Date: 1 August 2023
Organised by Singapore Fashion Council, the summit aims to provide insights into trends, developments and topics that the region is having in areas of innovation and technology, and sustainability of the fashion industry.
The summit will also discuss how this culturally rich region is leveraging its craft to balance the insatiable demand for fast fashion; and how all these are impacting jobs and careers in this thriving industry.
This one-day Summit will bring together local and international industry experts, thought leaders and practitioners, to examine the challenges and opportunities facing Asia’s growing fashion sector.
Participants will benefit from a unique learning experience, gaining the best expertise within an international context. The Summit will focus on the following topics across four panel sessions:
Panel 1:
Responsible Consumption in the Fashion Ecosystem
Panel 2:
Culture, People, Heritage, and Sustainability
Panel 3:
The Evolution of Technology for the Future of Fashion
Panel 4:
Talent Development for the Future Fashion Economy
The summit will be held at the Auditorium (Level 9 and 10) of Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, located at 1 Straits Blvd, Singapore 018906.
If arriving by taxi, please use the building name (‘Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre’) or address (‘1 Straits Blvd’).
If arriving by car, parking is available in the building, with access via Union St or Marina View.
If arriving by bus, the two closest bus stops are:
If arriving by MRT, the three closest stations are:
More details and directional videos can be found at https://singaporeccc.org.sg/visit
We serve as the catalyst driving the fashion industry’s continuous growth, with a focus on three key areas:
With a mission to empower and inspire all brands across the fashion ecosystem, SFC works closely with diverse partners to offer readily- accessible resources, meaningful networks, sustainability-focused innovations and future-forward insights — unlocking new opportunities for impact.
by Minister of State Low Yen Ling, Ministry of Trade and Industry & Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth
9.45AMConsumers desire to shop responsibly, yet consumption habits do not reflect the same sentiments. We can play a leading role in fostering a common understanding of fashion sustainability among consumers. This panel explores how every business can use its means to enable sustainable purchasing and consumption.
10.30AMCulture and heritage can often be regarded as too traditional, antiquated, or outmoded. However, innovative ways of engaging communities can help build a culture of sustainability, and ensure greater positive social responsibility and impact.
11.30AMFashion is an industry that has always been built on a foundation of creativity and artistic expression; and is now adding more science to the mix by embracing technology to an unprecedented degree. As such, the industry is now entering a new era of exponential transformation, where innovation and technology reshape the industry practices and human experience.
2.00PMThe fashion industry has significantly evolved over the last decade with emerging trends, such as changing of consumer preferences, and a heightened need for radical transparency. What are the new job functions that have evolved in this industry?
3.00PM*Please note that programme is subject to change.
Minister of State for Ministry of Trade & Industry, and Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth; Mayor, South West District; Member of Parliament, Chua Chu Kang GRC
Ms Low began her career in the private sector with experience in financial institutions and a start-up venture. Thereafter, she joined the Singapore Economic Development Board and in her decade of service, played a key role in strengthening Singapore’s entrepreneurial landscape and professional services sector. In 2011, she became Chief Executive Officer of Business China, an organisation nurturing Chinese biculturalism, bilingualism and collaboration with China. With her strong bicultural and bilingual background, she spearheaded unique programmes to immerse business leaders in China and deepen young Singaporeans’ knowledge of modern China.
Drawing on her strong ties with the local business community, Ms Low is presently Advisor for the Singapore Business Federation’s (SBF) SME Committee (SMEC) and Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (SCCCI) Trade Association Committee (TACOM).
President, Singapore Fashion Council; Executive Director, Teo Holdings Pte Ltd
Wilson has a proven record of accelerating performance with remarkable results for privately-owned investments in Asia Pacific that encompasses numerous businesses, such as real estate, apparel manufacturing, trading and outsourcing as well as brand development for wholesale, retail and distribution in the baby products field. He is a vocal advocate for fashion sustainability and has been featured in the media to share about SFC’s efforts in sustainability to accelerate the green evolution of the industry.
CEO,
Singapore Fashion Council
Semun joined Singapore Fashion Council in April 2018, where under her leadership, the association secured the appointment to run the Design Orchard co-working space in 2019 and the retail space in 2020, and kickstarted The Bridge Fashion Innovator (TBFI), an incubation programme targeted towards the fashion industry in 2019. In mid 2022, the organisation underwent a brand transformation from Textile and Fashion Federation (TaFF) to Singapore Fashion Council (SFC), to encapsulate its wider purpose in serving the entire fashion value chain.
Before joining SFC, she was with SGTech (formerly known as Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation) and helmed the organisation for 11 years as its Executive Director. Prior to that, she was the General Manager for Caliper (Singapore office), a HR consulting firm from Princeton, New Jersey.
Semun currently sits on the Design Education Advisory Committee (DEAC), ITE Design and Media Academic Advisory Committees (AACs) and Temasek Polytechnic Design Advisory Committee to further strengthen the links between the schools and industry. She sat on the Made With Passion (MWP) Strategic Council for 2021, to promote better awareness for local designers, and is a member of the Technical Committee on Retail Services.
Co-founder & CEO,
Multiverse Labs
Cliff is the CEO and Co-Founder for Multiverse Labs. He graduated from Stanford with a degree in Computer Science and an Economics minor degree. Prior to his entrepreneurship, Cliff worked at IBM in A.I. and led mobile engineering at a Google-acquired company.
As the visionary and rainmaker, Cliff landed the team into the world of metaverse where it led to exponential growth of the business. Multiverse has grown to be a globally remote organisation with diversified members across 9 countries and just recently this year, Multiverse was recognised as one of the top 10 Emerging Giants by KPMG and HSBC.
Outside of work, Cliff is intrigued by people and culture around him which his love of photography helped to capture these moments.
Partner, Digital Solutions Leader,
PwC Singapore
So Cheer is a Partner who started his career in Business and IT Consulting for 21 years and was most recently the Group CIO for a Fortune 500 enterprise headquartered in Singapore. These combined hands-on experiences from both consulting and client perspectives have enabled him to appreciate and deliver optimal results for the businesses involving large and complex end to end digital transformation programmes such as implementing SAP Hana on the Cloud, centralized finance and procurement on SAP, delivered online e-Commerce for sales and ordering, digitalize the logistics and supply chains with demand forecasting, delivery scheduling and tracking, inventory management with IoT, AI in healthcare and facial recognition access security, Industry 4.0 rollouts, etc.
He has also managed to implement data lakes and analytics dashboards for critical business decision making as well as put in place cybersecurity initiatives like Threat Intelligence, Endpoint Detection Response, Next-Gen Firewalls, etc. together with a global SD-WAN rollout with Data Management and Security capabilities.
Chairwoman, Browzwear;
Vice-President, Singapore Fashion Council
Sharon Lim is the Chairwoman of Browzwear, a leading fashion tech company that partners with leading fashion retailers, brands & manufacturers globally in their digital transformation. A well-recognized tech visionary for the fashion industry, she has been both an advocate & consultant for sustainable change in the industry through technology for 20 years.
Prior to her technology career, she was the General Manager for Tommy Hilfiger in Latin America where she oversaw in the region the product development, supply chain, retail and wholesale functions of the company. This experience showed her the unsustainable challenges of the industry, and triggered her transition to the technology world with the intent to develop tech and consulting solutions for the industry globally.
Browzwear was included in the 2021 Fortune Impact 20 list as a business that offers products and / services that have a positive effect on the world – a testament of her tenacity to the mission of enabling digital transformation in the fashion industry.
She is also a board mentor to TBN Asia, a network that supports Social Enterprises to achieve their impact goals. In addition, she volunteers as a mentor for Digital Mission Ventures – a faith-based incubator that trains early-stage tech founders.
Director, Asian Civilisations Museum & Peranakan Museum; Advisor, Asian Craftsmanship, Singapore Fashion Council
Kennie is the Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum. He has overseen the shift in the museum’s curatorial approach from a geographical focus to a thematic, cross-cultural focus, and from an ethnographic focus to a focus on decorative arts and design. He has helmed exhibitions on the arts of Myanmar, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia and Japan, and on the material culture of cosmopolitan Asian port cities.
Most recently, ACM under his direction has presented exhibitions and experimental showcases on contemporary fashion and photography, spotlighting Asian masters such as Russel Wong, Guo Pei and BINhouse, and in strong partnership with the Singaporean fashion community and industry. He is interested in the history of travel and the heritage of Asian port cities and is the author of the books, The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in South East Asia, Singapore Chronicles: HERITAGE and Singapore 1819 – A Living Legacy.
Principal Consultant & Founder,
The Seed Consulting Group
Carolyn is passionate about sustainability and the transformative value of technology to help businesses and people become better versions of themselves. She comes from a strategy and product management background, and her past roles include being regional director for a Fortune100 company. Her expertise lies in balancing problem-solving rigour, people skills and pragmatism to influence key strategic decisions with key stakeholders, to deliver outcome-based programmes.
CEO,
The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA)
Mr Edwin Keh is the CEO of The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. He also teaches supply chain operations in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Until April 2010 Edwin was the SVP COO of Wal-Mart Global Procurement. Prior to Wal-Mart Edwin managed a consulting group that has done work for companies on supply chain, manufacturing, and product design. The practice also did work for non-profit organizations and charities. Edwin co-founded the Consortium for Operational Excellence in Greater China (COER GC) sponsored by the Wharton School and Tsinghua University. Edwin had a career as senior executive with several international consumer goods and retail companies. He also worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Edwin is on the advisory board of multiple social enterprises, research organizations, and NGOs and served on the Board of Whittier College, CA and the Expert Panel of H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award. Edwin was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2020 by the HKSAR Government for his research work during the pandemic. He was named “Asia’s Most Influential” 2022 by Tatler, the best of Top 50 Innovative Retail Leaders by Inside Retail Hong Kong in 2019 and is on the Debrett’s Hong Kong 100 as one of the most influential people in Technology and Digital sector. Edwin is a recipient of the Production and Operations Management Society’s Excellence in Production and Operations Management Practice Award. Edwin holds over 30 IPs and most have won global invention awards.
Head of Enterprise & New Business,
Edward Chen is the Head of Enterprise and New Business at LinkedIn, responsible for LinkedIn’s Talent and Learning Solutions business. Edward’s organization supports companies in optimizing talent acquisition and development strategies through the use of technology, insights, and best practices on LinkedIn’s platform. He has also collaborated with industry associations on talent development initiatives to raise awareness among a broader audience. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Edward held various roles in information technology companies with experiences in cyber security and cloud computing spaces.
Founder & CEO,
Telaship.com
Amrita Haralalka, an MBA graduate from XLRI, brings together her expertise in running large-scale global businesses and her profound textile heritage to revolutionize the handmade industry. Having worked with PwC and Procter & Gamble across India, Australia, and Singapore, she founded Telaship.com, a platform that directly connects small and medium clients with over 10,000 skilled artisans. With a deep understanding of the textile ecosystem, Amrita’s company enables sustainable fashion co-creation and spotlights every participant in the value chain. Inspired by her family’s documented legacy in the book “Heritage Retailers of Kolkata,” Amrita’s passion lies in returning to her roots and embracing her textile DNA, as she strives to bring ethical practices and transformative change to the industry.
Chief Technical Advisor,
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Global Quality and Standards Programme
Dr. Celia Elumba started her career with multinational buying offices (Swire & MacLaine Ltd., R.H. Macy & Co. Inc., Liz Claiborne Int’l. Ltd.) and international retail chains (Igedo Fashions with Liz Claiborne, Boss Hugo Boss, Clark’s England) before joining government-service and the Department of Science and Technology as Director of the Philippine Textile Research Institute in late 2013. She holds a Career Executive Service Officer eligibility and during her term, spearheaded textile developments and collaborations with the campaign for TELA Pilipinas, or Textiles Empowering Lives Anew. promoting the development of sustainable and circular textile ecosystem. Following her retirement last year (2022), Dir. Elumba continues to promote the local textile ecosystem and through her current engagement with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization or UNIDO as Chief Technical Advisor, hopes to further develop this field of study. Director Elumba was recognized as Distinguished Alumna by the University of the Philippines, College of Home Economics in 2014, and was conferred Recognition by the Department of Science and Technology in 2022.
Global Head of Public Affairs and Country GM, Singapore,
SHEIN
Mr Leonard Lin joined SHEIN in Feb 2022.
As Global Head of Public Affairs, Mr Leonard Lin oversees the government relations, public relations and ESG functions of SHEIN. He is responsible for formulating SHEIN’s public policy positions and fostering strategic partnerships with external stakeholders and leading advocacy efforts across focus markets and key domain areas that impact the company’s business interests.
In this role, Mr Leonard Lin is also responsible for building and managing SHEIN’s corporate profile and safeguard the company’s reputation among global stakeholders. In addition, he manages the organisation’s public relations strategies and campaigns to support business objectives.
He also oversees the company’s ESG team and partners with respective internal teams to drive SHEIN’s ESG strategy and advance ESG initiatives.
Prior to joining SHEIN, Mr Leonard Lin helmed concurrent Director roles with the Singapore Market, Institutional Relations, as well as Enterprise Development Group within Temasek International. In those roles, he was responsible for building Temasek’s institutional relations and providing assessment of strategic issues across the globe, as well as identifying and developing new business enterprises that have the potential to be global/regional champions.
Before Temasek, Mr Leonard Lin served with the Singapore Ministry of Defence. He was responsible for managing Singapore’s defence relations with the United States and China. His last appointment with the ministry was Head of International Policy Branch, Defence Policy Office.
Mr Leonard Lin graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Honours) in Political Science with a Minor in Business from the National University of Singapore.
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer,
Remake Hub
Vincent has over 17 years of experience in the textile and fashion industry. He is the co-founder of Remakehub, a startup that focuses on turning waste into valuable products and materials for the apparel and plastic industry. He also serves as Director of Cheng Kung Garments, a 47 years old family business that focusing of garment product for premium brands using sustainable material and processes.
He also works with different startup accelerators such as Fashion for Good, German Accelerator, and Startupbootcamp as mentor and advisor to help startups in the Fashion industry.
Vincent is the former President of EO China East Chapter based in Shanghai. EO is a global entrepreneurs’ organization with over 17000 members and 200 chapers across 60 countries.
Consultant, UNESCO; Advisor, World Craft Council (Asia-Pacific Region)
Graduated with a PhD in 2015, Dr Lo’s academic contribution has been to determine self-identified markers of authenticity in the work of artisans. Practically, it addresses the balance between protection and conservation of the community’s identity with openness to design innovation and development from outside.
Dean of School of Art and Design,
Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
As the Dean of School of Art and Design, Sabrina oversees the degree, diploma and certificate courses in 4 programmes – 3D Design, Design & Media, Fashion Studies and Fine Art.
Prior to this deanship, Sabrina led the 3D Design programme for 10 years and developed the areas of 3-Dimensional Design and Spatial Design comprising of Furniture & Spatial, Object & Jewelry, Interior & Exhibition Design and Landscape & Architecture. Under her leadership, Sabrina spearheaded a number of initiatives which include the development of the double majors learning and practice. She is a firm advocate of the engagement of students in professional practice and work on ‘live’ client projects. The accolades of furniture and object design course include major awards in local and regional design competitions. Under her mentorship, students and alumni have been winning awards at major international competitions – Red Dot Concept Award, Design Quest from USA, IAI Awards in China and locally at Furniture Design Awards. The NAFA’s 3D Design programme has established an enviable reputation of outstanding designers who are also creative entrepreneurs on the global arena.
Founder,
Big Ideas Consultants
Christophe Roussel is a leading global sourcing and supply chain expert who has over 25 years of experience with several global retail giants, including Gap Inc., Tesco and Carrefour. His expertise sits at the intersect of sourcing, product development, manufacturing, end-to end supply chains and apparel.
Most recently as Executive Vice President of Global Sourcing & Manufacturing for Gap Inc., Christophe was responsible for shaping the direction of sourcing, product development, production and global quality, while providing transformative strategies and sustainable solutions that support the business to satisfy the needs of their customers. Christophe and his team worked towards strengthening the company’s partnerships with factories, vendors and mills across the world, focusing on product innovation, responsiveness and digitization of the Supply Chain.
Christophe has now started his own consultancy company, Big Ideas, and is supporting retailers, manufacturers, service providers and investors in the following areas:
VP of Asia Product Supply for Apparel,
VF Corporation
Natalie is the VP of Asia Product Supply for Apparel, for VF Corporation’s active, lifestyle and outdoor brands.
VF Corporation is one of the world’s largest apparel, footwear and accessories companies connecting people to the activities and experiences they cherish most through a family of iconic outdoor, active and workwear brands.
Natalie leads the sourcing teams that manage factories within the Asia region, covering multiple countries of origin, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and China.
You can still join us online by purchasing the live webinar tickets at USD 60 only.
For enquiries about the summit or partnership opportunities, email us at marketing@sgfashioncouncil.org.sg
