisionist narrative of Tinseltown in the late 1940s. We discuss the important role of costumes in evoking the era and bringing the characters and story to life. These are sourced and created by Sarah Evelyn and Lou Eyrich, inspired by the work of costume designers Adrian, Orry-Kelly, Edith Head and Walter Plu...

Episode 34: We share 34 accounts we like on Instagram. From unexpected street fashion to elevated selfies, and from photo archives to fashion news, we speak about the images and captions we enjoy and why. Do follow us as we meander through our choices, including a few non-fashion ones that have tickled our fancy. And do follow us @inthevitrine on Instagram!

Episode 33: We speak about Lanvin’s quattrocento blue and Schiaparelli’s shocking pink, and segue into how the colours blue and pink have historically been gendered. We talk about Korean artist Jeongmee Yoon’s “The Pink and Blue Project”, and exhibitions that have focused on singular colours and their meanings, such as “Black in Fashion: From Mourning to Night” at the National Gallery of Victoria....

Episode 32: We review two books: Contemporary Indonesian Fashion: Through the Looking Glass by Alessandra Lopez Y Royo, and Fashion and Postcolonial Critique, edited by Elke Gaugele and Monica Titton. We talk about their strengths and weaknesses well as what more can be written from an “insider” perspective. To that end, we highlight three Instagram accounts that do this well: @fashioningtheself,...

Episode 31: With a new Vogue Singapore on the horizon, we take the opportunity to look at the history of the global magazine franchise. We talk about our favourite covers, including illustrated Vogue Italia options for January 2020, and the important work that editors-in-chief from Edna Woolman Chase to Diana Vreeland to Edward Enninful have accomplished. We also consider the intimate experience o...

Episode 30: For the first time, we meet outside of the vitrine, so to speak, as we record remotely due to the circuit breaker in Singapore. We discuss work-from-home (WFH) fashion, and look back at the history of loungewear. We also look at fun home-based projects people have participated in on social media such as @quarantine_ss20, the #don'trushchallenge and the #pillowchallenge.

Episode 29: As Singapore begins its month-long "circuit breaker" (read: partial lockdown), we think about the privilege of staying at home and the fashion resources we can access online to keep our spirits lifted, our curiosity burning and our hands occupied. We discuss the different resources that allow us to engage with fashion in different modalities including online exhibitions, behind-the-sce...

Episode 28: We speak with Elsa Wong, Head of Visual Media at Youths in Balaclava, an independent fashion collective that was taken under Adrian Joffe's (Dover Street Market) wings and showed at Paris Fashion Week last season. Known for their underground, subcultural references and style, the collective was featured widely in online publications like Vogue, Dazed & Confused and Hypebeast. What are...

Episode 27: What are we watching as we practise #socialdistancing to #flattenthecurve? We talk about our current and all-time favourite fictional shows and how costumes figure in our choices. The list includes Kingdom, Grace and Frankie and Gilmore Girls, among others. Click to listen for more titles to binge on!

Episode 26: "Collecting Comme" and "Japanese Modernism" are two wonderful exhibitions at the National Gallery Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne. We talk about our favourite Comme des Garçons pieces on display from such iconic collections as Body Meets Dress-Dress Meets Body in the Spring/Summer 1997 season. In the second show, we discover some wonderful interwar Japanese artists such as Ishikawa Toraji,...