Surreal stories behind the gloss

I never thought I would end up working for a newspaper. In my delusional days I wanted to become a senator (age six), an actress (still an ongoing ambition that has its roots in unicorn land) or a fashion designer.

When I was 18, my mom told me I had to work and I became the chief random kid at the ABS-CBN newsroom fetching coffee, sometimes getting a break doing a small story, giving shoulder rubs, talking about myself and (the best part) watching the evening news air live every night. It was then that I felt life beginning. Of course on my first day, I wore a suit and brought an attaché case with only lip gloss and a copy of Vogue and GQ in it. It took seven seconds for me to realize that I was a fool, like always, and returned to the office the next day in slacks, a cardigan and loafers.

After screwing up as a reporter and even as a coffee fetcher (seriously, I don’t get why anyone would just not have skimmed milk in their coffee!), as much as I loved my colleagues (okay, “lords” since I was a major serf) Vince, Gidget, Daphne, Itos, Robert, Nina, Marie and the rest of the gang, we all knew if you can screw up doing a rave party report (I forgot to interview the foreign DJ), there was no place in newsroom heaven for you. I stayed there for almost a year, still the best year of my life when I think about it. I knew somehow that I was probably better off-cam. Thus my shift to newspaper world.

I worked on Teen Philippines, a mag then started by Ginggay Joven. I was so excited. At the first editorial meeting of Teen I just had to say, “I grew up reading Teen magazine and it’s an absolute honor,” in my best Oscar-shaky voice. Everyone, to say the least, was appalled. Or maybe just amused.

I had my first shoot. I had no clue what a pullout was. I just figured I could go in the store and snatch some stuff to shoot and return. A little cocky from my sojourn as a “news reporter,” I thought I knew it all and didn’t bother to ask the procedure. I wanted to impress my boss, after all. We were supposed to shoot makeup as candy. I thought it was brilliant when I thought about it: ice cream made from face cream with eye shadow sprinkles, lipstick bon-bons and some other retarded Willy Wonka ideas. I walked into the cosmetic store, picking up all the cosmetics and when they would not let me pull it all out, I cried, “I won’t steal them!” Mind you, I was still in my teens. I ended up buying the whole lot because the shoot was the next day and if I effed up an ice cream-inspired cosmetic story then there was no hope for me in this world. I had a firehouse cosmetic sale in the office four months later, when my boss was in a press lunch.

Then the same year I met Millet Mananquil in Stars (remember that resto?). We had a two-hour-long conversation and she asked me to send a sample article. I sent one and she surprisingly liked it. The first crease-free success in my career! Who said you can never meet your soul mate in a bar? She asked me to come up with a column title and my friend Joel and I brainstormed in Starbucks. We figured it was going to be about the days of an imbecile who was trying to be cool (me) and he brilliantly suggested “From Coffee to Cocktails.” Which was basically our lives. I remember going to Starbucks before work with my friends before work then meeting up in a bar for Extreme Happy Hour after work. (My body was so much more cooperative back then.)

It’s jarring to think this was almost 10 years ago! I wrote my first batch of articles while I was living in New York and my writing days were so much more anticipated than my Bungalow 8 nights. I saw everything as a topic, including the guy I kinda dated who had a 15-year-old son. Scandale. I fell in love with it. And when I returned from New York I was offered to do fashion editorials as well. I kept on using my friends as models, mainly because they were actually very cute people and I was more into the clothing.

Then YStyle happened and everything changed. The first cover was a decoupage piece of “art” of Nafsika Droussou done by me. It was not an Andy Warhol interview moment, but it was the beginning of the anti-elite fashion movement. Any serious fashion playmate who had no connections was welcome. Joey Samson, Kate Torralba, Yvonne Q, Patty Eustacquio et al were first featured by us. Mark Nicdao did most of his early work with us. These were also the pages where Ria Bolivar first strutted her stuff, a shy Georgina Wilson posed for the camera for the first time and Olivia Oli first came out covered in Post-Its after I spotted her in a mall. It was also where the revolutionary HG team composed of Erwin Romulo and Juan Caguicla added their sepia magic to the mainstream.

It was magic, but behind the gloss were truly surreal stories. One was a shoot with a now major international model then just starting out. A little psycho as most beautiful women are, she was bipolar at every layout. I put her in these hypnotically beaded pants and she screamed in delight and told the designer he was a genius. The designer, so smitten with the compliments of this outstanding beauty, gave her the pants on the spot. When the next layout called for hot pants she started yelling at him, “You’re stereotyping me! I’m not a whooooooore!” They proceeded to do a tug of war with the beaded pants when the designer decided to get his present back from Ms. Bipolar Hottie. Then she smacked me with the hot pants.

Another was a young model in her early teens, maybe 13, who was smoking cigarettes during a shoot. Like chain smoking. She was French, after all. If kids could booze there with their folks why not add the yin to the yang? I was itching for a cigarette myself but despite my rather boho view of the world I just could not bring myself to nick a cig from a major minor. This would have made a good anti-smoking ad campaign. The perils of smoking.

In this ride we also had events, one major one being produced by the HG team that featured avant-garde fashion shows inspired by movies. We sent out invitations and despite being quite the party girl, I was certainly on my feet as the hostess. (A guest, I was not.) The invitations were sent in handwritten envelopes — not calligraphy, more like serial killer-scrawled font by Bea Ledesma and myself. It was kind of hilarious. Especially when we dared to send the Manson-penned invites to Pauline Suaco of Preview and Anton San Diego of Philippine Tatler who have always made their events into key life moments. Bea and I got so stressed at the event that we went inside my car in the middle of it all and hugged and cried. It was a hilarious moment.

Fashion is fun when you don’t take it seriously. In the end the humor and the authentic wit that only comes from authentic experience is what style makes. No matter how gutter it may be.