Heaving weaving
No warp. No weft. No loom. No yarn nor thread. Still, Estien Quijano weaves.
His are tapestries of a different sort, the type that’s worn. He had a brilliant idea then to weave garters he found by the kilos somewhere in the guts of Divisoria Market. Since then, Estien has become the veritable postmodern designer. Dubbed the Garter Guy courtesy of his groundbreaking Garter collection in the Mega YDC 7th edition under the theme “Shape of the New Future,” he has fashioned tops and fashion whatnots solely from the ubiquitous elastic material, weaving stretchy strands and scraps to create wearable art. He is the first Filipino to do so, distending the capacity of the material, ultimately stretching the word “flexible” to new dimensions. And how.
To weave is to make something by interlacing strands or strips of any material. Inspired by woven local handicrafts such as the banig made of handwoven dried palm leaves (buri), Estien’s designs reinvent traditions while utilizing new materials. Or more succinctly, Estien weaves the old and the new, the conservative and the innovative to create distinct fashion. Considered a veteran in the fashion world — with eight years of experience under Ricco and Tina Maristela-Ocampo’s group of companies; and then assistant designer and apprentice to fashion guru Frederick Peralta — Estien knows his stuff.
For one, Estien’s extensive experience made him realize one does start at one point, and certainly one does not go in just one direction. Just look at his woven sculptures.
The point is to seek the details and the dregs, collect the scraps and stories, and then put them together. Androgynous, original, and multiwearable — Estien’s masterpieces reject the fixity of institutions, and instead flow in and out of history, modernity, fashion, sculpture, sexuality, borrowing a little bit of this and that to make a primal pastiche. Primal because his material is heartbreakingly primeval in terms of its omnipresence in the history of dressmaking. Pastiche because it is all in one, continuing. Primal because beneath and in between the woven elastic strands peeps the taut skin of youth that the pieces aim to clothe. Pastiche in its woven splendor.
As if narrating a memory from all points of view. As if simultaneously walking along the narrow lanes snaking through the metropolis. As if sexing the pliable fabric, weaving in and out on top of each other, to conduce the birth of something massive — Estien sits in his loom, warping local fashion and history, threading and treading oppositions, heaving, weaving.
