Girl against the machine

MANILA, Philippines - I expected a different kind of entrance from Dominique Cojuangco. One like the struts and strides I witnessed Barretto women make. Her cousin Julia, current apple of the public eye, flitted into a studio like Daisy Buchanan cutting through a ballroom. A girl who lives to harvest glances. Aunt Claudine was one for more gracious entry. A conservative smile of acknowledgment shone on her face, similar to most politicians’ wives. Then there’s mom Gretchen, a whirlwind whipping through with bold gestures and an air of dominion. An object that no matter your disapproval, you can’t help but be transfixed by.

You’d expect the daughter of a woman whose nickname brings to mind fierce climate change to be a force of nature. Instead, Dominique walks in unassumingly, gum in her mouth and a hesitance in her stance; as if physically thrust into this studio, toward the makeup chair, to the spot in front of the camera we ask her to stand on. Of course, photo shoots and the like would be unnerving if you were spared from them all your life. “They wanted me to have as normal a life as possible,” Dominique says of her parents, the tempestuous actress known in showbiz as La Greta and magnate Tonyboy Cojuangco. “I’ve never done any sort of advertising just because my parents tried to keep me away from that.”

Visiting from London, where Dominique studies fashion design at the vaunted Instituto Marangoni, a little more attention these days is acceptable. The 19-year-old was recently launched as an endorser for Bench’s new whitening lotion, a request from CEO Ben Chan, who she considers an uncle. It was a proper debut in the limelight after years of cultivating a social media persona that’s earned a 200,000-strong following on Instagram. Besides the rich-bitch paraphernalia of designer bags and jewelry, you got a glimpse into a teen life of pigging out on junk food, fangirling over Pretty Little Liars (star Shay Mitchell is an acquaintance) and reveling lightheartedly in the company of family (all of them famous). A girl the public first discovered amid the sordid backdrop of gossip had turned out a fine young lady. Her life was charmed, yes, but pretty normal, too, you realized. And normal is how she’d like to keep it.

 â€œWalking around London, I was a little more comfortable because it felt like I could be whoever I wanted to be and nobody would be able to judge me because they don’t know who I am,” she says of embracing anonymity, her voice luscious, her cadence thoughtful, like someone prone to daydreaming. In school, she’s assumed a Hannah Montana-like existence and kept Dominique, Showbiz Daughter, under wraps. “I don’t want my friends knowing… I don’t know what they would think of it so I just try to keep quiet. Especially when they ask me for my Instagram. I just say I don’t know what my username is.”

And if a friend stumbled upon her account, given her straightforward username? “I have a really techie best friend and they rigged it,” she says, laughing at the absurd explanation. “No, I’m just kidding. I’d explain it but I’d probably try to make it vague.”

 For now, Dominique is responsible for her own narrative, for where she ends up and how she gets there. Far from the days her mom chaperoned her to school, Dominique ventures out on her own. “I never had to pay attention to directions here. I just tell people where I want to be,” she says of her cushy commute in Manila, a world away from navigating the tube in London. “I’ve had the experience of getting lost and trying to find my way around — and that’s been nice, I guess.”

In London, mistakes have been made. Struggles with the sewing machine, lessons in resourcefulness such as scratching SoHo off as a place to buy fabric (“I didn’t know there were places you could go to pay a pound a meter.”) It also isn’t easy being the only Filipino and what seems like the only non-smoker in school. “(The students) don’t eat. They smoke and they drink coffee so that’s something I had to adapt to,” says Dominique, who opts instead for a good breakfast and a proper chat with whoever’s stuck around indoors. “I’m usually a very shy person so knowing that I don’t smoke and they’ll all be talking outside, I try to not make that bother me at all. I’m not going to smoke just to make friends. I don’t think that’s what real friendship’s about.”

The cool kids can smoke their lungs out for all she cares. When possible, she’d rather chow down with the people closest to her: Ladurée macaron runs when mom’s in town or late-night trips to Shakey’s with her cousins, all of them in house clothes, drowning the place in girlish chatter. Then again, without her family close by, retail has become refuge.

Harrod’s, London’s high-end department store, is the Tiffany’s to her Holly Golightly. “I don’t buy anything — I can’t afford it. But I do like looking,” says Dominique, who’ll have a bite at the emporium’s food court before losing herself among new collections from the likes of Alaïa, Balenciaga, and Dolce & Gabbana. “Their work right now is absolutely amazing,” she says of D&G. “What I’m drawn to is their ability to use themes like Catholicism and not make it look costume-y. There’s a really fine line between high fashion and costume, I feel, and I think that their ability to balance that is really impeccable.”

 An internship with the duo-designed label might be in the cards upon graduation. And though she’s literally distanced herself from it, even showbiz could be a possibility. “Right now, I’m focusing on my studies and all that but I do remember when I was younger, I wanted to get into musical theater, so you never know,” she says, not totally shutting out the industry that introduced fashion to her in the first place through her mom’s rack of ASAP outfits.  

As Dominique weaves in and out of two realities, what matters is that the decisions she makes and path she treads are all her own. “I was walking with my friends and it was breezy and sunny and it just felt so free,” she says, recalling one particular jaunt through Hyde Park. “I looked back just to make sure there were no guards or anything, I guess ‘cause I was so used to it. It was so new to me.” She pauses, surveying her reflection in the mirror as makeup artist Patrick Rosas, a longtime friend of her mother’s, hovers from behind. “But I don’t think I’ve ever told myself, ‘Oh I’m not coming back. (Manila) is home for sure, but it made me think of staying longer than I had planned.”

London looks good on her, no doubt, but that sense of place and sensibility — well, Dominique wears that quite nicely, too.

Photos by ROY MACAM, Produced by RAYMOND ANG Makeup and hair by PATRICK ROSAS