INSPIRING CAREERS:
Beauty Queen Mum

It’s no mean feat running your own business, juggling a full-time career, taking care of a young daughter, and looking great all at the same time. But Audrey Quek, founder of Audrey Quek Image Consultancy, and winner of Junction 8’s Most Beautiful Mum contest 2007, does it with consummate style and elegant ease.

At only 33 years old, Audrey has built up a well established image consultancy, won a bevy of beauty queen titles, worked as a property manager, been a model, and has a Bachelors Degree in Real Estate with Honours from the National University of Singapore.

Audrey, can you share with us your journey before you started your own image consultancy?

While still at university, I got into modeling when I was talent spotted by Elite Models while taking part in The New Paper New Face contest. And it was a great learning experience for me during my 2 years with Elite Models.

Upon graduating from uni, I worked as a property manager. It was a good job for me to have my first taste of working life, but I found myself looking for something more inspiring and challenging.

In 1999, while reading the newspapers one day, I came across the advertisement for the Miss Singapore World pageant and decided to take part – It was a great achievement to win the title, and that inspired me a year later, to actually organise the Miss Singapore World 2000 pageant. I also took part and won the Miss World Fuqing title in 2000, which was conducted in Mandarin.

After winning the two beauty pageants, I decided that I wanted to put all my experience in grooming and modeling to good use by sharing my knowledge to help transform other people’s lives. So with this in mind, I was inspired to become an image consultant. I decided to train with First Impressions, U.K., a leading image consultancy firm, and I became a fully qualified image consultant in 2004. A week after I was qualified, I opened Audrey Quek Image Consultancy.

My first big client was Mediacorp, where I was grooming and teaching kids on social graces, dining etiquette and modeling. That stint gave me an excellent launch pad to grow and my clientele has been steadily expanding ever since.

Being an image consultant in Singapore is rather challenging, I noticed most Singaporeans often ‘dress-down’ or dress casually in our efforts to stay cool and comfortable in this humid and hot climate, and hence our dress culture can come across as sloppy at times.

However, I believe that we should never sacrifice having a presentable and respectable dress style for the sake of comfort, especially in the corporate world, where image is so important. If you really want to succeed in your career, grooming and communication skills are just as important as your work performance results. Without a doubt, people do judge us based on our external appearance, and we are like walking brands, therefore we need to brand ourselves well.

I’ve also recently become the Vice-President of Education of the Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) South-Asia Singapore, dedicated to advancing the level of professionalism and enhancing the recognition of image consultants. I am also a member of International Society of Protocol & Etiquette Professionals (ISPEP) in USA, a professional body specializing in etiquette management.

Ultimately, I believe that it’s all about how you project yourself, and having that inner confidence. It’s also about the ABC factor – Appearance, Behaviour and Communication.

What aspects of image consultancy are you passionate about?

Having 101% passion is important – it’s not so much about how much I earn, but rather, more about giving value to all my clients and ensuring that they glean valuable image grooming tips and advice from all my talks and workshops.

In the first year of my business, I never slept earlier than 2am. The truth is, I really love my job! Every day when I wake up, I’m eager to go out and meet my clients, and I feel very satisfied when my clients give me good feedback. Now that I’ve become a mum to a beautiful little girl, it’s getting interesting to try and juggle between work and family life, but I’m really blessed to have a supportive husband and caring family members around to help me.

What are your plans for the future?

I’ve just written a comprehensive book packed with interview strategies, dressing and grooming advice as well as etiquette skills for young people and jobseekers in general, and I’m looking to publish it soon. As my desire to see others reach their potential, image-wise as well as personality-wise, I will continue reaching out to help as many attain personal success.

www.audreyquek.com