By Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman
From choker necklaces and patched bomber jackets to matcha green teas and salted egg chips, the country’s biggest names have all played their A-game to catch up with the latest fads in food and fashion. But who gets to decide what trends should be present in our closets or eaten from our plates?
In the fashion industry, the Western voices of fashion trailblazers from Paris and New York, among others, influence what should be seen in the world market, including Manila’s runways and streets.
“I think it all starts with a brainstorming between fashion personalities like forecasters, influencers like Anna Wintour, fashion designers, and textile designers, to know what’s currently relevant and what’s happening around the world, including art, culture, and news,” said Edrelyn Santos, freelance fashion stylist, former fashion writer, and marketing officer of an international fashion brand.
After the high fashion items are shown on the runway, the mass market will follow suit, but first the designs will have been filtered to fit a country’s profile like its climate and color and cut preferences. “After, the fashion magazine people and the bloggers will then start to make their own forecasts based on what stands out during the fashion shows,” she added.
Vogue magazine said that the trend for this year “is a season of contrasts,” meaning a mash-up of couture and the rugged.
Something similar happens in the food industry. Superstar chefs who mostly come from the West like those with Michelin stars, meet up in conventions to talk about hip ingredients, emerging markets, and food trends. Madrid Fusion — arguably the most important food congress in the world — has, for instance, brought together chefs from 22 countries in one place when its break-out convention, Madrid Fusion Manila, was held here in 2015.
According to Margarita Fores, chosen as Asia’s best female chef in 2016 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and a Madrid Fusion participant (both in the Madrid and Manila congresses), said that the food trend in 2017 is all about minimizing food waste and championing sustainability.
She said the food trends in the Philippines “usually come from the outside [like in Spain and in the US]. But sometimes, food trends could also be dictated by the consumers, including ‘lifestyle food’ like turmeric.”
But some food trends also happen by accident, like the cronut craze which was born in New York in 2013. The croissant and donut hybrid was born from the creativity of award-winning French pastry chef Dominique Ansel (a recipient of the 2014 James Beard Award, which is often dubbed as the “Oscars for food”). Filipino pastry shops latched on to the craze which saw long lines in front of Ansel’s bakery for the pastry, coming up with their own twists and giving a local flavor to the original sweet.
But the more important issue is not what the upcoming trends for this year and the next are, rather: does the Philippines always have to be the one following the trends? Can’t it set them?
LOVING LOCAL
According to some of the interviewees for this story, the Philippines does not have to follow the dictates and the whims of the rest of the world, but it does so because it is not proud of its own.
“We’ve always been following the trends abroad because it took as a while to be proud of our culture as a Filipino. When we have house guests, we serve paella and not adobo (vinegar-stewed pork and/or chicken), sinigang (sour soup), or pancit (noodles), which are our own,” Ms. Fores told BusinessWorld in an interview on Jan. 9 at one of her restaurants, Grace Park, which is a farm-to-table concept that uses local ingredients. She said Filipinos have always thought that our own delicacies are for ordinary days only, and are not good enough to be served at special occasions.
But this shouldn’t be the case, she said, adding that the last Madrid Fusion in Manila, for instance, opened the doors for international chefs to taste, love, and experiment with our heirloom recipes and local ingredients like calamansi and cacao. She said international chefs are now starting to incorporate Philippine ingredients into their own cooking style. She thought that we should be among the culinary destinations in the world map.
But while we are slowly making progress when it comes to food, the thinking that the products abroad are always better than ours is still strongly embedded in our fashion sense.
“There is that notion that imported brands have better quality compared to local ones. There is that feeling of reward or of [gaining] higher stature when Filipinos buy and wear [foreign] branded [items]. More importantly, the price points of the local market are higher than or sometimes of the same price range with the imported brand,” said fashion stylist Millet Arzaga Gonzales, who has been in the industry for 20 years.
“We don’t have our own style identity compared with other countries,” added Ms. Santos, whose personal fashion sense lean toward pop culture and mixture of high and low fashion. “When you walk around [Metro Manila] and see what people are wearing, you wouldn’t think or even say that ‘Oh, they are from the Philippines,’ unlike when you see the Koreans or Japanese — you’d instantly know where they are from,” she said.
Our Asian neighbors like Thailand, Korea, and Japan have a stronger sense of culture and the people wear their fashions with pride, the two stylists said. “They have markets and market lanes solely dedicated for their local brands. In the Philippines, it’s not. Have you noticed when you walk around the malls — Greenbelt 5 for instance — there is a limited selection of Filipino brands? Hindi tayo (we are not) solid as a culture. We are malleable,” said Ms. Gonzales.
But it is also important to note that unlike the Philippines which has a long history as a colonized nation, Thailand, Japan, and Korea (at least before the 20th century when Japan held it for 35 years) were among the only countries in the world that were never colonized.
“The rise of the indigenous, one-of-a-kind and handmade pieces from the local market would have a better chance in the market, because diyan tayo magaling (that is where we are good). We can work with abaca, capiz shells…” said Ms. Gonzales. But then again, how many brands do you know sell good-quality local items? To love local is seemingly easier said than done.
Surprisingly, there are even international brands that think Filipinos should not necessarily follow a specific style bible. “There is a plethora of refreshing and distinct brands that I think a lot of people in Manila are not aware of yet,” said Michele Chan, founder of Tryst, in an e-mail interview. Tryst is boutique that caries European fashion labels that fit the Filipino taste. It ran a pop-up store in Makati’s Rockwell mall last year and will be opening its next pop-up at SM Aura in Taguig’s BGC some time in March.
Ms. Chan said it gets fashion ideas from “people-watching,” but the “core values must be in each brand: design, quality of fabric, and the cut and fall on the body.
“Forecasting and trends play a role in the international fashion scene. But I don’t think it necessarily applies to our market here, and Filipinos in general. Most people here, including our clientele, dress according to their own personal style and comfort, also considering their body type and the fit of the clothes, their skin tone, fabric and color preferences, perhaps their mood for dressing for the day or occasion, and what generally suits them,” she wrote. But then again, Tryst’s target market is the middle to upper classes.
DEMAND AND SUPPLY
At the end of the day, it still is all about business. Whether in food or fashion, or in any business venture, sales matter more than anything.
In fashion, it’s all about keeping up with the bankable style. “The fashion buyers always have the mass market in mind,” Ms. Gonzales.
Fashion buyers are the people who work in the big department stores, the chain stores, and boutiques who decide and curate what will be available in the stores based on what they see in international trends, fashion showrooms, and trade fairs. BusinessWorld tried talking to a fashion buyer and stylist from one of the country’s biggest retail brands but the buyer declined because her employer would not let her share the business’ trade secret.
But the golden rule is to feed the mass what sells.
“When an item is too trendy for the ordinary Filipino consumer — like a silver or gold pleated full skirt — they will not patronize it. In the end, the fashion brands are compelled to showcase the classics, or those with tamer and safer designs because they sell and because they cannot afford to have too many product returns in their inventory,” said Ms. Gonzales, who studied fashion buying, merchandising, and styling in London.
At the local branches of multinational clothing chain H&M for example — which entered the Philippines in 2014 and currently has 21 stores nationwide — the selections are tamer and safer compared to what is found in its other branches abroad, “and we should blame it on the merchandiser,” said Ms. Gonzales.
“In a Third World country like ours, the safe will always sell, masa pa din talaga (it is the masses who matter). Most Filipino brand fashion buyers and ready-to-wear designers lean on the safe, classic designs. They are careful and would like to be sure of the sales,” she added.
TRAVEL AND APPRECIATE
But as the world gets smaller things may change. Thanks to the increasing number of people who travel and greater access to technology, there are more opportunities for collaboration with other nations, and nations that were unheard of before are now given better chances to be known worldwide.
When it comes to food preferences, Filipinos need not always follow the trend, but it also doesn’t hurt if we extend our palates beyond what we are accustomed to. “Everyone is becoming a foodie and food-driven because of social media. The world has gotten so much smaller,” said Ms. Fores, adding that traveling opens opportunities for people to extend their sensibilities and choices. She said she wouldn’t be surprised if besides sisig (chopped pig’s face on a sizzling plate) — which the New York Times called as “arguably the greatest pork dish on earth” — the world will come to know and love our other delicacies like dinuguan (blood stew) and sinigang.
In the fashion sphere, travel is also urged. “The Millennials — those who will [save] their money to travel — filter out the trends and are more open to other choices. But they are not the buying market, but the yuppies and their parents [are],” said Ms. Gonzales. Still, she believes that as the world gets more connected, there is the possibility of blurring the line on who gets to decide what is in or not. Taste still remains personal.
She urges Filipinos to travel, and to travel with a sense of appreciation of what our local indigenous products can do, if only given more opportunities. Someday we might see more Filipino products penetrating the international market. Already an Aranaz bag has been seen in the hands of Queen Mathilde of Belgium.
