At Aquafina Vietnam International Fashion Week, Frederick Lee once again showed what a couturier he says he is
Frederick Lee has done our island nation proud, again. He is Singapore's most prolific "couture" designer, with the most runway presentations not shown on home turf under his belt. He was at it again. Yesterday, for Aquafina Vietnam International Fashion Week (AVIFW) in Ho Chi Minh City, he showed another collection of indeterminate season that, despite the many years of participation, has yet to find a retail outlet for his gowns there. Mr Lee is well loved in Vietnam's most populous city, and has been the sole Singaporean designer to show with such remarkable consistency. Apart from Ho Chi Minh City, Mr Lee shows in Harbin as well, at the Harbin Fashion Week (哈尔滨时装周), but it is in the former Sài Gòn that he seems to be in his elements, showing increasingly staggering creations year after year to rapturous response. How remunerative this participation is has not been made known, but it does confirm that, whether a market for outlandish clothes exists, there are designers from our island with dependable theatrical flair.
AVIFW is a veritable showcase for designers of special occasion dressing. They supply—as seen on the runway—a market that could be mistaken to be dominated by beauty contestants in search of a winning gown. And Mr Lee fits right in. His costume-as-couture has found the right, impressively-scaled stage to flaunt its over-the-top compositions. For this collection, offered entirely in black and white, Mr Lee continued to make a spectacle of his love for decorative parts attached to, say, a bodice (usually it is) to form a fantasy of a frock. This time, the rosette in various sizes were employed on dresses, like a craft project in art school. Even the guys get their shield of a top with an oversized bloom. Mr Lee is partial to the overwrought, the excessively ornamental. As one industry veteran said to us, "It's like he is doing a window display." How apt for the body is the pillar on which anything decked to it must be large enough to incur maximum attention. Tempting it is to ask Mr Lee: it is not really about fashion, is it?
On 6 June, eight days before the AVIFW show, Mr Lee shared on Facebook: "I have nothing to declare except my vision", paraphrasing "I have nothing to declare but my genius", the popular quip attributed to Oscar Wilde. What was Mr Lee's vision? He did not say. But it is possible to see that he desired to top the over-the-top: From Miss Universe gowns to those commissioned for the Icon Ball, his idea of couture narrowly conflates applying by hand (stitching is not always evident) and the ornamentation he is passionate about. His basic, close-fitting silhouettes do not change much. It is based on what is fitted over a tailor dummy, but whatever is piled on top allow fantastical shapes to form up. On stage, this exaggeration can arouse the admiration craved. Mr Lee loves to show himself at work via his socials. He is always pinning, tucking, sticking, and swirling fabric around the dress form. We have never seen him at a drafting table, hunched over, making minute adjustments to a paper pattern. His work is largely what he can apply on the surface conspicuously so as to "go beast mode" because, as he confessed, "ordinary, monotonous is not for me."
Admittedly, there is minute refinement to his work now, compared to those of his early couture showing, such as at Fide Fashion Weeks in 2013. Back then, he was inspired by Alexander McQueen, reflecting the latter's love for plumage and effecting the man's high theatricality. Mr Lee has since moved on. Now, it seems he has found some aesthetic kinship with Valentino under former creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli's watch. The rosettes, in particular. One, a full-face frame of five blooms recalled a similar seen in Valentino's fall couture 2023 collection; it also brought to mind Rihanna's hooded Valentino top that she wore for the Met Gala of the same year. If not those massive inflorescence, there are the layered crinkled and edged-in-black pieces that mimicked wine glass fungus, and is reminiscent of the diaphanous work of Iris van Herpen. Confluence of like-minded visions?
In his pursuit of the seriously dramatic (including a mini-crini that could, when dislodged from the head, where it hanged from, be worn like a baby-doll dress!), Mr Lee frequently forsook practicality to the extent that at least two models tripped over their too-long skirts. But the performative and the practical can never be friends, and Frederick Lee has been happy to keep them apart. Or, as mortal enemies. For some, fashion is not fashion if there is no fantasy to fill to the rafters. Or, the extravagance that allow the creator to "dream". Whether vain fancy or social signalling, it is really hard to say. Perhaps both, in equal measure.
Photos: Aquafina Vietnam International Fashion Week
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