IT’S time for Asian faces to shine in the world of fashion.

Speaking on Wednesday at a press conference in The St. Regis Singapore,
Dan Caten of high-end Canadian fashion label DSquared2 said: “I think it’s the  moment where fashion is taking that turn and I think it’s a joy to celebrate beauty in all shapes and forms.” Indeed, Asian faces are becoming more prominent in major advertising campaigns and on the catwalk.

America’s Estee Lauder announced earlier this month that it has signed on 22-year-old Chinese model Liu Wen as the company’s first Asian face.

And 27-year-old Japanese model Ai Tominaga (once the face of Moschino) walked the Givenchy Fall 2010 runway show at Paris Fashion Week last month. Giorgio Armani, too, tapped on Asian beauty by naming 27-year-old Chinese supermodel Du Juan as the face of his campaigns in 2008.

No stranger to the international scene is 25-year-old Singapore top model Sheila Sim, now based in Tokyo.

She is home for 10 days to participate in fashion trade show Blueprint and the five-day Audi Fashion Festival which kicked off on Wednesday and ends on Sunday.

The festival, in its second year, features collections from DSquared2, Italian
fashion designer Roberto Cavalli, Warehouse, alldressedup and House of Holland.

Sim’s last show is today, for high-end American fashion label Marchesa. Talent-spotted when she was just 16, Sim, who studied at CHIJ St Theresa’s Convent and the Marketing Institute of Singapore, moved to Hong Kong to
pursue a modelling career in 2002 at the age of 17.

At the time she left Singapore, models with Caucasian looks were more sought after. “Back then, Pan-Asians were more ‘accepted’ in the Singapore modelling scene,” she said. “It was hard to get good jobs then, so I moved.”

How things have changed. “I left Singapore with the mentality that ‘the fashion industry in Singapore does not use Asians’, but when I came home, I was working every day,” said Sim, who moved back to Singapore in 2006 before jetting off to Tokyo last year.

She has appeared in campaigns for international brands like Shiseido, Levi’s, Canon and Estee Lauder.

Sim appeared in Poh Heng Jewellery’s ad campaigns in 2008. In the same year,
she walked 10 out of the 24 shows at the Singapore Fashion Festival and was chosen as the face of London-based Singapore designer Ashley Isham’s global autumn/winter ad campaign.

“I came back at the right time,” said Sim, who moved to Tokyo six months ago
and lives in the Ebisu district with her boyfriend.

Still, Asian models do face challenges.

“Caucasians take good shots because their features stand out, as compared to Asians,” she said, adding that Asian models must work hard to recognise how – as Tyra Banks might put it – to give a “good face”. That means knowing precisely the right angles for the camera.

Mr Watson Tan, director of local modelling agency Upfront Models & Production,
noted that for Singaporean models in particular, modelling just isn’t a career option.

Many Singaporean models take modelling “as a stepping stone to do television or just for the glamour”, he said.

Another problem with home-grown models is that many girls here are just too short.

“Out of the 60 to 70 local models that Looque represents, fewer than 10 per
cent meet the height requirement,” said Mr Chris Swee, general manager of Looque Models Singapore.

The minimum height requirement for a catwalk model is 1.75m.Lucky for Sim, then, for she stands proudly at 1.76m. For now, Sim is just happy she’s had the opportunity to return to Singapore for a short span of time.

“I was in Japan when I got the casting call and I was happy to know I was coming
home,” she said with a grin.

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