"Fallen Fashion"

A literary analysis of Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s short story “High Fashion”

The locals of some 300,000 square kilometers of land hailed as the Pearl of the East boast distinctive hospitality, bayanihan, close family ties, and conservatism. Surely, this race known globally as Filipinos, is recognized with intense facets peculiar to them: bayanihan, close family ties, conservatism... One of these is the chief concern of one of pure Filipina writer Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s short stories: utang na loob.

The catwalks of the dramatic and ambitious novella High Fashion are two discrete lives bound by a single force: fashion. One was of Gabinito, a distinguished couturier in the Philippines, and the other, who entered almost halfway in the story and budged the scene, was Edwina, Gabinito’s idyllic model.

It was established quickly in their depiction how different they were, in the gist that although none of one’s characteristics bluntly opposed the other —they were both well-heeled— in a way they harmonized each another. Gabinito, who was voguish and creative, lived an extravagant life, armed with his ability to “make or break a debutante”, and splurged in his famed parties. With justified fame and fortune and apparently tons of flair, one might think he already has everything one could ask for. Yet he knows he hasn’t. He knew what else he wanted, and for years he searched, for that perfect Christian Dior model. Finding her would be equal to happiness, the interesting search for fulfillment of one who seemed to have everything a human wanted, someone who seemed perfect.

At length, he found his prototype in the unglamorous Edwina. She was “an heiress without taste, Venus sans the graces of divinity.” She was rich but she “didn’t belong.” One can assume, if not for her satisfying Gabinito’s ideal exterior of a dummy, that he would want nothing to have done with her.

But Gabinito adored this mannequin; he worshipped the seemingly asinine snob who “could not tell a swizzle stick from a swastika.” This could be viewed as a form of self-effacement in the part of Gabinito, in that he stooped down, proud and rich and famous, to provide for a woman who was nothing like him except a little rich, too.

What one lacked the other filled. Edwina could not cook; Gabinito prepared sumptuous dishes. He beat expertly on drums and snatched the baton, while she kicked off her shoes and danced in ecstasy. The dressmaker created designs inspired by mustard pots, fallen soufflés, and scorched dresses, while the model wore wilting cloth roses. They complemented one another in those ways, and they were both aware how much they needed each other.

He needed her – and wanted her – as his Christian Dior dream, and she too, needed him, his fulsomeness, his creativity, his dedication. He offered her greater than she did offer him, though he never seemed to be bothered by it. Their relationship can be seen as an archetype of the conventional female-male relationship: with the man having the brains and the power, and the woman displaying nothing and surviving barely on her looks. Gabinito lived through his capabilities, while Edwina lived through Gabinito, dependent on him. It was a typical antediluvian relationship where the strong man dominated the beautiful woman, and provided for her often material needs while she compensated through her own means.

What led to the conflict of the narrative was Gabinito’s resolute determination in creating the “silk of a most fantastic shade” that have “the translucent amber of centuries-old Amontillado, the ephemeral glitter of green in the wingtips of dragon-flies, the elusive wisp of gray in the sulphurous smoke of a dying volcano.” Was it out of love, of true feelings of affection toward Edwina, who might be the ideal woman Gabinito has “done up” the dainty room for? Or was it minimally every tailor’s dream, to produce a fine cloth to be shown of by one’s most prized mannequin? Was it an expression of love or a show of one’s abilities, of one’s pride?

Whichever the reason kept Gabinito in his lofty prospect, and provided him sufficient motivation to keep working despite grueling obstructions. He abandoned his wonderful life and lived in poverty and simplicity, to the point of utter hardship, to produce that dress. Along the way, he proved that he was indeed strong, that he could survive –though he struggled hard– on a hard life.

Meanwhile, his model has grown even haughtier and more persistent, diminished into an insensitive piece of creature that has grown too cold and vain and selfish. She constantly complained and insisted of getting that dress Gabinito was making soon, without stopping to utter even a word of support or gratitude to the man who has left all that he has and all that he is to provide her with a priceless creation.

“Gabinito searched in the margins and in the back of the paper, in the borders and the flap of the scented envelope, and found not a single crumb of love he might feast on.” Surely, after all his hard work and sacrifices, after reducing his pride to ashes, he expected a few words of encouragement, in the least. Yet he received none. Nevertheless, he continued working, telling himself he was “old and almost fulfilled.” At that same time, the root of all his miseries and ironically, his joys, was in the lap of luxury, where she “so languorously sits with nothing more pressing than a date with the hairdresser…”

Gabinito’s dedication to his craft and focus on his lone purpose until the end was appalling and admirable, at the same time pathetic in that it sounded unintelligent, ridiculous, in fact. Toward his end, he exhibited the self-actualized man who didn’t care about frivolous matters and instead, set out for his dream. “Have I really grown this ugly? But no matter. I am old and almost fulfilled…”

Poverty and dirty living was likewise tapped in the story. In the “little village tucked in the apron of a mountain”, where life, even for someone with fortune like Gabinito, was unbearably hard and cold, the villagers took advantage of the rich and humbled Gabinito, much like Edwina had used him. “Everyone here takes advantage of me—for with my brown skin and shiny leather shoes and immaculate shirt and solid gold cuff links, they believe I am a god dropped from the sky for the role of enriching their village!” It is the same deprivation that induced ill-will that led to Gabinito’s murder in the pawnshop.

In his end, he served as an example of one who regretted his actions, who finally saw light in where he was wrong, like most of us humans do after a sin or a mistake. “As his dying eyes rolled heavenward, Gabinito thought – what a sacrifice to pay for an ideal, for a swath of cloth!...”

Hundreds or thousands of miles away, the fortunate woman who had power over the couturier received the cursed dress. In her ambitions to permeate the high rungs of society and have all awed eyes fixed on her, in her envy of “snooty Buchay Gabaldon and Titina Araneta”, and in her resulting hatred of them, Edwina glided into the Ambassador’s party. And in the final paragraph of the story, she successfully demonstrated the lack of one of the most esteemed values for Filipinos: that of utang na loob, or indebtedness, which many people today put to bad use and use as wrong influence, as she breathed quickly, “Yes, that’s what it is – an Original Dior I picked up on my last trip!”