“She Was A Special One”: A Tribute To Lynn Ban

I woke up from a horrible nightmare in cold sweat, got out of bed for a glass of water and tried to go back to sleep. At the same time, a notification popped up on my iPhone charging on my side table. Gracia Phang, our Style Editor, had forwarded me an IG post earlier that evening. It was about the tragic passing of Lynn Ban.

By the morning, more team members had texted about the news in the Harper’s BAZAAR Singapore team’s Whatsapp group chat, including Kenneth Goh, our Editor-in-Chief, who reflected, “She was a special one.” Other tribute posts and comments had also appeared on my social media feed, notably from people in the industry, including Andrew Gn, Rihanna, and Katy Perry, among others. How could we not? Lynn Ban had clearly made an indelible mark on fashion, social media and popular culture in general. The Singaporean was known for her love for fashion and love for life. And what a life she had shared with her 178,000 followers through her Instagram feed and through the silver screen with her appearance in Netflix’s Bling Empire: New York. On screen, she looked out-of-this-world zany and eccentric, but I’m lucky enough to have shot her in person and seen the real side of her.

Related article: All About Lynn Ban, Singaporean Jewellery Extraordinaire

It all began with an email correspondence that went back and forth between her and the Harper’s BAZAAR Singapore team. She was about to hit our shores to visit her Singapore-based family and the team jumped at the opportunity to do a shoot with her. Of course, by this time, we had had featured Lynn Ban in many different ways, including featuring her iconic jewellery pieces as well as an interview about her work space during the pandemic—a photo sitting idea proved to be impossible due to her manic travel schedule.

We were given a half-day slot and were informed that her location of choice was Four Seasons Hotel Singapore—Nobu restaurant, to be specific. I wasn’t worried so much about the location. I was more worried about the looks that she’d be wearing for this special sitting. I didn’t know what she had or hadn’t packed for the trip. At this juncture, she was already widely famous for being a maverick, for her style choices and antic parades broadcasted on Instagram. She had worn a metal bra from Schiaparelli’s couture collection by the pool, Tomo Koizumi’s crazy concoction on the streets of Tokyo, and Mary Katrantzou’s kaleidoscopic-print kaftan with Balinese traditional headgear in Seminyak, just to name a few. Clearly, she led her life on-camera by whimsy, and whatever I ended up dressing her in for the sitting couldn’t look paltry in comparison.

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It took me a while to decide on the hairstylist and makeup artist duo that would suit her. I assigned Rina Sim and her adept hands to be on makeup duty, while Grego, Singapore’s own veteran hair maestro and someone who I thought could match Lynn Ban’s camp energy, to be on hair. We quickly discussed about the look and the hair and makeup as soon as she introduced the team to her husband, who on that day documented the shoot with his iPhone camera. Gan, our trusted photographer, was commissioned to photograph the sitting for BAZAAR’s pages.

The look that we both agreed on was a black faux snakeskin draped dress and strappy sandals with sculptural heels, both by Azzedine Alaïa (the fashion geek in me pored over the sandals’ gold heels, which were shaped like a woman’s silhouette.) Midway through the hair prep, she stopped Grego and called me to re-discuss the hair style because, alas, she had done a similar high ponytail style for her previous editorial shoot.

Now, frantically poring over Google images and toggling between my Pinterest boards and her IG feed, it dawned on me exactly what the shoot needed: a cinematic edge to it. So I proposed The World of Suzie Wong, the seminal 1960’s Hollywood drama set in Hong Kong about a love story between a Chinese girl and an American man. She immediately got excited about it before pondering over her nails. She thought her current talon shapes could look a bit too much for what I envisioned, but I managed to convince her otherwise by saying that she could embody her own version of Suzie Wong. She got even more excited.

Related article: What’s In My Bag: Singaporean Jewellery Designer And Fashion Fanatic Lynn Ban

Over one hour later, we were walking outside on a courtyard outside of Nobu. She, now clad in the said black Alaïa dress and the teetering heels, wobbled on the hard gravel and soft grass to get to a bamboo patch at the end of the veranda. It took her one swift move to hitch her skirt high and literally hop onto the pavement so Gan could get a better angle of her with the bamboo plants in the background. And by the time she got her bearing on the pebbled ground, she was posing and swinging, embodying the character and channeling her own modern version of Suzie Wong. But the shot that ended up on the page was not enough to describe my personal experience with Lynn Ban behind the lens.

Lynn Ban was charming, eloquent, knowledgeable and absolutely daring, especially in making sure that the shoot’s objective could come through. She was sweet, knew how to have fun on-set, and yes, she was funny. She was surprisingly down to earth, willing to share some endearing stories about her son and a little bit about her personal life. Her passion for fashion was legendary. She made the fashion scene, in general, more cheerful, more enjoyable and definitely made people stop and stare for her style choices. More importantly, Lynn Bann made me glad that I work in fashion.

Rest in power, Lynn Ban.

Creative Director: Windy Aulia 
Digital Content Manager: Navin Pillay
Videographer: Lawrence Teo
Hair: Grego
Makeup: Rina Sim
Special thanks: Nobu at Four Seasons Hotel Singapore