Best Face Forward

Samantha Wijaya is not your average 25-year-old. The mother of two is taking on the fast-moving beauty industry,one lipstick at a time.

- Candice Chan

SAMANTHA WIJAYA is two hours late for our interview. Held back by flight delays — the bane of all jet-setters — she finally arrives, a vision of casual-chic in skinny black jeans and a floral top, matched with the iconoclastic fur-soled Gucci loafers and an alligator skin Hermès Lindy handbag. In between her effusive apologies, I learn she has not only flown in to Singapore (with her two young daughters and a nanny in tow) especially for this interview, but is also booked on the evening flight to Jakarta right after. At this point, all is forgiven.

Born and raised in Jakarta, the 25-year-old fashion and textile retailing graduate from the University of Manchester considers Singapore as her second home. Having lived here briefly when she was pursuing a postgraduate degree at the Singapore Management University, many of her closest friends are also based in the city-state.

These days, she visits at least once a month for her children’s paediatric check-ups, to shop, or get her tresses trimmed by celebrity hairstylist David Gan. Her family’s hairstylist since she was a child, Gan now tends to her daughters’ hair as well.

The second of three daughters born to businessman Yongky Wijaya and homemaker Theresia Wijaya, she was 22 when she married her husband Kevin Soesilo. He was a friend of the family and the pair dated briefly before the smitten Soesilo popped the question when they were on holiday in Bali. “It was crazy! We got engaged and then married two months after the engagement. I prayed for signs of chaos if things weren’t meant to be but everything happened so beautifully,” she reminisces.