The big move

In the fashion industry, you don’t get second chances," Mitzi Quillendrino-Bustos states succinctly. With a new collection in the offing and a recently-held fashion show debuting her clothes along with fellow Young Designers Guild (YDG) members at Fashion Week, the newly-married designer is aware of the pressure to keep up with the stylish Joneses.

Her newest cocktail collection, a ballet-inspired line, evokes the agile movements of dancers. Fabrics are fluid and light in a subdued palette of muted salmon, ballerina pink, powder blue, sea foam green, emerald, capuchin brown and khaki. Silhouettes are lean but graceful, almost frothy with the diaphanous fabrics creating a sheer veil over the closely cut shapes.

Mitzi’s line, while sophisticated, is not the high-minded fashion of the sort you see on socialites trotting off to Acapulco in a jet. "It’s for ladies who enjoy being pretty without much ado and fanfare," she explains. "The look is delicate but toned and agile." The luminous quality of the designs demonstrate a sensibility that is at once mature and knowing, while playful and sensitive to the evolving needs of women. A difficult thing to pull off for such a young designer, but one she attributes to her schooling at LaSalle College International.

It was after graduating from Ateneo de Manila with a degree in business management and attempting to make a living in the corporate sector for about five years that she decided to enter LaSalle, a move that boded well for this lowkey designer who opened her atelier one year into design school because she "thought it smart to learn the ropes of the business simultaneously with the skills (she) acquired in class." Armed with knowledge earned from classes as varied as patternmaking, draping, material research and couture techniques to the obligatory sewing and garment construction, she accepted orders from her family, friends and their referrals to pay for her studio’s upkeep.

Her training has served her well, as she has not only learned to construct sturdy dresses out of feathery-light fabric, but she has acquired a taste for well-finished garments. "We were taught never to write on the fabric," Mitzi states, "and to sew quarter or half-inch seams on a high-speed sewing machine by eye and to always come to class prepared en punto." Lessons, she learned, her clients appreciate. "People notice the clean seams and quality finishing."

Today, this designer, who earned her stripes on bridal wear, now creates custom-made designs by appointment. Her standard operating procedures include never copying other designers. "I’m a conscientious designer – or I strive to be. It’s important to me that clients get good value for what they pay for: professional personalized service, couture-quality finishing and highly individualized design." Even passing trends aren’t subject to her designs. "Trends are just barometers of where the winds of fashion evolution will blow next, and basically where the levels of consciousness and sentiments of the buying public are. These should be taken as fortune told: with enough curiosity and enough caution not to let it limit you."

Not surprising, coming from a designer who considers Balenciaga, the ’50s designer who joined the ranks of Elsa Schiaparelli, Chanel and Mainbocher as one of the most cutting-edge designers of his time, her design landmark. In the same way that fashion savants drool over Marc Jacobs’ kitschy prints or Luis Vuitton’s latest must-have bag, Mitzi worshipped the unflinching modernism of the celebrated designer. "I like what Cristobal Balenciaga did for the sleeves what Coco Chanel did for the little black dress. He reconfigured it and created what is, for me, the perfect shape. It psyches me up because he did it by pattern, which I love playing with. He opened up a lot of possibilities in terms of innovation in cuts and shapes. His aim of comfort and sophistication and fluidity of fashion reiterates my own."

For the summer months, she’s toying with stretch tulle, jersey and silk chiffon in candy striper colors, a selection of fabrics that’s sure to bring some fun – without being annoyingly quirky – into the mix.

With her clothes already covering runways and fashion magazines, it won’t be long until Mitzi will have a phalanx of devoted followers calling for truckloads of custom-made pieces. When that happens, you can be sure they won’t be knock-offs of the latest Style.com designer update. "I’m not one to follow trends. I’d rather make my own," Mitzi confidently states. "I’m in the business of setting you fabulously apart from the rest."

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Mitzi Quilendrino-Bustos can be reached at 0917-8996437. Contact Studio 546 at 638-3956.

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Special thanks to Saki Ramos of Ballet Philippines.