It’s not a show, the London-based Filipino designer, at the end of his recent presentation that capped off the three-day Bench Fashion Week, insisted, but a celebration. After having gone through all the “negativity” that the pandemic has brought, he thought that staging a purely “fashion” fashion show would have been “shallow.”
By Alex Y. Vergara
“It wasn’t a fashion show!” So, said London-based Filipino designer Lesley Mobo as soon as PeopleAsia caught up with him at the end of his recent, ah, show at the Bench Playground in Bonifacio Global City. Dubbed as “Masaganang Bukid,” the event, from the live music provided by a traditional town band to the fiesta-like atmosphere the models and colorful clothes they wore evoked, was a fitting conclusion to the recent three-day Bench Fashion Week.
“The entire effort was less about showing clothes per se, but more about creating feelings,” Lesley explained, summing up his 32-look collection, which includes 11 printed and tiered ternos, three of which were inspired by the gigantes of Quezon province. To achieve the effect, director Robby Carmon asked three female models to stand up presumably on the broad shoulders of three brawny men. We say presumably because whoever were carrying the three terno-clad ladies were hidden underneath tiers of multicolored fabrics, which doubled as skirts.
The rest of the models, including former beauty queens Ariella Arida and Katrina Llegado, as well as comedienne Maine Mendoza, either wore Lesley’s trademark printed ternos with draped skirts and oversized butterfly sleeves or his recently launched ready-to-wear collection for Bench consisting of separates like bomber jackets, pullovers, shirts, shorts, pants and skirts in the boldest of fiesta colors like neon green, fuchsia pink, red and canary yellow.
In keeping with the theme, models smiled, sashayed and skipped instead of strutted with a pout on the runway while the town band from Carmona, Cavite played traditional Pinoy folk tunes, which were later mashed up with OPM dance classics like Sumayaw Sumunod, Swing it Baby and Bongga ka ’Day, among others.
The ladies carried either woven fans, baskets of native veggies, or bilao-full of uncooked rice, while their male counterparts carried miniature animal figures made of papier-mâché.
Except for his newly launched RTW separates for Bench, Lesley insisted that “I didn’t show anything new because a terno is a terno,” referring to his Filipina-meets-Hawaiian interpretation of the national dress, which he has been promoting on social media and selling for several seasons now.
“During the pandemic, a lot of my friends and family members were affected,” he reflected. “We’ve all lost either someone close to us or someone we know. In short, it was such a terrible time. So, when Ben (Chan) hatched the idea of us staging a show, I told him I don’t want to strictly do a fashion show. That would have been too shallow. What I wanted was a celebration.”
If there’s one thing Lesley reaffirmed for himself during the past two years or so, “life is short,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen to us. We might as well set aside all the negativity and simply enjoy the moment.”
During a lull in the pandemic, Lesley was able to fly back to London where he again got stuck for more than a year. Finally, when restrictions were beginning to ease, Ben and certain key people from Bench were able to visit Lesley there where they broached the idea of him doing a collection.
“I said yes, but I wanted it to be Filipino-inspired,” he said. “Ben agreed before he later brought up the idea of doing a fashion show featuring the collection.”
Staging a show was so last-minute, Lesley added, that he barely had time to do the ternos. Af for the RTW pieces, Lesley, with Bench’s creative team at his disposal, did all the designs, including hand-drawing all the logos and graphics as well as selecting the colors and fabrics, a few weeks back.
“When we all realized that we had less than six to seven days to do it, I told everyone involved to gather all the possible materials, which we could cut and turn into ternos,” he said with a laugh. “Still, I insisted on staging a celebration, through the clothes, music and spectacle of it all, instead of just a show. I told Ben, let’s aim for something happy, colorful and loud because I don’t want to dwell on the pandemic’s negativity any more.”
Despite being pressed for time, it was a happy problem that allowed Lesley to once more go crazy, but in a very good way. Certainly a far cry “from all the craziness,” in his words, that rocked the entire world in the recent past.
