Thursday, July 29, 2010

Evening Wear Fascination

If you have been following my career since the very beginning, you'll know that I'm not the kind of designer who is heavy on the evening wear. When everyone was fascinated by the cascading chiffon of Elie Saab, or the magnificent Grecian draping of Alberta Ferreti, or even the
incredible beading of Giorgio Armani, I kept sticking like glue to the construction of Balenciaga or the architecture simplicity of Jil Sander, or rather the rebelliousness of Proenza Schouler or the extreme of McQueen and Galliano.

Beading is never my thing, and though I fully appreciate and sometimes do implement beading in some of my designs (by the requests of my lovely customers, of course), i do must admit that too much sparkle hurts my eyes.

Many of my classmates must have heard how I call Armani boring and Valentino coasting, some threw their eraser at me 'cause I can't seem to understand the beauty of 45 similar evening dresses walking through before my eyes, all with beading that took hundreds of hours to do and floating chiffon that were elegant and pretty, to me that particular Elie Saab collection look exactly the same.

But by then, I never really fell in love...

Cliche, I know. What exactly is the relation of love and designing an evening gown? I started to dig deeper into those people who does some of the most incredible evening gowns. And I realized that the one thing missing in my design element is romanticism. There's no sentiment there, it's all function and shape and emotion but never ro
mance, never passion, never that throbbing feeling inside you that says I fall in love with that dress.

And once my eyes are open to the beauty of romance in fashion, then and there, I can really appreciate the beauty of evening gown.



Giambatista Valli was my gateway to romance in fashion. I saw his collection and see how much love he must've put on every stitch, every detail, every cut. It was love. The lesson he gave me was love was to do beyond the necessary.
His clothes are pure love and poetry. It makes me wonder how much love he can give to another person...

Surely words cannot explain love, but a true poet like Olivier Theyskens can put them into magical creation that are simply breathtaking. It was not just beautiful to look at, the whole emotion caused by that dress is so powerful that it makes you want to touch, feel, or even know that magical feel wearing that dress. And that's just pretty much like love isn't it?