The great escape

The weatherman is calling a scorcher. May a botanical frock bounce your spirits right up to the forever-blue skies. Where will summer take you? Will you — looking like Francoise Hardy in a Ditas Rodriguez minidress — stroll the Spanish steps with a dark, handsome Roman?

Good times and cloudless days are the promise of the resort 2017 collection launched by the Fashion Council of Cebu along with the members of Performance and Classic Enthusiasts of Cebu at the eighth installment of Gear and Glam at the Mountain Wing grounds of SM Seaside City Cebu last Oct. 13. To boot, I am seeing lots of fun (pastel colors, shimmering sequins, little posies) and kicked-back, unpretentious day and evening looks — moreover, sports-wear at the opera?

“Our Gear and Glam theme this year is Monte Carlo, Monaco. So I tried to visualize a young, fresh batch of vintage car enthusiast into my collection. I came out with something classic retro but with current and fresh activewear touch in the form of the lace bomber jackets with patches, translated into dresses and separates version,”
describes Philip Rodriguez, who is also the head creative director of ready-to-wear brands Filippo and Pierre Angeli.

“The result is a sporty chic luxurious vintage-inspired collection.”

If we were to announce the best collection, we’d certainly unfurl the banner for Philip who closed the show with a novelty of charming oddities: bomber jackets made of lace, paired with a pleated A-line skirt and the new scheme of color blocking. His taste, of course, is his secret ammunition.

Witness how he pairs the green jacket with red skirt in this series because in the hands of others, they wouldn’t be as thought-provoking. Certainly, I didn’t learn
it at fashion school: Who would have thought that tangerine and purple could forge a union?

Then, some goodbyes are not eternal.

“My collection is something very comfortable,” says Ditas, who returns to the runway after years of hiatus to concentrate on another business. As a welcome treat—while bursts of colors have always been a stable idiosyncrasy—she heightens our excitement to embrace her once again with a fresh idea that we least expect. Ruffles,
yes, and by cascading them on the right side seam of the skirt sewn all the way up to the right shoulder convinces us why she’s worth the wait.

“I’m not really into draping,” she told me over a private dinner she hosted at her son’s restaurant two years ago. But right here, right now, she has become a master of fluidity—leaf-resembling appliqués and floral cut-out make a good anchor to the draped capes and off-the-shoulder necklines. In return, we give her a round of applause.

On the other hand, Arcy Gayatin—the most engaged creator among them to this fabric command—suddenly surprises us with her supremacy at tailoring and visual manipulation, either the wide-legged pants, precisely dropping the hemline two inches above the ground or sheering meters of lace fabric that mimic the human skin. A bustier with a floor-sweeping tiered skirt could be a Renaissance art whip up—perhaps, influenced by her recurring trips to Europe or the gargantuan replica of Titian’s Venus of Urbino in her atelier.

But in Yvonne Quisumbing’s galaxy of creativity, it’s leather and chiffon blouse-and-skirt separates. She launches the trapeze silhouette back to the runway with a resized, draped translations paired with rock-and-roll pencil skirts, cowl sheering and sequined shift dresses.

The roomier the fit, the better, as in the case of Edwin Ao, too. He establishes the color palette —neutral with a “splash of black”—according to the works of Swiss painter Alberto Giacometti, and he takes full advantage of the twin effect of cotton and linen. “I wanted to play with exaggerated and loose proportion this time, soft tailoring and detailed with military elements as seen in the patches,” he said.

And like in the old military junta of displaying respect for a job well done, all please rise— hand salute.

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