You could say it took Ivarluski Aseron, the featured designer at this year’s Red Charity Gala, the 12th since it started in 2009, over three years to prepare for the ball.
 

Anyone would have taken their time to take their turn after the 11th edition of the fashion-for-a-cause gala in 2019, hard to top for it featured not one, but 10 of the most acclaimed designers here in the Philippines as well as in Dubai—Cary Santiago, Chito Vijandre, Dennis Lustico, Ezra Santos, Furne One, Joey Samson, Jojie Lloren, Lesley Mobo, Michael Cinco, and Rajo Laurel.
 

Soon after the gala in 2019, Red Charity Gala co-founders Kaye Tinga and Tessa Prieto gathered the designers to ask whom they would recommend for the next gala, and Ivar was the unanimous choice. Although it was obviously a challenge, even for the most masterful of designers, Ivar accepted it graciously. He would have been ready to present the next year. But, well, the pandemic happened.

For three years, like much of life as we knew it before March 2020, all plans lay in limbo. There were far more urgent things to think about—or to worry over—than a fashion show, especially since, on the worst part of the past three years, we were in and out of house arrest, the farthest we could go if we did venture out was the neighborhood grocery or drugstore. 

But all’s well that ends well. On Sunday, Oct. 8, the 12th Red Charity Gala happened at last, and Ivar took his turn on the gala floor. 
 

I’m not sure if that was the only reason tears were shed at the iconic lobby of the Peninsula Manila, which was commandeered for the event and equipped with a ramp that snaked across the length of the entire lobby for guests at every table strategically placed along two sides of the ramp to see up close the details for which Ivar has made a name for himself as a fashion designer.

Unfolded was a 53-piece collection Ivar called, “Memoirs in Motion.” He did not pull the name out of thin air. Each of the designs presented was a nod to the past—our weaving tradition, our rich heritage of handbeading—and yet, all at once, it was a leap to the future, say, in its androgyny or its gender fluidity or in the way some of the pieces took shapes and forms that looked like the past reinvented at a time that had yet to come. 
 

My seatmate, Thelma San Juan, described it as cerebral, and I thought at first that maybe it might have had more of its day if it were presented not in a lobby full of women looking for wearability. I’d like to think that the collection could have turned heads—and stimulated minds—where the audience, rather than looking for a dress to wear, would decipher in it a season yet to come or a reflection of the temper of the times, or the dreams of the future, even the most urgent concerns or, to borrow from Diana Vreeland, hints of a revolution waiting to get ignited. 
 

This was until I remembered that at the Red Charity Gala, as Tessa and Kaye and their team have envisioned it, fashion isn’t just a side show or an excuse for raising funds. Fashion is the cause célèbre, maybe the raison d’etre, of the Red Charity Gala. The gala is Philippine fashion’s answer to the troubles of our times, the platform on which it stretches out its hand to those in need of uplifting.

Emotions did run high at this year’s Red Charity Gala, so that even the auctioneer Tim Yap turned uncharacteristically mawkish at one point in the spotlight, as tears might have caused mascaras to run down Tessa’s and Kaye’s cheeks, especially at the end of show when two of their top supporters Ben Chan of Bench and George Royeca of Angkas joined them onstage. Also in full support of this year’s gala was Arthaland, along with A2A Safaris and Jewelmer, and others, such as Botanist, Crate & Barrel, Diagold, Emirates Airlines, Genteel Home, JMA Jewelry, Omega, Peninsula Manila, Remy Martin, Rhodium Regenerative Institute, and Tiffany & Co. With that much support, anyone could cry buckets of tears, especially with the more than enthusiastic response to the auctions on gala night, which aimed to raise upward of ₱5 million on top of its donation for Red Cross for its other beneficiaries Assumption High School Batch 1981 Foundation and Hope for Lupus Foundation.
 

Of course, the resounding applause and the standing ovation given to Ivar would make any designer shed tears the volume of the Niagara Falls. Other than bouquets of flowers, the designer known for his attention to details and experimental approach to design received so much love from the audience, as well as his peers from the industry. The gala, even at the after-party held at the Rigodon Ballroom, did feel like a reunion of long lost friends, as if it were the first time we saw each other after three years of lockdowns as a result of the pandemic. Obviously, we have been out and free as far back as last year, but last night still seemed like the first time.

No clue if there were reasons other than the tearjerker of a success the Red Charity Gala has been, or at least I’d never know how much of a challenge mounting such a show had been, especially the beaded dress top model Jo Ann Bitagcol wore to crown the collection, but I’d take a cue from Tessa’s last word on the stage.

Love always makes us cry, whether it breaks our hearts or truly makes us happy.

And love was Tessa’s last word. Before exiting the stage, she said to the audience, “To love!”