In October 2026, Vogue Singapore celebrated its sixth anniversary with the launch of Vogue Living, an editorial arm dedicated to interrogating the spaces where architecture, interiors and fashion meld and meet. As part of its pilot edition, we held our inaugural Vogue Living Conversations at National Gallery Singapore, a fruitful day of insightful panel discussions that opened the stage to a myriad of veteran industry speakers.
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Moderated by Kissa Castañeda, ‘The Luxury of Place’ directed the day’s last conversation towards the hospitality industry. Panelists included Clint Nagata, founder and creative partner of Blink Design Group; Mark Wong, senior vice president of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, APAC; Samuel Ding, senior vice president of design & technical services at Capella Hotel Group; and Aik Wee Ong, senior director of Design Hotels, APAC.
In the hospitality industry today, the panelists noted that aesthetics matter less, and ‘place’ matters more. The less explicit details of community and memory have become more central to determining a hotel’s success. This trend was noted by Ding, Wong and Ong as being especially prevalent in Japan. In a post-pandemic world, the properties there embody a particularly special kind of soft power—their grounded aesthetics and authentic sense of place and locality are better suited to address the modern patron’s travel sensibilities.
With most of the panelists being voices for smaller, more ‘boutique’-minded property groups, there was a much greater emphasis placed in the discussion on intention and curation—and not just in the land of the rising sun. The slow life is a good life, and coming from a country like Singapore, contemplation and quietude are boons.
