Hello to Hablon

Brave is the out of town designer who decides to show her latest collection under the scrutinizing eyes of Cebu’s fashion demimonde under a particularly balmy night. Well, not strictly outside, but in the courtyard of The Terraces, Ayala Center Cebu. Even braver is adding a bevy of movers and shakers in the world of business and commerce as the invited guests for the culmination of the Cebu Business Month. Perhaps Jackie Penalosa from Iloilo—the hardy soul who made these decisions—felt that she had to come up with a show to remember. In which case, best start with the clothes.

Penalosa’s collection was representative of an exquisite hand woven fabric, the hablon: a dash of modern looks lurking under the weight of a heavy-handed, generally old-fashioned fabric with an altogether new approach to clothes. Her shrunken high necked long-sleeved jersey dress worn with a fully embroidered hablon skirt, or a hablon jacket with tattered and frayed cutwork panels on the shoulder, made a convincing case for the return of layered dressing. It’s harder to imagine under what circumstances a woman would ever need—or want—a metallic hued dress with crisscrossing biased details super-imposed on the bodice to create a three dimensional detailing. And if any more evidence of Penalosa’s bravery was needed, then it was her use of oversized accessorizing tools as a decorative leitmotif. They came swarming over an improvised kimono or dangling freely on to brush the edges of a mandarin and fichu collars, with more crawling up the all covered up frontal bodice of maxi dresses. Bulky-crawly-yet-light-as-a-feather chic. Bravissimo! ?