Drag artist takes after seamstress grandmother

For Singaporean drag artist Opera Tang, 29, a seven-decades-old Singer sewing machine handed down from her 93-year-old grandmother stitched a precious bond between them.

- Shawn Hoo

"She likes seeing me continue with the skills she practised when she was younger," says Tang, whose preferred pronoun is she/her. She grew closer to her maternal grandmother about five years ago, after she picked up sewing from the former seamstress.

Madam Martha Lau, a small but spritely Teochew Peranakan woman, has cared for Tang and her four siblings under one roof since they were born. They still live together.

The only one out of her siblings who did not go to school, Madam Lau declares proudly in Teochew: "In the past, we didn't formally learn our craft - we were all self-taught."

She name-drops that she used to tailor clothes for the late Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his late lawyer-wife Kwa Geok Choo at an Emerald Hill shop where she worked in the 1980s.

Tang's claim to fame is starring in Singaporean director Lei Yuan Bin's documentary feature Baby Queen (2022), and she is a regular performer at various clubs and bars.

She believes that she has inherited her grandmother's self-starter spirit in executing her own costume designs, often inspired by local iconography such as the mosaic dragon playground and the Vanda Miss Joaquim.

Even her grandmother says Tang is more "ngiao" (Teochew for calculative) about perfection in her tailoring.