Model-actress Sheila Sim back on runway after more than 10 years
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Singaporean model-actress Sheila Sim presents a creation from the Chanel Cruise 2026/27 collection during a runway show in Sydney on Nov 5.
PHOTOS: CHANEL
- Sheila Sim, 42, returned to the runway after more than 10 years, modelling for Chanel Cruise 2026/27 in Sydney on Nov 5.
- She said the comeback felt like “coming home” and praised Chanel for seeing women “in every season of life” and supporting her as a mother and model.
- Sim has worked in major fashion cities and acted in TV dramas; after a family break, she returned to screen work in 2025 and has more roles ahead.
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Singaporean model-actress Sheila Sim has made a return to the runway after more than a decade.
The 42-year-old was one of the models presenting creations from the Chanel Cruise 2026/27 collection during a runway show on Nov 5. The fashion show took place at The Cutaway, an underground venue located beneath Sydney’s Barangaroo Reserve.
“It’s been over 10 years, and I honestly never thought I’d feel that again,” Sim wrote on social media, posting photos of herself on the runway. “But the moment I stepped out, something in me came alive. It felt like coming home to a part of myself I’d quietly set aside.”
Sim has over a decade of modelling experience in fashion capitals around the world, including Hong Kong, Tokyo, Milan and Paris.
She first walked for Chanel in 2010, in the presentation of the Cruise 2010/11 collection at the opening of the Chanel boutique at Marina Bay Sands.
She also attended the Cruise 2013/14 show in Singapore, the Spring Summer 2017 show in Paris and, in November 2025, the Cruise 2025/26 show in Singapore.
“For so long, I believed I had to choose: Mother or model. I could never understand why one had to cancel out the other,” said Sim, who has two daughters, aged three and six, with her husband Deon Woo. “So being invited back, by a house that sees women in every season of life, means more than I can say.”
She expressed her gratitude to Chanel’s artistic director Matthieu Blazy, the Chanel Singapore team and those who worked behind the scenes.
“And to Chanel, for decades of steady support and for reminding me, again and again, that I still shine just as I am,” she said. “I feel inspired. I feel like I belong.”
Sim made her television debut in Mediacorp’s I’m In Charge (2013) and has since acted in dramas such as the long-running franchise 118 (2014 to 2018) and dialect series How Are You? (2019 to 2020).
She took a three-year hiatus to focus on her family and made a return to the screen with the role of Zhang Yinniang in Mediacorp’s blockbuster Emerald Hill – The Little Nyonya Story (2025).
She recently starred in family drama Brighter Days (2026) and is set to act in new dystopian crime thriller The Leftovers.