Following the runaway success of the film Crazy Rich Asians, the author of the book, Kevin Kwan, and Harper’s Bazaar take a look at “real” Crazy Rich Asians. Via Harper’s Bazaar:
When my first novel, Crazy Rich Asians, was published in 2013, many readers were astonished to learn that in Asia there were women who dressed in couture from morning till night. They were particularly captivated by the character of Astrid, the beautiful heiress from Singapore who was always immaculately attired in the latest couture looks. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked whether women like Astrid truly exist, but I would always answer that, as a child in the late 1970s, I personally knew women who took the Concorde from Singapore to Paris via London twice a year for their couture fittings and that Queen Sirikit of Thailand had been partial to Balmain since 1960. I have pictures of my grandmother from the 1920s and ’30s in avant-garde dresses that looked like they could have come from the House of Worth or Lucien Lelong. She would never say if they were couture, but I do recall her telling me, “All my clothes and shoes came from Paris.”