BRING THE HOUSE DOWN

FOR SOME OF SINGAPORE'S MOST EXCITING CREATIVES, 2025 HAS BEEN QUITE THE YEAR. FROM A BUZZY FASHION DESIGNER WHOSE GRADUATE COLLECTION BRIDGED TRADITION AND CONTEMPORARY IDENTITY TO AN EMERGING FILMMAKER WHOSE DEBUT FEATURE MADE IT TO CINEMAS DESPITE STACKED ODDS, EVERY ONE OF THEM PULLED OFF PROJECTS THAT MARKED MAJOR MILESTONES. WHAT THEY ALL CAN ALSO AGREE ON: NONE OF THEM COULD HAVE DONE THINGS ALONE. TO CLOSE OFF THE YEAR, WE GOT THEM TO GATHER THEIR COMMUNITY – FRIENDS, MENTORS AND COLLABORATORS WHO HAVE HELPED TO SHAPE AND REALISE THEIR DREAMS – AND TELL US ABOUT THEIR JOURNEY, AND WHAT THEY'RE CARRYING INTO 2026.

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THE ART WORLD IT GIRL ANNA DU TOIT

It has been a mad, mad year for this 24-year-old who's been a rising name across both the art and fashion worlds. Her day job: curator at GOFY, a platform that champions Southeast Asian artists. Its mission is close to her heart since she, too, is an artist, known for her phantasmagorical ballpoint pen drawings that seem right out of a gothic Hans Christian Andersen tale. As that girl, she was part of the Sixty Summers Here group show at Cuturi Gallery this July, exhibiting two of her paintings. She followed this with her inaugural solo show Lingerers, which dived deep into works she produced over the last four years — including her first experimentations with ceramics — a month later. All of that has incidentally put her on the radar of the fashion circle — and we aren't referring only to her cover story for this magazine when we rebranded to F ZINE this August. This November, she became one of six names — alongside the likes of Tilda Swinton and Thai-British actress Rebecca Patricia Armstrong (aka Becky) — to be featured in a magazine Chanel had specially commissioned in conjunction with the staging of its Cruise 2025/26 show at Raffles Hotel Singapore.

WHAT MADE 2025 SPECIAL FOR HER

“It's hard to choose from everything I did this year because every project stretched a different part of me, but my solo art show Lingerers stands out. It was the first time the works based on my most intimate medium (ballpoint pen) had been showcased in a public space. Seeing them exist beyond my private world, and having to consider things such as titles, framing, pacing and spatial presence, shifted how I understood my practice. It was deeply personal and it made me grow in ways I didn’t anticipate. Working with the supportive team at the salon 35A, where the show was held, also renewed a sense of hope for me.”

ON HER SUPPORT SYSTEM