DESIGNING clothes for the current and past presidents of the republic can make one think he’s something else. It can also delude him into thinking he can get away from any fashion faux pas. But it’s a good thing such flights of fancy have not corrupted the soul of JC Buendia, who showed an austerity without loopholes at a Fashion Watch Quartet afternoon at the lobby of the Makati Shangri-La Hotel recently.

If fashion can change whims as easily as the weather, fashion can also stick to a conservative hawkishness. In Buendia’s case, his design aesthetic was able to withstand the passing of the Arroyo administration, and when President Aquino was installed at Malacañang, it was still the same designer who was invited to hover over fittings without blinking an eye in time for the inaugural address of the new president. And so Mr. Aquino wore Buendia, but who was there to complain? Is fashion really apolitical?

Just look at the dynasties of Ancient Egypt who followed the rigid lines set in stone by tradition until a renegade pharaoh, Akhenaten, proposed to change the status quo to more naturalized forms, as exemplified by the life-like bust of his consort, Nefertiti, or by the likenesses of Akhenaten showing his bulging, yet natural-looking, beer belly. In a similar vein, menswear has not really undergone massive metamorphoses in the past 200 years. It is still the same suit, shirt, breeches.

But fashion has changed minutely to become more global, more natural, and more open to the influences of the street. Call it street cred. Or for a lackluster way of saying it, fashion has become more and more pedestrian.

But who is there to complain if fashion becomes as sordid as the gutter?  Or perish the thought that we will descend to mob rule, the fashion of the unworthy proletariat, which brings to mind images of the old Soviet Union’s babushkas in grey sackcloth waiting in line at a soup kitchen, or of the women of the Paris Commune (1871) in shapeless shifts as they mourned the murder of Marat. Yes, even a sexy Svetlana can look like a sack of potatoes once you burn away all traces of haute couture.

So we will definitely complain if fashion becomes unfashionable. Fashion has to maintain its single-minded sagacity to remind you that it must be oppressive to obtain its ends. It has to maintain its credibility as a needless, ever-changing necessity that you’re only as good as your last frock, your last shopping experience, your last session with an haute couturier, your last diet regimen, or your last paycheck to burn at the temples of excess and consumption. Everything else be damned—including the look of the street.

It was a good thing that an afternoon tea with Buendia at Fashion Watch woke us up to the royal feeling that you can still have a slice of cake and enjoy the quiche, too, if only for a little while.

Buendia’s confections stuck to conservative and timeless silhouettes influenced by our colonial past of the 1930s and 1940s now made retro fashionable. Ladies wear was defined by calf-length skirts and embroidered tops reminiscent of a deconstruction of the Barong Tagalog.

Menswear stuck to the designer’s closed-door policy of only strictly- and expertly-tailored pieces that hugged the body. It was too good to be true: to see something almost conservative gain the upper hand during what may be a society’s slow decline to really bad taste.