The right look for the right guy

Until about more than a decade ago, TV networks only had wardrobe mistresses and they only attended to the cast members of mostly comedies and soap operas. Basically, their job was merely to coordinate with the stars and remind them to bring the three Ps in the vernacular: Pantulog, panlabas and pambahay.

But life eventually became more complicated in the television world and now they have stylists.

On record, GMA 7 had its first official stylist during the dying days of 1999. His name is Sander Andan and he was hired initially to style the then teen participants of GMA 7’s grand millennium New Year’s Eve special in Ayala Avenue.

Sander eventually was taken in to style the young cast members of a program geared for teens called Click. Its stars were Danica Sotto, Alessandra de Rossi, Sherwin Ordoñez, Maybelyn de la Cruz and the late Miko Sotto.

What exactly is the job of a stylist? For TV, the stylist has to create a certain look for a show’s cast members. The duties and responsibilities require reminding the ever-forgetful stars to bring certain types of clothes. If the on-cam talents can’t produce the requirements, the stylist has to beg, borrow or steal from fashion designers or clothing stores.

Of course, a stylist doesn’t only have to be resourceful. Needless to say, he or she also has to have fashion flair. It is a crime for a stylist not to know the latest style when it comes to apparel.

In the case of Sander, you’ll never find him home. When not in the studio, expect him to be going around malls and checking out clothing stores. As for the fashion flair, he was born with it.

Even when he was in Grade 5 at the Pasig Catholic College, he admits to already being maarte. The color of his schoolbag has to be the same as that of his lunch box. He also saw to it that bed covers in their private quarters matched the blankets and pillowcases. Now, you can just imagine the attention to details he observed dressing up even for school. Everything had to be coordinated — starting with the hankies.

A MassCom graduate of Letran, Sander never took formal schooling to be become a stylist — but I swear he is one of the best if not the best on local TV today.

He sharpened his nose for fashion working as assistant in fashion shows during the late ‘90s — “when fashion shows were being held left and right,” Sander recalls.

In time, he also worked for photographers and helped out in garbing models. Oh, yes, he did go through fashion training once. This was when topnotch photographer Raymond Lontok worked on a book that featured nude or half-naked male models. For this project, Raymond sent Sander to Singapore to train on how to properly fix the most private part of a male’s anatomy while wearing only underwear. Sander swears such formal training exists.

He doesn’t necessarily get to practice whatever he learned in that short (no pun intended) course now that he is the stylist for Party Pilipinas (the episodes of Mark Reyes), Tweetbiz and Startalk.

Sander also used to be a stylist for soaps, which offered a different set of challenges. “If the character being played by an actor is rich, I had to see to it that the clothes he wore were attire that would really be worn by the affluent,” he points out.

Lance Gokongwei is his peg for male characters who are supposed to be young, rich and successful. He doesn’t know the heir of John Gokongwei pesonally, but Sander did a research on the clothes the young businessman usually wears.

Sander, however, had decided to give up soaps because he couldn’t stand the long taping schedules. But he has his hands full on his other assignments.

In Startalk, his biggest accomplishment — and that is a major feat — was to have successfully convinced Lolit Solis, who detests wearing shoes, sport a pair of closed toe slippers he found in one store. On TV, Lolit looks like she is wearing shoes when those are really just slippers.

For Ricky Lo, Sanders does layering (usually vests or cotton jackets) on the host-columnist/editor. “Sir Ricky is always on the move and does multi-tasking. He has to run from the studio to the office and I always keep that in mind,” shares Sander. And since Ricky has a serious image to keep (more of quiet dignity), Sander stays on the safe and conservative side. No jeans. Mostly slacks.

For this writer who can never command the same respect as Ricky Lo and has nothing much to lose, Sander is more experimental. Since he finds me playful (which is an understatement), Sander is free to garb me in any type of clothes and we had tried out the boldest and brightest of colors.

One GMA 7 artist Sander enjoys dressing up is Enzo Pineda because the boy has an impressive height and an excellent body frame — not to mention great attitude (the StarStruck alumnus is well-loved in the network).

Unfortunately, not everyone has a model frame like Enzo’s (his mother, the lovely Macy Pineda, was once a model and cover girl and has maintained her great looks and figure to this day). But Sander loves challenges and can create a look and style for any on-cam talent put under his care.

Basically, these are the problems of most stylists:

Schedule. Sander personally attends to the clients assigned to him. Ricky and I can swear by that. The problem is, if the stylist dresses up too many people, he cannot attend to each one of them himself.

Making the stars wear his choice of clothes for them. Sometimes, he finds a set of clothes he feels looks good on a talent. But the talent may not necessarily think so. That becomes a problem. He would like Kyla, for instance, to wear short shorts since she has a nice pair of legs anyway, but the singer is too conservative and refuses to wear those.

Budget constraints. He is only given so much by the producer, but has to deliver good quality clothes. Fortunately for Sander, he has established deep friendships with most reputable designers and he borrows from them.

Storage. His collection of clothes has yet to find proper storage. To his relief, GMA 7 is currently addressing this problem and is finding an area for costumes in one of the buildings in the network complex.

Sander can’t wait for the day his clothes find the right storage where everything will be kept and properly classified. Everything in order. Yes, he is that organized. That is his system.

That is his style.