Day One of the recent biannual fashion gathering featured three designers of varying experiences and sense of aesthetics. What binds them together is their fearless and intrepid nature to reinvent themselves without completely turning their backs on who they are as creatives.
By Alex Y. Vergara
Day One of the recently concluded Bench Fashion Week Holiday 2024 kickstarted the biannual event on a high note by featuring three designers—two veterans and a relative newbie—who each brought something different to the table. It was a masterstroke in reinvention, as the designers went out of their respective comfort zones either as creatives or, in the case of R’Bonney Gabriel, as a public personality.
R’Bonney Gabriel
Her R’Bonney Nola line started some years back in her native Texas even before the world got to know her as Miss Universe 2022. This Fil-Am beauty, who flew to Manila last April to try her luck in showbiz, was formally trained in school by taking up a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design in the US. But prior to her debut at Bench Fashion Week, she was a virtual unknown in the world of Philippine fashion.
Now it can be told. She can make clothes and how! Drawing inspiration from land and sea, surf and turf, R’Bonney, in an interview after the show, said she paid homage to her Filipino and American roots by fashioning dresses, separates, jackets, skirts, pants and corsets made mostly of denim and reworked fabrics. She also resorted to combining new and vintage garments she sourced from Bench as well as from ukay-ukay (secondhand clothes) outlets.
Her collection’s edgy, overhauled vibe was very evident and, in fact, reminded us of efforts made by Bench itself in the early aughts to give designers du jour a venue to rework the brand’s signature jeans into various articles of clothing.
In the hands of a poor tailor, the collection would have foundered from the get-go. But because of R’Bonney’s proficiency in cutting and tailoring, the collection succeeded in what it meant out to do while being able to hold its own with the evening’s other featured collections.
Apart from new and vintage, the collection was also a juxtaposition of soft and hard, as seen in the stiff quality of “virgin” denim combined with the willowy feel of cotton materials found in certain looks. Sure, we’ve seen variations of such clothes before, but R’Bonney’s own take on the overhauled look nevertheless resulted in well-made clothes meant for this generation’s fashionistas.
And she knew how to have fun, too. “I accessorized some of the pieces with (mussel and abalone) shells I found in Siargao. I had them painted and combined with upcycled pieces from Bench clothing and ukay-ukay outlets. They’re clothes I would want to wear myself,” she said.
If R’Bonney’s career as an entertainer doesn’t pan out, she will always have a place in her father’s old country as a designer. She gave us a preview of what she’s capable of, and from the looks of it, she has what it takes to offer us much, much more.
Rhett Eala
How do you keep a relatively old retail brand meant for the girlie girl fresh and interesting? It can be tall order, especially if you are required to stick within certain price points and market segments. But not in the hands of Rhett whose fashion DNA has always been ready-to-wear and retail.
In his latest holiday collection for Kashieca, one of Bench’s premier women’s wear brands, Rhett steered clear of last season’s, in his words, “hyperfeminine” pieces by avoiding pastel tones and such cutesy details as bows, shiny, shimmery and semi-beaded fabrics. This time, his collection is more fluid and less ornate without abandoning the brand’s signature feminine aesthetics.
He achieved this by not only sticking mostly to neutral shades, including black and white, but by also using various cotton materials and tulle. In lieu of in-your-face bling that’s par for the course in most holiday collections, Rhett opted to use satin in some of his pieces to achieve some shine. The silhouettes were more structured this time compared to pieces belonging to earlier seasons.
“I just wanted to produce a totally different collection from the previous one,” he explained. “The challenge is to be simpler without abandoning the brand’s DNA. This latest collection is meant for women who want a toned-down look but still look young and sophisticated.”
Anthony Ramirez
Taking inspiration from Japanese anime and Yakuza thugs on steroids, Anthony surprised his fans and perhaps even himself by coming up with a mostly tailored collection with exaggerated proportions, from the jackets’ shoulders down to their matching trousers made of such materials as Japanese leather, French cashmere and custom-made perforated fabric like those used in basketball uniforms.
For someone who made a name for himself in fashion some 15 years ago making soft, close-to-the-body women’s dresses, Anthony’s collection for Bench, which closed the evening, was certainly a great leap forward.
As the designer himself later confessed, “I’m not really used to doing men’s wear, which requires a lot of tailoring. Although I’ve done men’s wear here and there in the past, the pieces were just there to complement my women’s wear collection. Majority of what I produced were still clothes made for women.”
Anthony started to gingerly venture out of his comfort zone during the pandemic. With extra time in his hands, he began reacquainting himself with men’s wear pieces, particularly suits, with no specific purpose or target in mind. “I really immersed myself in tailoring,” he shared.
Well, his efforts paid off handsomely, as he produced the evening’s best collection. (That isn’t to say though that the others did badly.) Instead of the thick shoulder pads and boxy power suits we’ve grown accustomed to and later abhorred from the ’80s, Anthony produced suits that are broader, more angular and oversized.
But despite immersing himself in the how-to’s of tailoring, the job didn’t become any easier, he said. For one, the challenge, apart from the collection’s technical requirements, was to produce edgy clothes that “real men” would want to wear. Judging from the initial feedback, Anthony felt that he had achieved this.
“Men still need to look and feel handsome,” he said. “It can’t be just edgy alone, but clothes they could imaging themselves wearing. That was the hardest part, making the pieces look edgy and still wearable. But those silhouettes are very now. Admittedly, it would look better on taller guys.
But the designer didn’t turn his back completely on women’s dresses, doing several looks that reaffirmed his ease in doing women’s wear, particularly soft, close-to-the-body numbers that highlight a woman’s curves. This time though, women’s fashion played second fiddle to Anthony’s bad boy collection. And the overall result was quite good.
