“There’s always someone living a better life than you on social media,” says Willabelle Ong. It might be a strange proclamation from Singapore’s social media fashion doyenne. After all, she garnered a million followers across the different platforms by showcasing her overflowing envy-worthy wardrobe.
Her advice, however, comes from a place of empathy. As a result of shifting algorithms on social media, Ong, too, has felt the pressure. Everyone posted their shiny baubles and outstanding achievements, and Ong felt small by comparison. She constantly believed she had not achieved enough, so she put a lot of pressure on herself to do more. “I felt incredibly stressed about my work,” she admits.
Only after she met her husband King in 2016 did her perspective begin to shift. Ong was at a friend’s wedding when she met him. Back then, she was still living in Australia, so they started a long-distance relationship. She would fly to Singapore quarterly and spend a few weeks in the country with King before returning home. Two years later, in 2018, he went down on one knee at the Glacier Lagoon-Jökulsárlón in Iceland.
It’s been quite the journey for Ong, now 30. She played a lot of games growing up, navigating Kirby on his adventures and taking care of a virtual dog on Nintendogs. “I also enjoyed reading mangas (Japanese comics) in the past and would draw a lot of Japanese-style cartoons.”
Her parents moved the family to Australia when she was 14 for “a change of environment”. She ventured into online community forums in her mid-teens, starting an account on the now-defunct fashion website Lookbook.nu when she was 15. Ong had grown up watching her mother try on clothes and wanted to emulate that. Her parents were incredibly supportive. “My dad would drive me out to the Outback and help take photos of my fashion stuff and my mum would help with the poses,” says Ong. She’s still incredibly close to her parents today, texting them daily and sending updates about her life.
Photo: Joel Low
The young Ong’s digital influence grew steadily and within a year of posting her looks, fashion brands began reaching out to her. “The first sponsorship I ever got was from Madonna and her daughter Lola’s fashion brand, Material Girl,” Ong recalls, laughing. “I think I was 17 at that time. I got my high school friend Jeremy Chou who’d never touched a camera before in his life to shoot for me. Now he’s a huge photographer in Los Angeles.”
Ong’s influence even reached the shores of America from her cosy home in Perth. High School Musical actress Vanessa Hudgens credited Ong’s blog Pale Division for inspiring some of her own looks. That shout-out brought a massive surge of readership.
She also credits fashion veteran Frank Cintamani for expanding her worldview. After graduating with a double major in communications and marketing from the University of Western Australia in 2014, Cintamani asked if Ong would like to work with him. She readily accepted and was swept into the world of haute couture and fashion weeks. Armed with more experience, she returned to her social media career in 2016. She hasn’t left.
Her social media posts in the past two years, however, have a distinctly new flavour—motherhood. Ava Eleanor has been leaving her tiny handprints all over Ong’s heart and social media accounts. Ong thought she would be a hands-off mother, dropping Ava off at daycare and putting on her career hat until it was time to pick her up. Now, she wants to spend as much time as possible with her daughter. “I just felt an overwhelming sense of love when I first saw her. I would give up everything for her,” she says.
Ava has taught Ong many lessons. But more importantly, she’s revived Ong’s sense of wonder, eroded over time by doom-scrolling a deluge of picture-perfect digital postcards. When everything is incredible, nothing is. “Then I see Ava being fascinated by the simplest things, like ordering fruits or letting the wind from the fan sweep over her. It’s so amazing to see her experience life and be surprised and thankful. I appreciate everything now in my life.”
The passing of her grandmother in 2021 also crystallised in Ong that time, in all its clichés, is short. Her pregnancy was difficult, so she couldn’t visit her grandmother as much as she would have liked to. Sadly, she took her final breath before she could see Ava. “It killed me. Now, I really value the brief moments and cherish the time I spend with my loved ones.”
Naturally, Ava has her own Instagram page. Ong discussed putting their firstborn’s pictures on the Internet with her social media-averse husband. She’s read all the scary stories of online predators preying on the young. It’s one reason many celebrity couples such as Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, and George and Amal Clooney never upload images of their children on social media.
The mother, however, feels that the pros outweigh the cons. She’s experienced first-hand the power of social media to benefit lives and wants her young daughter to capitalise on it when she’s old enough to understand the different platforms. Ong posts only carefully curated, professionally shot pictures of Ava. If an older Ava wants to do a digital detox, then she will help her pull the plug.
Ong, too, has been on a different kind of detox. “I don’t really consume Instagram anymore,” she admits. “But I still use TikTok because there are a lot of funny videos on it.” Instead, when she’s not taking care of Ava or working, she watches television shows or reads. One book that has gripped her is Pachinko, a 2017 novel that follows four generations of a Korean family living in Japan. It has been turned into a serial drama.
Ironically, television has also nudged its way into Ong’s mind recently. Fifteen years is an eternity, and Ong is the wise matron in the sea of luxury-focused influencers. “I want to challenge myself to do more than just social media. I’ve been thinking of exploring acting this year,” she says.
Photo: Joel Low
There isn’t anything concrete yet, but conversations have been had and ideas floated. The next step is to turn them into reality. But between that and now are a thousand more unrecorded steps that you’ll never see.
These are the steps no one ever sees because they aren’t recorded on social media for posterity. Ong has been down this road many times before. She knows what needs to be done. She’s ready for her next act.
Read the other cover stories and see their cover shoots in the links below.
Photography Joel Low
Style and Art Direction Chia Wei Choong
Hair and Makeup Jyue Huey
Photography Assistant Eddie Teo
Styling Assistants Julia Mae Wong & Caleb Lim
