A publicity stunt or simply an extension of his boundless creativity? The jury is still out. The fashion designer who once made headlines in 2018 by creating Catriona Gray’s lava-red evening dress for the Miss Universe finals is again in the news with his Swarovski-beaded, P25,000 face mask. Who is Mak Tumang and how did he start in the seemingly glamorous but competitive fashion biz? PeopleAsia takes you back.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article first appeared on the February-March 2019 issue of PeopleAsia magazine.
By ALEX Y. VERGARA
Photography by MARK CHESTER ANG
With the last of the biggest global beauty pageants behind us, the “beau con” season in this beauty contest-crazy country is once again on the ebb. For wannabe beauty queens, now is the perfect time to prepare, including finding the right fashion designer to collaborate with for that knockout evening gown.
But if they’re eyeing the support of Mak Tumang, they’re better off looking elsewhere. The Pampangueño designer behind Catriona Gray’s much talked about “Ibong Adarna” and “lava” gowns has no intentions of dressing up any beauty queen aspirant between now and until the reigning Miss Universe 2018 passes on her crown. And he’s doing it for a good reason.
Exactly a month after Catriona won for the Philippines its fourth Miss Universe crown, PeopleAsia travels 70 kms. north to Mexico, Pampanga, a first-class municipality adjacent to the bigger, more populous city of San Fernando, where Mak not only hails from, but also runs a shop with Neo-Baroque interiors and a well-lighted production area manned by 30 people dressed in white lab coats. Both his atelier-slash-office and work spaces are located within the family compound.
“Even before Cat won in Bangkok, I already turned down a number of requests from aspiring beauty queens and their handlers na bihisan ko sila (for me to dress them up),” Mak shares in a mix of Filipino and English. “I want to focus muna and maintain the Catriona brand since I would also be doing her homecoming outfits and farewell gowns for Binibining Pilipinas and Miss Universe.”
Champion thoroughbred
Indeed, why waste time, energy and money betting on a horse with no proven track record when you already have a champion thoroughbred in the person of Catriona?
Besides, Mak doesn’t want a repeat of his past experiences when certain beauty queens, either through their beauty queen training camps or their local pageant directors, promised him that they’d wear his creations only for him to discover on pageant night that the brand new gowns he lovingly made for them pro bono were ditched in favor of other designers’ works.
Cary Santiago among his idols, with model Dinara Abdullina, wearing the designer’s magenta gown with a tted, strapless crystal- embellished bodice and ared skirt hemmed with French lace
Who are these characters? Mak is such a gentleman to go on record, but after learning what designers like him go through, you’d readily understand his reluctance.
He also did a gown for Catriona supposedly meant for the Miss World 2016 finals. At least, that was what her handlers made him believe. Instead, she wore it to a post-contest party celebrating her rival’s victory. In short, the gown’s exposure wasn’t maximized. That was why Mak was a bit more affront with Catriona when she first approached him this time around.
“The good thing about it was our collaboration was now limited between the two of us,” says Mak.
In the process, he also saw her public persona’s evolution from sweet, the standard in Miss World, to fierce, the way Miss Universe wants its winners. But on a person-to-person level, Mak vouches for Catriona’s sincerity.
“You could readily sense this when you talk to her,” he says. “I believe her sincerity was the primary reason why she won Miss Universe. She also knows how to loosen up and have fun. Our fittings were very informal.”
Unlike before when Mak dealt with other people, this time, Catriona, who did away with her old beauty queen training camp by forming her own, communicated directly with him. Except for Caloy Buendia Jr., Catriona’s catwalk coach, no one in her new camp had any idea what her gowns would look like almost up to the very end.
“They finally got to see Catriona wearing the lava gown during a final look test we did. Even then, Caloy and I had to temporarily confiscate their cell phones just to make sure,” Mak says laughing.
More than a year in the making
Catriona and Mak’s collaboration actually began more than a year ago, as the designer also did the beaded gold gown his now world-famous muse wore to Binibining Pilipinas on her way to clinching the Miss Universe Philippines crown.
blue o -shoulder number embellished with countless crystals and feather-like details, for Miss World Philippines 2015 Hillarie Parungao
Not counting the time and man-hours he and his team spent researching and creating the three Swarovski- and pearl-studded gowns Catriona brought with her to Miss Universe (she has yet to wear a spare gown Mak dubbed “Perla Oriente”), the 32-year-old designer invested a little over a million pesos in what has been so far the biggest gambit of his life.
“Sugal talaga (it was really a big gamble),” he says with a chuckle. “Before our collaboration began, I even studied couture embroidery at Central Saint Martins for two weeks.”
Even before Mak (his real name is Mark, but his parents affectionately called him Makmak, the second in a brood of five, as a child) became a household name, his fairly affluent family is already known in this corner of Pampanga, thanks to his dad Teddy, the town mayor since 2004.
Like a typical Filipino father, Teddy at first didn’t like the idea of little Makmak showing interest in women’s clothes. There was even a time when Mak got his share of spanking after his father caught him fashioning dresses for Barbie dolls.
“Pero ngayon, hindi na (but now, not anymore),” says Mak, who grew up and learned the rudiments of cutting fabrics and using the sewing machine by observing his grandmother. “In fact, he’s very proud of what I’ve become. And that pride swells even more whenever his constituents mention me to him.”
His mother, for a totally different reason, wasn’t initially too keen either when Mak started to pursue a fashion design career sometime in 2009. Before that, Mak, who was initially drawn to production design, was a constant figure at their parish church, as he conceptualized various looks and themes for the main and side altars during town fiestas and Holy Week.
“Unlike most of my colleagues, I wasn’t really into fashion and trends when I was younger. My first business before I became a full-time designer was dressing up religious images. Up to now, I still do,” says the devout Roman Catholic.
No altar chic
Surprisingly, none of his labor-intensive made-to-order gowns betray obvious signs of “altar chic” resulting from his previous background dressing up, say, a statue of Jesus Christ or the Blessed Virgin Mary in velvet and embroidered finery. If there’s one commonality between his two pursuits, apart from the collaborative effort, cost and long hours they entail to finish, both require attention to details.
“That’s why I’m no longer doing wedding entourages because I want to focus mainly on the bride,” says Mak, who also does couture gowns for debutantes as well as their mothers and grandmothers. Although he doesn’t do casual and ready-to-wear dresses, Mak doesn’t mind collaborating with a store or brand someday to produce a more wearable and affordable capsule collection for the mass market.
His mother’s initial reluctance was quite understandable. When Mak was just an industry newbie, he received one of his first major rejections from the hands of people behind one of those annual fashion weeks. He was most probably rejected because he had yet to run a legitimate fashion business to back up his vision. Seeing the effect it had on Mak, his mother encouraged him to pursue something else. Well meaning as it was, such an unsolicited advice hurt him even more.
“She was just being honest,” he shares. “She didn’t want to see me experiencing setbacks and getting hurt. But that episode didn’t stop me. In fact, it even fueled me to further pursue fashion.”
Soon after, a friend introduced him to a leading fashion editor. That started it. Before long, Mak was being asked by a number of fashion glossies to send them pieces he designed and created for their fashion editorials. It didn’t take long before the budding designer opened a small shop in Metro Manila.
Back to his roots
Two years later, sometime in 2012, Mak decided to close his shop and move back to Pampanga to open up a bigger atelier there. It was also a tactical decision on his part, as he wanted to corner the lucrative Northern Luzon market, particularly his fellow Kapampangans. Through the years, his shop, office and production area have expanded.
These days, he spends part of his waking hours planning the museum he intends to build someday in a separate location. Of course, three of its featured pieces would be gowns Catriona wore at Miss Universe.
“I really feel comfortable and at home here,” he says. “I felt so stressed while I was in Manila. Feeling ko, tatanda ako agad (I’d age there before my time). But I’ve maintained a small condo unit at Rockwell where I’d sometimes go on Sundays to attend to client fittings.”
Painfully shy and soft-spoken when dealing with strangers, Mak confesses that he still has to get used to all the attention. “Masasanay rin siguro ako (I’ll probably get used to it eventually),” says the Production Design graduate of the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde before breaking into boyish giggles.
“When I went back to my hotel in Bangkok after the contest, I was surprised to receive congratulatory tokens from the hotel’s management,” he continues. Apparently, the Thais had learned who Mak was from the numerous phone calls they got from inquiring Filipino journalists.
That was around 2 p.m. By evening, Mak began facing the first of several interviewers who flew in straight from Manila. The windfall from all his hard work had begun. On his way back to Manila a few days later, several Thai airport personnel in Bangkok recognized him. When they requested to have their pictures taken with him, Mak readily obliged.
And how has Mak Tumang’s life changed since that fateful day? “Not much,” he says. “There have been plenty of inquiries from potential clients. But I have yet to sit down and fully assess it. And, yes, I now also have to look presentable all the time in public. ’Di na ako pwedeng naka pangbahay lang (I can’t go out anymore wearing house clothes) even when I’m doing minor errands.” Other than that, it’s all been good.
Art direction by Ramon Joseph J. Ruiz
Makeup by Erwin Oning
Hair by Aloja Carvajal
Model: Dinara of Mercator
