Rooms for newlyweds

In an amazing display of collaboration with designers, many of them running their own home stores, Rustan’s Department Store’s home section is exhibiting seven vignettes tailored for a newlywed couple’s first home. Called "Rhapsody in White: A Bridal Affair," the exhibit invited seven designers and decorators – a mix of well-known names in the industry and newcomers – to create settings using furniture and accessories available at the home section of Rustan’s Makati.

The result is a mixed bag of design concepts that go from the very opulent to the starkly simple, from elegant to casual, from classic to contemporary, and, as displayed in majority of the designs – somewhere in between.

Rustan’s Visual Merchandising Team: Green’s New Appeal

Not to be outdone by the invited designers, Rustan’s own visual merchandising team, led by Ross Morante, came up with a dining room setting that puts green in a new, cool light.

Ross’ vision was to create a contemporary room for a couple and stimulate their senses, particularly the sense of sound. Water trickles down on the white wall, which is covered by branches with white flowers on the tips. His table is topped by a textured fabric originally meant for a ball dress, white flowers on low vases, squarish stemware, and plates by Multiple Choice, a brand that has attracted customers for its wide range of designs and affordable prices.

In this room of white and green, it would be a crime not to serve summer drinks. The feeling the colors evoke is of perpetual summer – a cool relaxing time with your spouse and friends and endless banter – and glasses of lime and lemon juice or champagne.

Ross has been working in Rustan’s for 20 years and cites Nena Tantoco as his mentor. He used to decorate the homes of Imelda Marcos when the Marcoses were in power, and was part of the group that styled the weddings of Jackie Ejercito in Malacañang and Sharon Cuneta.

Ito Kish: Paul Smith Meets Laura Ashley

Ito Kish has created the most eye-catching setting with his Paul Smith stripes using Laura Ashley colors. With the stripes beginning on top of the walls down to the floor, the colors are continued on the dinnerware, stemware and flatware. Only the stripes are matching – the rest is a melange of styles and brands with the common denominator being the colors blue, white and gray colors, evoking China blue for an eastern touch as well as Delft blue for a European flavor. And that’s how it is when you get married, he says. "You don’t get matching pieces as gifts. More often you get starter sets of four or six – you don’t get 12 or 16 sets of plates or flatware. Even the dining room chairs, you usually don’t have 15 pieces unless you have a very big house."

Ito’s setting serves as an inspiration for couples who are hosting their first dinner in their new home. "They shouldn’t panic because the pieces don’t match. There’s always something nice that can come out from mixing everything, you just have to find a common thing to pull off a nice presentation. The thrill is putting it all together."

Owner of Kish home store, he gives this advice to couples: Don’t put elaborate or unnecessary props such as big flower arrangements, rather put low vases and fill them with simple flowers such as orchids and hydrangeas. Don’t match furnishings in such a way that the room ends up looking like a showroom, don’t be afraid to mix expensive things with cheap ones, and don’t shy away from getting furnishings from German brand all over the world. For instance, Ito used china from Villeroy and Bosch, chairs from Italy including a pair that’s meant to be for one’s work space, goblets from Mexico, delicate Filipiniana napkins, capiz candleholders, and beaded flower vases to add spark to the table.

As cherry on top, he chose a classic European-inspired chandelier to light up this youthful setting.

Andy Vazquez Prada: Back to Old Traditions

One look at his setting and you’re transported back in time, when the colonial masters went on hunting trips and brought the entire house with them in leather trunks. It’s Out of Africa meets the Orient Express, it’s having a martini in the middle of Africa’s plains, and a hundred white-gloved servants packing every convenience imaginable.

"I think there’s nothing more romantic than olden times," says Andy Vazquez Prada. "This room is really my style. I’m into classic English and European and I just thought of doing this to be different from the others."

Andy divides the setting into two spaces. Right up front is the man’s corner with a foldable writing table complete with envelopes he made to appear old by spraying them with tea, a man’s caned chair complete with a cigar box. Opposite this is a bar (again a convertible trunk from the floor’s Store It department) with the necessary crystals and enough drinks to knock you out.

Behind this is the woman’s corner with her perfume bottles and cigarettes and a wooden screen where she could discreetly change into her jodhpurs.

Which part of the house would Andy put this setting? "In the study because of the bar, but it could also be in the bedroom."

When we wonder aloud how come he decided on this theme, Andy explains, "I’m not a modernist at all though I can appreciate it. You look at it and you’d think it’s for older people but this is what applies to me and I’ sure there are many more out there like me. My favorite thing that’s happened to modern decorating is the use of indigenous materials (which explains the caning in a lot of the furnishings he chose). It’s a more dressed down look, it can be formal but the materials are informal. It adds richness, not like stainless steel which I find too cold."

Miguel Rosales: Classic Meets Contemporary

Not every designer will tell you that he’s "anti-decorating." But that’s how interior designer Miguel Rosales likes to describe his work: "It’s meant to make you question design and how it should be more personal and not so much a prepackaged look. It’s looking at things with a different eye."

Certainly, Miguel looks at his job with a different eye. His very "graphic" sitting room takes 1960s Italian designers like Gio Ponti and Fornasetti as his starting points and from there he used Rustan’s accessories "that you wouldn’t normally use in such a setting."

Starting with an eight-by-eight blowup of an18th-century print from his own collection (a Fornasetti trademark, according to Miguel), he added color almost teasingly – red here, coral and orange there, and some neutrals to balance it all off. The print is not the only surprise element in the vignette as he put a Murano rooster on top of a round table, right beside a modern silver-leafed lamp with black shade. "In the ‘60s the designers would put old pieces alongside new ones and used them in a new context. For me, every room has to have that one object that would throw everything off a little bit when you look at it. It doesn’t seem to belong there at first glance but it does."

As for the colors, Miguel wanted to tell people that they shouldn’t be afraid of using colors. "I think in Manila, people are into very safe color palettes. Actually red can even be as neutral as white, depending on how you use it. I didn’t want to overpower everything with the wall." 

His design also reflects his philosophy on how to handle small spaces and scale. "Use bold colors and oversized furniture to draw the eye away visually from the fact that it’s a small room." A strategy not every designer employs, but he says, "Sometimes if it’s a lot of small things, it looks even smaller like a coffee table with a lot of objets d’art on top."

This is a room of subdued luxury as evidenced by the Jim Thompson silk and the mirror table. Miguel envisions a couple coming to this sitting room and making martinis while they’re all dressed up on their way out for a night on the town.

An interior design graduate of UP, Miguel has worked on the homes of young society like Celine Lopez’s pad and Wendy Puyat Hotung’s apartment. His events company Mo Style, which he runs with Ovvian Castrillo, organizes corporate events and parties, which may explain the quirky elements in his work.

But we tell him there’s nothing more fun that seeing his obelisk-shaped étagère with a sculpture of a horse’s head on the top shelf.

"How very Godfather," we say.

He laughs and says, "Maybe I should have done a bedroom."

Joby Belmonte: Asia Meets the World

To fans of the Asian look, Joby Belmonte is an old friend. He brought to Manila affordable Asian pieces through his store Urban Effects, first in a huge showroom in Parañaque where interior designers flocked when it opened and later in Glorietta 4. Until a few years ago he had a coffeeshop in Malate which served the most unbelievably delicious atis cheesecake. Batavia was then using the furniture of Urban Effects, and you could actually order your coffee and your chair to go.

Joby specializes in Balinese furniture and accessories, and that was how he envisioned his setting – a place that could be in an open lanai or even under a huge tree in the backyard.

The focal point is the wooden carving, which was originally from a Balinese opium bed. Below this is half of an opium bed converted into a daybed (also used by some people as media table with all the high-tech gadgets lined on top of this carved piece).

Joby mixed traditional items "that couples would probably inherit from their parents with contemporary accessories." It’s not just a practical design but also a symbolic one. "The traditional pieces symbolize the past life you have with your family and the modern stand for your new life with your spouse, and the heavy wood on how you are building a solid foundation for your married life."

To add texture and color to the setting, he used plenty of throw pillows covered with slips of natural fibers such as abaca and raffia. A low table in front of the daybed is a game table with roll-out seats which can be used for chess or card games. Remove the caned seats and put pillows on the banig-covered floor and you can actually use it for meals.

"When I do a setup, I make sure it doesn’t look nice just for magazines. When clients look at it, I want them to feel that they can move it around – it can be in the living room or the lanai."

Ricky Toledo And Chito Vijandre: Midnight Passion

The Firma guys known for their opulent style designed a setting that’s meant to be sensuous and sensual. Or as Ricky Toledo puts it: "With a setting like this, there’s no excuse for an heir not to be in the offing." And yet another way of putting it by Chito Vijandre: "It’s midnight indulgence after the fact."

Ricky and Chito envisioned a couple’s first honeymoon night – "a night without end" – and their sexy desires outside the bedroom. It’s a setting where the couple can have a brief respite and indulge their sense of taste. It’s luxury all the way, from the very strong coffee dispensed by a Russian samovar (the better to keep the couple awake all night) to the silver caviar and champagne buckets to the mother of pearl plates for the oysters ("not that they need any help in terms of aphrodisiacs") and don’t forget the Filipiniana cigar and cigarette boxes.

"We have to admit we are given to excesses," Ricky says, laughing.

They have certainly pulled out all the stops for this setting, starting with the multiple crystal candleholders hanging above the mirror table (the low table is in fact a framed mirror that holds all the shining, silver accessories), the Lalique glass pieces, and the crystal wine glasses.

They didn’t stop with the furnishings though. These guys like to tease the imagination by putting a nightgown seeming left strewn on the carpet in a hurry and a sexy shoe thrown without a care.

Chito says, "For a setting that has to do with passion, all the senses should be stimulated."

Ricky adds, "For the wedding night, you want it luxe and opulent. Otherwise, you’d just be a monk in the monastery."

The only duo who worked on one setting, Chito and Ricky say that when designing they start with the concept and it changes along the way. "We’re two peas in a pod. Our minds work the same way. But we also like to do things separately. We’re partial to European and Eastern things so we mix them all the time."

Chito says the setting is just right for "a night of wild abandon."

Ricky was right. You don’t have time for a full meal after the wedding. Caviar and champagne would do just fine.

Gabby Lichauco: Room With A Sense Of Humor

The whiteness of Gaby Lichauco’s futon-covered sofa-slash-daybed is made even whiter by the grass carpet on the floor – well, actually plastic grass squares. His concept is of a room for the handyman. Take an old sofa (available at any garage sale, he points out) and put a futon on it and on the side put numerous vases to double as shades for hanging bulbs. Beside it, fill up white vases and put just about anything – transparent glass cubes that look like ice cubes or candies for guests.

This living room setting is "for people with humor, willing to experiment on something new coz it’s not the normal setup of chairs and coffee table. It’s about being creative, not about purchasing expensive Italian brands."

Apart from the sofa he put a Scandinavian chair for "those moments you want to be alone."

The Industrial Design graduate from La Salle says he wanted to experiment with textures, hence the plastic grass and also to bring the outdoors in. "It’s a change from having a carpet, it makes you feel good because you feel like you’re in the garden but you’re actually inside. A little refreshing."

On the side of the futon sofa is a Lalique sculpture of a Godzilla-like figure pushing a dome-like light.

Godzilla as Sisyphus? Perhaps. But the young designer grins and says, "Godzilla laying a giant egg."

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"Rhapsody in White: A Bridal Affair" with the invited designers is ongoing at the home floor of Rustan’s Makati until July 23. Rustan’s Shangri-La and Rustan’s Alabang Town also have some vignettes created by the store’s visual merchandising team. To contact the designers, call or e-mail Ricky Toledo and Chito Vijandre at 757-4009; Joby Belmonte at 729-1398, Miguel Rosales at mtr888@hotmail.com; Ito Kish at store@kish.com.ph, 757-4002, 0917-537-1681; Andy Vazquez Prada at 727-0226 local 2289 or asvazquezprada@rustans.com.ph; and Gabby Lichauco at glichauco@hotmail.com.