THE RESORT WEDDING. Alexander is wearing a Protacio white shirt with bow tie available at The Bridal Room at Ayala Center Cebu and Philip Rodriguez linen trousers at Filippo; Leslie Jean is wearing a Marichu Tan lace and neoprene serpentine dress. Set décor is designed by Pinky Chang of Pink Flora.
Tan’s resort wedding dresses are blank canvases on which individuality is being writ large. She has sewn a new skin to wear in the last three years of her career, spanning over 25 years and so far, so good. It’s not rocket science at all. But is she taking everything too far?
She could firmly stand on a single merit of being a prominent figure in the thinning bevy of lady designers worldwide. Marichu designed her own wedding dress at 27 years old — oh, Coco Chanel never married Edward Capel — and she remains to create her own clothes to embody the eponymous brand. Anyone who has observed her runway presentations several times should not be surprised to see the same creative spirit translated into wedding garments befitting sunny skies, island white sands, and a thousand heartbeats: streamlined silhouettes (easier to lug in a suitcase), shorter trains (easier to walk on). The star factor? It’s the illusion of nudity underneath a fully beaded, Moroccan inspired collection she executed through a floor-sweeping, skin-tone matte jersey slip dress.
ROMANCE. Beaded wedding dress and nude slip dress by Marichu Tan. Bouquet by Pink Flora.
“I am very conscious with how they feel in the gowns I make,” Marichu says, “and as a woman, I know just how much skin to highlight.” Or how it is to be standing on a six-inch sandal. Whatever that is, anyway, a pool of ideas in her head always thrills her, especially now that she has opened her doors to ready-to-wear selections at The Bridal Room at The Maze in Ayala Center Cebu. “If you’re in Cebu, you can’t miss the beautiful sunshine, the warmth,” she says, “a resort wear collection will never fade.”
And at that, practical, too: Yes, use it at your own wedding and then to someone else’s ball.
Compared to her custom-fit clients, unless they’d phone in for a private meeting, an actual conversation may not occur. This time around, she is selling to a multi-generational cluster of women who respond differently to a certain style stimuli, like how live theater thespians adjust when they crossover to movies: an unidentified type of spectators.
THE LACE MANTILLA veil is a traditional Spanish reference that fits resort weddings due to its length and dramatic scallop edge.
“Addressing a larger market is challenging. But I am keeping a strong sense of what is happening in Cebu. I try to sum it up into a set of wardrobe requirements,” she shares. Creativity is in-born, in her case — she used to make clothes for her Barbie dolls at age six — but as she hikes up high above the commerce of fashion, everyone has become fanatic of her technical supremacy. No further questions, of course: Marichu was trained at the Slim’s Fashion and Arts school founded by Salvacion Lim-Higgins herself, one of Manila’s earliest and most revered haute couturiers, whose iconic butterfly gown is currently housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
In the past, Marichu has experimented on varied fabrics, treatments and sewing possibilities. She has learned to form embroidered floral patterns without base, sent models in overly wide-legged, electric pleated trousers at the Philippine Fashion Week, a weaved neckline inspired by native utility bags, and origami frocks modernized by her witty choice of colors.
“I do not want to take all these too far,” she laughs. “I do not want to be overly experimental with what I do. I am still a girly girl who enjoys romantic views, and I hope I am able to reflect that in every wedding gown that goes out from this atelier.”
The main atelier of Marichu Tan is a peculiar pause in the middle of D. Jakosalem Street. Among the long stretch of old Cebu’s economic pioneers, still riding on the wings of change — a car clinic, a telecommunications office, a business mall — is her show window, encasing another wedding dress, but here, a little leg room is required: a skin-tight beaded bodice and a fluff of ruffles attached around the bouffant skirt.