The sensational catwalk theatre of the Singapore Fashion Festival (SFF) 2008 at the Tent@Orchard promised a fabulous display of beauty on its 60-feet-long, elevated and glistening white runway, whose narrowness left this UrbanWire editor wondering if he would be treated instead to an entertaining spectacle of tumbling models?

The parade of absolutely entrancing apparel, draped on very beautiful people, put UrbanWire in a delightful reverie. Fascinating choreography only served to heighten his senses, sensitising his eyes to tiny details on the Ashley Isham dress and the texture of CK shorts against the background of runway music.

But beauty and diversity should characterise every runway show; in almost every other aspect besides the clothes, Singapore Fashion Festival 2008 sorely disappoint.

This UrbanWire writer firmly believes that, where fashion is concerned, form always precedes function. It’s about the preservation of the perfect appearance, with flaws concealed beneath a façade.

Some flaws, admittedly, were very well hidden. For example, in the middle of the Ashley Isham show, all the intercoms stopped working right after the snow machine started, and the models lost their cue to start on time. Daniel Boey, creative director of SFF 2008 told The Straits Times, “By the time the snow had fluttered to the ground, I switched on my mobile phone, giving my cue to the crew backstage and the first model appeared.” As a result of his timely and wise intervention, the error was hardly noticed and quickly forgotten.

On the hand, not enough attention was paid to the absolute pandemonium the Singapore Fashion Festival 2008 tried to pass off as an ushering system. Ushers looked confused most of the time, while attendees, taking an arbitrary blind jab, tried desperately to look for their seats.

The veneer of perfection cracked even further as the fashion festival progressed, and finally shattered dramatically into shards of disillusionment. There’s no excuse for models, called thus as they epitomise beauty and grace, to sport horrible complexions, unglamorous plasters on their feet and frightful cellulite, all of which only proved to be a ghastly distraction from the masterpieces they’re wearing. Their poor posture and sloppy runway strut destroyed the spirit of the clothes they were purportedly modelling, reducing them to brilliant pieces of limp dead cloth, devoid of colour and personality.

The fault didn’t merely lie with the fashion festival. One just doesn’t turn up for a cocktail party or a dinner at a posh restaurant dressed for a casual Sunday stroll; it’s just downright rude. A cursory glance, however, betrayed a particular group among the audience who simply didn’t bother or didn’t know how to accord a fashion show with the respect it deserves.

On the other hand, you have people who try too hard to please. One understands that the closing show exhibits work by Calvin Klein’s Creative Director Kevin Carrigan. This doesn’t mean one should attend the show dressed in a faded white CK tee-shirt, proudly grasping a CK carrier bag that he had, one could almost imagine, probably taken from a CK boutique minutes before the show started.

Additionally, UrbanWire doesn’t understand the look of indifference most Singaporeans, especially those who evidently don’t understand what they’re seeing, assume even when they see something that should obviously have awed them. It didn’t help when an editor of another publication decided that it was a good time to vocalise his displeasure loudly, worsening the experience for everyone around him.

Despite all these shortcomings, this wasn’t an event one would regret going to, only because the charming works of very talented fashion designers redeemed the mistakes of the Singapore Fashion Festival 2008.

On this note, UrbanWire urges you to take a read at other SFF review articles, which will give you a glimpse of the fashion world in Singapore. Perhaps, you will prove to be a better judge.