Who Needs Abs When You Have Great Skin? Meet Six of Malaysia’s Grooming Kings
In the country’s evolving landscape of male identity, a new wave of men is using grooming, fashion, and personal care not just to look good, but to define how modern masculinity is seen and understood
Malaysia is witnessing a subtle yet striking recalibration of masculine identity. The new icons of Malaysian manhood are less concerned with muscle and machismo, more fluent in moisturizers, monochrome tailoring, and self-reflection. Their influence is persuasive but not loud, their faces as curated as their feeds. In this new aesthetic economy, grooming is vocabulary.
Here are six men who have turned beauty into branding and the self into a performance art, shaping what it means to be seen in the digital age.
ALVN
A musician by trade, ALVN’s approach to beauty is more textured and ambient. His grooming is mood-driven, hair tousled just enough to suggest insomnia and genius, skin glowing in a way that hints at both youth and rebellion. He plays with light and shadow, scent and style, like chords in a song. With ALVN, beauty becomes performance, sometimes deliberate, sometimes chaotic, always magnetic. He’s the man who walks into a room and makes it feel like a music video.
Aedy Ashraf
There’s something old-Hollywood about Aedy. The camera loves him, but more importantly, he seems to understand the exchange, that to be looked at is to give something away. Known primarily for his acting, Aedy’s grooming rituals have become part of his allure. A flash of cologne on the wrist. A perfectly disheveled wave of hair. His off-duty content is never truly off, it’s composed, clean, and curated. In Aedy’s world, grooming is a character study, and every post a new role.
Hun Haqeem
As the first Malaysian face of Emporio Armani fragrances, Hun occupies a rarefied air, literally and figuratively. His beauty is cinematic, edged with mystery, and his content, whether a behind-the-scenes fragrance campaign or a street-style snapshot, feels editorial. Hun’s vanity is expressive. If he poses, it’s with intent. If he smells good, it’s a story. In an age where celebrity often blurs into branding, Hun wears his image like a well-fitted cologne: layered and intimate.
RELATED: The Scent of Stardom: Hun Haqeem Ushers in a New Era for Emporio Armani in Malaysia
Han Pin
There’s a monk-like discipline to how Han speaks about skincare. Every product has its function and every step a ritual. His presence on social media is almost clinical in its clarity, no excessive edits, just the slow unveiling of texture and tone. A digital apothecary for the modern man. With skin so luminous it seems lit from beneath, Han offers solace. His message is simple: take time, for yourself and for your skin.
Jack Gohr
Jack is a man who turns a mirror into a moodboard. His presence is all geometry: the perfect fade, the sculpted brow, the silhouette cinched just so. But there’s something tender beneath the sleek exterior, his grooming content often slips into moments of introspection. The camera lingers not just on how he looks, but on how he feels about being seen. Jack’s brand of beauty is about embracing process, the daily work of looking good, and therefore, feeling whole.
Li Tim
Imagine a man who understands angles, not just of cheekbones but of lapels and lighting. Li is as fluent in grooming products as he is in cuts and color palettes. His aesthetic leans classic but is always cleverly subverted: a double-breasted blazer with street sneakers beside a subversive caption. In his world, the body is a frame for fashion, and grooming is a gateway to presence.
Together, these six men are architects of a shifting narrative around masculinity in Malaysia, one that embraces softness, precision, and the right type of serum. In their hands, grooming is not shallow, but sharp. Not indulgence, but identity. They remind us that vanity, when done well, is about being seen.
Special thanks Mughni Che Din
Photo courtesy Instagram/ALVN
