HAVING table decorations sticking out of one's head is unusual in any circumstance, but wearing them for an international pageant?

Yet this was what Lilian Lee, Singapore's representative at the Miss Intercontinental Pageant in Poland on 25 Oct, did.

Outrageous - but it worked.

The 23-year-old air stewardess clearly wowed the audience, returning home with the Miss Intercontinental Asia Pacific title.

The Asia Pacific category included 11 out of the 57 countries present, including Afghanistan, India and Korea.

Dress from eBay, sari from Little India

Colombia's Cristina Carmago, 23, was the overall winner.

The table ornaments formed the 'Malay wedding head-dress' of her multi-ethnic costume that cost just over $200 - a DIY outfit consisting also of a Chinese gown and a Indian sari.

But why table ornaments?

UNDAUNTED: Lilian remained optimistic although she was one of the shortest at the pageant. --TNP PICTURE: SIMON KER

Two days before she had to jet off for the pageant early last month, Lilian found herself desperately running around Geylang and Joo Chiat trying to find a Malay wedding head-dress to complete her dress.

Her hectic flying schedule had prevented her from starting earlier. And when she finally found time, it was the Hari Raya Puasa week - when many of the shops were closed.

'I was panicking already,' she said.

She ended up at a shop that sold Malay decorations. There, she found some golden flowers on sticks.

'Can I wear this for my head?' she asked the shopkeeper.

'No! It's for a table!' the shopkeeper replied. They were decorative flowers for use in vases, not on girls.

After saying, 'Can lah, aunty, can lah,' Lilian rolled her hair into a bun, stuck five flower sticks in, looked into a mirror, and thought, well, it doesn't look so bad.

Lilian, a Singapore Polytechnic graduate who was an optometrist before joining Singapore Airlines, had qualified for Miss Intercontinental by winning Miss Singapore Sweetheart (a local pageant which has an agreement with Miss Intercontinental organisers the World Beauty Organisation).

She secured boutique Blum & Co's sponsorship for three of her gowns, worth about $800 each, because she was a frequent customer at its Citylink outlet.

Opera robes?

But she didn't have a sponsor for the national costume. To find one, she even visited a shop that sold Halloween costumes and considered Chinese opera robes.

Ms Jackeline Carter, in her 40s, director of iGlamour, the organiser of the Sweetheart pageants, and her team at Academy IG, the talent management and training wing of iGlamour, ended up brainstorming costume ideas themselves.

They decided to go red and multi-ethnic to represent Singapore's many cultures.

In the end, Lilian bought a Chinese dress from the US off eBay for about $100.

But Ms Carter thought it needed more 'oomph'.

'A national costume must be larger than life on stage,' she said.

So to add that 'oomph', Ms Carter, who was a fashion designer, used a $65 sari that her company's image consultant Justin Lim had bought in Little India. The iGlamour director sewed it on the dress herself.

With the $50 for the 'head-dress', the costume costs just more than $200.

Not bad, especially considering the flak the last two Miss Singapore Universe contestants got over their national dresses.

For example, 2007 winner Jessica Tan's similarly multi-ethnic dress was slammed by critics who said it looked unpolished and cheap.

Then there's the infamous Merlion dress worn by 2008 winner Shenise Wong earlier this year, which cost $1,000. People said it 'looked like a joke'.

Both Lilian and Ms Carter said the same thing about the Merlion dress: It's unique.

Lilian spent three weeks in Poland, and she admitted it was tough at points. The European girls, thanks to the proximity of their homes, had entourages and supporters with them, while she was alone.

She said the western girls were also more aggressive in putting themselves in front of the camera. Already one of the shortest girls there at 168cm, Lilian found herself constantly at the back or the sides with the other Asian girls during group photoshoots.

'I admit I felt quite sad in the first few days. I thought I didn't stand a chance,' she said.

But she soon cheered up. Lilian, a perky girl with a disarming laugh, is someone with 'high EQ'.

And this Singapore Girl gave the other contestants a taste of Singaporean friendliness.

Souvenirs from Singapore

Besides 70 batik fans to give away, she also took two boxes of pineapple tarts and prawn rolls to showcase Singapore's food.

Each contestant was also required to bring something from their home countries for a charity auction for a Polish artificial heart centre.

Lilian took a custom 'Singapore Shawl', worth $150, which was donated by the brand's creator, author-trainer Shelley Siu, 63. It's a shawl with orchid prints and embedded Swarovski crystals.

However, she said, other than a few contestants thinking she was from China or Japan, most of the people she met were quite knowledgeable about our little red dot.

'A lot of them knew F1 was here,' she said.

So does Lilian, a previous Miss Singapore Polytechnic and Miss Singapore World runner-up, intend to take part in more beauty competitions?

'No. This is the end of it,' she said.

It's not a big title, she said, but nothing could top the experience of representing Singapore on the world stage.

Said Ms Carter: 'My goal was always to prove that a Singapore girl, with the right support, can make it in an international pageant, and thanks to Lilian we did.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 1, 2008.