Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i Esquire Singapore

Let there be light My Facebook feed is inundated with resolutions: “Starting Dry January” or “This is the year to be a boss bitch”. Familiar refrains that start with a spark before, more often than naught it fizzles out. Then the new year rolls around and we recycle the resolutions. Back when I was a doe-eyed teen sitting in church listening to an ex-con, a reformed gangster or someone who was once at the end of their rope; I was ensnared by their testimonies at how just before the darkness snatches them for good, they are rescued by the saving grace of the Divine. Now they walk the straight and narrow road. Sure, temptation seeps in but, like a sailor clinging to beechwood in an open ocean, they rebuke it.…

Not too long ago, this correspondent was given the following advice from the CEO of a well-known watch brand. “Men,” he explained, “do not buy square watches.” The Apple Watch went on sale a few months later—roughly the same time that very boss was last heard of. Anyway, it’s not like we needed some upstarts from Silicon Valley to show us that men can cope perfectly well with square wristwear, as the decades’ worth of admirers of Tag Heuer’s Monaco, Cartier’s Tank and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso prove. The new undisputed kings of the square watch are Bell & Ross. French-led, Swiss-made and founded in 1992, the relative newbies proved that a square case was less a dead-end, more a perfectly proportioned canvas on which to let your design department really go…

It was in September 2016 that I had the opportunity to meet and interview Virgil Abloh. The tall, Ghanaian-American creative director was in Singapore on the occasion of the opening of Off-White’s first store here. It was the brand’s seventh then—a far cry from the more than 60 stockists that it’s currently available globally—and Abloh made every attempt in ensuring that the press knew about every inch of the space. Abloh felt imposing, but not only in the physical sense. Even long before his appointment as men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton, Abloh was already a creative force and his reputation preceded him. He was the creative director of Donda, a creative content company founded by Kanye West that was involved in conceptualising everything from music videos to the album…

Comebacks and retro revamps in anniversary years are hardly a rarity in the car world, yet news that a reimagined Lamborghini Countach is on its way in 2022 feels a little different. Particularly to anyone who had their own bedroom in the mid-1980s. Back then, it was bordering on illegal not to have a cheaply framed picture of an airbrushed Countach on the wall, probably to the left of a Ghostbusters poster, and just above a rack of Garfield books. More spaceship than road car, with lines that looked too sharp to touch, everything about the Countach felt extreme and dangerous. You wondered in awe what it might be like to open those scissor doors for yourself, and, with equal astonishment, how the driver could see out of the window…

Nestled in the CBD amid the shining spires of commerce and glass, there in a 1920s heritage building is Rosemead. The restaurant broke open a dam of memories of my time spent in the Golden State. It’s the inviting openness and congeniality. The country home-styled eatery, where patrons can settle—not sit—in chairs and a dining experience, is more of a communal occurrence. Luxuriate in the neutral, earthy hues of the room, where an open-hearth kitchen further breaks down the walls that separate the people who prepare your food and the ones eating it. The menu leads with using sustainable ingredients, sourced from local producers including Ah Hua Kelong and Edible Garden City as well as regional ones, as much as it can. You have omniseasonal courses that are segmented into…

When trapped, we fall back on our instincts for solutions to a way out. That’s how many felt when lockdown and mandatory confinement were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. For Foxes, born Louisa Rose Allen, writing music became a solace. “I felt quite lost and needed something to ground myself. Creatively, music was that,” she tells me. These remote sessions spawned her newest album The Kick. Writing from a place of wanting to escape the confines of her apartment, Foxes imagined the freedom of the outside where people can dance and hold each other again. “I felt a wild and animalistic feeling of needing and wanting to socialise again; come out whilst writing and the feelings just didn’t stop.” Her first full-length studio album since 2016’s All I Need also…

“DARKER WITH A HINT OF LIGHT IN IT, THAT SHOWS YOU WHAT LIFE COULD BE.” Nothing makes sense about Thierry Guetta. Born in 1966, he’s the street artist who can seem like a parody-those sunglasses, that fedora, the heavy French accent, the permanently paint-splashed clothes-but whose works sell for many tens of thousands of US dollars a pop. He’s the relative newbie-only making his breakthrough a decade ago-who does charity events with Michelle Obama and the Pope. He’s the 21st-century pop cultural figure who, on the side, designs album covers for pop cultural figures the likes of Madonna and the late Michael Jackson. And on it goes. He’s the artist who decries the art system, yet parlays his art world status into lucrative gigs for the likes of Nike and…

How should we listen to songs? On commute, in malls, at home, and sometimes in our heads, melodic phrases and the words they may carry are constantly adrift in our midst. But because there is an abundance, there is a loss of value, and that is especially true in the world of music today. With the cacophonous soundscape we all live in, it’s only normal the rhythmic layers of vibration that artists and producers painstakingly put together are more often listened to without really being heard, left alone to accumulate and morph into noise. Sure, we might never be privy to every single message these melodious time capsules hold. But we only live faster every day, and if the nature of efficiency is that we expend energy only on what…

It was only last year that Loewe first began a partnership with Studio Ghibli. The famed Japanese animation house—co-founded by one Hayao Miyazaki—has a growing roster of beloved animated films that defy all language barriers. Loewe’s capsule collection then featured Studio Ghibli’s mascot Totoro as well as various other characters and elements from My Neighbour Totoro. The film’s animal-like characters were deftly translated onto Loewe’s signature pieces the likes of its array of both big and small leather goods to printed T-shirts in colours based on the palette favoured by Studio Ghibli. But beyond the seemingly straightforward veneer of the collection, it was the craft techniques used in most of the pieces that bound the two entities together. The leather marquetry and intricate embroidery employed throughout echoed the kind of…

With Covid, the world went into lockdown. We were sequestered indoors as a way to stem the spread of the virus. Communication was relegated to video calls and our outlet to the world was through our laptop screens. So when something like Kaws:Holiday chose Singapore as the seventh spot to host a giant inflatable Companion-a bulbous, skull-headed figure with Xed-out eyes and attired in Mickey Mouse’s iconic pants, shoes and four-fingered gloves-it almost felt like a reason to head out. The guy behind Companion, Brian Donnelly-or as he’s better known, Kaws-was in town to do press. We had a scheduled one-on-one with him but Donnelly was whisked away for a sudden Antigen Rapid Test. This ate into his interview schedule. So now our one-on-one turned into a three-way with me,…

What’s a new year without taking time to look back at what we’ve experienced and learned the year before? Let’s be honest, 2021 felt quite like 2020 but with slight glimmers of hope. Just when we were about to reclaim some semblance of normalcy in our lives again, COVID-19 threw some curves and mutations our way. But learn a few things we did—whether they’re fashion trends and tricks we should take into 2022 with us, or bury in the deepest recesses of our minds only for them to be uncovered a decade later for laughs. 1. LOUNGEWEAR CAN BE CHIC. After nearly two years of working almost entirely from home, the loungewear segment has been getting a sleek upgrade. Sweats are well coordinated with fresh tone-on-tone colourways, and they look…

At a time when the lines segregating casual from formal dress are increasingly being blurred, pyjamas remain one of the few articles of clothing that have yet to be fully embraced out in the open. Sure, there have been countless variations of pyjama-inspired fashion by luxury brands the likes of Prada, Gucci, Dolce&Gabbana, and most recently Versace for its upcoming pre-autumn 2022 collection, but you don’t typically see them being worn by the average man on the street. We’re quite certain that fashion will continuously riff on pyjamas for the foreseeable future, especially with loungewear experiencing a resurgence, thanks to the pandemic. Perhaps what we need to consider is that some things should just be left alone—pyjamas should really just stick to being pyjamas. Studies have shown that what you…

The irony is not lost on me that this service is not recommended for folks who are on the plus side, if that’s still a politically correct term. Unlike traditional liposuction, this works with an external application rather than well, literally sucking excess fats out of your body. Meaning if you have too much to work with, you may not be barred from having a go, but results would virtually be negligible. Undo your perception of removal; think of it more as contouring. Ideal for stubborn areas that don’t seem to shrink with diet or exercise, or the condition that plagues many Singaporeans-being skinny-fat. It’s not fat freezing; it’s eliminating fat cells. Using multi-sequential ultrasound waves to penetrate and destroy the very homes of fats thus violently evicting them (obviously,…

In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen published The Emperor’s New Clothes-a tale about two travellers who trick a sovereign into believing they have woven garments that are invisible to those that are too incompetent to see them. Proud and vain, the emperor and his court willingly buy into the deception, pretending to be able to see and admire the ‘invisible’ clothing. The entire village grudgingly joins in the self-deception, when the emperor parades the ‘clothing’ through the town. This self-deception lasts until a child points out that the king is naked. While it might have been mortifying for the sovereign but fast-forward to now. Today, influencers in skintight bodysuits or barely-there underwear snap photos of themselves to be dressed in digital versions of clothing that exist only as a virtual layer;…

Why didn’t Bang & Olufsen call its new all-white collection White Noise? Surely they missed a trick. Then again, being world-class experts in high-fidelity audio, maybe not. Such experts would know only too well the connotations ‘white noise’ has, that it contains all the audible frequencies, just as white light contains all the frequencies in the visible range. And that, of all the noise types named for a loose analogy to the colours of light—pink noise, brown noise, red noise—white noise is the harshest, comparable to television static or a hissing radiator. Furthermore, that the word noise is itself derived from the Latin word for ‘nausea’. And no one wants that. Better, perhaps, to focus on more positive connotations with the colour. Being world-class experts in hi-fidelity audio marketing, Bang…

Certain brands find success for purely aesthetic reasons. We’re talking labels that sell out plain white tees with the tiniest logo, hollow coffee-table books complete with the cover and spine of Kinfolk, and that one notable skincare brand whose hand soaps you see at almost every café. We’re not diminishing the quality of said products, but their branding surely lends to a particular nuance that people want to emulate. Now, discreetly designed with a minimalist look is the latest series of soaps from PS.Cafe, which you probably wouldn’t have guessed is from the homegrown brand. The longstanding restaurant has ventured from tote bags to truffle oil, but this limited-edition soap range sports a monochromatic scheme with only the hand-sprayed name on the bottle. What you can likely guess is that…

You may have seen Cherin Tan’s work with Violet Oon Singapore. That among other projects across commercial, hospitality and retail in her roles as the principal and creative director of self-founded interior design firm Laank, and recently the Interior Designer of the Year awarded by the Interior Design Confederation Singapore. Spanning both local and regional brands, Tan paces on towards a decade with her studio and doubles that duration in her design journey. Still, it goes beyond spatial considerations to creating purposeful environments. Here, in an e-mail conversation, she tells us what it means to design an experience. ESQUIRE: You’ve mentioned that you see design as a problem-solving approach, is that what drew you to design? Do you also somewhat see or use it in other areas beyond interior design?…

Benedict Cumberbatch is a diligent researcher of the lives of his characters, both fictional and non-fictional. On the face of it, the story of Greville Wynne, the character he plays in his most recent film, The Courier, offered rich pickings. But there was a problem. A real-life businessman recruited by MI6 during the Cold War as a go-between with Soviet asset Oleg Penkovsky, the late Wynne had left behind two books detailing his exploits. Unfortunately, he was a compulsive liar. Much of what he described was either wrong or simply couldn’t have taken place. The Courier, then, needed to be one Hollywood biopic that relied less on its source material to try to get to the truth. (When it comes to espionage, it turns out you don’t know who to…