In the music video Before Sunset, the young Jeffrey Ngai wanders like a lost soul, dressed in Saint Laurent in the most emblematic districts of Paris. The columns of Buren, the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame and Montmartre parade as quickly as his outfits, half ready-to-wear, half haute couture. Thanks to a few holes and indentations, cleverly placed in his magnificent cashmere sweater, Jeffrey Ngai takes on the appearance of a cursed poet.
Enough to make his “coffee beans” crack, a nickname given to himself by his fans in Hong Kong since the young star revealed that he drinks a lot of coffee to stay in shape. Cantopop (pop sung in Cantonese, the language spoken in southern China), which seemed to be in decline after its glory days in the 1980s and 1990s, in favor of K-pop (in Korean) or mandopop (in Mandarin), has experienced a spectacular renaissance in recent years.
With his angelic smile and his shy, even naive demeanor, Jeffrey Ngai has stormed, with as much innocence as efficiency, the artichoke hearts of young Hong Kong women, the front pages of celebrity magazines and the advertising posters. At 25, he has more contracts than any other local celebrity, and in all sectors: insurance, luggage, banks, beer, energy drinks, jewelry… His dazzling success is also very recent, because it is especially his main role in the television series I Swim, on the ViuTV channel, in 2022, in which he plays a university swimming champion, who propelled him into the deep end of stardom.
His new music video filmed in Paris has reached nearly a million views on YouTube in two months. The French authorities could not have dreamed of a better ambassador to revive tourism in France. “You said you come with me to read Hugo (…). Looking at the Eiffel Tower (…). Without you, with whom to drink champagne and experience our love? (…) I am not as strong as Joan of Arc nor as stubborn as Molière, how could I wait a lifetime for you? “, sings Jeffrey Ngai while strolling along the banks of the Seine, guitar slung over his shoulder. ” My fans keep on ask me the addresses of the various places where we filmed, especially the places that are not really identifiable”, confides the singer.
A pinch of France and Paris
When we meet him in real life, during a reception organized in his honor in the former residence of the French consul in Hong Kong, he is dressed in Dior (which he dutifully pronounces “di-oh”) ) and adorned his hands, neck and ears with Boucheron jewelry, and kindly admits to finding himself “classy” in her chic French look. In fact, to hear it, the Parisian clip was made on short notice at the beginning of the summer. Jeffrey Ngai was one of the happy few of the jet-set from around the world invited to the spectacular Pharrell Williams fashion show, on the occasion of his first collection for Louis Vuitton, on June 20 on the Pont-Neuf, in Paris. The opportunity for him to pose with some big Asian stars much more established than him, such as the Singaporean singer JJ Lin, or the Thai rapper BamBam.
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