It's easy to get lost in Beatriz "Patis" Tesoro's house. The way it's built is pretty much open to interpretation, much like the owner. One room is well-lit and buzzing with sewing machines and women assembling fabric, another is dim and quiet and occupied only by handmade dolls in their individual glass displays.
The designer moves around a lot, poring over lengths of hand-painted silk, chatting with a client while making marks on an unfinished dress in the fitting room, all the while ushering this bewildered journalist into a parlor filled with antiques, ethnic bric-a-brac, sketchbooks, magazines, an unwanted cellphone, beloved dogs of various sizes, and portraits. One photograph dated January 10, 1960 shows Ms. Tesoro's mother, Nena Fabella Pamintuan, wearing a dress that could be the designer's favorite thing. Even if she will not be selling the dress any time soon, Tesoro says she refuses to be attached to any one thing.
So you can burn the whole thing down?
Basically, I could walk away. I'm not attached. I like it, I live in it, I enjoy the process of creating beautiful things, and it's not a burden, but when you're too attached, you sacrifice relationships, or the art of creation, because you're so attached to things. The fun thing is to create something.
Tell us why you like this particular dress.
My mother wore this at some special event, a 50th wedding or whatever, and I remember being there. I don't know who made it, it could have been Ramon Valera… It's almost 50 years old. This is taffeta and hand-painted. I don't know anybody who can make this embroidery. The craftspeople have gone. It's made of Italian straw that's all embroidered in and out. The closest I could get was a jacket [and pants] I made myself.
Were you influenced by your mother?
Yes, I grew up with clothes. She was a modista. She earned extra money by making clothes. She was a good dresser, she had good taste. She was best friends with Baby Quezon, the daughter of our Commonwealth President [Manuel Quezon], so she was always in Malacañang. In those days, Ramon Valera started a shop. There were one or two or three of them who had small shops, and many also just had in their house. My mother was one of them, and she would make her own dresses and clothes for her friends. But nobody was called a couturier or anything like that, they were called modistas.
Was it the glamour that attracted you?
No, at that time there was no glamour to it. Of course there was glamour when you went to parties, but not like this where it's a fashion thing and people walk up and down and people pretend a lot. You were a modista, you made beautiful things, you did it for special events and the costureras all knew how to do handwork. So it was really a craft thing. They were very proud of their work, and you see the type of work that was done. It wasn't just about the money.
How does the process of creating start with you?
I have trouble sleeping because my brain is always going. I read newspapers, I read art books. I've really quit looking at Vogue. What I do look at and I buy [are trend forecasts]—it's very expensive—because it just encapsulates the entire trend instead of going through all that advertisement. It encapsulates the mood. Not that I copy all of that, I just want to see what's going on… You create just like you do a painting. You have to have background, you need to learn the trade in school.
There weren't any fashion institutes in the old days.
The convents taught craft and home things, and you learned at your mother's knee. Home economics is finished, they thought it was not necessary, they brought technology.. But people forgot, human beings will never change their makeup, no matter how high-tech we get… Some of the most beautiful things are totally useless, except to enhance and to inspire you to do other things… They're not trappings, they're necessary for the human spirit. I think everybody would want to own beautiful things… So beauty will always sell… There can be degrees of beauty, but ugliness is inadmissible and not acceptable in life.
Most Filipinos consider the terno as a costume… We have so few opportunities to wear it.
I would say national dress, not a costume. We wear our national dress. Globalization made people run after a living, run after money, which is totally tasteless, and build awful houses that are not even eco-friendly and forget the niceties of life, which is actually getting to know people, having time to sit down and have coffee on nice plates or even just a simple setting. Do people make time? No, they give you a bottle and plastic wrappers and [say] "Eat!" But you see, the process of eating can be beautiful, it's not just for survival… Filipinos have a very strong aesthetic. We just sort of just forget, because we're so busy serving other people and we're so busy copying other people.
There seems to be a need for validation for most Filipino designers; when their work is recognized abroad, there's an added cachet.
I have never, never looked at that. There was this Italian journalist, and she told me, why don't you be like Shanghai Tang, and do clothes for the foreigners? And I said, "I'm just not interested."
I always have thought, even in my youth, that my main market, who would really enjoy and appreciate this, would be the Filipino people. I have never really deviated though I have supplied Giorgio Armani and Mary McFadden, because the expertise is doing the embroidery. But I have never thought of having my name out there, because that wasn't my passion. And if to make your name abroad validates you as a designer, give me a break.
Originally published in BusinessWorld High Life.