Water everywhere at Monique Lhuillier’s collection

By Elton Lugay

Cebu jeweler Amparito Lhuillier watched proudly as her daughter Monique’s water-inspired collection passed as if in a carousel before her eyes.

“That’s been her dream since she was 10 years old,” Amparito told me, a fellow Cebuano.

The dream did not include the part about being a highly sought-after Hollywood designer but the mother knew it was all going to be just a matter of time. “When she finished high school she told me she wanted to be in fashion, I told her not yet, when you get a little older because it’s a very complicated career.”

Fast forward to 2012 with Monique unveiling her spring 2013 collection at New York Fashion Week. Amparito was front among the crowd quietly reveling in the applause and ovation meant for her daughter.

“I love to wear her dresses,” whispered the elegant Amparito. “It makes you feel like a star.”

Monique’s collection, inspired by the fluidity of water, was heavy on the blues and digital prints of mermaids, fish and sea birds. Some of the models appeared to have wet hair created by a hairstylist’s crimping because, as she explained to The FilAm, “I wanted a feel like they were very elongated and sensual and just emerged from the shower.”

The press handout describes it as being inspired by the “life of the sea, birds, brightly colored fish and glowing sunlight on water and the luminescence of moonlit waves.”

Monique’s spring closet includes peplum tops and pants shaped to define the waist, with “cocoon-like” coats and jackets to complete the look. The evening wear shimmered with golds and sea glass beadings, and showed a lot of skin “to create a very sensual woman.”

“This season is all about water,” she said.

Amparito thought the designs were very wearable. “Every time I have a big event in the Philippines or in Paris, I only wear Monique Lhuillier. That’s my brand.”

She said all the long gowns were her favorite.

Amparito said she’s viewed her daughter’s Fashion Week show at least five times, and she’s always delighted to see something new with every collection.

“As a child, she would comment on the clothes I wore. She’d tell me if I looked nice or not,” said Amparito backstage where we found the time to chat.

“I made her take lessons in design at the age of 10. A teacher who does painting taught her to paint. She didn’t design flowers or a view, she only wanted dresses. And the artist told me, I think your daughter wants to be a fashion designer,” she recalled with a laugh. At 10, she was the youngest in the design school.

Monique is opening a boutique in Manhattan on October 1st on 71st off of Madison. “We’re still in the finishing stages and we’re very excited,” she said.

Stylist: Tiina Laakkonen
Hair: Odile Gilbert for Kerastase Paris
Makeup: Val Garland and The Mac Pro Team
Nail Styles: Candice Manacchio for CNDC
Undergarments: Commando

source: thefilam.net

Fashion grads from Asia have their New York moment

NEW YORK - There's nothing glamorous about ironing your own collection before a show at New York fashion week, but if that's what it takes for Jie Jessie Liu to break into the business, she'll do it.

Liu was among nine jury-selected master's degree graduates - all women - from San Francisco's Academy of Art University fashion school whose creations Friday got the kind of runway exposure usually reserved for top designers.

Five of the newly-minted designers hailed from Asia, underscoring the region's rise as a fashion power, and Friday's well-attended show was a prized opportunity to be spotted by international buyers, talent scouts, and journalists.

"This is a way for them to be seen across the globe," said university spokeswoman Edith Mead Barker.

Backstage at Lincoln Center, ground zero for the ongoing spring-summer 2013 collections, 32-year-old Liu reflected on her long and winding journey from her seaside hometown of Penglai, in China's eastern Shandong province, to New York.

"I was just like most women when I was young. I loved to dress Barbie dolls," she told AFP during a break from steaming out the creases of the silk outfits she created with Belgrade-born textile design classmate Tanja Milutinovic.

"When I was grown up I was still obsessed by fashion ... and after I worked as an accountant for three years (in Toronto, Canada, where she got a first degree in accounting), I just realized that I would enjoy doing it every day."

The eight distinctly modern looks Liu sent out Friday, with their sharp lines and angular silhouettes, drew inspiration from London-based sculptor Anish Kapoor and Beijing's "bird's nest" Olympic stadium, she said.

Liu's ambition? Her own label, like those now firmly established by pioneering young designers of Asian origin like Alexander Wang and Jason Wu, with a firm hand on every aspect from initial design to final distribution.

"That's my long-term goal," she said. "In the short term, I'm looking for suitable position (in New York next year), maybe an associate designer position, just to sharpen my design skills."

From Taiwan, Ginie C.Y. Huang, 28, let the hypercolorful floral still lifes of Japanese photographer Ninagawa Mika inform skirt-and-jacket combinations that strolled down the runway in lime, red, orange and fuchsia.

"Actually, my whole collection is really tailored, but I added feathers to make it crazier, but not by too much," the Taipei native told AFP. "I design for the woman who is really willing to take a risk, who knows what she is doing."

Also a fashion devotee since childhood, Huang faced stiff resistance from her banker father and teacher mother when she first aspired to break into the business -- resistance that eased only after she first got a business degree.

"I just held out and finally they understood," she said, and indeed the entire family was on hand for Friday's show.

Jarida Karnjanasirirat, from Bangkok, had no such problem with her next of kin. In fact, she said, she enlisted them to send over "hundreds and hundreds" of swatches of Thai silk, of which she picked a handful, some of them antique.

The result seen Friday comprised silk tunics, dresses, shorts, and jackets in shades of champagne, silver, rose, and white, with three-dimensional lapels and pleats inspired by relief sculptures at a church near her San Francisco home.

"I kept looking at it for three years," Jarida said. "I took that as my inspiration because I liked it so much."

A big fan of Calvin Klein creative director Francisco Costa's designs ("I want them all, even the menswear"), she too dreams of having her own label in Thailand, and teaching as well.

But for the immediate future, her sights are on New York: "The fashion industry in Thailand is not as developed as here. I want to get experience and then I can go back home and develop."

Other Asians participating in Friday's graduate show were Jisun Lee from Seoul, who reinterpreted men's suits from the 1920s as women's wear for today, and Yanfei Fan, from Shijianhuang, Hebei province, China, whose silk and organza looks were inspired by the windows of modern buildings.

source: interaksyon.com