COUTURE ELEGANCE. (On Alexander): Protacio cotton polo shirt and bow tie, Philip Rodriguez linen slacks; (on Leslie): Philip Rodriguez off-the-shoulder embroidered lace with butterfly prints and scallop hemline.
THIS compulsion to get into glad rags and raise high the glass often articulates itself in a memorabilia—opulent reverence toward velvety Victorianism or bustled Edwardian ball skirts.
But not this August.
You, ladies, will be lustrous now, not in winsome tinsel-metallic but in slick and sleek silver and gold as futuristic as the fiber optic materials Zac Posen sews inside a glow-in-the-dark princess gown; you won’t be ornamenting yourself with loads of finicky decorations but will let the strongly colored fabric itself be the star of the night.
The cleverest designers are, of course, social observers who take their cues from modern life. Close up, naked-eye viewing of such achievements as Protacio’s floriform embroidery, overlaying paillettes, and embedded strands of stones can’t be rivaled by digital capacity.
FANTASY WEDDINGS. A fresh calla lily is styled as a hair accessory to achieve an elegant couture wedding look.
Couture is a three-dimensional sojourn because the progress of these garments is done in a cycle: draped on a mannequin, and ultimately organized to fit the specific human body of the woman who purchases them. It occurred that the atelier study tables and the walls behind them were full of all the work-in-progress stages of the garments; his sketches recording the internal structures of dresses and jackets, swatches of fabric samples, the paper printouts of jewelry that are passed around on patterns while the embroidery-assignment decisions are being rationalized.
“I love modernizing the ‘30s through showcasing different fabric texture, especially if I work with satin, which has both the matte and the shimmering sides,” Protacio said.
Another designer is accepting this month’s couture challenge. A complete sense of the Philip Rodriguez reality from the front-on pictures in this gallery can’t be promised here. But once you see his collection face-to-face, something good happens: He carried on sewing and embroidering turning out to be the best angle on the collection, as it was all down to the silhouette of those ruffles, the cool proportions of the kitten-heeled, ankle-hugging black cage shoes under the cropped wide pants, and the long swooping belled skirt shapes of the duchesse-satin dresses that came later. And as always, a rule of thumb is constantly on his mind: “To give that lightness and ethereal effect.”
GLAMOUR. (On Leslie): Tiered long dress by Philip Rodriguez; (on Alexander): Protacio suit, Yvonne Quisumbing dress shirt and Philip Rodriguez trousers
Extravagant sets, imaginative wit and sociological opinion are all fascinating settings for fashion shows, but in this case, the in-house creativity was just as astonishing. As a manifestation— proof, really—of the actual virtue of haute couture, it couldn’t have been more direct or more jaw-dropping.