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BARELY
two months after the annual staging of Philippine
Fashion Week, what lingers is the strangeness and
outrageousness of some collections. However dense our
definition of “taste” is, “conventional loveliness” was
reinterpreted in various ways by some designers.
Maybe to
be noticed amid the thousands of clothes on parade, or
just to put forth an aesthetic that is a counterpoint to
the prevailing look, these design ideas need to be
understood. An explanation has to be offered, or we risk
hearing the great YSL castigating self-important fashion
critics once again: “I did not think in a profession as
free as fashion that one could meet so many people so
narrow-minded and reactionary, petty people paralyzed by
taboos.”
Not a
few were aghast that the glamorous gowns that the
reliable Larry Espinosa usually creates had such “ugly”
accents as bricks on the skirts. What happened? Fashion
observers exercised their birthright to know. “It’s
inspired by my house, which has a wall with an old brick
and cut stones with growing fungus plants,” the
mild-mannered designer says of his metallic debutant
confection with cutout lace, beads, sequins and brooch
accents, and to silence the naysayers: “That gown is
already reserved for a client while the rest of the
collection is sold-out.”
BENJIE
PANIZALES
LARRY ESPINOSA
Striking
a balance between wearability and experimentation, which
makes critics go berserk, has been mastered by today’s
young designers, especially those from the South who
have elevated this skill. Davao’s Benjie Panizales,
whose clothes were dismissed as “bad office wear,”
enlightens the unknowing: “[The one worn by the model
2tay] is an animed Alice in Wonderland straight dress, a
ruched tube, leather-strapped top with a skirt cut as a
box combined with red velvet upholstery boned on the
sides and hem and then tucked and pinched to make it
look deformed and warped.”
On the
flown-in Ford supermodel Charo Ronquillo, Davaoeño Emi
Alexander Englis created a stupendously complicated
dress. “I used shell pin-tucking and cable stitching to
create texture on milkyway georgette. With one square
sheath, the fabric was molded directly on a bust form
and sewn to lock the shape. Lacework was added to define
the empire top.”
Popoy
Barba’s gowns’ being un-ironed looked annoying on the
runway, but had they not been creased in transit, they
were elegant “curvilinear cutouts of beige, brown, gray
and black accentuated with oversized purple bows
inspired by the mountains of Mindanao and Davao’s flora
and fauna.”
To those
too cosmopolitan in their dressing, whose nationalistic
fervor is absent or fading, Steve de Leon may be an
anachronism. But look closely at his astonishing
techniques, which can never be discussed adequately at
fashion school. On the model Ava, he made the dress
through “the traditional origami way, from paper to
abaca in making the leaves and lilies, the geometric
piña collage were shaped to the body to achieve its
desired form. The skirt is frosted tulle that was
bubbled and twisted.”
When it
came down the runway, the two-piece Venus cut dress and
blouse by Nicky Martinez screamed sophistication, and
then Charo raised her left arm to reveal a one-sided
Japanese sleeve with a handpainted geisha. It could be
beautiful on a wall, but on a dress? No matter, the
talented designer wanted to show off his theatrical
streak. “I added silk on the geisha print for an
embossed effect. I wanted the geisha to pop out so I
also embellished it with beadwork.”
On
Design Fusion night, confusion really reigned when
Jasmine Castelo of Iloilo unleashed on the runway his
“Rebel-Hot Couture” collection of futuristic robotic
garbs. While the cuts were interesting, dramatic and
mysterious, his use of coconut suwak accents irritated
the fashion flock. But the designer is unfazed. “It’s
not my problem anymore. Perhaps as the late Diana
Vreeland would say, ‘They don’t belong to the fashion
world.’” |
