TJIN LEE , MANAGING DIRECTOR,  MERCURY MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

TJIN Lee, 36, remembers sitting with three of her friends at Newton Hawker Centre six years ago, telling them she wanted to put Singapore on the world fashion map.

'We have Formula One and the Singapore Air Show for the boys. We need something for the girls, and a world-class fashion festival is it,' says the festival director of the Audi Fashion Festival.

'It's the nature of our set-up. We have a great airport, fantastic infrastructure, a prime location, Orchard Road, the integrated resorts, Formula One.

'We are also fun and young and vibrant. I've seen the potential from Day One.'

Lee, the managing director of Mercury Marketing Communications, a boutique events management and public relations company, had a clear vision of the event she wanted to create.

It would be both consumer- and trade-driven, one that will attract Singapore's biggest fashion names, including designers, buyers and members of the media.

Singapore, she says, may not be a big city or a big couture market, but it can certainly be a gateway for fashion bigwigs to tap into the region.

'Everything is related. When there is trade, there will be Mice (meetings, incentive travel, conventions and exhibitions) opportunities. Money will be spent here,' adds Lee, who worked as a marketing executive for leading fashion group Club 21 for six years before setting up Mercury.

'There will be opportunities to promote local designers; there will be opportunities for them to learn from their international counterparts.'

A good fashion festival will also add vibrancy to Singapore, and enhance its reputation as a lively, cosmopolitan city.

'Imagine beautiful models flooding the streets, fashion tents along Orchard Road, glamorously dressed people going to fashion shows.

'It is a great branding exercise. People love the red carpets, the celebrities, the designers, the models. It's like the Cannes Film Festival. Not everyone will get to see the movies but they love to see the pictures of the parties, the champagne.'

Lee, one of four daughters of a doctor and a former remisier, is certainly not all talk and no action.

For the past seven years, she has been working tirelessly to make over the little red dot into the region's fashion nation.

An English Literature graduate from the University of West Ontario, she organised the Singapore Fashion Festival in 2004 and 2008.

When the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) put the event - which it had supported since 2001 - on hold last year, Lee staged her own private fashion extravaganza.

Detractors said she was crazy to think of such an idea in the midst of a recession, but she knocked on doors to cajole backers. Her conviction won over sponsors, including Audi, Samsung and MasterCard. The result was Singapore's first privately funded fashion extravaganza, The Audi Fashion Festival (AFF) in April, which was lauded as a resounding success.

The AFF is back again this year, with a budget of $2 million, twice that of last year. It will come under the umbrella of the Asia Fashion Exchange (AFX), a new initiative by the STB, IE Singapore and Spring Singapore to develop Singapore's long-term sustainability as a fashion hub.

The AFX comprises three other events: Blueprint, a trade show featuring Asian designers, the Asia Fashion Summit networking event and the Star Creation design competition.

Lee and her team at Mercury are back too, overseeing the AFF and Blueprint, which she conceived in 2004 to support local designers.

She is chuffed that it has morphed into a trade show promoting not just Singapore but regional fashion talent.

'Milan did not happen in a day and we will need time to become a world-class fashion city,' says the fashionista, who is married to an oil trader. 'But I know that one day, we will be there, along with Paris, London and New York.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.