Did the homecoming arrive at something good?
“I’m amazed,” Pinky Magalona sent me a personal text the afternoon after her first show in six years since her diaspora to the Middle East
to work for a Kuwaiti couture house. It could be a little nostalgic, too, for her to be standing on the exact spot where her career in fashion was crystallized. Only this time was more like standing in the middle of a gale of change. Everything she has now is being tossed up in the air, swirling around.
“I still remember the first time I was on that stage. I’ve thought of it over and over,” she recollected. In 2012, she was hailed winner of the Cebu Young Designers’ Competition, here at the Northwing of SM City Cebu, where she recently launched a denim collection for the seventh year run of Glitteratti, themed “Electric Dreams,” last Friday night along with few other ready-to-wear brands.
But this time around, it smelled like teen spirit. The set was a 360-degree inversion of the old one, transforming it into a discotheque runway, providing a sky-like neon screen backdrop for the models that emerged from the dressing room. Furthermore, the lighting effect was perfect for the splash of neons she incorporated in her sports-attired community models. Born to a family of tailors, Pinky has exhibited supremacy
The set was a 360-degree inversion of the old one, transforming it into a discotheque runway, providing a sky-like neon screen backdrop for the models that emerged from the dressing room. Furthermore, the lighting effect was perfect for the splash of neons she incorporated in her sports-attired community models. Born to a family of tailors, Pinky has exhibited supremacy
Furthermore, the lighting effect was perfect for the splash of neons she incorporated in her sports-attired community models. Born to a family of tailors, Pinky has exhibited supremacy in this area (one men’s wear, jacket and jogger pants), in patternmaking (a pretty, pleated skater’s
Born to a family of tailors, Pinky has exhibited supremacy in this area (one men’s wear, jacket and jogger pants), in patternmaking (a pretty, pleated skater’s skirt with an oversized radius), and in seduction (cropped tops that exposed a decent part of the skin to offer some scintillation).
Engaging us with two opposite moods kept the show exciting, too. A draped one-shoulder top was matched with a tailored pencil skirt, detailed with satin overlap piping. Another was a brassiere tube and a pair of Capri pants.
As a concept, it seemed to be a cheerful commentary on the chaos we’re all facing—a clever, spontaneous-looking bout of
experimentation with bolts of fabric, surreal sewing directions.
It was grounded, though, in the “real” fashion trigger of the month: all the neon knee-high socks I’m thinking of wearing to my CrossFit routines.
She conjured the acid punk with collaged Pop Art hints and in neon patchworks, swathed with scarves around the neck and the arm. When fashion is extravagant or experimental, it has the potential to be fantastic and memorable, especially if it’s something done to the nth degree of sincerity,
skill and conviction. I’m up for it. It’s the banal and timid in-between I can do without. Then again, on a
Then again, on a personal observation, I am overly fascinated with female fashion designers, especially in a male-infested creative community.
“Since I came back to Cebu, I felt my horizons have widened once again. Compared to designing for a fashion house, I now get to converse with my clients—what is comfortable for them, what fabrics and cuts to use,” Pinky said. “Of course, my aesthetics I have to add with current trends.”
She was a thrill to see again, one of those memories I store up for the future, to check where something began. We went to the same fashion school in Manila, and by coincidence, worked separately in the same foreign country.
Since she came home (still, on the same flight with me), she has been racking her brains over what good aesthetics ought to be: Should it weave dreams or register reality?
I can’t even explain that logic, either.
