Pocketful Of Sunshine

Dana Cheong is a stalwart in Singapore’s high society, a style icon, a fitness trainer and a philanthropist. She’s also a wife, a mother, a daughter and, as Crystal Lee observes, someone who knows how to love.

- Crystal Lee

Dana Cheong is standing between two giant strobe lights with her hands on her head. She’s wearing an Alexander McQueen dress and high jewellery pieces from Bvlgari’s Serpenti Collection. Holding the pose, she breaks into a little dance as the photographer pauses to look at his shots on the computer screen. As soon as he returns, she snaps back to business.

That insouciant bop is a glimpse of her dynamic personality: vivacious, friendly, playful, elegant and at ease with herself. She radiates warmth and light from every ounce of her being. “I believe in positivity,” she says, when we met at her studio a week before the cover shoot. “For the people I love, be it my family or friends close to my heart, I feel like I should be that pillar of light; a positive energy. But you know what? At the end of the day, the light bounces back. So I try to start a fire. If you catch it, you light up, and it will shine on me. It’s a chain reaction.”

DEEP FAMILIAL BONDS

Therein lies Dana’s single, most important goal in life: to be a source of light for the people around her. Growing up in a tight-knit kampung community in Kuala Lumpur with three generations under one roof offered a young Dana a model of love, warmth and kinship. “Because my grandparents lived with us, our house was constantly full of people,” she recalls. “My uncles, aunties and cousins often visited. Neighbours came around with food they cooked. I was the happiest in the house, always running out to see who rang the doorbell.”