Our history repeats itself much too much, so that you wonder if we must be truly enjoying this collective dementia.
Someone said this over lunch, and we agreed. Our quarter storms come in periodic cadence. Like in a stormy relationship, we can’t seem to move on—actually we want to move on, but can’t do it fast enough. We can’t seem to learn our lessons. And like in a failed relationship, there’s no closure. We like to flirt with danger. We are like a girl who gets attracted to bad guys, because good guys—who bring stability—bore us.
That’s our country, not so unlike a juvenile who never learns. And as in any relationship, you don’t really know what you have until you lose him/her, and in our case, it’s democracy.
But—one thing you must admit: we don’t give in to anger fatigue, especially the youth with its millennial energy.
Today a simple act of clicking into social media is a commitment—commitment to be informed or misinformed, to engage, and to be stressed. It’s a major feat to achieve clarity amid the fake-news clutter and chatter. Education is the long-term key to a mature democracy, but in the meantime, asking the right probing questions should be a good start to arriving at truth and accuracy.
Speech therapy
Speaking of noise and scandal, at one dinner, our friend had an odd, funny way of seeing the upside of sleaze and scandal in the news. “Thanks to this Andy/Tish (Bautista) (scandal), my mom is talking again. She can’t wait to see the news and she comments away.”
His mom suffered a stroke and was just beginning to recover her speech. Since the Bautista couple were her friends, she became engrossed in the news and simply had to keep on voicing her comments—and that, in our friend’s nonexpert medical opinion, was how the bad evening news had helped his mom recover her power of speech.
Good lighting
The Red Cross Charity Gala Ball of the Joey Samson collection at Shangri-La at the Fort proved how a good production could serve a good fashion collection. Unlike in previous Red Cross ball shows, this one, at last, was well and appropriately lit so that the audience could see the clothes well, and there was no need to stretch your neck to get a good view of the ramp, simply because there were no obstructions.
Samson has always thought out of the box—he doesn’t simply cater to the ladies who lunch and their love of cookie-cutter ballgowns, columns and shifts. He is almost oblivious to trends and to gender-centric dressing; only a blurry line separates the feminine from the masculine silhouette. The only constant and predictable thing about a Samson design is his mastery of construction, usually tailored structure.
We had a throwback moment seeing his monastic look—we remembered the clean yet powerful monk fashion of the late Bubum Melgar, who showed his one-man collection in the cloister of the San Agustin Church about two decades ago.
Samson’s show augured well for the randomness of runway collections—following no specific sequence of day or evening wear, of casual or athleisure lines, of men or women lines. Big fashion houses have been presenting their collections this way in recent years. The Gucci 2018 Spring-Summer collection held in Milan, which Lifestyle live-streamed with the Stores Specialists Inc. last month, was exactly that—an unending straight parade of clothes in no stereotypical order.
Fashion-forward
While most of the Gala guests wore ballgowns that swept the ballroom floor, Slim’s scion Sandy Higgins wore a different look—a simple black column with removable top. It was silk blend raffia with vintage sari trimming and touches of red velvet visible from under the vintage trim. It was designed by Slim’s School of Fashion and the Arts graduate Milka Quin, a Project Runway winner two years ago.
We got to scrutinize the design when we had dinner after the Gala show, at Shangri-La’s Samba restaurant, with Virgie Ramos and friends—at almost 2 a.m.
One of the evening’s must-remember moments happened before the Gala show, when a very amiable Salvador Panelo, the presidential legal counsel, dropped by our table to chat with beauty queens Rachel Peters and Laura Lehmann. The man was fashion-forward, as usual, with a glittery scarf.
Our tablemate, who obviously doesn’t read the news, looked at Mr. Panelo, and asked us innocently, “Is he the designer?”
No, we replied not so innocently.
Different proposal
Proposals are a huge part of today’s millennial lifestyle. A guy’s proposal of marriage to his girlfriend is usually an elaborate, unique production.
And now, there’s a “promposal” where a boy asks a girl to be his prom date—in a production just as elaborate and fussy as a marriage proposal.
Food entrepreneur Luis Mercado proposed to his girlfriend Monica Ang in Kyoto—a moment the jitters, the fun, the kilig of which was captured on video.
But what made Luis’ proposal different was how he raised it a notch higher, in our view at least.
The week after Monica said yes and the couple was back from Kyoto, Luis lost no time in inviting his “titos” and “titas”—the good friends of his parents Romy and Margie Mercado—to dinner so he and Monica could break the good news and show the proposal video. Not every engaged couple does that.
That a young couple made time to share their happiness with their folks was a touching gesture that bared their affection and respect for their elders.
It’s one bright spot in our relationship with millennials.