By Büm D. Tenorio Jr.
A thousand and one silk threads, and certainly more, make up the tapestry of Jeannie Goulbourn’s life.
(Top by SILK COCOON; earrings and ring by MILADAY JEWELS)
(Dress by SILK COCOON and jewelry by MILADAY JEWELS)
Joy is embroidered on her sleeves, very close to her heart. The bodice of her dreams is dyed to become a perfect pattern of reality. Pain is just an applique but she sews it well to become part of her total design. The hemline of her life is stitched well flouncing, prancing. Her verve is structured without a lint. Her childlike bliss irons out the creases in her humanity; it is the same infectious happiness that forms the silhouette of her life.
Jeannie is both a fashion designer and a crusader of life. The former lounges in her DNA. The latter is brought about by her close brush with the human beings fragile life and her desire to protect and preserve it. That she can think of seven different concepts all at the same time and process them all with finite results is a gift tempered by both her genes and her experiences in life.
My grandmother Titay (Lim) taught me to cut my first shorts when I was 12 and a half years old. As a very young girl growing up in Legazpi City, I was exposed to my grandma, aunt Lourdes and my mom (Amy) who exchanged notes on what to cut and sew for the day. Later on, I would learn from German nuns at St. Agnes Academy, my grade school, how to embroider Spanish veils and make lace, begins Jeannie, founder and president of the fashion company Silk Cocoon that makes stunning and intricate dresses, gowns and barong Tagalogs. She runs the company with her equally lovely and hard-working sister Frances Lim.
At 15, she sold her first dress. It was also at this age when she enrolled and learned to make patterns at Slims Fashion and Arts School in Manila, whose founders Salvacion Lim Higgins and Purificacion Lim, are the sisters of Jeannie’s father, Joseph Lim, a businessman.
“When I was 20, with full bangs and a bob, I left for Europe as one of the Philippine top models. The European paparazzi went gaga over my Chinese eyes. I also enjoyed modeling for Pitoy Moreno, enjoying 10 weeks of modeling in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Hawaii and other US cities. I roomed in with Chona Kasten and Pearlie Arcache,” she reminisces with glee.
Jeannie, always hungry for knowledge, took up a one-year program at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She laughs remembering that she got A++ in pattern making and draping but a grade of C in nude drawing! She was allowed by her parents to stay in New York for five years, beginning 1968, because her aunt Louise Jerome supported her dreams and taught her to be street-smart.
In New York, she rose from being a secretary to assistant fashion editor at McCalls Magazine, a monthly American women’s magazine that enjoyed supreme popularity through much of the 20th century. She was the first Asian hire. “I worked with the best—Shana Alexander, magazine EIC and Time Life writer; Virginia Steel; Richard Avedon; Lauren Hutton; Julia Child (Oh, Julia Child was divine! How she used to thank me for doing my job well.); among other great writers and photographers.”
Jeannie adds, “My job at the magazine opened doors for me. I gained confidence and felt like a small curious girl in a toy store. I loved every moment of my five years in New York that further shaped who I am today. Nothing was impossible in New York. It was a city of possibilities. I learned discipline and leadership and never to be shy to give an opinion.”
Jeannie was Alice in Wonderland in New York. But in 1973, she had to come back to the Philippines for a two-month sabbatical. In Manila, she met Cid Goulbourn, a Canadian who was the VP for general insurance of AIG and PhilAm Gen. A hundred days after meeting Cid, she married him. “It was cultural adjustment,” she says with hearty laughter.
Later on, she enjoyed Manila all the more, especially when she became consultant for SM in 1975. What fun it was to be working with SM. It was a new playground. It was at its birthing stage as Shoemart was planning to change its brand to SM. Tessie Sy-Coson and her dad, Henry Sy, trusted me to head the creative department. I was also involved in marketing and media.
“My brand JmGoulbourn, too, was born in SM. I began with 80 pieces in one store. Twenty-five years after, we had 23,000 pieces in 14 boutiques, seven factories and 1,300 workers. That was beyond my dream,” she says. Ten years ago, she stopped operating JmGoulbourn.
She admits that Silk Cocoon made her a real designer. From having 10 looms, Silk Cocoon, at its height, had 80 looms producing 80 percent interior or home textile and 20 percent fashion textile, selling at 400 euros a meter. She felt like a child weaving her own fabrics, dyeing and choosing from 2,000 colors to suit the skin tones of her clients. She researched further to perfect not only silk but also abaca and pineapple fibers as materials for her clothing designs.
So successful Silk Cocoon was that the genius of Jeannie was utilized by President Fidel V. Ramos when his administration tapped Jeannie to design and make barongs for the heads of state participating in the 1996 APEC summit in Subic. Her theme for the barong was ‘Windows to the World.’ And as testament to the success of her creativity, US President Bill Clinton approached her, shook her hand and profusely thanked her for creating a wonderful barong Tagalog design for him.
Jeannie never forgot to celebrate her successes with her husband Cid. They were blessed with two girls, Natasha and Katrina, the apples of their eyes, the love of their lives, the light bulbs in their home.
Until one day, 14 years ago, 27-year-old Natasha took her own life. She suffered from depression.
Jeannie was filled with guilt, anguish and pain. “Were Cid and I not parenting well? What happened? Was I too busy a mother?” I questioned God.
She found the answers when she founded the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation (NGF) in 2003. The foundation, populated by volunteer psychiatrists and psychologists, helps give advice and guidance to those undergoing clinical depression and their families. The NGF has helped save many lives that the acronym is also known now as New Good Feelings.
Eight years ago, she also put up Global Vital Source, a wellness company.
She also involved herself with Hopeline 24/7, an emotional crisis help line with branches in Metro Manila and Metro Cebu, manned the whole day by experts who speak seven Filipino dialects. Because of this help line, Jeannie and her group have come up with the Wellness Emotional Resiliency Manual. “We will share this manual with the Department of Education to further address the anxiety and depression of young students,” says Jeannie, who was once bullied in grade school in Legazpi City when some of her classmates put chewing gum on her chair and called her Intsik Baboy (Chinese swine).
In spite of her experiences, Jeannie says, “We have to feel good about life. She confidently adds that despite empty nesting now after Cid passed away two years ago (her daughter Katrina Feist lives with her husband and two kids in Alabang), she can honestly say life is good.”
“We do have the privilege to leave a legacy behind. Our names are not important. I can be anonymous. But it is so important that mental health is given importance and respect because we function to the extent of how our brains can make us act, react to situations, to dreams, to visions. It truly will make us think out of the box and experience life with its surprises and joys once we get to understand and know our mental attitudes. And what a privilege it is to feel whole and live life with new possibilities,” Jeannie says.
Morning and night, Jeannie says, her life is filled with prayers of gratitude and asking for forgiveness. “I am most grateful for a lifetime of joy and happiness,” she says.
She has found new joy now in the arms and lilting voice of her three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter Karine, daughter of Katrina. They play at the park. They sing together. They horse around the house. She dresses her up. Karine lights Jeannie’s world anew. Jeannie is a child again.
As she holds tight to the child in her, Jeannie cocoons in her dreams of making life better, not anymore for herself but for others. Then she flies with joy in her heart knowing that in the hemlines of the people’s consciousness she has made an impact to better their lives, one silk thread at a time.
Photography by DAN YUSAY HARVEY / Hair and Makeup by Erwin Oning
