Cover Tina Tan Leo reflects on her career in this interview with Tatler Singapore
Tina Tan Leo reflects on her career in this interview with Tatler Singapore
1 / 1
For more than 40 years, Tina Tan Leo has helped Singaporeans and those in the region live and look more glamorous. We pay homage to the ultimate style queen as she celebrates the 10th anniversary of her luxury concierge service, Privato
It is almost impossible to talk about style in Singapore without her name coming up. For more than four decades, the always impeccably dressed Tina Tan Leo has helped Singaporeans, and those in the region, to dress better and live more elegantly. Hers is a story of luck and privilege, but also one built on a foundation of trust, tenacity and good taste. Looking back on her career—which is far from over—you cannot help but marvel at all the firsts she has accomplished and all the doors she opened for international brands that are now global household names.
Over the past four decades, Tan Leo has helped more than 70 brands enter Singapore and Southeast Asia. These include Versace, Vera Wang, Roberto Cavalli, Hervé Léger, Christian Louboutin, Jimmy Choo, Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Lacroix and Givenchy. And while today, almost all of these brands operate their own boutiques, in the 1980s and for a large portion of the ’90s, these houses depended on retailers like Tan Leo to represent them in the region.
Tan Leo was for so many, for so long, an arbiter of taste, someone who could spot trends far before anyone else. One of her oldest friendly rivals in the fashion and luxury world, Douglas Benjamin, CEO of FJ Benjamin, puts it aptly when he says: “Tina was the purveyor of glamour and style, epitomising those two qualities herself completely. She brought things to us even before we knew we wanted them, in her own undefinable, unique way.”
What is even more remarkable is that she started influencing her patrons—telling people about the brands they needed to know and wear—at what seems an almost impossibly young age. Tan Leo was just 19 when she helped Gianni Versace open his first boutique outside of Italy. She met and befriended the late designer and his brother Santo through “fashion friends” in Milan. She had moved there to gain work experience in the fashion industry after attending art school in Florence, where she earned a degree in graphic design.
“Because I was such good friends with Gianni and his brother Santo, they said to me, ‘Hey, why don’t you do something for us in Asia? We don’t know Asia—why don’t we do something?’” Tan Leo tells Tatler. “And I said, ‘Are you sure you mean me?’ I mean, normally, people who open stores were much, much older than me. I didn’t know anything about stores. I also didn’t have any financial backing; I had just graduated and started working in Europe.”
The brothers, though, could somehow tell that the tenacious teen was the right person for them and convinced her to take on the challenge. Tan Leo adds: “They told me, ‘We know you and we trust you.’” Armed with this trust, she turned to her parents for support, morally and financially, generously receiving both from them. It helped, of course, that Tan Leo comes from a well‐known and well‐off family, which helped her to not just fund the business, but to also lure in the right crowd and make the boutique a success. Her grandfather was Tan Lark Sye, a prominent businessman and philanthropist, perhaps best remembered for having founded Nanyang University, which merged with the University of Singapore in 1980 to form the National University of Singapore. On her maternal side, she is the niece of the late Ong Teng Cheong, who was president of Singapore from 1993 to 1999.
Tan Leo shares that growing up, her grandfather would get the whole family together every weekend. These weekly gatherings remain one of the best parts of her childhood. “Every week, we’d get to see all of our cousins. I have over 50 and it was so nice to see them all religiously each week.”
Above Tina Tan Leo graces the cover of the September issue of Tatler Singapore with her husband, Lionel Leo, and sons, Brandon and Julien
Tina Tan Leo graces the cover of the September issue of Tatler Singapore with her husband, Lionel Leo, and sons, Brandon and Julien
1 / 1
One friendship that had a major impact on her life was formed when she was just 13, when Tan Leo’s family moved into the Binjai Park neighbourhood, next door to entertainer and Cultural Medallion winner Dick Lee’s family. “The Tans were our new neighbours in 1973. The young family—father, mother, and a boy and girl—were as glamorous as their low‐slung bungalow,” Lee shares. “Tina was the elder of two children, and immediately connected with my younger sister, Pat.”
As Tan Leo was his sister’s friend first, Lee, who was 17 at the time, did not take much notice of her. “But soon, I started to see how mature she was and she slowly eased herself into my social group of older teens. It was the ’70s and kids like us were going to discos by the time we were 14,” Lee says. “Tina, though younger, started coming out with us. She took after her stylish mother Lillian, and had access to fabulous outfits and suddenly became this gorgeous young lady.”
While Tan Leo grew up with an interest in fashion and design inherited from her mother, a recognised trendsetter herself, it was Lee who nudged the young teen to start modelling. “In 1974, I started designing clothes for my mother’s boutique Midteen and just for fun, Tina modelled for me,” he explains. “Then, while waiting to do my National Service, I stumbled into the world of fashion shows and before long, I joined Carrie Models as its choreographer, trainer and scout. Introducing Tina to the agency was a no‐brainer and she immediately became one of the most photographed models in town. And she was still only 14! I remember her rushing to a show rehearsal in her Methodist Girls’ School uniform only to transform into a swan a few hours later.”
At 14, with barely any experience, Tan Leo was landing coveted gigs. One of her first photo shoots was for the cover of Her World or Female magazine—she forgets which. The opportunity, like so many in her life, came through a friend: she credits Cynthia Wee‐Hoefer, the mother of former MTV VJ, model, host and influencer Hanli Hoefer, who is a friend of both hers and Lee’s. “Cynthia spotted me,” Tan Leo says, “and she told me to try it. She said it’d be fun.”
Above Tan Leo and entertainer Dick Lee formed a tight friendship as teenagers (Photo: Dick Lee)
Tan Leo and entertainer Dick Lee formed a tight friendship as teenagers (Photo: Dick Lee)
1 / 1
Indeed it was; as Tan Leo shares more about her modelling career, she makes it seem like it was the perfect pastime for a precocious teen in love with fashion and style. But she also makes it clear that it was never anything more than a hobby: she was always much more interested in the businesses behind the looks. “I was always very entrepreneurial,” she says.
In the mid‑ to late 1970s, there were already several multi‑brand boutiques in Singapore, “stores that inspired me”, she shares. “Some of these stores were bringing in some really big‑name designers, beautiful brands like Kenzo. So I went around knocking on doors, trying to learn more. Man and his Woman gave me a job as a visual merchandiser, you know, looking after the window display,” Tan Leo says, referring to the boutique opened by veteran fashion journalist Judith Chung, then considered by many as the go‑to store for high‑end designers. Among the designers Chung carried were Kenzo, Geoffrey Beene, Thierry Mugler and Issey Miyake. “Through that [ job], I discovered another side to my own creativity. I believe I have a good eye for putting things together and an innate sense of style. And in many ways, that was a really nice part of my introduction to the fashion world.”
Tan Leo drew upon her experiences there when she opened Versace’s first international outpost in Singapore in 1979. That year was notable for the country’s fashion history: in addition to the Versace boutique, other luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Christian Dior also opened their first boutiques here, all of them through local franchisees and partners.
Compared to these other brands, Versace was ostentatious and over the top. This meant that the 19‑year‑old and her mother, who was helping her reach out to her social circle from behind the scenes, had their work cut out for them. “The older generation thought I was crazy. I kept being told that nobody would buy this kind of fashion—which was totally wrong,” says Tan Leo. “All the arty‑farty, artistic, creative people were overjoyed. At that time, Hong Kong was not as advanced as us; there were no brands like Versace there. Malaysia also had nothing, they were just developing. Indonesia also didn’t have any fabulous creative designers like Versace. So we got everybody’s attention and every creative person [from the region] flew into Singapore when we opened the store to shop the brand.”
Three years later, Tan Leo expanded her fledgling empire. With help from her parents, she bought over The Link boutique from respected entrepreneur Farah Khan and set about rebranding it. “I knew Kheng Lin (Khan, who was then known as Chan Kheng Lin), who founded The Link. She was not much older than me,” says Tan Leo. “She had already established the business and the store carried all of these chic older brands. Unfortunately, she and her husband split up, and they asked my family if we’d like to take over the business. At first, I wasn’t sure; what they carried was very classic. But then I thought about it and decided I could change it. I could make it hip; I could make it different with my ideas and my taste.”
Above Tan Leo with
her husband, Lionel
Tan Leo with her husband, Lionel
1 / 1
Reflecting on her decision, Tan Leo says: “Looking back, I’m not sure whether it would have been easier if we had started from scratch; what I wanted to do was so different. But the positive point was that there was already an audience. So the challenge was to rebuild the brand without losing the old, but also bring in a completely new audience at the same time.” It is not an understatement to say that Tan Leo certainly succeeded in finding, building and swaying multiple audiences to appreciate her vision and taste. The Link—and its multiple offshoots, The Link Home, The Link Wedding and The Link Men—defined fashion and style in Singapore for much of the 1980s and ’90s.
One of Tan Leo’s friends and patrons is Andrew Ooi, a celebrity talent agent who represents top Asian performers such as Chin Han, Celina Jade, Ludi Lin and Yeo Yann Yann. “Back in the ’80s, through The Link, Tina introduced classic and avant‑garde European and American designer fashion to a then‑developing Singapore, which helped Singaporeans learn more about fashion, and the importance of clothing cut from quality fabric as well as tailoring,” Ooi says. “My own first suit at 17 was from The Link; it was a classic Gianni Versace double‑breasted jacket [circa 1985/’86], which I wore to my junior college prom and I still have in my closet!”
For the next 20 years, Tan Leo introduced new and exciting brands to our shores, paving the way for their success in Southeast Asia. But as their clientele in the region grew and the businesses thrived, the inevitable move by these houses was to take over these international stores themselves. By the early noughties, it was clear that Singaporean luxury franchisees were in for a rough ride.
Tan Leo remains remarkably calm as she speaks about what must have been a challenging period. “Obviously, the big brands were smart. They got franchisees like me, the Benjamins and other people to open stores, which we needed to because we needed to build a market, we needed to build a clientele ... we needed them as much as they needed us. So in that sense, we’re grateful to them; they gave us an opportunity. But I knew that one day, they would take them back.
“My husband saw this and he said, ‘I think it’s time we have our own brand.’ We had to create something different. So we created our own brand, Alldressedup.” Tan Leo explains that she had two goals for this local label from day one. Firstly, it would be positioned as a masstige brand; she wanted to create something that was prestigious but also affordable. Secondly, she was determined to create something Asian and to successfully market it to the West.
Alldressedup launched in 2005 and featured the designs of the then‑relatively unknown Sven Tan and Kane Tan, who would go on to found In Good Company seven years later. Thanks in part to Tan Leo’s network and tenacity, it was an immediate success. The clothes were quickly stocked at premium retailers and big‑name department stores including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Harvey Nichols and Lane Crawford, and also carried on global fashion e‑tailer Net‑a‑Porter.
To help market the brand, Tan Leo did what every major label still does today: get the clothes on the backs of celebrities. Some of the global names who wore Alldressedup back in the mid‑ to late noughties included Paula Abdul, Fergie, Michelle Yeoh, Lucy Liu, Dannii Minogue, Cheryl Cole, Zhang Ziyi and Kelly Lin.
Alldressedup had a great run for several years, but the party came to a pause in the early 2010s. Tan Leo and her husband Lionel wound down The Link in 2010, stating it was no longer profitable. In 2012, because of the way the business had been shuttered, a former landlord sued Tan Leo over an alleged breach of fiduciary duties; the case was finally closed in 2016. That same year, Sven Tan and Kane Tan decided to leave Alldressedup to start their own label. By the following year, Tan Leo announced that Alldressedup would be going on hiatus while undergoing a “ brand realignment”. Now, 10 years later, the brand is yet to be relaunched.
1 / 1
While 2013 was a difficult year for Tan Leo, it did have its high points. One of them came in January that year from the Italian government, which conferred her with the Order of the Star of Italy, an honour akin to a knighthood, for her long‑standing commitment to showcasing the very best of Italian fashion and lifestyle brands in Singapore. The same year, as she put Alldessedup in mothballs, she launched luxury concierge service Privato.
The business started serendipitously, to fill the needs of both luxury brands and consumers that Tan Leo was perfectly suited to address. “We saw the need for a concierge shopping service. The customers are the ones that I’ve been looking after for years. So many of them were telling me, ‘You can’t stop. If you do, where are we going to go? Who’s going to teach us, who’s going to style us, who’s going to give us tips?’” she says. “So that’s how it started, because all of our regular clients still wanted my help. You know, ‘I want something for my home; I want something for my daughter’s wedding; I want something for my engagement.’ And as the requests became more and more bespoke, I realised, you can’t do this through a store. This is a shopping service, which, to me, is brilliant.”
Privato plays two roles and, as Tan Leo explains, services two very different groups of clients. “So, we have classic customers who don’t go out to events and they like to shop very privately,” she says. “And then we have customers who love to go out to be seen; they like to be photographed.” She estimates the business is split 50‑50 between managing private concierge‑like requests—and not all of them are limited to purely shopping—and organising trunk shows, pop‑ups, and small but ultra‑luxe events on behalf of the many brands that still enjoy working through her, because of both her creative ideas and the customers she can attract. These partners include Buccellati, Judith Leiber, Frette and Versace.
Ten years into running Privato, Tan Leo seems to be in a good place. The business is thriving, despite three slow years due to the pandemic. She is also healthy, with an energy that she says her three sons—twins Brandon and Julien, and youngest Sean—are often envious of. So much so you would never guess that she was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. Fortunately, it was caught early. As Tan Leo tells Tatler, “I was lucky. I had an operation and went for [six weeks of ] chemo ... You know, I lost my hair. But it was fine—I’d just put on a wig.” Today, her cancer is in remission.
1 / 1
In addition to running Privato, Tan Leo is a consultant to the Singapore Fashion Council (SFC ). While she had quietly assisted SFC—formerly known as the Textile and Fashion Federation (Singapore), or TaFF—for decades, she started helping them formally in 2020; at first to help rethink and redesign SFC’s retail and incubation space Design Orchard, and now as an adviser and advocate, nudging worthy local brands to take advantage of the resources SFC can provide. Having championed European brands for more than 40 years, and her own local start‑up, Tan Leo sees part of her life’s mission as helping more Asian brands, as she puts it, “to rise”. “I’d like to help create and encourage talents that can go West, or even to think more regionally. Southeast Asia alone has [almost] 700 million people. That’s a significant audience if you can tap into it.”
This mission, she says, extends beyond fashion and across the creative industries, and is one of the reasons why she is so passionate about the work and pursuits of her producer‑musician twin sons Brandon and Julien. One thing she has tried to encourage them to consider is to keep Singapore as their base, while finding the right paths to make their names overseas—as she did with Alldressedup.
Read more: Tatler scions in New York City: Mae Tan and twins Brandon and Julien Leo
1 / 1
Just as her own parents encouraged her passions, both Tan Leo and her husband are completely supportive of their tall, talented, artistic sons. Watching the twins interact—with each other, their parents and the Tatler Singapore crew—for the Asia’s Most Stylish photo shoot, it appears that the young men take after their parents in all the right ways. This is something Tan Leo says has always been the most important value she has tried to teach them. “We want to ensure that they see the goodness in people—and treat everyone with respect. It’s important to be respectful.”
It is no surprise that respect ranks high in Tan Leo’s world view. Time and again during this conversation with Tatler, she makes it clear that her life and career has been built on relationships and, most importantly, on trust. “Trust and respect are gained through your actions, your service, your experience and your relationships,” she says. “It’s not like you can just do one thing and get someone to trust you. It takes time to properly build a relationship. It’s not about money. It’s not about business only. It’s about helping people. And that’s the foundation of what I do and stand for.”
Credits
Photography: Lionel Leo
Topics
About
Aun started his career in media, working at illustrious publications in NYC, Paris, and Hong Kong before launching his own Asia-regional lifestyle magazine, East, that was called "Asia's hippest magazine" by Asiaweek and "an Asian Vanity Fair" by Fortune. Committed to community service, Aun has helmed the visual arts and literary arts divisions for the National Arts Council in Singapore; led the marketing, communications, and corporate community investments teams at the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre; was the founding Chair of the Pangdemonium Theatre Company; and currently sits on the Board of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. In 2006, Aun co-founded The Ate Group, a content strategy and communications agency specialising in F&B, hospitality, luxury and lifestyle. Aun has run the content and communications teams at Tripadvisor; similarly run content and communications at a sustainability focused tech start up; and run marketing and communications at a global BPO with over 17,000 employees worldwide. Aun has also been a consultant for Mediacorp and has produced and hosted two food & travel television series for them. In 2015 he began working on the creation of a private members club, Straits Clan, which he launched in 2019 and sold the following year. Returning to his roots, Aun joined Tatler Asia in 2023 as editor-in-chief in Singapore and is committed to telling great stories of change makers through Tatler’s online and offline platforms.
Work
As Editor-in-Chief of Tatler Singapore, Aun leads all the content teams: branded content, print, digital, and the creative teams. He works closely with the heads of each team to ensure that Tatler continues to cover the most important, inspiring and exciting stories that are affecting Singapore and our region. He also works closely with the events and commercial teams and is always excited to collaborate on new ideas and projects that the Tatler team can activate.
Follow Aun on Instagram at @aun_koh (primarily a food account) and on Linkedin here.
