Clothes the deal

The Premier 2 collection was predominantly black – either the color is making an unwonted summer return, or designers are sticking to the classic and tested. Black eveningwear at its finest stands out in high drama – poorly executed and unimaginative, you’ll look like an extra at some movie funeral, or worse, boring. Splashes of excessively bright color – summer’s acid greens and yellows – wove their way through the thematic thread, but only as exclamation points to an otherwise somber tone. Pepsi Herrera turned on the show with retina-burning neon swimsuits, chopped this way and that, but receded into a string of humdrum monochromania. Lyle Ibanez went safe and straight with his mod update of neo-preppy A shapes and pink and black blocks. Edwin Tan dappled sundrops over columns of feminine black chiffon, and turned out Arabian-ish menswear. Raoul Ramirez’s collection harked back to vintage Hollywood, with gothic and Victorian-inspired lace gowns and headdresses I couldn’t decide were cool antlers or creepy cockroach wings. His metallic zebra zooland set were the strongest pieces of the show, sexy and bold and unexpected amidst the shell-sweet predictability of the other offerings. The Philippines isn’t known for having particularly innovative textiles and luxurious fabrics, so to make up for this, creative structuring, deconstructing, design and embellishment become particularly important, and mark the merely good designer from the truly inspired.