These are the adjectives the designer himself uses to describe his clothes. And he’s not exaggerating. From politicians and government officials of every political stripe and color to members of showbiz royalty as well as nameless individuals with the means, they’ve all been trooping to him for more than three decades now to have their clothes made.
By ALEX Y. VERGARA
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Paul Cabral didn’t dream of becoming a designer at a young age. He wasn’t exposed to any role models while growing up nor did he hone his talents at some of the world’s top fashion schools. Yet more than three decades on, he remains the go-to designer of some of the country’s most visible and most influential men and women.
Despite such an inauspicious start, Paul made up for it through sheer dint of hard work. It also helps that he’s such a likable and well-loved fellow with a gift of putting people, including hard-to please clients, quickly at ease. And thanks to his accounting background, he can keep his enterprise humming without the need for a business manager to rein in the expenses or keep his 15-person team productive and on schedule.
“I wanted to become a doctor because that was where the money was,” Paul, one of 12 children, shares with PeopleAsia. “Now you can be anything you want to be and still make money. Since my parents were the ones financing my education, I ended up taking Accounting.”
Clothes that do the talking
He’s also not too fond of doing interviews, preferring to let his clothes do the talking. And even with his clients’ blessings, Paul is not the type who would readily go to town and tell the whole world of his work.
Paul’s personable nature can also be seen in the way he deals with media people, especially those he’s familiar with. In the years that this writer has known him, for instance, Paul would rather call and answer my questions over the phone instead of merely texting his thoughts.
His reluctance to do long, frequent interviews extends to staging gala shows consisting of 50 looks or more. Apart from the expense involved, he says, preparing for a big show means time spent away from making real clothes.
“Ngayon na lang (It’s only now) that I have become a bit lax about it because I feel the need to share my experience with younger designers. To inspire them hopefully with my journey. Call it giving back,” Paul, who turned 60 last April, says.
It was for this reason that he finally relented and did his first and so far only gala show last Feburary at the Laperal Mansion, formerly known as the Arlegui Guest House, near Malacañang.
Featuring 70 looks for men and women that combined modern fabrics like Mikado silk and brocade with locally handwoven fabrics such as embroidered piña and piña suksok, the show was also Paul’s way of supporting First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and her efforts to shine a light on the country’s traditional weavers.
But just like Paul foresaw, mounting a show involved a great deal of time, energy and money. It took forever, for instance, for the expensive locally woven and embroidered materials he ordered from the provinces to arrive.
Preparing for his gala
To prepare for his show, he stopped accepting orders from clients even before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address in July 2023, but he soon realized that it wasn’t enough. Thus, his show, which was originally set in September 2023, was postponed indefinitely.
“I ended up closing my shop again for almost three months, from December last year to mid-February, so I could sit down and fully realize my vision,” he says. Aptly dubbed as “Una,” or first, Paul’s much-awaited gala show was finally staged in late February to overwhelmingly glowing reviews.
“In terms of design, I’m not an avant-garde designer,” says Paul. His aesthetics, he continues, hew more to the classics. “I’m into classic looks, which I try to upgrade and update every year.”
In his own words, the designer describes the overall look and flavor of his clothes as “mukhang mayaman, mabango at malutong.” (Rich, sweet smelling and crisp-looking.) Paul is also known in the business for producing figure-flattering clothes, making him the preferred designer of showbiz denizens and more mature women.
Paul likewise takes pride in the attention he and his team put in impeccable construction, finishing and embellishment. Some of his clothes may look heavy, but the designer insists that they’re light as a feather.
He learned to perfect this feature after being inspired by the late great Joe Salazar, who became one of Paul’s good friends when they worked together during President Joseph Estrada’s short-lived administration.
On persistent talk that Paul had hired Joe’s entire production team soon after the latter died, which partly explains his clothes’ elevated sense of aesthetics and craftsmanship, he says it’s not true.
“I’ve heard that story many times before,” he says. “I only hired two people from Joe, his draper and cutter, who both resigned one after the other not long after.” He also shares with us an amusing anecdote, this time involving the late Cesar Gaupo, also one of Paul’s good friends. Known then as the country’s “RTW King,” Cesar once called him from out of the blue. Paul learned that he had just finished hearing mass in church where a wedding was also held.
“He said he saw my dress worn by one of the wedding’s female guests,” says Paul. “I asked him, ‘How did you know? Cesar said, eh, pulidong-pulido ang pagkalagay ng zipper at ang damit walang kakulu-kulubot. Halatang sa ’yo.’” (The zipper is seamlessly placed, and the dress doesn’t have any traces of puckering. Obviously, it’s your dress.) Part of Paul’s strength as a designer also comes from knowing what he wants and what he’s good at. Going into RTW, he says with finality, will never be on the horizon. He also has no plans of expanding and branching out to other parts of the country, much less abroad.
Salad days with “TF”
How an Accounting graduate ended up as one of the country’s leading designers is an interesting story in and of itself.
After graduating from college, Paul was in such a hurry to find work that he didn’t have the time to review and take the accountancy board exam. He was soon hired by an accounting firm, but he lasted only one week.
“Sumasakit ang ulo ko (I experienced headaches) every time I got home,” he says. He realized early on that accounting wasn’t for him.
Not long after, a chance encounter with the late celebrity makeup artist-turned-designer Fanny Serrano changed Paul’s fate for good. He summoned enough courage to approach Fanny, more popularly known in showbiz circles as Tita Fanny or TF, and introduced himself as a fresh graduate looking for a job. He told Paul to see him the next day at his El Niño Apartelle shop in Quezon City.
“Since I know a bit about makeup, I was hoping that TF would hire me as one of his junior makeup artists,” he says. “But, no, he wanted me to be his assistant.”
Fanny’s clothing business was growing, and he needed someone to manage his newly opened branch in Ortigas. Paul eventually became the store manager, a fancy title that involved doing everything, from entertaining clients to taking note of their requirements and even helping in the window display. Before long, he also found himself sourcing for fabrics in Divisoria.
“I did almost everything in TF’s absence except cut and sew,” he says. “I was the first to arrive at the shop and the last one to leave.”
The stint at Fanny’s opened Paul’s eyes to various possibilities. He also discovered, albeit belatedly, that he had a knack for fashion. He eventually learned how to draw much later when he started to venture on his own as a full-fledged designer.
When he finally went on his own, putting up a small shop in Quezon City, he also did pretty much everything, leaving the cutting and sewing to a small production team.
“That it was hard is an understatement,” he says. “Close friends whom I hadn’t seen for a long time were surprised to see me and told me that I had aged.”
Despite the long hours and the costly mistakes that came with being a newbie designer, Paul was happy at how things were turning out. Back then, he would often junk finished dresses not on par with his standards and redo them.
“I’m like that,” he reveals. “Even now, I won’t mind redoing a dress from scratch if I’m not satisfied with the results.”
For a time, he even bought expensive of-the-rack designer pieces from the likes of Escada and used them to do some reverse engineering by slowly pulling them apart.
“I wanted to show my staff who initially said that it couldn’t be done that, on the contrary, it could,” he says. “If Escada did it, so could we!”
As luck would have it, one of his earliest clients was a stylish lawmaker in the person of Rep. Julita Villareal. Before long, word spread within the halls of Congress and beyond about this brilliant newbie designer who charged a fraction of the price pegged by industry veterans.
It was only a matter of time before then Vice President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and, by extension, his wife Loi Ejercito started tapping Paul’s services. It was also Paul who recommended to Loi that she hire Joe soon after Erap won the presidency.
“I remember the First Lady asking me, isn’t Joe, who was then based in the US, already retired?” says Paul with a chuckle. “Then I teased her, well, what are you in power for?”
The offer from Malacañang was too good for Joe to pass up. He ended up going home for good and doing Loi’s dress at Erap’s oath-taking ceremony at Barasoain Church, while Paul took care of her dress and that of the president’s and their sons’ barongs at the Luneta inauguration.
“One of the things I remember fondly about Joe, apart from his kindness, was the fact that he only needed to do one client fitting to get it right,” Paul recalls. “I don’t know how he did it because back then, I needed to do at least to two to three client fittings.”
Joe, who was pushing 60 then, was almost the same age as Paul is now. During the intervening years, Paul has been able to do what his idol and good friend once did with his eyes closed: get the fitting right the first time. And what’s more amazing is he’s not going anywhere. Just imagine what Paul Cabral could do a decade from now.
Photography by RXANDY CANAPINPIN
Art Direction by DEXTER FRANCIS DE VERA
Shot on the location at THE LAPERAL MANSION
