We have fallen behind. Fashion, as anyone who has visited Hong Kong knows, is a race to wear this season’s die-die-must-have or the best copy from Causeway Bay, maybe – why else should models strut along run-ways? – and somehow or other, when we were ransacking our bedroom closets for the worst clothes to wear to the market, the competition has come to little Bukit Batok.
So it is that Fei and I are at the market one morning, watching the world go by with her LV. “Wah, atas, siah. See the girl with the –” says Issey Feiyake, naming a limited-edition zillion-dollar canvas bag I have never ever heard of. Monogram-less and on a girl in shorts and sandals, it looks like any other canvas carryall. But what do I know? The guru has spoken. I’m just a shoe slut – the CK in my life is not Calvin Klein but Charles & Keith.
Then I catch sight of the chic monogram: a woman dressed up and made up to the nines, in pink high heels, with two bagfuls of food and in a pink shirt-and-skirt set so sheer, the world can read most of the multicoloured LVs on her undies. She is quite a sight on many, many levels. “Made in China,” says Fei. “The undies or the woman?” “Both.”
Like little children again, we point her out to Pa and Ma, but they act all blasé. We are told of a newcomer to the neighbourhood who goes for morning walks in her qipao. “Fresh off the boat, trying not to lose face,” says Ma, who travelled here on the same boat some 50 years ago. (She is not the same, she maintains. Her parents had made her here before her mother took the boat to, and gave birth in, China.)
We have fallen behind, not that we want to be ahead – it is our birthright to look as laidback as we want in the heartland – but where has Bak gone? For one thing, he has gone bottle-blond (Fei says it makes him look like a Johor video pirate). For another thing, he has gone temping for LV, manhandling in its store and warehouses all the bags we will not buy. Bak, LV runner, our pride and joy.
3 comments:
this is hilarious. especially the johor video pirate bit.
actually sg women dress really sloppily. it's the sweltering heat lah. everyone just flops around in as little as possible. they take much more care - and wear far more, even on a hot summer's day - in hk, tp, bj, sh and of course tokyo.
it is the heat, yes. but also some sort of comfort-zone thing, maybe? people who are from a dressier culture, they dress down at home too? but our idea of dress-down-at-home goes to the ends of the neighbourhood.
yes and for some ppl it extends to orchard road too.
interesting point, that our idea of home includes the whole island. that neighbourhood and town/city/state are all conflated. the semiotics of dressing down is indeed multi-layered :) it isn't just the heat then. my twnese friend thinks it's cos Sg women are more kaifang and westernised. you've added another perspective.
You really should be writing the CV column. A gross editorial oversight.
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