It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen

Singapore Fashion Week! At last, an opportunity for Singapore to break out from being the little island-nation-state that could. To draw breathless reviews that for once didn't include words like "Orwellian", "squeaky-clean" or "soulless, like the tunes of Sharon Stone jamming in a recording studio". Well did the rest of the world sit up and take notice? Probably not and here's why.

There's an unwritten rule that when a city puts on a fashion week, it should last for no longer than the time it takes to experience all the major attractions of that city. How Singapore managed to stretch its fashion festival out to 10 days is beyond me. There are only so many merlion statues to visit about town and once you've got your mind around how drunk a mermaid and a lion had to get before they created that, the itinerary starts looking pretty thin.

However that's not to say that the clothes on parade were not worthy. Indeed there was a whole lotta fashion involved, just not a lot of Singapore. Jean-Paul Gaultier, Escada, Calvin Klein, Salvatore Ferragamo, Missoni, Diane von Furstenberg - I dare say this stuff looked awfully familiar as if it had already been covered by...oh, I don't know, PARIS fashion week, or say MILAN fashion week or even NEW YORK fashion week? And what about Top freaking Shop? That is padding if I ever saw it.

Not only that, but the runway choreographer seemed to have taken copious notes from Britney Spears' performance at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. That snake doesn't even look home-grown to me.



The highlight of the festival was Triumph's Decadence and Desire show but take a look at that, I bet that ass was flown in from abroad.


Likewise the wackiness had to be imported, with this pocketful of style from Thailand (above) and pantsless convict gear from Indonesia (below).



A shame really, because the local designers could have stepped up to the plate and impressed everyone with how bizarre they really could be, thus putting the Singapore in Singapore Fashion Week. Oh well, there's always next year's event, and all that official nicey nice subtle repression has to eventually come out one way or another.