CARMINA Shoemaker
IF I force to fasten the first button of the sample coat that Kevin Yapjoco put on me, I would not be able to walk straight without holding my breath in. Pardon my white-sauce pan pizza and Carbonara over lunch, but I have finally accepted that I could never be size zero.
“Not all of us look like models, and that’s fine,” he assured me, however. “In our culture, we think a good fit is always tight, but it’s not. It should be just enough to skim your body.” While some men eye fashion conservatively, Kevin’s observations would tell us otherwise that a large percentage of men have been style adventurous and discriminating.
Quality is a basic criteria and an excellent conversation starter. Last Saturday, June 25, Ayala Land Premiere and The Alcoves assembled a pop-up shop for Signet—-a luxury menswear brand that houses Japanese signature coats and suits, Ring Jacket, and fine Spanish footwear line, Carmina Shoemaker—at their showroom at the ground floor of The Terraces Ayala Center Cebu. “Jackets must be worn many times, so we’re very keen with how it is made and how it is tailored to suit our tropical weather,” Kevin, Signet’s manager who maintains a personal blog on menswear called Bespoke Man.
THE Alcoves Bedroom
Unlike ladies’ wear, you can’t tweak blunders with glistening beadwork and thick draping because the devil resides in the tailoring. Even if I was mentored by Levenson Rodriguez, a famous menswear designer, at the School of Fashion and the Arts in Manila, I still find male garments complicated because: It should be stylish (but not Vivienne Westwood stylish).
Notice that the lapel seen on most of the coats manufactured by Ring Jacket is wide. Not only it retains the traditional concept, but it also adds the right proportion to almost all body types. When you wear a suit, according to Kevin, four elements—pocket square, collar, lapel, and necktie—direct the attention. “They do not have to match identically at all. You just have to style them with tasteful coordination,” he said. “The color combinations in regard to formal wear, can be applied just as readily to casual wear. Although there will always be elements that don’t cross over (such as the immense versatility of denim) a lot of the themes and lessons are the same.”
RING Jacket
It must be as comfortable as wearing a T-shirt. Usually, you cannot drive in a suit due to its armhole construction that follows general measurements. Ring Jacket has addressed this concern. High-speed machine stitches attach all the seams except the armhole: the closer it is to the arm, the more movements the wearer can perform. For a tropical country, a quarter lining is ideal—across the upper half of the back, sleeves, and down the sides of the jacket. Shoulder pads are taken out, too “because you really do not need them.”
It must reflect varied personalities. “We seek clothes that ‘are us’, and there is an implicit insolence in the ready-to-wear, off-the-rail garments we rifle through, that unsettle us in suggesting that our precise measurements might be generic, predictable and average,” Kevin commented. “Clothes mark our mutability.”