Cover Dressed in Onitsuka and Onitsuka Tiger, Fiona Fussi shares the lessons a life in front of the camera has taught her about character, boundaries and knowing when to be seen
Dressed in Onitsuka and Onitsuka Tiger, Fiona Fussi shares the lessons a life in front of the camera has taught her about character, boundaries and knowing when to be seen
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Model and actress Fiona Fussi considers the lessons that visibility has taught her about character, boundaries and the freedom to define herself
Fiona Fussi entered the fashion industry at 15, an age when most people are only beginning to work out who they might become. She did so in a profession built on appearances, where identity could shift from one shoot to the next and visibility was often treated as a measure of success. Long before authenticity, representation and personal branding became part of the industry’s everyday vocabulary, Fussi was already learning how to navigate visibility on her own terms—a sensibility that has quietly shaped her career ever since.
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In 2016, Chanel Beauty introduced the Singapore-born model as its first Asian face. Appearing in the house’s beauty tutorials, she brought an easy confidence to its polished glamour. The opportunity brought her to a wider audience, while revealing the cosmopolitan ease that had come to distinguish her work. The daughter of an Austrian father and a Hong Kong Chinese mother, Fussi is fluent in English, German, Cantonese and Mandarin. Yet the quality that held the camera was not simply her international background or physical polish. It was the impression of a person who understood that elegance could come from restraint as much as display.
Three years later, she expanded her work to acting with Last Madame, the English-language period drama that became Singapore’s highest-rated series in the category and won Best Asian Drama at the 2020 Asia Contents Awards, which is part of the Busan International Film Festival. As Chi Ling, Fussi displayed an emotional range that complicated the immaculate image familiar from her modelling career.
Above For Fiona Fussi, identity and worth have never been defined by appearances, but by the freedom to decide who she is beyond the image
For Fiona Fussi, identity and worth have never been defined by appearances, but by the freedom to decide who she is beyond the image
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Speaking to her today, the connection between these two worlds becomes clearer. Modelling and acting may each require performance, but the principle guiding Fussi through both has been intention. “I’ve always tried to approach both my work and personal brand with authenticity and intention,” she says. “I’ve come to value the balance between sharing parts of yourself and preserving parts of yourself.”
That understanding began forming early. After winning Elite Model Look Singapore in 2011, Fussi spent her teenage years balancing international assignments with her IGCSEs (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) and, later, the International Baccalaureate. There was school during the week, campaigns and shoots around it, and flights overseas on weekends. Sleep, she recalls with a laugh, was almost non-existent.
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The pace demanded discipline, but it also gave her an early education in the limits of appearances. Growing up in front of a camera made her acutely aware of how much an image could suggest—and how much it inevitably left out. “Image so rarely tells the full story,” says the United World College of South East Asia alumna. “It made me value substance, character and emotional depth more deeply.”
Above Having grown up in an industry built on appearances, Fiona Fussi has come to value substance, character and emotional depth over what an image alone can reveal
Having grown up in an industry built on appearances, Fiona Fussi has come to value substance, character and emotional depth over what an image alone can reveal
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That awareness continued to develop as her work took her from Singapore to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris and New York. Fashion offered her access to different cities and creative worlds, but it also exposed her to the competing expectations. “Women today are expected to hold so many contradictions at once,” she says. “Ambitious but not threatening, visible but not attention-seeking. To me, modern femininity is about having the freedom to choose what you want to do and how you want to define yourself.”
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Above From modelling to acting, Fiona Fussi has approached each chapter of her career with intention, allowing instinct rather than expectation to guide what comes next
From modelling to acting, Fiona Fussi has approached each chapter of her career with intention, allowing instinct rather than expectation to guide what comes next
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For Fussi, that freedom is inseparable from the ability to establish boundaries. If modelling taught her how to inhabit an image, it also taught her the importance of retaining authority over herself. “The modelling industry thrives off models having no boundaries,” she says candidly. Learning to speak up remains a “muscle” she continues to train. This sense of authorship also informs the way she dresses. Fussi has little patience for prescriptions such as “dress for your age”, or for the idea that elegance should be governed by a fixed set of rules. She no longer begins by asking whether something looks good. The more meaningful question is whether it feels right. “I feel most like myself when what I’m wearing feels effortless,” she says. “Comfortable, elegant with a hint of edge.”
The description suits her beyond style. In an age of constant disclosure, Fussi remains selective about what she reveals. After half her life in front of the camera, she has learnt that visibility is most powerful when it is a choice. Perhaps that is the luxury she values most: not answering every call, but knowing which ones deserve a response.
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Credits
Content Direction: Adriel Chiun
Photography: Darren Gabriel Leow
Fashion Direction: Adriel Chiun
Hair: Grego Oh using Revlon Professional
Make-Up: Dollei Seah using Chanel Beauty
Adriel Chiun is the Branded Content Editor of Tatler Singapore.
