In the pecking order of music and celebrities, the Koreans come first, followed by Singaporeans, and in third place, the Japanese.

That seemed to be the case at least at the Asia Style Collection 2013 fashion show cum concert at Singapore Expo last Saturday.

The biggest and rowdiest cheers from the 6,000 mostly teenage and young adult audience were reserved for the brief performances from K-pop girl groups Girls' Generation and 2NE1.

They also cheered, albeit not as loudly, when MediaCorp personalities and actors such as Zoe Tay and Jeanette Aw walked down the runway togged in clothes by local fashion houses including Depression, Mash-Up and Ong Shunmugam.

The responses were a lot more tepid when J-pop songbirds AI, Thelma Aoyama and Mai Kuraki took the stage though.

Still, kudos to Japanese-American rapper/singer AI, who put on a gutsy set and won over the crowd with her lively presence and silver foil-like outfit, and red-headed hip-hop/pop singer Thelma Aoyama, who got them to sing along to one of her hit tunes, Let's Party.

When Girls' Generation came on to close the show with a 20-minute set just before midnight, the whole hall suddenly came alive as the fans defied ushers' orders to stay seated and started screaming and waving placards and banners dedicated to the pop octet.

Ninth member Sooyoung was not part of the show because of filming commitments back in South Korea.

It was clear that many of the fans had sat patiently through four hours of models catwalking and other entertainers while waiting for their idols.

The fan fervour was matched only by an earlier set by 2NE1, sporting a street/ rocker-like get-up of black T-shirts and Chuck Taylor sneakers.

They came on to fireworks and a brief audio problem - the speakers blasted out shrill feedback which drowned out their voices - but the quartet bounced back quickly to stage a set of tightly choreographed dance moves and chant-worthy signature tunes such as I Am The Best and I Love You.

There were other Asian pop acts too.

Malaysian singer Issac Dang belted out a couple of tunes while models paraded the works of local fashion designers.

Six members from Japanese pop group AKB48 opened the show at 7.30pm, dressed in pseudo-schoolgirl outfits with helium-high voices driving catchy pop ditties. They were later joined by similarly dressed six members from their Chinese counterpart, SNH48, resulting in a brief Sino-Japanese bubblegum pop meltdown.

Indie-folk band The Sam Willows kicked off the Singapore segment of the show as models paraded outfits by home-grown designer Reckless Ericka and playing a rollicking version of their single Glasshouse. For a local showcase, they should have replaced their cover of Of Monsters And Men's Little Talks with an original tune though.

Tay is still the reigning queen of local celebs, judging from the boisterous cheers and applause that greeted her while she strode the catwalk dressed in Singapore designer Zenchi, but even the response paled in comparison to the reception given to the K-pop girl groups.

And while Girls' Generation's performance was short, they gave the audience what they wanted to hear - the group announced that they will be back in Singapore to play a full concert soon.

If that brief appearance elicited such fervour from fans, one can only wonder at the mania when the group come down for their own big show.

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