FILIPINO FASHION DESIGNERS IN HOLLYWOOD: SHOWCASING MANILA AS ASIA’S FASHION CAPITAL

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good evening! Magandang gabi!

Manila media just recently released the good news about Filipino fashion designers making it good in Hollywood. Led by Monique Lhuiller, who hails from an entrepreneurial family back home, Hollywood entertainers’ eyes marveled over the works of the Pinoy fashion designers worn by some famous Hollywood personalities.

As a sociologist and economist, this is what I can say of the matter: Philippine fashion design had already reached a very high level of maturity at this juncture. Both domestically and overseas, Filipino fashion designers are making waves precisely due to the mastery of their respective crafts.

Like their counterpart in motion pictures & mass media production, who are able to found institutions of higher learning—inclusive of graduate schools—for motion pictures & tri-media production, the fashion designers have reached a level of mastery and esteem enabling them to teach the craft to enthused learners. I have no better wish, as a sociologist studying popular culture, than to see couples of fashion institutes rising sooner or later in Manila and Cebu, the nation’s top metropolises.

Just recently, the fashion design guru Pinoy Moreno won his National Artist Award. Some people in the art & culture circles raised some eyebrows about the matter. There surely are people with astigmatic interests, who just couldn’t see the very positive implications of awarding a fashion designer as National Artist. The Award is a testimony of the maturing of the fashion industry itself, and should be welcomed without reserve.

The wave-making trend of Filipino fashion designers is also a testament to the rise of Manila/Philippines as the Fashion Capital of Asia. This trend should be stressed to the world, at a time when the global economy has grown. Filipinos are no longer the copycat morons as far as fashion is concerned, we have graduated to that of trend-setter or avant garde in the fashion & culture domain.

Not only is the Manila/Philippines the Fashion Capital, it is also the Shopping Capital of Asia. It boasts of malls that are spacious and exquisitely designed in architecture, malls that serve as retail outlets and/or display centers for some of the works of fashion designers.

The Jurassic trend of Filipinos having to fly overseas just to buy some good fashion and quality garments is long gone. The trend now is for Filipinos to invite kins and friends overseas to come visit Manila and other key cities to do a shopping spree and appreciate the fashion designs done by our topgun designers who are also Asia’s fashion gurus today.

Incidentally, around 6/7 or 84% of fashion designers are in the couture business. So any enthused appreciator of our designers’ works should deliberately visit the couture shops to enjoy the exquisite works of the fashion masters. Only 1/7 or roughly 16% of the fashion designers are in the RTW business, either as consultant designers or as designer & owner of the business.

The likes of Ben Chan, for instance, are among designers who also own RTW chain of shops. The Bench brand owned by Chan happens to be the forward linkage for his design works. Both high end and mass markets are catered to by the Bench brand, and I’d say my own kudos to the likes of the noblesse gentleman.

Those in the fashion design as well as the shoe design should better look up to the motion pictures & tri-media production their models of institutional strengthening. The challenge is for both sectors to set foot in the universities to install special departments or institutes for fashion design. Fashion design should better broaden to integrate shoe design into it, and the broadened sector should establish a presence in the University of the Philippines or U.P. as exemplified by motion pictures & media production.

Clothing technology is already present in the U.P. The presence of clothing in my alma mater should be a stepping stone to opening up a learning institute for fashion design since this new domain of arts & culture is giving a very positive name for the Philippines.

As a long-time educator, I recognize that setting foot in the premier university is a yardstick of the maturity of any sector in the country. Fashion designers, from couture to shoe design, better count me among their appreciative allies. May the tribe of fashion gurus—coming from our masters of the fashion craft—increase and multiply.

[Philippines, 13 February 2011]

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs anytime!

Social Blogs:

IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com

UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com

Wisdom/Spiritual Blogs:

COSMICBUHAY: http://cosmicbuhay.blogspot.com

BRIGHTWORLD: http://erlefraynebrightworld.wordpress.com

Poetry & Art Blogs:

ARTBLOG: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com

ARGONZAPOEM: http://argonzapoem.blogspot.com

Mixed Blends Blogs:

@FRIENDSTER: http://erleargonza.blog.friendster.com

@SOULCAST: http://www.soulcast.com/efdargon

Website & Mixed Blogs:

MULTIPLY: http://efdargon.multiply.com

INDIANA JONES REINFORCES ALIEN PRESENCE

Erle Frayne  Argonza

Good morning from Manila!

 

I just reviewed the film Indiana Jones recently at one of the theatres of the new Trinoma Mall at North Avenue of my city (Quezon City). The film series is still captivating in special effects and general plot, the flamboyant figure of Dr. Jones still a magnet of awe and controversy.

 

For sure this film had projected quite well the significance of archeology as a science, and is doing a PR job by promoting this science to adolescents who are fond of adventure and are inquisitive at the same time. Albeit, the series causes chagrin on real life archeologist, including those personal friends of mine in Manila who disdain the plot as denigrating to the anthropological profession.

 

Let that be the two-side reflection of those viewers who prefer to see that archeological side of the film. I would rather at this moment highlight one facet to Indiana Jones: its reinforcement of accentuating the presence of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligences or ETIs on our planet.

 

The whole plot in fact was centered on the ETI angle. The relic that was being searched for by a competing force (Soviet agents) and their foreign assets (a former MI6 agent, British) happened to be a crystalline skull whose significance was as recondite as the ocean’s floor.

 

At the concluding segment of the film, the players ended up in some sanctuaries deep in the Andes jungles and mounts (Peru area). There they stumbled upon the shocking truth that the skull belonged to an ETI, and the cavernous space housing the skeletal ‘remains’ of the ETIs was actually a space ship.

 

For so many centuries, the owner of the skull (head of the ETI mission team) was waiting for the skull’s return. It was stolen by some adventurers in the past (Spanish conquistadores), but sooner or later it will be returned.

 

Return did the skull to its owner. And upon its return, the erstwhile dormant being was activated, including its team members. The other dormant skeletons, with their skulls intact, then merged with the team head to comprise one whole unified being, with flesh.

 

The film revealed that this was the Zeta Reticuli species of ETIs, the ‘Greys’. They were tall, like the 7+ footer ‘greys’ that mystics (I am among them) and observers listed among a short list of ETI visitors and claimants to our planet.

 

The merging of all the ‘greys’ in the film signified that the said species were unified by their ‘collective mind’, that they didn’t possess individual minds like Earth humans or Earthans. They don’t exactly merge physically in reality, but their electromagnetic bodies (etheric-astral) do merge, something that they can do at will (which we Earthans can only do when our body sleeps and our astral body moves to the ‘dream plane’ or astral plane that happens to be its natural niche).

 

Already psychically powerful, a merged Zetan (grey) would be even more powerful by hundreds of times than the leader. So powerful was the Zetan that it was able to disintegrate the competing force (Soviet spy) at will.

 

Then, the Zetan spaceship moved out of the area and quickly moved to ‘hyperspace’, the astral-etheric 4^th dimension (‘space between space’) that can short cut the travel to one’s destination across the universe.

 

It was simply a probe team, not an invasion force, that got stuck up in the Andes during its  eco-scanning mission. Just like any probe team, it has to return to base to report its findings. It did just that, as the film suggested.

 

The latest film re-echoed the thesis of Isaac Asimov, a pioneer of post-modern futures, that galactic intelligences will choose between technological superiority or psychic (occult) superiority to prove which one is superior in the end. (See Asimov’s ‘foundation and empire’ series.)

 

As the ‘foundation & empire’ series of Asimov kept on re-echoing, those that nurture the occult/psychic side of life over and above technological prowess will prove to be the smarter species. Indiana Jones did re-echo this theme well, and so we Earthans better heed the message.

 

[Writ 30 May 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]