Opulence is back, or at least it was on Tuesday night, June 18, when Puey Quiñones debuted his holiday 2024 collection at his atelier in Poblacion, where—with a mishmash of high and low, works of promising artists and found things, treasures unearthed from thrift shops, objets d’art by craftspeople not usually celebrated in the mainstream, touches of Filipiniana, lush carpets, sheer curtains, and a central floor-to-ceiling mirror—everything seems chic, rich, opulent.
But first a definition of opulence. In Merriam-Webster, the word is defined as “fashioned often to the point of ostentation.” This is not how opulence redefined itself in Puey’s holiday collection, although every piece in it did call up visions of opulence, referred to in another dictionary as “drenched in wealth and luxury.” But opulence, as revived by sleight of Puey’s hand, did not suggest extravagant excess or over-the-top living.
Instead, opulence returned with the grace and elegance of 1950s couture.
Luxury came in a sheer, diaphanous fabric, light as air, adrift like a cloud over a contoured dress.
Wealth stood out in a pink number abloom with the sinuous details of rosettes abloom in the folds of the skirt.
Extravagance revealed itself in the frills and flounces that spill out of a white cocoon of a dress tied delicately near the bottom to exaggerate a mermaid silhouette, as well as in the sumptuous shower of fabrics that paid tribute to the shape of the quintessential 1950s party dress.
Even the men’s pieces were lush, full and layered in Filipiniana fabrics.
Puey presented the collection before a few of his most valued clients and treasured friends at his showroom designed as a sitting room in which a consummate host or hostess would gather friends and family in private. I arrived one hour ahead of schedule, while the crew were still putting name cards on armchairs, divans, couches, Tiffany chairs, and settees covered in Iranian carpets to give everyone in the intimate party of politicians, socialites, fashion insiders, and the lifestyle press a front-row view of the show wherever they sat in the room. The presentation did not start until 7 p.m., when the atelier, suffused in the glow of the chandeliers and the living room, evoked the golden age, although I imagined it would have been just as fabulous in the late afternoon when the atelier, through the picture windows overlooking a tree-lined street in residential Poblacion, is drenched in the golden glow of the fading light.
There was nothing loud in the collection, nothing in your face, a breath of fresh air after season after season of the avant-garde, of dresses meant to shock or call attention. The wealth of Puey’s work for holiday 2024 is also in its restraint, in his decision to take it easy on volume to bring the wearer out. The dominant fabric, silk chiffon, breathes and flows and goes well with a body that is made to move, like air, like water, like living matter.
What a lovely, intimate show!