From Maria Grazia Chuirri to Karl Lagerfeld, this look is a melting pot of many design houses and culture
Talk about making a chic first impression. Philippine representative to the 70th Miss Universe pageant, Beatrice Luigi Gomez, arrived in Israel over the weekend wearing an ensemble that exudes a very “Dune” vibe.
If you have been in the cinemas yet, “Dune” is a 2021 movie adaptation of a 1965 science fiction novel of the same name by Frank Herbert. It follows House Atreides, who is assigned to be the new rulers of Arrakis, a desert planet and source of the important “spice.” The epic movie gained a lot of praise from critics and audiences. One of the things people loved the most about the epic movie is its costume and production design. Mara Chua, the designer of the Cebuana beauty queen’s arrival look, was coming from a post-”Dune” high when she was designing the look and decided to make it a reflection of her cinematic experience.
While getting inspired by movies is not new to a designer’s process, Mara took time to edit her design to make it more fashion than a costume. In a post, she shared that Maria Grazia Chuirri’s 2020 couture collection for Dior and the late Karl Lagerfeld’s “Paris meets Bombay” 2012 collection for Chanel influenced her look.
“The idea is basically universal queen who can rock different modernized cultural outfits or that's how I understood it,” she says. “I told them (Beatrice’s team) that's the overall silhouette and feel I wanted to achieve. I did push for a more androgynous look by pairing Indian jodhpur pants instead of a skirt. For the top, I made the silhouette more armor-like with more angled and sharp lines and square shoulders. I did the drapes in overlapping diagonal lines to depict sand dunes.”
“It's kind of serendipitous in a way,” she continues. “‘Dune’ is a film that I believe parallels modern Israel, and the look we're going for is indeed a nod to the industrious people who built thriving and ultra-modern desert cities. And I firmly believe we have a queen who has the unique quality to seamlessly transition between pageant and editorial that I think it would have been a waste not to put her in something different from the usual.”
With Beatrice’s luxe departure outfit by Francis Libiran and this couture-like arrival look, we can't wait to see more of the fashions she’ll be presenting throughout her Miss Universe journey.
The 70th Miss Universe pageant is happening on Dec. 12, 2021 (Dec. 13, 2021 in the Philippines) in Eilat, Israel.