SINGAPORE – From art exhibitions to gender-fluid fashion, here are 10 lifestyle trends, forecasts and “mark the date” events to look forward to next year.
Travel powered by AI and Taylor Swift, diminished by bugs and prices
Where can I find Chinese-style durian pastries in Shanghai? How do I get to the matchmaking corner in Renmin Park from the Conrad Shanghai hotel?
Ask TripGenie. In seconds, the travel assistant powered by artificial intelligence (AI) will personalise answers for travellers in the Chinese metropolis, or elsewhere in the world.
Rolled out by online travel agency Trip.com in July, TripGenie covers multiple aspects of the journey, from itinerary crafting to immediate bookings.
“TripGenie’s major differentiator lies in its ability to provide actionable responses,” Ms Amy Wei, senior product director at Trip.com, said during the chatbot’s unveiling.
Robots to the rescue in the building industry
Robots and robotic systems are expected to boost Singapore’s building sector from 2024, judging by a slew of recent tech roll-outs.
Robots and building automation software were trotted out in September 2023 at the International Built Environment Week (IBEW), billed as the most important event in the built environment industry in the Asia-Pacific region.
Launched in 2019, the three-day event drew local and global players to network and share knowledge. The annual event organised by BCA International, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), also featured its sister event, the BEX Asia trade show.
BEX Asia had 160 booths in 2023, showcasing 250 brands from across 14 countries.
TikTok’s continuing pop culture domination
In 2023, TikTok officially became the town hall of the Internet – the social media space where trends are made and broken, with a new headline in the form of the latest viral moment every other week.
There was, for instance, the “canon event” trend inspired by the animated superhero film Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023). TikTok users have used this phrase as a platform to lament and accept unfortunate events as being important and character-building in their personal story arcs.
And following in the tradition of 2020’s Dalgona whipped coffee and 2022’s butter boards, 2023 had another food-related TikTok trend take off around the world: #girldinner.
Girl dinners are generally some variation of charcuterie boards or snack plates arranged to look aesthetically pleasing. They took off in May when TikTok user Olivia Maher, based in the United States, posted a video showing her haphazard late-night assembly of bread, cheese, wine and grapes.
A whole “girl” universe of TikTok-driven trends followed.
Refillable beauty – groundbreaking or greenwashing? New dilemmas as green packaging takes off
It has been a year rife with packaging innovations in the beauty industry.
Brands and manufacturers are answering the call of consumers seeking more sustainable packaging options for their purchases.
Refillable products in particular, an emerging trend at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, have now permeated the mainstream and are set to become not just a norm, but also an expectation.
American market research firm The NPD Group reported that in 2022, sales of make-up refills soared by 364 per cent.
In its 2023 Sustainable Beauty report, consumer intelligence company Nielsen IQ found that compostable and plastic-free products are driving dollar growth, while searches for refillable packaging have spiked.
Gender-fluid fashion on the rise
The line between the men’s and women’s sections in clothing stores looks set to get more fluid as shoppers cross the aisles, mixing up fashion to suit their individual tastes.
Timothee Chalamet, the French-American star of the fantasy movie Wonka (2023), is just the latest in a long list of fashion-forward celebrities who have endorsed the trend. He stepped out on the movie’s red carpet premiere in Paris in December in a shimmery, beaded top from fashion designer Tom Ford’s 2024 women’s Spring/Summer collection.
In a November feature on Singapore male fashion influencers in The Straits Times, three out of six revealed that they shop in the women’s section of fashion retailers such as Uniqlo, H&M and COS. The main reasons given were that women’s clothes have nicer designs and better fit.
Art, books and theatre offerings to look forward to
Even as the DBS Singapore Gallery at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) closes in phases for its first major revamp from April, visitors to the museum can still get their fill of Singapore art history as four major solo exhibitions of Singapore artists are scheduled for 2024.
They are pioneer Nanyang artist Cheong Soo Pieng in April; Singaporean-British sculptor and printmaker Kim Lim in September; as well as Cultural Medallion recipients Teo Eng Seng, inventor of the paperdyesculp medium, in September, and Lim Tze Peng, a 102-year-old Chinese ink artist, in October.
At the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), art lovers can expect contemporary art megastar Olafur Eliasson’s first South-east Asian solo exhibition in May. It promises to be an immersive and sensory encounter, as the Icelandic-Danish artist often works with large-scale installations and sculptures, as well as elemental materials such as light and water.
Films to watch out for in 2024
The Mission, which opens on Jan 4, American film-makers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss explore the life of John Allen Chau, an American missionary who broke local laws to visit a protected island in the Indian Ocean. He was killed with arrows fired by its inhabitants, a people who for centuries have used violence to maintain their isolation.
Dune: Part Two will hit cinemas on Feb 29. The first part of the science-fiction epic in 2021 had left viewers hanging. The hero was still a long way from fulfilling his destiny – to avenge the murders of his family and possibly become the prophesied saviour of the world.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the follow-up had a planned release date of October 2023, but a crowded schedule and the Hollywood strikes moved it to 2024.
The adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 novel picks up the story at the point when aristocrat Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) has survived an attack from the military forces of the rapacious House Harkonnen, who seek to oust Paul’s family as overseers of the desert planet Arrakis. Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) are saved by Chani (Zendaya) and her people, the Fremen, the natives of Arrakis.
Everything but the squeal
Trimmings and spent ingredients pile up in restaurant kitchens. Fruit peels, herb stems, bits of meat and fat, and bones, almost all of which is usually thrown away.
Of course, some restaurant kitchens use bones and vegetable peels to make stock, a foundation ingredient.
Some, however, are looking harder beyond the usual ways of using discards. They are using ingredients to the fullest – seeds, skin and bones – to make delicious food that are front and centre on the plates, not just building blocks for dishes.
In short, they are using, if you are talking about pigs, everything but the squeal. The idea can be applied to things that do not squeal – fish, vegetables, fruit.
Alternative protein sector ramps up
After a fairly lukewarm year, the alternative protein sector looks set to take flight in 2024 with a series of events, product launches and start-up debuts.
On Jan 20 and 21, the inaugural Flavours of Tomorrow Festival will be on at the Teletech Park in Singapore Science Park 2.
The two-day event – jointly organised by CapitaLand’s Singapore Science Park, venture capitalist firm and food accelerator Innovate 360, and NUS Enterprise (the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore) – aims to challenge stereotypes surrounding alternative proteins and meatless cuisine.
Admission is free, though attendees will have to pay for food from local vendors such as plant-based meat manufacturer Shandi Global, oatmilk company Oatside and food tech start-up Hegg.
Gearing up for super-aged Singapore
By March, Jurong Community Hospital will have seven model flats where patients can practise everyday activities, such as getting up from bed or doing laundry, before they are discharged.
These home-like environments, named Space@JCH, can be used for functional rehabilitation.
Ms Qiu Wenjing, the hospital’s head of physiotherapy, says about 80 patients and caregivers have used the first Space@JCH since it opened in May and find that it helps prepare them for the transition from hospital to home.
Most of the hospital’s inpatients are above the age of 60 and were warded for conditions such as cognitive or physical decline. Some might be at risk of falling as well.
