Yes, that’s the latest number of islands that now reportedly make up the Philippine archipelago from which Rajo Laurel, Red Charity Gala’s latest featured designer, drew inspiration from. And he backed this up by tapping the country’s weavers and making them develop new and breathtakingly beautiful fabrics. Admirable as it was, the scale of his ambition became both the source of his collection’s strength as well as its weakness.
By Alex Y. Vergara
Knowing how people put a great deal of emphasis on round figures and certain milestones in our lives—from, say, our 25th wedding anniversary to our 50th birthday—a lot was riding on Kaye Tinga and Tessa Prieto-Valdes’ most recent Red Charity Gala at Marriott Hotel Manila’s grand ballroom.
Not only did the annual event, which again sought to raise funds for charity through a series of auctions and by showcasing the works of a Filipino fashion designer, celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, its featured talent, the versatile and prolific Rajo Laurel, was also marking his 25th year in the business.
It was also a homecoming of sorts for Rajo, technically the very first featured designer in the annual gala fashion show. But since Kaye and Tessa weren’t on top of the then little-known Philippine Red Cross charity ball’s first iteration, Rajo’s star turn 11 years ago didn’t seem to count.
Now that it did, one of the country’s most popular and most financially successful designers didn’t miss the opportunity to pull out all the stops to produce a 92-piece collection aptly inspired by the country’s “archipelago.”
With the help of the show’s director, Robby Carmona, stylist Pam Quiñones and even Nix Alañon, Rajo’s partner, the designer, with great difficulty, says he was able to edit out no less than 25 looks. Yes, if not for these people, Rajo would have unleashed 117 looks down that huge runway.
Still, considering that the typical fashion gala consists of between 40 and 50 pieces, 92 looks were still a lot to digest. The collection, he adds, was made of 75 percent local and indigenous materials. The rest consisted of various fabrics and embellishments the designer sourced from abroad.
“I tapped various weaving communities all over the country,” Rajo shares with PeopleAsia. “The most notable of which were the abaca weavers from Abra that I worked with to create fabrics, which I infused with new materials and modern techniques like copper wire, fish wire, nylon wire and plastic.”
He also tapped weavers from the Cordilleras, Miagao in Iloilo and Davao. The entire process, he says, took all of 18 months, from research and development, to actually working with the weavers and seeing their samples.
Indeed, you may or may not be a big fan of Rajo, but one thing we can say for sure about him: he, along with countless others, stayed, practiced his craft in the country and, despite all the challenges and limitations such a decision entailed, made it work.
Rajo, like many of his colleagues who chose to stay put, didn’t need Middle East tycoons and members of royalty’s nearly limitless financial backing and easy access to all those exquisite fabrics and Swarovski crystals from Europe to grow his business and advance his art.
In other words, it was quite admirable and fitting for him to distill the best of the Philippines, through its unsung weavers, to produce such a mammoth collection. We have to give it to him. Like almost everything he sets his mind on, Rajo, more often than not, is able to rise up to the challenge.
“I actually didn’t work with what is available, but instead developed materials and pushed them (weavers) into incorporating new techniques. Basically, it was introducing new elements in the weaving process,” he says.
“If you looked closely, the silver ternos were actually made of strips of leather woven with rayon,” he continues, referring to his futuristic, almost Pierre Cardin-esque take on the country’s national dress. “We also used very thin strips of recycled plastic for some of the ruffled pieces.”
Admirable as it was, the scale of Rajo’s ambition became both the source of his collection’s strength as well as its weakness.
Rajo did a great deal of pleating and fabric manipulation to produce visually arresting pieces that reminded us of Issey Miyake, Christian Dior and some of the most iconic fashion designers, both living and dead, from Europe and Japan. And we mean that in a good way.
(Point us to any local designer whose works haven’t been influenced by the West, and we’ll point you to a loincloth maker from any of our indigenous tribal communities.)
Although the silhouettes and the styling were still very Western, Rajo’s use of indigenous materials and treatments were certainly not. And going “indigenous,” by the way, also presents its own set of pitfalls, especially in the hands of the inexperienced and the unimaginative, which Rajo certainly isn’t.
Every collection has its fair share of challenging looks to piece together. “What was challenging really,” says Rajo, referring to his biggest show, “was creating a paradigm shift [in the way weavers think]. Often, I would visit them and they would always be hesitant [to try new ways of making things]. It was also a desire on my part to make the materials not itchy and more contemporary.”
Instead of resorting to every cliche found in the Filipiniana and lumad playbook such as embroidered piña separates, and panuelo, fichu collar and tapis made of, say, t’nalak, inabel and hablon, Rajo reimagined the entire native shtick by producing some of the loveliest, most figure-flattering and most Instagram-worthy pieces.
How did he do it? A lot of it most probably had to do with what he shares earlier in this story. It wasn’t so much an incorporation of native materials, but more an infusion of previously unused or untried ones. Another thing going for Rajo, of course, is his almost unmatched taste level.
All these factors were evident in certain pieces, particularly a pair of back-to-back looks made of what appeared like a painstaking patchwork of bright and sometimes beaded fabrics as well as his partially beaded pieces with ingenious beadwork. With off-white fabrics for its canvas, such beadwork was akin to watercolor blow painting.
His three black-and-white pintado-inspired looks also caught our attention. He also used what appeared like strips of dyed, multi-colored strands of abaca with their fringes undone on an entire dress as well as on the bodice of another dress with matching flowing skirt and beaded panties. Both looks, especially the first one, were truly inspired.
If you ask us, these are some of the pieces we would have wanted to see more of. What other possibilities and permutations can a seasoned designer like Rajo do had he zeroed in on these looks and inspirations? Could he have created a stronger, more cohesive show by chucking off, say, those men’s wear pieces and a number of dresses, including shiny and dangling fringed numbers that have been so done to death by his colleagues, and even a green blouse-and-black pants ensemble that hardly added anything to his narrative?
Only Rajo, whose range and energy as a designer are beyond reproach, knows the answers to these questions.
