By Vernon Velasco
IT was the fruitcake kind of show you hooted for and hankered to see, your eyes having grown tired and your mind numb from the endless parade of some glossy’s “super bods” and “super mods” tsunami-walking down the runway showing off their pecs and bulges and twin peaks.
Mercifully, a spectacle of fashion unprecedented came just as we about to forever lock ourselves in our bedroom, refusing to eat and swearing never to talk again on account of that Flop of the Century (este, Fight of the Century) in Las Vegas.
What was dubbed as Global Fashion Flair II: Fashion For A Cause was more than just homespun entertainment, and was done for a far nobler cause than being huddled over the TV to watch a lousy prizefight as a show of quasi-patriotism.
The fashion event was a comeback, an encore to the successful gala held two years ago that showcased the best of Philippine fashion and raised much-needed funds for scholars, victims of calamity, the elderly and the abandoned. This year, the ambassadors to the Philippines and their equally stately missus emerged from their posh residences to participate in the fashion show-cum-fundraiser at the New World Makati Hotel that would, this time, benefit at least a fraction of the victims of typhoons Yolanda and Ruby.
Just like the way they might do a ballroom or a little cha-cha-cha, the diplomats and their madam ambassadors channeled their inner Brad Kroenigs and Kate Mosses, dressed to kill in stately Barong Tagalog, traje de mestiza and other fineries by Kultura and The SM Store. Slap me down and call me Susan, but who would have imagined how regal and surprisingly Filipino all skin colors can be in Filipino raiment, made only diverse, for instance, by innate stately differences, like the signature swag beneath the debonair German Ambassador Thomas Ossowski, or Swiss Ivo Seiber’s megawatt smile, or the fine and reserved manner of the French Gilles Garachon.
With glasses upon glasses of French red now in our bloodstream throughout the vivid affair, we were also at the edge of our seats when the missus emerged from the curtains, breezing in impeccable ensembles that were unmistakably Filipino. Madam Italian Ambassador Agnes Roscigno, who stole the show in her stunning set of Filipiniana, said, “It was so heartening to see ambassadors go onstage and walk under track lights, camera flashes, background music. Indeed, it was an unusual setting for the ambassadors, being more inclined to perform in the formality of official ceremonies, carpeted palaces and closed-door meetings.”
And have I mentioned Washington Sycip gracing the runway, fly-kissing everyone and striking his own endearing signature pose?
Image credits: Photos courtesy of SM Prime Holdings
