Move Over Milan, Manila Is Taking The Catwalk - Filipino fashion industry

Reviving a piece of fashion heritage, a Filipino housewife creates an alternative sense of style

Until the late 1980s Patis Tesoro was a housewife and part-time fashion designer who enjoyed an upper-middle class life in the exclusive neighbourhoods of San Juan, a town on the outskirts of Manila. Occasionally, she would tailor-make an outfit for people in her rich circle of friends, and it would bring enough money to buy the expensive ornaments with which she decorates her spacious home.

But in the aftermath of nation-building that followed the 1986 overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos, Tesoro found her true calling as a social activist, entrepreneur, and leader in development economics. Seeing that ethnic wear was a part of Philippine identity that was dying out as the result of an invasion of polyester and cotton goods based on Western design, Tesoro set out to save one humble piece of heritage: pina, a handwoven fibre derived from the pineapple leaf, the mainstay of the traditional ethnic dress called the barong. (See box on facing page).

Turning over a new leaf

More than a decade later, her designs are de rigueur for Philippine high society. Along the way to success, Tesoro almost singlehandedly helped create thousands of jobs for peasants and weavers throughout the Philippines. In a country whose per capita GDP is roughly $880 a year, pina weavers can now earn as much as $200 or $300 a month. Such an income makes it much more likely that women will stay in the villages and weave pina rather than go abroad to be domestic servants, who earn salaries ranging from $300 to $400 a month. Though Tesoro had a lot of help from others, she used no capital except her own pocket money and grants totalling no more than a few million pesos(1). Her story is that of raw determination, strategic lobbying of the right government officials, and smart marketing at home and abroad. It is also a tale of how the developing world can transform tradition into business that creates wealth and shores up cultural identity.

For developing nations, the potential economic rewards alone of building fashion design and retailing capabilities are enormous. Currently the South is the hub of textile and clothes manufacturing, Asia being the biggest producer (garments account for 45 per cent of Hong Kong's exports) with Latin America now emerging as a player.

But these are largely "low-end" operations where the gross profit margins are fairly small - perhaps only 10 per cent. The big margins, as much as 200 per cent, go to designers and retailers, predominantly Western. Ironically in recent years many Western fashion houses have turned to ethnic themes from Africa, Latin America and Asia for creative inspiration. In the middle of this supply chain, trading houses that source from manufacturers and sell to retailers enjoy margins of 20-30 per cent.

If the developing world has thus far been relegated to a sweatshop role, things may be changing in Asia as the region's economies get back on track following the 1997 financial crisis, and as indigenous designers discover their abilities.

"We (in Asia) have a wealth of talent emerging, as good as anywhere in the world," says Professor Edward Newton, chairman of Hong Kong's Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Asia's biggest such research centre and think tank.

But to realize potential a lot of artistic creativity is needed, as well as a sense of what sells, gumption, risk-taking and a vision.

"I always felt that we Filipinos were looking for an identity," says Tesoro at a coffee shop she's built adjacent to her museum-like studio, which is filled with rolls of traditional fabrics and tropical spices. "What we needed to do was to get back to our roots. We were losing our identity. We were being overwhelmed by Western civilization."

Ethnic roots

Tesoro's story begins in the late 1980s. In the euphoria after the downfall of the Marcos regime,Tesoro and her close friends began a process of soul searching. Many wanted to do something to contribute to the new republic and decided to look at their ethnic roots: a complex history of ethnic tribal traditions, flavoured by Spanish and American colonialism.

Along with two other well-connected wealthy friends, Tesoro, now 48 and a mother of four, opened the Padrones de Casa Manila, a museum that celebrates more than 300 years of Philippine history.

It was then that Tesoro came to realize that many traditional industries were dead or dying during years of neglect under Marcos. Among them was what once was the pride and joy of the Philippines: natural fibres. Tesoro was particularly intrigued by pina cloth, which by that time was nearly impossible to find.

When Tesoro went in 1986 to the Visayas, a set of islands where pina still grew wild, she found only a handful of part-time weavers - most of them women in their late 70s or 80s. Clearly pina was going to die with these women, says Tesoro, who began lobbying local officials to set up courses to train the next generation of weavers. It took Tesoro nearly two years of lobbying officials before they took any action.

It was finally only by contacting Victor Ordonez, Under Secretary of Education, and Carlos Dominguez, Secretary of Agriculture, that Tesoro was able to convince the government to take action. In 1988,Tesoro and the Aklan State College of Agriculture in the Visayas began a series of courses on pina weaving. It took another year of lobbying government officials for Tesoro to convince the government to put up more funding to train local farmers to begin cultivating pina again. "It was not easy," says Tesoro.

Re-establishing the pina trade was even more difficult. She recalls the first meeting she held with former growers, weavers, leaf strippers and traders. She asked why they stopped selling pina. "There was a shouting match," says Tesoro. "People blamed each other and the middlemen. What it came down to was the price of pina was just too low. There wasn't nearly enough a profit margin for the industry. People would rather go overseas to be domestic helpers than be weavers."

Status symbol

By now, the government's Fiber Industry and Development Association was on her side. Together they began setting up a distribution channel for the pina. In turn, she promised the growers and weavers that she would buy their supply and also help promote their fabrics nationally by integrating them into her fashion designs. In fact, it was Tesoro who continually was willing to pay a higher price for pina at the beginning. By marketing her pina barongs to her rich friends, Tesoro was able to influence how the elites of Manila dressed.

Tesoro's clients list today reads like a Who's Who of the Philippines: Cory Aquino and her daughters, former President Fidel Ramos and his wife, President Estrada and his wife, and almost every major business tycoon in the country. "It is now a status symbol again," claims Tesoro, whose outfits sell for as much as $1,000 each.

In fact, it was by enlisting the help of former first lady Amelita Ramos that Tesoro was not only able to get more funding grants to train both growers and weavers but also spread the gospel about the importance of pina as a fabric among Philippine elites. Together, Tesoro, the former first lady, and a few others, founded the Katutubong Pilipino Foundation, which is dedicated to the revival of traditional Philippine arts, crafts and culture.

Today, Tesoro is no longer the only buyer of pina. Many younger Filipino designers are turning to it. In fact, the pina industry today employs more than 2,500 people in the state of Aklan alone, which produced 80,000 metres of pina fabric in 1998, up from a mere 3,000 metres a year back in 1986. Aklan is the centre of the pina industry in the Philippines. Here, more than 80 per cent of the country's pina products are produced. The industry's annual turnover is roughly US$1 million a year.

Much of the Philippine's pina exports began after the Paris Fair of May 1997, when Tesoro and then first lady Ramos put on a major show to promote traditional Philippine fibres to the world's top fashion houses. That show was the re-introduction of pina to the world. New York-based Filipino-American designer Josie Natori is now experimenting with pina, for instance. More may be on the way. The Japanese textile group, Kanebo, for instance, is experimenting for the first time with the mass manufacturing of pina by mixing its fibres with others.

Newton shares the view that many developing nations will explode on to the world fashion scene. He is particularly optimistic about India and China, which have the market girth to produce influential fashion culture and may some day rival the West. Besides Tokyo, he sees the emergence of Hong Kong and Shanghai as possible rivals to Milan, Paris and London in the next decade or two.

Hong Kong already plays the pivotal role as the sourcing centre for the entire garment industry and is also beginning to produce some top fashion design talent. Shanghai will rise, supported by its growing middle class, which demands not just Western brands but Chinese ones as well. Indeed, in China today Jeans West is already a leading domestically-produced blue jean.

Unique products

"Some day, 'Made in China or Hong Kong' will become a status symbol," says Newton.

Smaller countries such as the Philippines will have fewer chances of producing name brands because the home markets in most instances are just too small to give them global presence. There, says Newton, designers should focus on niche design and products. "If you don't have uniqueness, then you have to be competitive in making cheap garments like any other developing country in the world," he says.

Finding the right designs however is a huge challenge. Newton believes talented young designers would do well to study fashion in the West, as did Japan's Kenzo (Paris) and Josie Natori (New York).

However, Tesoro's example suggests breakthroughs are possible by looking inward. She now hopes to professionalize the Philippines' natural fibre industry so that future designers will have more ingredients to use in their ethnic designs.

THE SECOND LIFE OF A 400-YEAR-OLD TRADITION

Brought by the Spanish galleons to the Philippines in the 1580s, the pineapple soon became a major crop in the isles. The variety that prospered then bore a fibrous fruit with leaves that grew up to two metres, three times longer than the leaves of today's edible variety.

Natives took those leaves and stripped them down to fibres, which they spun into threads to make a shimmering, soft fabric, softer than the softest hemp, yet with more texture than silk. By the 1600s, pina and abaca - a fabric made from the fibres of a plant related to the banana - became the major exports of the Philippines. Natives traded pina and abaca with merchants from the Middle East, Malaysia, China and india. "it was what everyone wore-pina and abaca," says Patis Tesoro. It wasn't until the 1700s that locals began importing cotton from England.

The pina plant couldn't compete with imported cotton or silk, both of which were mass produced in Europe and in China. Despite that, pina and abaca were what many rural Filipinos continued to wear well into this century. The process of weaving these fibres was far more cumbersome than cotton or silk, both of which can be spun into very long threads by machines. The pina fabric had to be hand-woven because its fibres were never more than two metres in length and were hard to attach to each other.

As a result, pina fabric was far more expensive to weave than either cotton or silk. Because of its higher price, pina became the fabric of choice of Filipino noblemen. "it used to be that if you wore a pina barong, you'd really made it," says Tesoro.

FASHION TIPS FROM THE PHILIPPINES

For those wishing to launch a fashion business, using their own funds or other sources of investment, Tesoro has this advice:

1. Identify partners in government and local communities who can be won over to your cause.

2. Learn about the community you will rely on.

3. Make all partners see that the project will raise living standards and benefit the country and its culture.

4. Selling to big fashion houses isn't that difficult because they are always looking for new ideas, innovative products and materials. But ensuring adequate supplies is a challenge.

1. 1 US$ = around 40 pesos.

The Art of Philippine Embellishment, by Patis Tesoro (Anvil Publishing Inc., Manila, 1994) traces the history of Philippine apparel from its native roots to modern times.

COPYRIGHT 1999 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group