PETALING JAYA, June 29 — Fashion designer Melinda Looi loves the challenge of making bold attires for her clients as it pushes her to think creatively and to create something extraordinary.
For her clients, who are artistes, she is delighted when they go all out to wear something extravagant and daring as it shows that they’re confident and constantly innovating their style as performers.
So for singer Aina Abdul’s recent performance at Istana Budaya, the Sepi singer wowed social media when she wore a black dress made from synthetic hair for her opening performance.
The concert themed “A Night With Aina Abdul 2.0” saw the Nafas Cinta singer wearing the black dress made entirely from about 140 wigs that was made by Looi and her team.
Speaking to Malay Mail, Looi said that Aina has always gone all out in terms of her clothing choice and has always preferred daring styles.
“The dress made out of synthetic hair was not just my idea — but Aina’s one as well.
“It’s a very detailed dress as it has different kinds of braids that were all stitched together and had to be handled with care especially during the sewing process.
“Even Aina’s headgear was made with intricate braid details from synthetic hair.”
Looi added that one of the difficulties of making the attire was making sure that the braids were always neat and not tangled.
Even after Aina’s full-dress rehearsal which was two days before her performance, the team and hairstylist had to always fix and spray the wigs so that they were constantly intact.
“We were dealing with fine hair pieces — if the braids were to be messy, it would be obvious on the dress so we were always fixing it.
“I even called my hairstylist Angelina Low to help make the different types of braids and to help guide us with maintaining the hair styles as Aina had to wear the dress for a photoshoot even before her performance.
“For Aina’s jacket, we decided to weave in 20 curly hair wigs to add variation to it.
“So in total — the dress weighed 20 kilogrammes — together with the jacket that Aina wore,” she said.
Looi added that enjoyed working with Aina and her team to design the dress although some fans were not happy with the design.
“If you go overseas, you see that artists will go all out to make sure their outfits are one of a kind — to mark their names as singers or dancers.
“Here, Aina is one of them as she is not afraid to try new styles and that is what I like about her as she is always open to daring styles,” she said.
