Velda Tan

As folks say, the third time is the charm and working with Velda Tan for the third time only confirms what we already knew: grace, like great style, is effortless when it is real. The first time she stole our hearts was in 2023, at a watch shoot in her new home; she was all poise and quiet power, wrapped in white fabrics and a kind of calm only the truly stylish carry. Her inclusion into the Asia’s Most Stylish fold is not just personal—it is professional: Tan is the business of fashion.

Twenty years ago, she co‑founded her first fashion label Bonito Chico (later rebranded in 2010 as Love, Bonito), paving the way for a generation of Southeast Asian women to dress with confidence and clarity. She followed that with Our Second Nature, a poetic study in quiet style, and more recently, Atlas Kind, a love letter to sustainability. Style, she says, is the language of her professional life—and when she speaks, people listen. Her signatures include a crisp white shirt, understated, elegant and effortless all at once, and a Balenciaga Le City bag she bought to mark a career milestone—her way of saying she had arrived. Tan’s style has grown quieter over time, more intentional—never performative, always present. She once wore micro miniskirts, a trend currently making its comeback, but now favours pieces that hold space for all her roles: entrepreneur, mother, woman. One day, she hopes her children will inherit a simple shirt, threadbare with memory—a quiet emblem of resilience, ease and grace.