Town & Carla

Carla Sibal, one of Manila’s original uptown girls, has grown up. Nowadays she’s usually chilling atop her double-digit-floor condominium located in tony Ortigas Center.

For the last decade or so, Carla had been living in her uptown world, soaking in la vida loca and loving it. How could she not? She was young, educated overseas in a top design school, gorgeous and stylishly smart. She was born and bred to be hot stuff.

Fast forward to the present, terrorism-ridden, recession-hit world. Carla’s a little bit older, a little spunkier, in fact she’s in the same age range as Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda and younger than Sam (if you have no idea who they are, then forget about it). She’s also as confounded as they are about men, sex and their womanly existence. So she got to thinking. Well, because like them she has serious responsibilities now. Life, as she knew it, suddenly changed. There had been a paradigm shift, someone moved her cheese. In fact, because of a number of milestones and dramas in her otherwise fabulous life (one is that of her beloved dad’s passing away suddenly last year), Carla has had very little time these days for getting together with her friends to party. What are you gonna do?

Segue to Ms. Grown-Up-Carla Sibal, circa 2002, postgrad from AIM (Asian Institute of Management) with a master’s degree in Entrepreneurship. Suddenly she is confronted with two multi-million sales companies under her wings to manage and grow. She is concurrently chief kahuna of her own fashion house, Baghera, and vice president for Corporate Affairs of SIBS, a publishing house for children’s and school textbooks. SIBS, a three-year-old venture, is an offshoot of the giant publishing company that her father Jess Sibal built when the family divvied up the family business, when Carla was barely 10 years old. (It has since been taken over by the Sibal family after her father’s demise.) All these twists and turns in her high-voltage, in-vogue world could have been enough to make her crumble like a chocolate chip cookie. But instead she reinvented herself and emerged unscathed. Who would have thought Carla would be toast?

Twelve years ago, in 1990, Carla arrived in Manila armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree major in Fashion, having graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York. The school, now 103 years old, was a pioneer in the field of art and design education since its founding in 1896. As gleaned from the history of the school, "Frank Alvah Parsons, the first president of the school, acted on a revolutionary idea: create a college that would respond to the tectonic shifts in demographics, economics, and culture brought on by the industrial revolution."

With this philosophy imbibed in her, ambitious and dreamy-eyed Carla stepped onto her hometown’s shores determined to make a difference. Consistent with her alma mater’s fearless forecast even then, when they predicted that consumers would be designing their own products, Carla, the ultimate shopper, decided to start a business of her own, where she was to roll out a fashion and clothes line.

She was only 22, inexperienced and perhaps a tad too young to be taken seriously by the bullies of business. So she did the next best thing. She took a job as technical designer for the top department store in the country, rolled up her sleeves and got to work at the drawing board and production lines. This marked the beginning of her enduring love affair with the local fashion industry. She quickly learned the ABCs of the business and soon she was ready to challenge her market.

Only two years after her graduation from Parsons, her dream store, Baghera, was born. This was 1992 when design was taking fashion – and the rest of the world – into uncharted territories. Among other fashion landmarks during this period, Prada, the Italian leather house of over 100 years old, was taken over by a brilliant third-generation Prada, Miuccia Prada. She revolutionized design with the use of unusual material like nylon combined with high-quality leather and stormed the entire planet with her newly-fashioned accessories: backpacks, totes, loafers and more, all emblazoned with the now familiar and much-coveted Prada logo.

In Manila a hot new glossy, Mega, was making waves, calling itself the best fashion magazine, causing a stampede of fashion magazine wannabes, thus creating today’s thriving fashion industry, Pinoy style. These combined events the trends and her own training made Carla intuitively see the opportunity to forge head-on with her business plans, no matter the risks. She was ready to be in the eye of this fashion storm. Spotting what was necessary for her market and what would appeal to them was another challenge she faced. She started churning out simple but well-tailored suits and corporate wear, which Manila had not seen before. With a touch of Armani and Calvin Klein in the details, Carla slowly established herself as a respectable designer, appealing to a wide market base of 17 to 49 year olds in the upper income range bracket.

The young designer tasted success and has never looked back since. On the side, her personal life sure resembled some Hollywood movie with the usual plot of falling in love, breaking up and dealing with the heartaches and consequences after. But Carla has survived these rocks and rolls in her young life and she has come out better than ever. She has managed to keep her head above water and as they say, that’s the stuff winners are made of. (With a little help from family fortune, luck and a nod from the Big Boss up above, of course)

And now you see her inspirations on a cork board which hangs on the main wall of her bedroom. She tacks on photos, clippings and even bits and pieces meant to stir or move her as she creates her new line of gowns and separates for all occasions.

Her home exudes serenity, a clever touch to allow the artist within her escape very often. Everything has its place and there are no excesses and clutter to mar this atmosphere. She likes gilt, dark wood, rich Persian rugs, a languid Sifritzi palm in a corner. Her windows are unadorned by curtains or shades, so on a clear day, she can see forever, we suppose. Her yellow Labrador Retriever, Luisa, is constantly at her feet or trailing her as she pads around her flat. Her true love, eight-year-old son Mito, occupies much of her time these days. He is her constant companion and cell phone mate, telling her how his day went at school and checking when she’d be home.

It was nice catching up with Carla. She has mellowed like fine wine. She is more confident now, taking full charge of her life, without Daddy.

We actually dreaded to ask how she reacted when she got news of his passing away. He was in San Francisco when it happened and she was in Manila. It was October 2000, she was home with Mito. The phone rang and she heard the sad news that her father had a stroke and he was in a coma. The end was near for him, she was advised. She started to cry. Her son inquired, "Why are you crying, Mom?" and she replied, "Lolo Jess is a vegetable..." and she sobbed some more. Puzzled by that answer, Mito muttered, "Why Mom did he become a broccoli?" And Carla broke down, this time in stitches.

And that’s the Carla we know, always unpredictable, laughing through her tears, beginning again, picking up the pieces and winning all the way home.

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For letters, comments and suggestions, e-mail Vickie at migasora@yahoo.com