Dining with a designer
Being innately grungeslashlaid-back in my clothes has not, immuned me from curiousity about couture as a form of self expression and art. Like aconfirmed fashionista (which I’m really not), I’d read the fashion updates and reports in th glossy magazines where many of friends of college now work: Metro, Preview; as well as the foreign high fashion publications such as Vanity Fair and the ever-reliable Vogue.
Last night I had a dinner-interview with Philippine avant garde fashion designer Eddie Baddeo,and he was such a revelation.
Before I go any deeper into our interview, I simply have to state that he was so beautiful! I’d totally forgotten that he was male because he looked so much like a dainty, fragile porcelain doll. I kept addressing him as ‘Ma’am,’ and he was very gracious about not correcting me.
But the best thing I liked about him was how humble, unassuming and down-to-earth he was. He spoke of his craft as his passion, and how he coped with the sometimes harshly discouranging challenges that came his way. We talked for two hours, and we barely ate the Thai dinner served before us.
Eddie is known in the Phiippines for his unusual fashion design sense. Reputed to be an innovative and inventive artist, he was once tagged as "the bad boy of Phil. Fashion." I’m no fashion critic, but judging from the way he described his work and from the fashion spreads in the internet on his creations, it does appear that he deserves the label.
He was once employed as house designer of movie/tv actress Boots Anson Roa’s garment factory and apprenticed designer of then couturiers Miguel Paez and Robert Castaneda in the early 80s.
hmm, work beckons…
