Two to tango

How do you make a store stand out in a place swarming with stores selling similar merchandise? There’s always the option of using multiple colors to catch the eye and of putting up wild and stunning window displays.

Or, you can go the other way: Paint the store in white, add numerous yellow lights for drama, create storylines with colors and throw in a pair of chairs. Go muted instead of shocking, go elegant instead of trendy, go white instead of black.

The second is what Gina Salud-Rodriguez opted for when her fashion retail store Tango transferred to Glorietta from Greenbelt in August last year. After all, it wasn’t just a design statement she was trying to make, but also a fashion statement: You start with the basics and work your way from there.

Her design philosophy fits so well with the fashion philosophy she has been espousing for the past 11 years since Tango opened.

"The design of the store represents the merchandise inside: simple and clean. We try to be very uncluttered even with our display window," says Gina.

This wasn’t always the case, though. The old Tango store was more colorful, though the merchandise was already moving toward casual lines with a timeless look – yes, even casual fun can be timeless – from its office wear bent. "The Greenbelt store looked old. It was boxy, painted yellow and beige. The merchandise didn’t stand out even though we were in the process of changing the concept of the store."

The new Tango is an entirely different story. The design provides a backdrop for the merchandise. Because it is understated, it never overpowers the clothes, rather, it creates harmony and elevates the shopping experience to a more pleasurable level.

The store looks expensive, but to no one’s surprise, this has worked well for Tango. It was planned that way.

"It was a deliberate move, we wanted to capture the foreign market in Manila. Now we have a lot of Japanese and Taiwanese clients," Gina says. Besides, girls nowadays no longer feel intimidated by stores looking costly – in fact, it entices them instead of turning them away. This strategy has also given her a reason to spring a surprise on consumers: The prices are tiangge-like.

"Immediately, they go frantic," Gina says with a laugh.

Young girls and thirtysomething women turning labels and screaming. That would be a nice scene, wouldn’t it?

Designed by J. Antonio Gonzalez Mendoza, Tango recently won Ayala Center’s Best Visual Merchandising Award for Apparel. Mendoza had previously designed homes for members of Gina Rodriguez’s family and worked with her on another store.

"Tonichi (Mendoza) presented me with just one study. In just a few sentences nakuha na niya what I wanted. We work on the same wave length. Like in the middle of the construction, we’d catch each other’s eye and say, ‘Let’s change this.’ We could read each other’s mind."

An architect and interior designer, Mendoza has done other retail stores including T&M (Tango & Merger) in SM Megamall, which is a partnership between Gina and her brother George Salud, who owns Tie Line and the male fashion store Merger. "Tonichi has a good sense of scale," she says. "You can tell a shop that’s literally kinopya from a magazine by somebody who doesn’t have an architectural background. Parang mali ang proportion." That’s a polite way of saying there are boutiques that have tried to copy Tango’s style.

The success of the Tango design hinges on its emphasis on function: There is a purpose to all the details (well, yeah, even the many halogen lights which, according to Gina, generates a lot of heat that the aircon has to be turned way up). They created modules or color storylines that would make mixing and matching clothes simpler for the customer.

"We wanted to do color stories," Gina explains. "The problem with fashion stores is when the staff isn’t so good at mixing and matching, it becomes harder to sell. With the way the merchandise is arranged, it’s easy for the customers to pick out a top and match it with a skirt. They are able to understand the logic of color so it becomes a no-brainer for them."

Gina says that with the coming of the imported brands to the local market and with a market that is now more than ever well traveled and well aware of the fashion scene abroad, consumers now look for the changing colors with every season abroad. Tango carries the "tropical version," meaning, it follows the colors of the foreign collections but not the fabric. Indeed, a consumer walking around Manila in a black heavy wool top in December would immediately be put in solitary confinement by the fashion police.

"I plan the colors before I go abroad to buy. Some buyers might buy first and then arrange it here. Not with me. I go with maybe eight storylines and the break them up into quantities even before I leave. So when I get there, the fun part na lang. Serious merchandising ng konti, kung hindi you end up with an inventory problem."

This is characteristic of Gina, who never fails to seriously study the market before making her move. Like when she was going to build Tango in Glorietta, Gina looked for inspiration in the US and Europe’s biggest stores like top American brand Gap; the Swedish fashion and cosmetic store H&M (Hennes and Mauritz), which follows Gap as the second biggest in the world; and the Spanish brand Zara.

Then, of course, there is the pair of chairs in Tango, the focal point of the space. Gina Rodriguez relates with a laugh, "When Tonichi (Mendoza) saw the chairs in Area, he called me up and said, we have to get these chairs. They were very expensive, pero pikit mata na lang."

The wax-white armchairs are called Dr. No and designed by that inimitable French designer Philippe Starck. (Interestingly, the table he designed to go with the Dr. No chair is called Dr. Na – that kind of humor is expected of the designer who’s designed everything, from toothbrush for Alessi to transparent chair for Kartell.)

One of Starck’s most famous designs, Dr. No is made of polypropylene with aluminum legs. Starck designed this comfortable stackable chair for Kartell in 1996. Designers have called it "an attempt to achieve near nothingness. The concept is that of a membrane, a plastic skin draped over the structure as simply as possible, able to mold itself to the body’s contours."

Almost as if they were made for a background such as Tango’s, the chairs not only provide function (husbands whose wives are busy browsing the racks of clothes are known to wait patiently in them) but also a takeoff point. Mendoza put the chairs facing each other, right behind the display window. The wax-white color goes very well with the backdrop: The only colors one will see are from the racks and on the glass display at the back end, which is filled with Tango’s luscious and unbelievably low-priced bead accessories.

Gina Rodriguez started in the fashion retail scene when she was in her early 20s. Having earned a degree in business at Assumption, getting married and having two children, she proceeded to go into business with her brother George, sisters Irene and Olive, and friend Doby Aranda to put up Kirei in the 1980s.

Kirei became one of the two big names in fashion retail (the other being Sari-Sari) and at one point, it was dressing practically all the celebrities on TV, from newscasters to sitcom actors. Back then, the standard line at the end of every talk show or variety show was, "I’d like to thank Kirei for my outfit tonight."

"Kirei was more fun," Gina reminisces. "We were young and reckless. The income was secondary."

After they sold Kirei to another company – "it was a time when we all wanted to do different and separate things" – Gina tried her hand at other businesses but it was fashion she was in love with. She describes it not unlike a relationship. "With the others, I felt nothing. With fashion, I was excited."

Gina says she gets her biggest thrill when she sees the positive response to something she hand-picked. "Yung bang kinagat yung gusto mo." She continues, "I must admit that for some time, I slacked off, but now I’m looking forward to expanding."

With the design of Tango, Gina gets a different sort of fulfillment: She has created visually appealing merchandise. And has breathed new life to a store that’s been around for nearly a dozen years.