Disposable fashion

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 16:15:10 +0000

FILIPINOS are among the most fashionably dressed in Asia, whether you include or exclude those crazy rich Asians (who are mostly Chinese anyway, and they live in Singapore, if Kevin Kwan is to be believed).

A long time ago, as I recall the memory of the one and only Ernest Santiago, women of the streets – not necessarily hookers – provided inspiration with their mix-and-no-match of colors and patterns, but oh how he smacked his lips at the ladies’ ingenuity, be they fishwives, vendors, palengkera, plain pedestrians, jeepney passengers. Pockets in their aprons, pockets hidden in their underwear, pockets cut into their skirts or dusters (daster? I’m not sure of the spelling, but every woman my age knows how comfortable they are as house clothes). These fashion-unselfconscious women wore their skirts like a sarong or malong. Pants or skirts, their garments were styled loose and airy, nothing to constrict their bodies, everything to do with identifying their status as working women without an office. They disdained zippers, which inspired Ernest to make clothes that had no buttons, no zippers, only bows and straps.

Several of those dresses are still in my closet; any day I can wear any of them without squirming when I face the mirror. They’re timeless, designed to be worn forever to last, a long way from today’s so-called disposable fashion. What’s with disposable fashion? Well, they’re creating an environmental problem. Nothing like the emperor’s new clothes, only that they’re outrightly, frankly disposable. Which means, colors fade after a few washes, loose threads a
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