Fashion Week 1960: The way they wore

For those of you who don’t know, it is Manila Fashion Week. Now, just to make it clear, I’m not a fashionista. My sartorial inclinations are limited in style to Kuya Kim-jungle wear with a general palette (as my better half always says) that is always the color of dirt. This is because of my bachelor days when I bought khakis, green or earth-toned slacks and shirts, even underwear in beige or similar colors, so that you could throw all of the stuff into the washing machine without any fear.

I latched on to this week’s theme because of an old article that shows us how we started on this road to the annual Fashion Week and because it involved Philippine cities.

Haute couture and the seasonal spectacle of fashion shows started in the late Fifties. We had by then recovered from the war enough to get back to luxuries and high society was able to indulge once more in ostentatious displays. This was the time when designers like Pitoy Moreno, Ben Farrales, and Aureo Alonso started to make waves and little shows, mostly in Manila, were held in restaurants and hotels.

The nascent fashion movement reached a tipping point when at the end of 1959, an organizer made plans for a fashion show intended to travel to major cities all around the Philippines. With the help of Philippine Airlines, the show, called “Fashion on Wings,” was launched in the summer of 1960. It was a stunning success.

The tour was featured in a weekly magazine with an article by Nati Nuguid (I love this name, given that I am a sucker for alliteration). Her piece “How Fashion Conscious Are The Filipinos? “made clear the fact that Filipinos were aware and appreciative of Filipino fashion design.

The tour, Nuguid reported, brought high fashion for the first time to cities such as Davao, Butuan, Zamboanga, Bacolod, Iloilo, and Baguio. The troupe was composed of Aureo Alonso, Nomer Pabilona (hairstylist), Ben Farrales, Bert Hernandez, Arturo Cruz, Karlos, Casimiro Nuguid and Pitoy Moreno. There were eight models whose ranks were made up of “a national beauty and several popular society figures.” Modeling was not a full profession then.

The tour also started the trend for these shows to be held as “charity events.” It also served to “put the national spotlight on the cities in the itinerary of the traveling fashion show.”

The shows were mounted in several types of venues. In Davao, it was the CYO Center where the “bleachers were filled to the rafters.” In Zamboanga, it was held at the Ateneo gymnasium. In Tacloban, they converted a huge aircraft hangar for the show.

Nuguid commented: “In most of the cities visited, the crowds were composed of men and women in almost the same proportions, and it is a toss-up whether the men came to gape at the gowns or at the models. One Cagayan de Oro male confessed: “First, I looked at the face, then at the dress, then I looked at the legs, and boy, it was legs, legs, legs until they disappeared from the stage.” Whether this particular male was in the minority or not, it is a fact that one of the most frequently applauded items in the show was not a model but a gown — a Bert Hernandez confection called the Rose and modeled by one-time Miss Luzon Encarnita Biera.”

The highlight was reported as follows: “Encarnita, first appearing onstage draped in a deep strawberry cape, would draw a round of applause. The applause would fade off as she walked down the ramp. At the foot of the ramp, Encarnita would pause, slowly unfold her cape, turn around, and the goose-flesh-raising round of oohs, followed by thunderous clapping of hands would start and spread as Encarnita would expose into full view of the hall — a form-fitting fluted strapless dress of organza with a row of intricately worked roses at the hipline, really a thing of beauty, a joy to behold.”

The show and the joyous beholding started in Cebu. The largest audience was in the then new Araneta Coliseum with a reported 25,000 people in attendance! The favorite creations included “one debutante’s frock into the sleeves of which had gone 20 yards of tulle cleverly cut and sewn together to undulate like leaves of an open book…a cocktail dress of saguran beaded and embroidered lavishly …Aureo Alonso’s interpretation of the wood rose, got for the model Norma Serafica much applause …a ball gown by Pitoy Moreno that had called for 500 yards of stiffened lace and looked it, drew prolonged clapping every time Jojo Kierulf appeared in it …a Ben Faralles creation — a stunning indigo blue formal evening gown inspired by the Mindanao woman’s malong was well admired.”

Nuguid’s conclusion was: “The almost uniform reception accorded the outstanding items in the collection was certainly indicative of the fact the Filipino is fashion-conscious...” She also highlighted the use of native motifs and materials in innovative ways, including the modern terno and abaca “that shimmers like lame.”

Philippine fashion has grown by leaps and bounds since the ’60s. It is a billion-peso industry. Whole sections of broadsheets like The Philippine STAR support it and glossy magazines like the pioneering Mega (flagship fashion publication of the MMPI group whose BluPrint magazine I edit) define a modern Filipino culture and taste for seasonal change.

This change has included the elevation of fashion design and its designers to the rank of National Artist. This has been controversial mainly because the award has been grouped with architecture and its allied arts. Fashion design, I believe, deserves its own category. Its scale and scope, materials and processes differ enough from the art of creating buildings, landscapes, and cities to justify separate recognition.

It must be recognized that all design nowadays is fashion or subject to the whims and globalized consumerism engendered by fashion. To mitigate the “fashionable” trend of planned obsolescence, Philippine architecture and its allied arts, along with Philippine fashion, too, should take stock of where it is and where it is going.

We, in the creative fields should answer the questions: Have we truly created a Filipino fashion? A Filipino architecture? A Filipino identity? Have we evolved enough to stop copying western styles and looks for fashion (or architecture)? Have we abandoned the practice of deifying foreign designers and looking down on our own by constantly comparing them to couturiers (or architects) of Paris and New York? If the answer is no, then what we have is Fashion Weak (or weak architecture), and a decade more of fashion (or architecture) weeks or more National Artists will not make a difference.

* * *

Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at Paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.