Fashion Week suffered from a palpable lack of mojo, but don’t blame the sobering circumstances of both calamity and recession for the neutered mood. The culprit may well be that old devil momentum, which has to be conscientiously nurtured and kindled and bustled along lest all that roiling energy dissipates into the ether. To us, the problem appears to be one of watchman’s lassitude. Given the cyclical nature of the creative temperament, with its ebbs and flows, coupled with the law of diminishing returns, the organizers should have upped the stakes and delivered a better program, instead of relying on the same old, boring formula. Designers, after all, need to be challenged from time to time. And, while a fashion audience may be expected to keep the faith, season after season, even the hardiest can succumb to ADD, especially when this outing is the exact, same repeat of the last.

Still, several designers managed to top last season’s efforts, creating both idea and clothing, which is to say, art and fashion. With gentle provocations and undeniable wearability, these collections proposed new directions while keeping it all within the ambit of the familiar.

TINA DANIAC

Completely unselfconscious, Tina Daniac is her clothes incarnate. Ultra-femme, effervescent and the coquette’s coquette, she is flirtation and fun in equal measure, just like her gloriously sequinned or handpainted cocktail mini dresses. Extrapolating from her previous collection, Daniac puts on the high shine on a mischief-minded evening, with fully sequined numbers, draped, bodycon, jersey dresses and ultra-sheer sheaths.

PUEY QUINONES

Quinones is master of the grand gesture, with his swagged, theatrical ballgowns, and his presentation had all the drama and surrealism of his previous shows. But, in his liquid, metallic dresses, he proves that he can also exercise control and restraint to startling effect. The planar discipline of the silhouette and the absence of cumulative flourishes—no folds or drapes—show that Quinones can be a constructionist in the strictest, minimalist sense of the word.

JEROME LORICO

Jerome Lorico is fast turning into the conceptualist among the emerging group of young designers. Adopting a cerebral approach to fashion, Lorico presents opposites and parallelisms in his Fashion Week collection, the menswear design signatures mirrored in the womenswear, intimating a “parallel universe where things have their exact opposite or pairs in another time or setting.” Lean lines and a somber palette evocative of the polarity of desert and sky cast a steeling severity on the collection, forcing one to think. Lorico shows his aptitude for fashion-forward menswear, integrating skirting into trousers in a way that seems organic to the design. Lorico’s collection is all rigorous discipline, a self-correcting mechanism for a young designer wise beyond his years. His next collections are avidly awaited.

JEROME ANG

The chaotic beauty of Jerome Ang’s clothes, a grand mash of organic and nomadic inspirations, combined with architectural construction, is in sharp relief in this collection. Ang’s underlying theme has always been the close tension between life and decay, entropy and order, as evidenced in his textures, which have the patina of disturbed earth. His chtonian fixation—highlighting the destructive power of Mother Nature—is mesmerizing and his explorations into the cycles of life and death make him one of the most intriguing designers working today. — JLF