By Your Side

As the only women in Singapore’s most famous football family, Wendy Jacobs and Iman Fandi reflect on building a career, navigating fame, and maintaining family connections through a strong mother-daughter bond.

- ROHAIZATUL AZHAR

Watching Iman Fandi and Wendy Jacobs on set is mesmerising—their confidence and synchronicity effortlessly command the camera. It’s no wonder. As a former model, South African-born Singaporean Wendy Jacobs has been in the game for years, with a successful career in the ’90s. And her daughter Iman? The apple definitely doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Midway through our video shoot for ELLE Singapore’s social media platform, Iman instructs her mum on what to say and how to gesture. “I’ll start with this part, then you can chime in with this line,” she suggests. It’s a moment that captures the close and loving relationship between mother and daughter. “You take the lead,” Wendy responds.

As they shoot the scene in a single take, it’s clear that Iman has inherited not just her mother’s looks but also her poise and confidence in front of the camera. Given Iman’s time creating content for her social media platforms and the fact that she has been in the public eye since a very young age, it’s no wonder that the multi-hyphenate is a natural. The roles have completely reversed, and the student has become the teacher. The seamless coordination between the two shows how much Iman has learned from her mum and, of course, her father, Singapore’s football icon, Fandi Ahmad.

Of course, at 23 years old, Iman has come a long way since being a shy little girl on set with her famous family. Wendy is quick to express her pride in her daughter’s transformation. “She was a little introverted, shy, and hardly spoke to anybody, but look at her now. She has blossomed into someone so beautiful: She’s elegant, funny, quirky, with a very serious way about how she works,” she says.