Going Gaga!
Fashion truly gets excited over its “momental” inspirations taken from pop culture. There’s no denying that today’s fashion of the moment takes most of its cues from no other than an American-Italian techno-dance musician bedecked in multi-themes from different oh-so-familiar fashion eras and making it her very own — Lady Gaga. As a current social cursor of popular imagery, she evokes a somehow original combo of both being an iconic reference and that with talent, notwithstanding the Grammy quotient. Casually we can infer her as an expression of ’80s resurrection, partially responsible in influencing today’s shift in the reactionary cycle of trend and style, which fashion’s guilty of.
As her name suggests within our Pinoy psyche, analogous to a belligerent concept of how “15 minutes of fame” works, “Gaga” can loosely be defined as being crazy and excited over a fleeting moment. As is, it usually takes much less than 15 minutes of your attention. Her music titles, with the same temporal hints of impatience, naturally follow suit. With hits like Paparazzi, Beautiful, Dirty, rich and Love Game, it’s all a naughty, almost an irrelevant suggestion of what’s in our society “no so taboo” anymore.
Fashion designer Antonio “Jan” Garcia explains: “Visual images implied and conjured by a mere mention of a name, Lady Gaga, has worked for most pop icons since time immemorial. Hence, from a designer’s point of view, the same visual inspiration comes to mind. More than just the visual stimulation, I’d like to initiate and somehow control design with the disciplines of design principles and element at hand.”
Armed with luxurious fabrics like cashmere knits, silk, taffeta, silk/wool blend jersey, and a palette of a rich canary, Bavarian and talc, Jan Garcia translates what may look like fashion’s riotous antics into controlled and wearable sane pieces. Here, he shows coordinated separates that are serious, well thought of individuals garments and designed to effortlessly look like they are not. Maybe that’s something worth going gaga about?
Photography by Joanne Zapanta-Andrada • Styling by Rainier Dagala • Makeup by Cay Cuasay of Make up Forum • Hair styling by Jigs for Emphasis • Model: Mafae Velasco (PMAP) • Shoes by Emi Jorge for Solea • Accessories by Herbert Custodio
