Young designers dueled with Fashion Week old-timers in Sony’s recent Philippine Fashion Week presentation, featuring the designers’ latest holiday collections that tapped tried-and-tested tailoring from the past, using the present trends as inspiration, to push the limits of the fabrics of tomorrow.

Red-to-toe
Head-to-toe crimson is not dead. Xernan Orticio helped spread the scarlet fever with tailored architectural dresses all in fire-engine red. Though he did not take off from any other color, he used different shades of red in a wide variety of fabrications to promote a sundry of textures — from the smooth but inexpensive geena silk, to the rough but relatively expensive Egyptian linen.
There was nothing new with his application of men’s wear tailoring techniques on women’s suits, pencil skirts and hi-lo gowns, but there was something definitely novel in the way he used the traditional technique to create intricate patterns without using semi-precious stones or beads. He ingeniously, and painstakingly, cut out patterns from the clothes’ provocative parts, and cleanly reassembled these using different fabrics and red shades. From these excellently executed details, one can clearly see that Orticio has a fiery passion for his craft, even with all the red aside.
The patterns seemed to be an approximation of stained glass. These, together with the models’ thorny red crowns, were suggestive of his very Filipino Nazareno (Jesus of Nazarene) inspiration, faithful to the theme of his previous collections featured in local fashion magazines. The use of red brings to mind something gory, like the bloodbath following the passion of Christ.
Besides redefining tailoring, the designer is also set to defy textile studies by introducing lining as outerwear. Geena silk, usually used as lining, was spotted on the bodices of some shift dresses, artfully combined with more expensive fabrics beyond the knowledge of an unsuspecting wearer.

Space-age safari
Jeffrey Rogador’s designs insinuated the season’s smooth transition from Summer to Fall/Winter by mixing Summer fabrication, like mesh and no-iron neutral cotton blends, with Fall’s space-age silhouettes. Metallic platform rubber shoes, a space suit rain coat, a wrap-around dress with bishop collar, and men’s pants with leopard print seams were just some of the proof that his collection might be imperfect but well-conceived.

Sheer over sheer
Dimple Lim transformed the runway into a chiffon nation with the svelte, airy fabric flying from all over her collection. The sheer fabric shells provided movement to solid, leatherette bodices, but as more and more of these dashed down the runway, the segment soon became a snooze fest.
Though the first few pieces felt exciting and goddess-like because of the ethereal nature of sheer fabrics, there was simply too much of the same thing toward the end of her segment. The collection, overall, was incoherent, made more disastrous by a gown with a poorly installed zipper.

Prism crystals
Roland Lirio presented a cleaner take on sheer and goddess with his see-through tulle gowns that might have looked like any other serpentine or trumpet prom gown with ruches and ruffles, but at least tried to be different with the use of the very trendy holographic or prism crystals as beadwork.