“What? You have a PhD in medicine? Isn’t it such a waste?”

Dr Fock Ee-ling, mumpreneur and fashion designer, hears this all the time.

When she became a full-time mum of three, she revisited a creative outlet she picked up while completing her PhD in Australia. And since she was sewing matching clothes for herself and her kids, she thought she would make the same for friends. They asked for more. And more. 

And The Missing Piece (TMP for short) was born.

Stylists have put celebrities like Zoe Tay (pictured) and singer Joanna Dong in the label. Some refer to this modern cheongsam with cape-like sleeves as The Zoe Tay Dress for the celebrity who wore it. Photo reposted from @zoetay10 Instagram page.

Then a local style icon came across a cheongsam with a TMP hallmark – a “cut-out” above both sides of the waist, separated by a strategic panel that hides mum-tums – a problem area for many a woman who has given birth. A week later, she posted a photo of herself in that cheongsam.

From there, the business grew organically.

Today, celebrities and influencers are among those who covet the clothes that an everyday woman or busy mum on the go can throw on and look effortlessly stylish in.

The clothes are designed for comfort from soft, breathable yet beautiful fabrics sourced from small family-run factories in Southeast Asia and beyond. They flatter and are utterly functional, with roomy pockets for keys.

Dr Fock does not pay influencers to wear her designs. TMP’s Instagram account has 28.5K followers (and counting). Many ask how she scored all this with minimal marketing.

“This business was not planned. It was really never in my deck of cards. I never ever thought I would swap from science and medical research to do fashion,” Dr Fock, 39, told Salt&Light.

Revisiting an old hobby

In between long days in the lab and writing up her thesis while completing her PhD in medical research in blood disorders, she picked up sewing and dressmaking. She loved shopping for fabric and made her own clothes in her spare time. She found it therapeutic and calming.

Then she returned to Singapore and entered the corporate world.

Ee-ling at her alma mater. She grew up in a Christian family, but really gave her life to Christ when she got baptised at 14. When she went to university in Australia, her parents helped her settle into a church where she found her faith growing even more through regular Bible studies and church fellowship. Photo from eeling.fock Instagram.

She was working for pharmaceutical MNC Johnson & Johnson when her first son was born. She went straight to part-time work. 

“I didn’t hesitate. I guess because that’s the way I’ve always been brought up. 

“Since young, my mum instilled in me that, when I have kids of my own, there is no greater calling than being a mum. 

“She herself was brought up by a full-time stay-at-home mum of seven. She knows how much time and constant effort it takes to train up a child in the way he should go, including the times you need to be around to answer the difficult questions and the dedication it requires to seize every teaching moment you have, especially given the times we currently live in.”

 Eleven months after her son was born, her husband was posted to the US for six months.

Ee-ling in her full-time job as a stay-at-home mum when her twins were younger.

“I told my boss that I couldn’t promise that I would come back,” Dr Fock said. “And so I told her I would resign.” 

Not too long after, the twins were on the way. 

Ee-ling at the sewing machine, in a photo from November 2020.

During her four years as a full-time stay-at-home mum, she revisited her old hobby at night after putting the children to bed. She would make matching clothes for herself and her mini-me’s.

“It was really more a creative outlet just for myself to get some respite from being a mum.” 

In a previous interview, Dr Fock had said that she was going through a phase where she struggled with losing her identity. And having left the corporate world, she lost a lot of affirmation as well.

Lookbook for friends

On the spur of a moment, Dr Fock made a little lookbook of outfits to show her friends.

“Since I was sewing for myself, I might as well just do some matching clothing for my friends and family.”

Ee-ling with her radiologist husband, Eric Ting, 41, and their children (from left to right): Jamie, 10, and twins Cameron and Alana, 8. “Even when I was still at the hobby stage, he would tell me that it’s not important whether this makes money. As long as it gives me an outlet from my daily regime with the kids, then do it,” she said.

It was so well-received that friends asked for more.

She subsequently “dropped little collections here and there whenever I just felt like it, whenever I had time”.

In end 2016, she registered the business as The Missing Piece.

Most people assume it is named for the label’s signature cut-out on womenswear – the primary focus of the business today.

The name actually comes from the roots of the business: Coordinated clothing for the whole family. “Because every person in the family forms a missing piece of the family unit.”

The kids’ fair

It was at a kids’s fair – a first for TMP – that the label would get its big break.

Style icon, entrepreneur and PR maven Tjin Lee, who had an online baby shop, was walking around the fair. Lee was also chairperson of Singapore Fashion Week.

She spotted a midi-length green cheongsam with the cut-out waist on a mannequin. She asked to try it on.

“I owe a lot to Tjin (right). She’s been very supportive, even to this very day,” Ee-ling says of the PR maven and style icon whose social media post put TMP on the radar of fashionistas.

“It was the only adult-sized piece of clothing there. It was to show buyers that it could be matched with kids clothing.

“For some reason, it fit her perfectly. And she walked out of the fair with that dress.”

A week later, Lee posted a photo of herself in the cheongsam on social media.

“And the business took off from there.”

Audra Morrice, judge of MasterChef Singapore, in a TMP dress.

Dr Fock sees the meeting with Lee as “fortuitous and planned by God”.

Lee is also co-founder of CRIB Society – a social enterprise that helps women become successful entrepreneurs through networking opportunities, matchmaking women of different skills, and creating opportunities for women to get mentorship and guidance to start their own businesses.

Through CRIB, Dr Fock met other influencers.

“I’ve been asked so many times how I get celebrities and influencers to wear my clothes.”

Ee-ling (right) being interviewed by Paige Parker, the Singapore-based writer and wife of American investor Jim Rogers.

She has never had to pay for influencers. It has always been the influencers or stylists of celebrities who approached TMP.

The brand has grown over the years primarily by word of mouth. 

“I don’t want to sound clichéd, but it is God’s favour.

“It’s also about building and maintaining relationships,” she says of those she and her team come into contact with. “They become genuine friends. And we give and take.

“The whole business is a good example of God’s hand. The way He has grown it has all been Him. Definitely not through my own efforts.”

God’s hand

Dr Fock has seen God’s hand time and again.

At the beginning of the year, a goal was to move the shop to a new location.

As she put in an offer for a space she had her doubts about, she prayed: “God, if this is not where you want us to go, just do whatever You can to stop it.”

Then she got a long overdue call back from an agent for a space that she had been eyeing. It was a rare listing. 

On the way to view that space at Cluny Court, she received a phone call that her other application was not going be accepted. She had put it in the wrong box.

“I felt a sense of relief.

“It was very clear that God was leading.”

Dr Fock runs the business “conservatively”, and is happy to reach “little milestones” each year.

“A lot of business people I speak to feel like a missing part of The Missing Piece is having a flagship store in a mall. 

“I don’t think that’s ever been what I’ve wanted for the business. My aim is to keep it at a level where I can still maintain my lifestyle.

“I am grateful to God that He’s helped me maintain this schedule of working only in the mornings, and still be able to pick up my kids from school and be at home with the kids in the afternoon. That has always been a priority for me.” 

Support for different communities

TMP breaks the stereotype of fashion world caricatured in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada.

“I don’t want to make decisions that are not in line with my principles.”

This includes not overpricing. “That is not what the company is about.”

“Like the business, going into bridal gowns was not planned,” says Ee-Ling (left), pictured at her first fashion show. It started with a regular asking them to customise a dress for her wedding day.

“With every business decision that we make, we try to prioritise the team.

“I don’t want to make a decision that would hurt the people on my team, to overwork or overstretch them. We have completely gone about growing the business and company treating team members like family.

“A lot of people have said that it is very different from their previous workplace.”

Many on her team attend the same church as she does, Cairnhill Methodist Church.

Without her colleagues of the same faith, she could have “easily fallen apart” when they lost a young team member suddenly and unexpectedly earlier this year. “Without them, it would have been very hard for me to grieve and bring the whole team back together.

“The team was devastated. The whole team was hurting.”

They attended grief counselling together.

“We turned to God to seek comfort and solace. I believe God saw us through that ordeal. And, a result, we were able to help other team members who found it harder to get over this.

“It hit very close to home. God was definitely with us through the whole thing.”

Their latest collection is dedicated to the young team member they lost. A portion of profits goes towards supporting the Singapore Association for Mental Health. 

From TMP’s early days, Dr Fock has wanted the business to raise awareness for and support causes that she believes in.

She tries to support a big World Vision project each year. One year it was a micro financing project, teaching single mothers to farm mushrooms. Another year saw TMP raising over $40,000 to improve water and sanitation systems in five preschools in Vietnam, and educating caregivers in hygiene.

The well-being and education of children are close to her heart as a mother. So are the people of Vietnam – it started from her university days when she sponsored her first World Vision child who happened to be from that country. 

TMP’s manufacturing is primarily done in Vietnam. “They are in integral part of our business and it makes sense that we want to give back to their community.”

Holding all loosely

Dr Fock sees God as the ultimate creative force.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalms 139: 13-14)

“I do feel like this business is an opportunity given by God,” said Dr Fock. “It is an opportunity I hold loosely because at the end of the day, it’s not really mine.

“I can comfortably say that if, within the next week, God takes away the business, I’ll be totally fine.

“The business is separate from my identity of who I am.”

The business is also an opportunity to be salt and light to the many people the team meets each day. Many customers have become good friends. 

“My colleagues have the gift of talking to people, getting to know people genuinely and ministering to people. 

“I do strongly believe that every person we meet – supplier, vendor, every customer who walks through the door – is definitely an opportunity for us to shine God’s glory on. That’s what I hope the business will continue to do.”

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