TWO young designers are etching their names in the Davao fashion scene.
With their latest achievement—winning the top honors in the first Stellar: Rising Fashion Star, a Mindanao-wide designer’s competition, which was also a design ideation and business incubation education to the participants to help them with their plans in putting up their own business under the design industry—Wilson Limon and Neil Jimlani are on their way to becoming the most-sought after designers in the city, and perhaps, the country.
The two designers also have another thing in common, they are both graduates of the Fashion Institute of Design and Arts (Fida), a design school with three campuses across the Philippines—Davao, Cebu, and Manila.
From Fida, Limon and Jimlani took to a university for a design course to hone their craft.
Fida offers one-year and two-year design courses wherein students can learn the basics of design, fabric and illustration, as well as the technical skills in sewing draping and patternmaking.
Recently, the school graduated seven new hopefuls. Louise Gumban Luntao, Laica Heruela Mraat, Kasimir Tan, Kathreen Cascabel, Anne de Arce, Melo and Julian Hellmuth have taken their first step in turning their dreams of making their marks in the fashion arena a reality.
Fida’s graduation rites called for its students to present their design skills applying what they have learned in the institution.
The show entitled “Aesthetics: Fashion + Fine Arts” presented the graduates’ collections taking cue from famous artists and art movements.
Each of the seven selected their own inspiration.
From the one-year program, Luntao presented Quasimodo inspired by the abstract art movement; Maraat’s Asperity took off from Impressionist Van Gogh; Tan’s Fusce Dictum from abstract expressionist Pollock; and Cascabel’s Opulence from the Rococo art movement.
The two-year fashion design and merchandising program de Arce’s Time Piece went Victorian plus Steampunk; Melo’s Afylos, meaning asexual, was inspired by the art movement Suprematism; and Hellmuth’s Ambivalence presented the Art Nouveau in her pieces.
Perhaps, like the other Fida alumni, these designers will follow their career footsteps and win the public’s hearts with their fashion creativity.
Congratulations to all the graduates!
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