THE PROMISCUOUS LIVES OF
THE LAST PLAYBOYS
AN UNAUTHORIZED PORTFOLIO
8 ANNIVERSARY COLLECTOR’S EDITION
THE UNRAVELING OF
ISABELLE DAZA
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARK NICDAO
THE MYSTERY OF
THE PINK PANTHERS
& THE $20 MILLION CANNES JEWEL HEIST
THE REPUBLIC OF 2022
P O E , R O X A S , B I N A Y & D U T E R T E IN A DYSTOPIAN FUTURE
HOW TO BUILD AN
ELECTION WAR CHEST
AN EXCLUSIVE WITH
ROGUE MAGAZINE / 220 PESOS
FIFA’S SEPP BLATTER
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
SOCIAL CLIMBING
CONTENTS ISSUE 89
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COVER STORY 80 THE LAST SEDUCTION OF ISABELLE DAZA In the three years since she last graced the cover of this magazine, Isabelle Daza has struck off on her own. Speaking to the woman who has graduated from Gloria Diaz’s TV host daughter to an emerging actress, Miguel Ortega zeroes in on a star determined to regret nothing.
2 J U LY 2015
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARK NICDAO
CONTENTS ISSUE 89
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FEATURES Fiat president Gianni Agnelli at the slopes of the Sestriere ski resort in Italy, February 1967.
97 THE SECRET HISTORY OF SOCIAL CLIMBING What separates self-proclaimed “old” Filipino wealth, who have fabricated their own founding myths, from the hordes of social alpinists and gold diggers? Only the harsh light of history. Nelson Navarro explains why it is all fantasy.
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104
ON THE TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHERS High-profile jewelry heists have grown increasingly bold over the years, while chances of recovery and identification of the lost pieces remain slim to none. Alice-Azania Jarvis details the expanding black market and the fate of stolen jewels.
THE REPUBLIC OF 2022 Amidst the customary campaign jingles and mudslinging of an impending national election, Rogue presents a creative approach to selecting your vote for the next Lesser Evil: four acclaimed fictionists depict the imagined governments of today’s rumored presidentiables.
4 J U LY 2015
DAVID LEES / TIME LIFE / GETTY IMAGES
70 THE LAST PLAYBOYS In the 1960s, “playboy” referred to an inimitable breed of men renowned for wealth, charm, and masterful way with women. Fifty years since their reign, we hark back to a lost era of premium travel, brazen affairs, and barefaced self-indulgence.
CONTENTS ISSUE 89
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SECTIONS
The 1966 Jaguar Mark X 420G was the largest four-door sedan built by the British car company.
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AGENDA In the Helmut Newton. Polaroids., the photographer’s noted works are chronicled in their test shot infancy. The newly opened Bar Pintxos, with its morsels of classic Spanish fare, proves that bigger doesn’t always mean better. Scout Finch takes her place once more as the protagonist of Harper Lee’s recently rediscovered novel, Go Set a Watchman.
SPACE Leica carves a new niche iwith the Leica M Monochrom, the world’s first digital black-and-white camera. Because online reading is practical in theory but cumbersome in reality, we present the apps that simplify your device into your own bespoke newspaper. Danish design brand Hay takes a global approach to revitalizing the traditions of Scandinavian design.
THE EYE Harlan + Holden taps designer Bea Valdes for B.C., their latest collection of pared down essential wear. The second-generation shoemaker and CEO of Milan’s Fratelli Rossetti talks about the importance of well-made shoes in this month’s Rogue Register. Over six decades since the brand’s debut, Japan’s Onitsuka Tiger launches its sports luxury line, Asics Tiger.
THE SLANT As the former FIFA president reels from his recent controversies, Bambina Olivares Wise remembers Sepp Blatter before the fall. Diana Limjoco recounts her role in the documentation of Imelda Marcos’s seized jewelry. With the national elections approaching, business writer Wilson Lee Flores breaks down the cost of running for a seat in office.
6 J U LY 2015
Editor in Chief PAOLO R. REYES Design Director MIGUEL MARI
Creative Director MIGUEL LUGTU
Managing Editor JACS T. SAMPAYAN
Style Editor GINO DE LA PAZ
Executive Editor CARMELA A. LOPA Associate Editor MICHELLE V. AYUYAO
Assistant Editor DON JAUCIAN Editorial Assistant ARIANNA LIM
On the Cover
Editor at Large TEODORO LOCSIN, JR.
Isabelle Daza wears a Burberry leather jacket ART Senior Designer PATRICK DIOKNO Photographer at Large MARK NICDAO
Junior Designer CHESCA GAMBOA
Photographer STEVE TIRONA
Illustrator MENEER MARCELO
Contributing Editors JAMES GABRILLO, TRICKIE LOPA, L.A. CONSING LOPEZ, MANO LOTHO,
Photographed by Mark Nicdao Styled by MJ Benitez Makeup by Robbie Piñera Hair by Brent Sales Stylist Assisted by Jaime Abella and Mika Reyes Photographer Assisted by Phil Nicdao, Jack Alindahao, James Bautista, Chris Soco, and Egoy
TATS MANAHAN, TEDDY MONTELIBANO, NEAL OSHIMA, NICOLA M. SEBASTIAN, GUTSY TUASON, MARTIN VALDES, MARITES VITUG, JJ YULO, CLINTON PALANCA Contributing Writers APA AGBAYANI, IAN ROSALES CASOCOT, PAMELA CORTEZ, ADAM DAVID, JOB DE LEON, MARGUERITE ALCAZAREN DE LEON, GIO DIONISIO, WILSON LEE FLORES, JEFF FRANCISCO, ALICE-AZANIA JARVIS, STEF JUAN, DIANA LIMJOCO, PETRA MAGNO, JANSEN MUSICO, NELSON NAVARRO, MIGUEL ORTEGA, KEVIN PUNZALAN, BAMBINA OLIVARES WISE Contributing Photographers & Artists GABBY CANTERO, MIGUEL NACIANCENO, SERIOUS STUDIO Interns ISABEL BINAMIRA, JL JAVIER, JAM PASCUAL
PUBLISHING Publisher FELIPE P. CRUZ III / felipe.cruz@roguemag.net Associate Publisher ANI A. HIL A / ani.hila@roguemag.net Advertising Sales Director CHRIS TAN / chris.tan@roguemag.net Senior Account Manager PAM PLANTA-YAP Account Managers THUNDER ILUSTRE, CATHERINE F. RAYMUNDO, VELU ACABADO Advertising Traffic Officer, Production Coordinator & Circulation Assistant MYRA CABALUNA Marketing Manager & Special Projects Head NIKKI ARRIOLA Associate Circulation Manager RAINIER S. BARIA Circulation Supervisor MARK ROLAND LEAL
Until 102, Building 2, OPVI Centre, 2295 Jannov Plaza, Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati, 1231 Telephone: (+632) 729-7747 Telefax: (+632) 894-2676 Email: mail@roguemag.net Online Presence: Rogue.Ph Facebook.com/rogue.magazine Twitter: @rogueonline Instagram: @rogueonline Tablet version available at: Zinio.com/Rogue Official Internet Service Provider:
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For subscriptions, back issues, bulk orders, and other circulation concerns please contact : Rainier S. Baria at (+632) 729-7747 and rainier.baria@roguemag.net ROGUE MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY, ELEVEN TIMES PER YEAR. THE EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS OF THE MAGAZINE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES IN RELATION TO THE
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WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS.
THE EDITOR’S NOTE ISSUE 89
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The First Eight Years
10 J U LY 2015
Taylor wrote) and set the bar for circulation. More importantly, it became the most popular and influential outlet of Filipino fiction, art, and comics. Rogue, on the other hand, was born in a very different time, in a very different world: a time when blizzards of free information come to us at blinding speeds, a world where the filtered pleasures of the printed page have so much more to prove to remain relevant. But like Liwayway, Rogue was spawned by similar minds with the same nonconformist spirit. Every month since July 2007, we’ve asked ourselves the same question: How should the pages of Rogue reflect the unique pulse of the Filipino zeitgeist—how we live, what we eat, what we listen to, what we watch, who leads and inspires us? I’ve always considered Rogue to be an ongoing biography of the personalities that color our age, an unfolding picture album of the definitive moments of our past and present, published one month at a time. There are many things to be grateful for, the 89th edition of this magazine most of all. Rogue, for me and the magazine’s other founding members, has always been more than just another glossy rag on the grocery shelf. It provided us, a curious and like-minded band of thirtysomethings from a shared background, with an extraordinary medium to express our
unique, almost global point-of-view of Filipino life when there was none. There have been turbulent times, certainly, but all of us at Rogue have always operated from a glass-half-full perspective. It’s this blind optimism that has kept us, to borrow from the lexicon of sports psychology, in “the zone.” Like Arabian blood horses on blinkers, our eyes are constantly glued to the road ahead, never stealing nervous glances at our side and rear for fear of a rival stallion or the stray rattlesnake with venomous intentions. This, I’ve always believed, is true vision: self-inspired, non-reactionary, and never afraid of running the red light or driving against the traffic. In the span of eight years and nearly 100 issues of women, mischief, and the stories of our time, we’ve been fortunate enough to blaze our own divergent path—to the delight of some and the derision of others. But hey, at least we’re always original. And we’re here to stay.
Paolo R. Reyes Editor in Chief
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK NICDAO
W
hen my greatgrandfather, the novelist and Lola Basyang scribe Severino Reyes, founded Liwayway magazine with Ramon Roces in 1922, his first order of business as publisher and editor-in-chief was to make it a “smart magazine for the man on the street.” He was determined for it to be a massmarket original, even if that meant raising a middle finger to the publishing norms of 1922. He recruited the country’s top photographers, comic book artists, and illustrators (a young Fernando Amorsolo was commissioned to design a few covers); solicited stories from the heavyweights of the literary world; and chose Tagalog as his medium in a market dominated by English weeklies. Initially, Liwayway struggled to find its niche in the popular imagination of everyday Filipinos, who were accustomed to “light and frivolous” reading material. A few believed it would succeed. Many predicted its demise. Six years later, however, the gamble paid off: Manila Daily Bulletin editor Carson Taylor proclaimed it “the most successful journalistic enterprise in the history of the Philippines.” By 1927, it was selling over 60,000 copies per week (“the greatest ever attained by any publication in the archipelago,”
ISSUE 89
THE GUEST LIST Ju l y 2 0 1 5
Ian Rosales Casocot is the author of four collections of short stories, including Old Movies and Other Stories, Beautiful Accidents, Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror, and First Sight of Snow and Other Stories. Two other collections, Bamboo Girls and Where You Are is Not Here, are forthcoming. His novel Sugarland was longlisted in the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize. He lives in Dumaguete City with his cat.
12 J U LY 2015
Bambina OlivaresWise has been called mother of all slashers: journalist/ PR strategist/media consultant/bookworm/ traveler, plus a mother of two. Following her coverage of the southern African region and occasionally Asia for fashion’s newspaper of record, Women’s Wear Daily, she recently joined The New Standard as its lifestyle editor, which means she finally has a day job.
Nelson Navarro began his journalism career with Graphic magazine in 1968. He co-founded the antiMartial Law Ningas magazine and later served as a columnist for major broadsheets and as co-anchor on ABS-CBN and GMA. He is an author of 11 books, including the biography of legendary journalist Max Soliven. He released his memoir The Half-Remembered Past and also edited the memoir of former senate president Juan Serious Studio, a Ponce Enrile. Manila-based design group, is shared by the young and talented partners Deane Miguel, Lester Cruz, Katrina Lontoc, and Claudine Santos. Serious Studio has worked with brands such as Departures & Arrivals, EDSA Beverage Design Group, and Rags 2 Riches for its Ampersand Collection.
Alice-Azania Jarvis is a freelance journalist currently residing in London. She has written for publications such as ES, Newsweek, i Newspapers, and The Daily Mail International. Before freelancing, she worked as an editor for The Independent.
Miguel Ortega once worked for a bank before realizing words did so much more for him than numbers ever could (Because if you can’t dazzle with brilliance, you sure can baffle with bullshit). He has since written video scripts for various largescale corporations in the country, on top of working as a communication associate for De La Salle Philippines.
Wilson Lee Flores is a self-made real estate entrepreneur, college teacher, columnist of The Philippine Star, and now also a baker since buying and reviving the 76-yearold Kamuning Bakery Cafe. A keen observer of economics, politics, and pop culture, he’s won a record 12 Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA) for “Best Business Column,” “Best Opinion Column,” and two CMMA Hall of Fame Awards. He’s also won three Palanca literary awards.
Diana Limjoco is a Filipino-American entrepreneur and photographer. Shortly after the People Power Revolution, she was assigned by the Presidential Commission on Good Government to shoot the seized jewelry collection of Imelda Marcos, an experience she details in this issue. She currently works as the CFO of Design Web Group, Inc., a company that specializes in development and web design.
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E DI T E D BY
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AGENDA
F O O D + E N T E R TA I N M E N T + C U L T U R E + T R AV E L
Helmut Newton took hundreds of Polaroid pictures throughout his lifetime. A reissued book compiles a rare collection of test shots and original outtakes, providing a neverbefore-seen glimpse into his most famous shoots WORDS BY JAM PASCUAL
ISSUE NO.
89
AGENDA BOOKS
PORTRAI\T COURTESY OF THE HELMUT NEWTON FOUNDATION
BEFORE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY became a mainstream visual medium, the Polaroid was an absolute necessity. During the heyday of film, photographers would take test shots with them to get a feel of their given space, lighting, and a subjectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical presence. Helmut Newton, a master of the lens, knew the importance of the test shot well and, while polaroids may have been neglected by some, a number of Newtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s square shots have been immortalized in Helmut Newton. Polaroids., which was reissued by Taschen last month. Newton was born in Berlin, a Jewish German who took an interest in photography at the age of 12. His family, however, felt compelled to leave the country because of the oppressive political climate. Come the 1940s, Newton found himself in Melbourne, Australia, where he set up his first studio and established himself as a photographer for fashion and theater. A decade later, he would take photos for Australian and British Vogue, feeding the flame of his growing reputation.
16 J U LY 2015
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE HELMUT NEWTON ESTATE
NEWTON’S WORK WAS CHARACTERIZED BY EROTICISM AND A HIGH REVERENCE FOR THE CORPOREAL, HIS SUBJECTS SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF SOCIETY’S DARK CORNERS. He went on to become one of the most prolific fashion photographers of his time, having spent the 60s working primarily for French Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Expertly capturing his subjects in both color and monochrome, Newton’s work was characterized by eroticism and a high reverence for the corporeal, his subjects draped in fur, feathers, and leather, set against the backdrop of high society’s dark corners. Sometimes the subjects were captured perfectly poised, other times with aloof candidness. But from Milan to Monte Carlo, Newton’s eye was sharp and his work even sharper. In Polaroids, his saved photos—some with visible folds, others with scribbles on its margins—were the basis and the blueprint for what would become his visual masterpieces. While the polaroid no longer enjoys the same glamour and prestige that
SQUARE SPACE
From women scantily clad in fur to nudes in striking compositions, the Polaroid canon of Helmut Newton (opposite page, inset) was chosen by his widow, June, who compared his coming home with a stack of images to “Othello coming home with the spoils of war.”
it did during the age of film, it lives on as a reminder of the techniques and conventions by masters in the field of photography. The collection of test shots in the book grants glimpses of the evolution of Newton’s style across decades, doubling as a behind-the-scenes archive of his creative process. Perhaps most appealing is the fact that the works of art present in Taschen’s collection cannot be found in any magazine, making it clear what kind of artist Newton is: a rarity.
J U LY 2015 17
AGENDA FOOD
Jesus Boulevard, Alabang, Muntinlupa; 831-0065) is a hidden space, albeit a cozy looking one, with natural light streaming into it. Now the people in the South, notorious for embracing chain restaurants and such, have a classic bar they can go to anytime. The idea is straightforward: simple food made from great ingredients, with the tipple of your choice—cerveza, vino, or a mean sangria. You can come in your business attire or shorts and flip flops, it really doesn’t matter. Drink a little, then eat a little, then drink again. And because of its location, you can be assured that very often it’s the people who live nearby who will be populating it. It’s like Cheers, the Spanish edition, except Norm speaks Catalan. And the pintxos? They’re delicious. Pintxos, to the unfamiliar, are classic Basque bar snacks—basically anything on a piece of bread. If you choose well, you can make a meal out of a few, and if you’re really good, you won’t spend a lot. Try all if you can but if you had to choose one, opt for their signature: roasted red pepper stuffed with Brie and jamon. Their salpicao and gambas is a crowd pleaser, too. So much so that they’re considering buying a rice cooker because too many people are clamoring for rice to eat alongside it. Some nights, usually on weekends, they’ll even fire up a paella. At the prices they’re charging, even students can come over on a date and have fun here. It’s going to be many things to many people.
SOUTHERN PERK
Left: The assortment of pintxos ranges from tortilla with angulas to jamon allioli. Below: The Alabang-based restaurant’s interiors include a bar area reminiscent of tapas joints in Barcelona and San Sebastian.
BASQUE BITES In Bar Pintxos, bigger doesn’t always mean better. The newly opened Alabang pintxos bar puts quintessential Basque flavors in perspective through tiny, palatable bites WORDS BY JJ YULO PHOTOS BY MIGUEL NACIANCENO
18 J U LY 2015
THIS TALE BEGINS with some chorizo, and a wedding: Miguel Vecin was going to get married to his sweetheart. As someone who lived in Spain for 20 years, he wanted to serve the delicacies he’d grown to love as part of their wedding feast—jamon, chorizo, cheese, you name it. The caterer loved it so much that he asked if he could buy some off of Vecin. This is how Tierra de Espana was born, run by Vecin and business partner Tinchu Gonzalez. Working together led to bigger dreams and, after much navel-gazing and mulling over, the decision was made to open a pintxos bar. Bar Pintxos (G/F, Don Gesu Building, Don
AGENDA TELEVISION
GRAND SLAMMING Airing simultaneously with the 2015 Wimbledon finals, the HBO mockumentary Seven Days in Hell chronicles a marathon match between two of the world’s greatest fictional tennis players WORDS BY MICHELLE V. AYUYAO
Blind Side, where a rich white family gets a black kid and makes him play football,” says tennis star Serena Williams. “We flipped it; my dad took a white kid and made him play tennis,” she goes on to say of her pseudo brother in the upcoming HBO special, Seven Days in Hell. The TV film stars Saturday Night Live alumnus Andy Samberg alongside Kit Harrington, coming out of his recent retirement as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. In the same order, the two play fictional sportsmen Aaron Williams (an American bad boy tennis player reminiscent of a teenage Andre Agassi) and Charles Poole (the sweetfaced British prodigy aiming to bring home a win for the motherland) in a weeklong match. The long-running rivalry between the two
“IT WAS A REVERSE
sports stars leads to the final match for men’s singles in Wimbledon that lasts, as its title suggests, seven days. Filmed in the same television format it imitates, the tennis mockumentary intersperses game clips with documentary-style commentaries from Williams’s and Poole’s would-be peers. Among them Chris Evert and John McEnroe, who deliver their observations and criticism to the camera as if the two lead actors were born into the game. That’s as far as tennis street cred goes though, as the real players are joined by a wackier mix that includes Lena Dunham, Michael Sheen, Will Forte, and Fred Armisen. Directed by Jake Szymanski—who has directed segments for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, SNL, and Funny or Die on various occasions—
BREAK POINT
Above: Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones) and Andy Samberg (SNL) star in the HBO Wimbledon spoof, which airs July 11. Below: Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper reprise their roles as camp counselors in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, a new Netflix series that premieres on July 31.
Seven Days in Hell watches like an SNL short on steroids, with the same quick wit and deliciously corrupted humor that the show had during the era of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Whether it was HBO’s decision, or the producers behind it, the movie goes the extra mile for a good laugh as it airs on July 11, the same day as the 2015 Wimbledon finals this year. Fan of the sport or not, catching Seven Days in Hell versus the actual Wimbledon title match will have you at game point.
SCHOOL’ S OUT FOR SUM MER ourteen years after the release of cult classic Wet Hot American Summer—the apex of 80s teen-sex comedy parodies—Netflix will unveil an eight-episode prequel series on July 31. With David Wain and Michael Showalter back as the main writers, the entire show is set in the first day of fictional Camp Firewood during the summer of 1981, and dives into the events that lead up to the shenanigans of the original comedy. Crass and satirical, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp aims to keep the original 80s feel of its cinematic predecessor—if the slightly distorted, Betamax-like quality of its official trailer is any indication. The show will feature most of the members of the original cast, with newcomers like Jason Schwartzman and Jon Hamm joining the party. – J A M PA S C U A L
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20 J U LY 2015
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AGENDA BOOKS
LOST AND FOUND Half a century since the release of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch takes her place once more as the protagonist of Harper Lee’s recently rediscovered novel, Go Set a Watchman, out this month WORDS BY PETRA MAGNO
22 J U LY 2015
IN WITH THE NEW
Though speculations surrounded Lee’s involvement with the publication of the sequel, she issued a statement saying, “I’m alive and kicking and happy as hell with the reactions to Watchman.”
MAKE A KILLING The stellar figures that surround Lee’s original Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
4 Millions of copies sold
5,000 Number of editions printed
3.95 Mockingbird’s original 1960 price in U.S. dollars
2983 Percentage increase in sales on UK Amazon upon announcement of Go Set A Watchman
in 2014; HarperCollins is set to publish the found novel as it is, unedited and unrevised. Misgivings and accusations have swirled around this decision, particularly because Lee has refused to participate in any media blitz to promote her new old novel. There are suspicions that the reticent Lee—currently in an assistedliving center post-stroke—did not at all consent to the publication of her unedited novel, especially after she sued HarperCollins for stealing Mockingbird royalties. Yet the rollout rolls on, and already Go Set a Watchman is ranked as the most pre-ordered book HarperCollins has ever had. One thing is for sure: if the book is a post-racism utopia, if in this novel Lee describes a world without the prejudice and violence we witnessed in To Kill a Mockingbird, it is truly a work of fiction.
GETTY IMAGES
To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, right before the peak of the civil rights movement in America, and as a Bildungsroman was based on several events from Lee’s life growing up in a small Southern town: her father was an attorney, the character Dill is sketched upon her childhood friend Truman Capote, and the novel’s milieu of racial inequality and miscarriage of justice is drawn from the case of the Scottsboro Boys—nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women—as well as the 1955 murder of Emmett Till. These cases of racism and injustice, however, are not just the stuff of literature, nor do they belong in the crueler, less civilized past. Recently, in an act of domestic terrorism, a white supremacist massacred nine black people inside the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Such a church is present in Lee’s novel; the Finch family’s black cook, Calpurnia, takes Scout and Jem with her to the fictional First Purchase African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which welcomes the children warmly. It is here where the young white protagonist glimpses her cook as a person with a life outside of the household. Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, comes out from HarperCollins this month. Despite the novel’s events being set after Mockingbird’s—the narrative tracks a grown-up Scout and her reflections on her father Atticus as the “moral compass” of Maycomb, the book’s Southern town—Watchman was written first. It was set aside when Lee’s editor suggested that she take Watchman’s characters and write from the point of view of a young Scout Finch instead, resulting in To Kill a Mockingbird. The unpublished manuscript for Go Set a Watchman was lost, and then rediscovered HARPER LEE’S novel
AGENDA FOOD
HALT AND CATCH FIRE Chef Bruce Ricketts has managed to pique the curiosity of every intrepid diner in the city. In his new venture Ooma, he plays with Japanese flavors to form a sushi bar like no other WORDS BY PAMELA CORTEZ PHOTOS BY GABBY CANTERO
24 J U LY 2015
FUSION IS A bit of a culinary dirty word. Chefs seem to loathe the idea of their cuisine being identified with the genre, maybe because of its reputation as an excuse for a terrifying hodgepodge of flavors, especially when people seem to look for that prized “authenticity.” To call a chef ’s work fusion is often a highbrow insult. But what other word can you use to describe Bruce Ricketts’s excellent cooking at Mecha Uma and Sensei Sushi? Cross-cultural? Pan-Asian? The chef fuses Mexican influence with Japanese produce and flavors. There is Peruvian boldness and intent in his ceviche, and sometimes, on his menu, there is Spanish and New American molecular ingenuity. It is fusion, but without ever crossing into dangerously overwrought and unpleasant territory. As Ricketts pairs up with The Moment Group, the partnership is bringing this philosophy into a much more casual space, Ooma (3/F Mega Fashion Hall, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong), with the kind of Japanese food that would be sentimental to a Filipino diner. “Japanese cuisine is super delicate. But in Ooma, we play around with form. Filipinos generally tend to like flavors that
“OOMA PLAYS WITH FORM. YOU’LL UNDERSTAND THAT IT’S JAPANESE, BUT A BOLD REINTERPRETATION OF IT.” hit you in the front of your tongue. Ooma is put-together, and you’ll understand that it is Japanese, but it’s a bold reinterpretation of it,” says Abba Napa of The Moment Group. There is tempura, for example, but the battered ebi has no soy ginger sauce alongside it. Instead, there is a bold aioli, which incorporates the rich, fatty, and salty notes of crab fat. Udon is rich, broths of miso nowhere to be seen. One bowl is undulated with the distinct sea flavors of uni, covered in an urchin cream sauce, then topped with its orange tongues. Napa’s words resonate when eating Ooma’s taco-maki, with a nori shell marrying the origins of the portmanteau. There is a focus on the art of aburi because of how straightforward it is. “What’s beautiful about fire is that you cannot control fire—it can be destructive or tame,” says Ricketts. “The smell of the fish fat sizzling right after it gets hit with the flame completely changes tradition.” Indeed, the flavor and aroma you get from the delicate flesh is completely transformed after merely a lick of the flame; sweet scallop is made smoky in an aburi maki with nori crumbs and kimchi aioli, leaving the bivalve’s subtlety to come through only at the finish. Ricketts started with a barely functioning kitchen in a hole-in-the-wall space. Now the obscure location has been replaced by a dining room with influences from Kill Bill to Tsukiji Market. The food is of-the-moment, exactly what his Sensei Sushi would be like after Ricketts has had a chance to travel the world, cook off the cuff, and experiment in his playground, Mecha Uma. With Ooma, it seems he has come full circle. It is fusion, but only in the way someone like Bruce Ricketts could ever make it.
CRACKLE AND CRUNCH
Above: Ooma’s ebi tempura leaves the shrimp heads on, and comes paired with aligue mayo and avocado mousse. Top left: Elements of the oyakodon include crispy chicken skin and smoked sous vide chicken. Right: California taco-maki is an Ooma rendition of the temaki. Previous page: Salmon skin aburi maki.
J U LY 2015 25
AGENDA FILM
BLOOD MONARCH
Salma Hayek plays a queen whose ravenous obsession with bearing a child has launched her on a quest to consume a sea monster’s heart.
The Nature of the Beast Drawing from the rich vein of Neapolitan fairy tales, Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales conjures a wildly imaginative world of kings and queens, nymphs and ogres WORDS BY JANSEN MUSICO
FAIRY TALES, whether brushed off as childish or labeled unoriginal, do not stand a chance against the prejudice of a public that has lost its sense of wonder. And who can blame moviegoers? These fantasies, no matter how
vivid, have been repeatedly ruined by the film industry, either diluted to unrecognizable mess or over-preened into trite versions of themselves. But if the stellar reactions at this year’s Cannes were any indication, director Matteo Garrone—whose film Gomorrah received the Cannes Grand Prix in 2008—has succeeded in capsizing this trend. Lauded for his penchant for variety and neorealism, Garrone took the timeworn Pentamerone— the lesser-known fairy tales of Giambattista Basile—and turned it into Tale of Tales, a morbid triptych balanced out by Garrone’s humor and mastery of cinematic hyperboles. The stories span three kingdoms, each ruled by monarchs with questionable morals: the first is governed by a queen (Salma Hayek) whose ravenous obsession with bearing a child has launched her on a quest to consume a sea monster’s heart. The second tale is of a hedonistic prince (Vincent Cassel) whose insatiable thirst for carnal pleasures makes him fall for a misshapen hag disguised as a beautiful wood
nymph. The last is of a king (Toby Jones) whose infatuation with a flea overrides any affection he has for his only daughter (Bebe Cave). As his flea grows to the size of a fattened bear, his regard for her accordingly diminishes. Each frame is painted with such meticulous stroke of hand, staging these lost stories within rich, hyper-realistic environments that blur the line between authentic and audacious. He drowns the atmosphere in Alexandre Desplat’s music and completes the look and feel of his scenes with Massimo Parrini’s larger-than-life creations. Parrini’s costumes were so grand that Hayek had to be dragged across Garrone’s hulking sets just so the director could capture the perfect lighting he required. This level of attention to detail may seem excessive even for Garrone, but once you unearth the reason behind his first English full-length feature, one he lovingly dedicated to his daughter, you will find a man driven to revive his audience’s sense of awe.
THE WOODY ALLEN SHOW Set in the fictional Braylin University in Newport, Rhode Island, Woody Allen’s Irrational Man surrounds Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), a philosophy professor caught in the middle of an existential crisis, who finds himself drawn to his student, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone). The
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film combines the intensity of Allen’s more serious films with the hilarity of the comedies that made him. True to his intellectual body of work, the film is an attempt at explaining how far one must go to achieve clarity and meaning. –J A M PA S C U A L
AGENDA SPOR SPORTS TS
Hounded by allegations of money laundering and fraud, the Federation Internationale de Football Association has run itself into the ground. Here, FIFA’s accounts of deception WORDS BY MIGUEL ORTEGA
$42,000,000
6 Amount of bribes received by Havelange, from 19922000, as revealed by Swiss court documents
FIFA officials, including executive committee members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii, that were suspended after claims that they offered to sell their votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids
2013
Amount of time Blazer is suspended for breaching FIFA’s code of ethics, apparently receiving $15 million in commissions during his time in CONCACAF. Blazer denies allegations. The year an internal investigation took place, which clears Blatter of any misconduct. Havelange is not as fortunate. He steps down as honorary president after being found to have received illegal payments during his reign as FIFA president.
2018 2022
HOST YEAR WON BY RUSSIA FOR THE WORLD CUP
HOST YEAR WON BY QATAR FOR THE WORLD CUP
$350,000
MILLION
Profit earned by Jack Warner, president of the Confederation of North, Central America, and the Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), from allegedly selling 2002 World Cup tickets on the black market
Amount that executive committee members were supposedly paid in order to vote for Qatar in the bidding
PLAYERS FROM KOREA THAT RECEIVE A LIFETIME BAN FROM FIFA AFTER MAX-FIXING IN THE K-LEAGUE
7
People arrested by Swiss authorities, at the behest of US officials, after raiding the FIFA headquarters in Zurich.
Ju l y 2 0 1 5
E DI T E D BY
DON JAU CI AN
SPACE
DESIGN + INTERIORS + ARCHITECTURE + TECHNOLOGY
Th e RU L E S o f
I N H E R I TA N C E saloon that purred more seductively than its American counterparts WO R D S BY K EV I N P U N Z A L A N
ISSUE NO.
89
SPACE MOTORING
IN THE EARLY 60S, wealthy Americans viewed Cadillacs and Lincolns as their steeds of choice. While the more urbane among them could travel to Europe and purchase Italian exotica, the continent was only emerging from the ashes of WWII and the meager postwar years. Even as some manufacturers built fast and light sports cars, such as Jaguar’s E-Type and Porsche’s 356, the luxurious European saloon had yet to make a sustained comeback as manufacturers focused on affordable family cars instead.
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When it unveiled the Mark X in 1962, Jaguar (32nd and 4th Crescent Park, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig; 856-2277; jaguar.com) took a further step forward, both aesthetically and technologically. At the time, Jaguar was at the forefront of automotive engineering as well as a trendsetter in rallying and grand prix racing, with drivers such as Stirling Moss establishing the reputation of its sports cars as possessing both “grace and pace.” The company was keen on making inroads in North America and intended
THE CAT’S CRADLE
The Mark X was renamed 420G in 1966. Its updates included a vertical central bar splitting the grille in two, padded dashboards, and air conditioning as an option.
to make the Mark X its flagship for a highly discerning market. One of the widest Jaguars ever made, the car measured over 76.3 inches in width and added “space” to the brand’s grace and pace. While narrower than its contemporary “Yank tanks,” it would have still been a wide car by modern standards.
One of the largest Jaguar sedans ever made, the Mark X measured over 76.3 inches in width and added “space” to the brand’s grace and pace. DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
Clockwise, from top left: The elegant interiors of the original Mark X featured polished walnut picnic tables, seats upholstered with the finest Vaumol leather hide, a centrally placed temperature control, and 27 cubic feet of luggage space.
The car disguised its bulk well with styling cues that would be adapted in Jaguars for the next 40 years. The long hood with sloping fenders formed a line broken only by the quad of independent headlamps up front. Raked forward, the grille and the headlamps echoed the aggressiveness of the leaping cat emblem that has always been Jaguar’s trademark. Inside, high-quality leather and handrubbed walnut established Jaguar’s reputation for excellent coachbuilding. Until car designer Ian Callum started revamping the Jaguar line in 2007, these design features influenced all the Jaguar saloons that followed. The Mark X introduced several features that are taken for granted in large saloons today: full monocoque construction, fully independent double-
wishbone suspension with telescopic dampers, double overhead camshafts, and four wheel disc brakes. In terms of power, Jaguar banked on its racing expertise to ensure that the Mark X had the pace to propel its space. Initially available was a 3781 cc DOHC Inline-6 that was sourced from the legendary E-Type sports car that propelled the Mark X to a top speed of 193 kph. The Mark X—and its successor 420G in 1966—pushed the envelope of what large saloons were capable of. Even today, owners prize the surviving models for their comfort, tasteful styling, excellent interiors, and power. They offer the same values as contemporary luxury saloons, yet are able to cocoon their owners in the timeless design of the early 60s in a way no contemporary saloon can.
SPACE TECHNOLOGY
KINGDOM OF THE NORTH
An image of Iceland by photojournalist Ragnar Axelsson, who traveled around the country last April with the Leica M Monochrom.
Life in Mono As the world’s first digital blackand-white camera, the new Leica M Monochrom challenges photographers to do more with less WORDS BY JOB DE LEON
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THE PREMISE OF the Leica M Monochrom is simple: color is a distraction. Leica ditched the color filter array, usually found in oother cameras, which creates color images but reduces the amount oof light that reaches the sensor in the process. It’s a counterintuitive setup in a consumer climate that prizes visuals and how it brings out the vibrancy of every imaginable hue. But by turning a blind eye to ccolor, this camera’s high-resolution 24-megapixel sensor captures the full intensity of light in 35mm, full-frame format to deliver u unparalleled detail. Leica (LGF Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati; 729-5567; leicacamera.com) promises its latest technology will aid photographers in ccapturing classic moments. Its ISO range of up to 25,000 encourages eexperimentation in any kind of light, while greatly reducing visual noise even in the darkest environments. n Only 11 buttons adorn its surface for simplicity and functionality, including a four-way rocker that tilts slightly to the right for easier thumb access. Users can also shoot up to three times faster than previous Leica M models thanks to two gigabytes of RAM. Images can be viewed instantly on the three-inch, 921,600-pixel monitor with up to tenfold magnification care of the Live View Zoom feature. The Focus Peaking feature supports the customary manual focus by sharply highlighting the focused objects in an image. Fittingly the Leica M Monochrom comes in a black chrome finish, a sleek and subtle update of the company’s traditional M model design that debuted in the 50s. Any kind of visible branding is absent from the body: even the signature red crest is missing from the camera’s face. Instead, it permits only a barely-there “Monochrom” engraving on the hot shoe. It’s the perfect understated look for the photographer on a mission.
FRAME BY FRAME Is Leica Q Q’s heftyy pprice tagg really worth it?
The Leica Q carries a full-frame 24-megapixel sensor found in SLRs and guarantees high-speed everything, capable of snapping 10 frames per second at a full 24-megapixel resolution, and up to 50,000 ISO. The alternative subject framing feature provides more creative opportunities, rendering the equivalent of shooting with 35mm and 50mm lenses on the electronic viewfinder. The Leica Q sums up what one expects from a Leica: quality features and—at over $4,000—the subsequent price.
SPACE FURNITURE
IN THE HAYSTACK Rolf and Mette Hay further the renown of Danish design by making use of unusual shapes and evocative minimalism WORDS BY DON JAUCIAN
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IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE THAT newer Danish designers balk at the prospect of following in the footsteps of the masters. Saddled with the legacy of luminaries such as Arne Jacobsen and Finn Juhl— whose names are widely recognized even by children in the streets of Denmark—there is a need for contemporary designers to create pieces that, at the very least, meet the industry’s expectations. In response to this predicament, Rolf and Mette Hay set out to “encourage Danish furniture design’s return to the innovative greatness of the 1950s and 1960s, but in a contemporary context.” With their brand Hay, which started in 2002, they have been able to create a playground for refreshed forms and concepts. Copenhagen plays host to the iconic Hay House, considered a mecca for worshippers of exceptional design; it’s even listed as a destination on the Visit Copenhagen website. Located on the second floor of an apartment building, the Hay House feels more like a lived-in home than a gleaming furniture showroom. An antique staircase imported
COLOR CORRECTION
Clockwise, from right: Hay’s New Order shelving unit is meant to work in both the workplace and the home; metal organizers that are available in contrasting colors; the Bjrn sofa with the J7110 solid beech chair, and a set of five cardboard boxes from Hay’s storage collection; the brass version of the Slit coffee table. The Danish furniture line is available at Casa Bella in Ortigas.
Hay,nowavailableinManila, encourages “Danish furniture design’s return to the innovative greatness of the 50s and 60s, but in a contemporary context.”
from England sets the loft-like atmosphere of the space, while expansive windows let in the soft northern light. A quick look yields the Hay’s love for unconventional shapes: hexagonal tables and mirrors, undulating chairs with textured finishing, and bent stools—an obvious tribute to their core philosophy. Having steadily built their reputation in the industry, Hay (Casa Bella, G/F AIC Burgundy Empire Tower, ADB Avenue cor. Garnet Road, Ortigas Center, Pasig; 470-6250; casabellahomeandliving.com) has become adept at working with a host of designers from all over the world, both prominent (Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec, whose collaborations with Hay include chairs for the University of Copenhagen) and off-the-radar (Scholten & Baijings), yielding pieces that are extensive and surprising. One of their most acclaimed collaborations is with London-based designer Sebastian Wrong, the co-brand Wrong For Hay. Under the creative direction of Wrong, this collaboration fed off of the British capital’s energy, fusing Hay’s fondness for evocative minimalism and London’s eclecticism. Ultimately, Hay is committed to bringing good design within reach, a direction understandably different from bigger design houses. With a hotel redesign finished and more awards scooped up along the way, Hay is taking an exemplary approach to furthering the wellloved aspects of good design: something that isn’t too serious and self-aware. J U LY 2015 37
SPACE TECHNOLOGY
Stranger than Fiction Mobile reading has become tricky with the deluge of links, bookmarks, and viral content. Here are six apps that can transform your smartphone into a bespoke publication WORDS BY APA AGBAYANI / PHOTO BY PATRICK DIOKNO
DISPLAY OPTIONS
Apple upgrades its Newsstand app for a more personal reading experience
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R E A DA B I L I T Y
I NSTA PA P E R
T H E ATAV I ST
L ONG F OR M
The app focuses on making web articles more readable on mobile screens. It has a spartan interface and minimal app integration. Readability is perfect if you just want to get to reading, but if you’re looking for features beyond that, you may have to search elsewhere.
Instapaper has a customizable interface and seamless assimilation with other apps that make for a straightforward user experience. Apart from storing article links when you’re idle, you can also follow other people and see the articles they’ve read and liked.
One of the most popular reading apps, Pocket’s main edge is that it allows you to bookmark practically any kind of content, whether it’s an article or a video. Another winning feature is its offline caching, which automatically saves your articles offline for easy reading on the go.
The Atavist offers access to the publication’s compelling longform pieces. These are published monthly and are usually longer than typical magazine articles. Stories come with audio versions as well as interactive multimedia elements to supplement the reading experience.
Longform offers a curated collection of the best articles (1,500 words up) from across the Internet. The selection features everything from The New York Times and GQ to BuzzFeed and Vice. It’s perfect if you’re looking for substantial, in-depth reads but aren’t sure where to start.
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Apple’s latest newsstand app, simply called News, coming this fall, takes information delivery to a higher level. News gathers and organizes stories from the best news sources, giving you a chance to share them or save them for future reading. The more the app is used, the more it adjusts to your tastes and interests, so you’re constantly updated with the latest stories about the topics that concern you the most. Plus, the Apple News Format allows publishers to craft layouts for their news, so that every article stays true to the publication’s brand while visually optimized for any iOS device. -JAM PASCUAL
Telephone number: +63 2 519 3515
PORCELANOSA BATHROOM
· FLOOR & WALL TILES: Porland Arena 59,6x59,6cm. · BATHROOM FURNITURE: Mood worktop with drawer, 120cm in oak finish · Mood wall hung pan with seat cover and upstand in oak finish · TAP: Mood digital wall mounted basin tap in white. · Mood floorstanding bathfiller in white. · SHOWER: Mood digital shower column in white.
CASA EUROPA Mezzanine, The Infinity Tower 26th St., Bonifacio Global City Manila
SPACE HOME ACCESSORIES
ASKEW BATHTUB by Kohler Askew’s playful silhouette—like three rectangular stacks in disarray—veers away from the tired profile of generic tubs. It is made of a solid-surface material, gleaming like smooth stone in the middle of your bathroom.
Breaking the Surface Sculptural tubs, invisible jet systems, and geometric shapes reflect growing trends that transform the bathroom into a design-savvy sanctuary WORDS BY DON JAUCIAN
DREAM 160 by Marc Sadler
ALLURE BRILLIANT by Grohe
AXOR CITTERIO M by Antonio Citterio
Gruppo Treesse’s Dream series is built with an invisible hydromassage system, eliminating the need for exposed outlets and jets. A thin opening line located on the inside edges of the tub conceals the jets that make for a fuss-free and immersive bath.
Constructed like a gem, the Allure Brilliant is a fitting showcase for Grohe’s predilection for geometric shapes. Though it’s easy to dismiss a faucet as negligible, Grohe’s architectural approach lends a new importance to this overlooked home accessory.
The Italian designer tells a story of Milan through his collection for Axor. Featuring a line of faucets and shower trims, Citterio evokes Italian charm and metropolitan hustle using svelte forms and an air of lightness usually absent in these fixtures.
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SEE SHOPLIST (PAGE 114) FOR STORE INFORMATION
SOUNDS AS BEAUTIFUL AS IT LOOKS
The new BeoVision Avant. 85” of great sound
An Ultra High-Definition, 4K TV with iconic sound and amazing movement designed to provide exceptional viewing flexibility. Listen to the new BeoVision Avant in stores now.
BANG & OLUFSEN PHILIPPINES Unit 2326-2327 Level 2 East Wing Shangri-la Plaza Mandaluyong City, Philippines T: +[632] 654 2240 E: info@livinginnovations.ph
bang-olufsen.com
SPACE MOTORING
The Long Stretch Hailed as a private jet on wheels, the new Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Pullman packs plenty of prestige in its 20-foot body WORDS BY JEFF FRANCISCO
MASTER AND COMMANDER
Above: The reclining seats include calf supports and head restraints that come with extra cushion. Below: The new S-Class Pullman with the original Mercedes-Benz 600, which went into production in 1963.
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FOR DECADES, THE Pullman’s grandiose stance, uncompromising comfort, generous interior space, and graceful pace has made it the default automotive centerpiece of sweeping, closely guarded entourages. Celebrating its five decades with a comeback, the latest Pullman model is a definitive and purposeful vehicle. It is a private jet on wheels, complete with top-spec comforts. In many ways, the Pullman acts like an attentive butler delivering phenomenal service. The interior is swathed in pulp leather and premium materials creating a lounge-like inboard atmosphere. The four rear seats are arranged with two facing forward and two fold-downs facing back, ensuring extensive legroom—the widest in its segment—for all passengers. The two supple executive seats that face the direction of travel can be reclined to 43.5 degrees. The cushioning, headrest, and back and calf support of each seat can be adjusted in various ways to cater to the passenger’s whims. Customers may also opt to customize the seats, paint finish, and virtually any element of the car according to their preference. Privacy is essential to the Pullman’s discerning passenger, and the car comes with a partition (separating the driver’s nook and the rear cabin) that alters from transparent to opaque with a flick of a switch. Temperature, speed, and time can be viewed through an analog instrument panel mounted on the upper section of the rear cabin. And if passengers are the type to ride in style, they can blast their preferred
EVOLUTION THEORY Trace the Maybach-Pullman’s development with its previous incarnations
1963 MERCEDES-BENZ 600 PULLMAN
Its Landaulet versions were used by the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II.
2002 MAYBACH 57 AND 62
Daimler’s Maybach revival wasn’t well received and caused the company losses.
WITH A PRICE TAG OF $537,000—CHAUFFEUR NOT INCLUDED—THE LATEST PULLMAN MODEL IS A DEFINITIVE AND PURPOSEFUL VEHICLE. THE KING’S STEED
Only 59 units of the Mercedes Benz 600 Landaulet were produced from 1963 to 1981. Ferdinand Marcos reportedly owned four, including a bulletproof and six-door version.
Mozart or Jay-Z track on the car’s spotless surround sound system by audio specialist Burmester. It takes a potent power plant to move a vehicle built with lavish features and measures 6.5 meters long. A 530-hp V12 biturbo engine is at the heart of the Pullman, urgent and ready to cover long distances in short periods of time. All this for the hefty price tag of $537,000—chauffeur not included. To the powerful and influential, for all that it brings to the table, this Mercedes-Benz (1008 EDSA, San Juan; 784-5001; cats.com.ph) stunner may be worth every cent.
2005 MAYBACH EXELERO
Based on the Maybach 57, its development gave the limousine the same power as a coupe.
2014 MERCEDES-MAYBACH S60
This incarnation has a 6.0-liter twinturbo V-12 engine and a Burmester sound system.
SPACE DESIGN
THE CHAIRMAN Occupying the storied offices of the Time-Life Building in the 1960s was the Eames Executive Chair, a piece specifically made for magazine mogul Henry Luce WORDS BY JAM PASCUAL
ONE COULD SAY the Eames Executive Chair was the byproduct of a politically tumultuous era. Henry Luce was the chairman of Time-Life, contouring the American zeitgeist during the heyday of print. Charles Eames, meanwhile, was steadily cementing his place in history as one of industrial design’s heavyweights, handin-hand with his better creative half, Ray. Amidst all these advancements, the Cold War was ongoing. In 1959, Herman Miller design director George Nelson had asked Charles Eames for his help in designing the US pavilion for the American National Exhibition, set to take place in Moscow. Eames quickly contacted Luce and asked, as a favor between friends, that the images in Time-Life’s archives
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SEATING PLAN
Still produced by Herman Miller today, the iconic chair features features a lightweight aluminum frame and finely detailed leather or fabric upholstery. Top left, inset: Time founder and publisher Henry Luce on the March 10, 1967 cover of his magazine, published shortly after his death.
be open to him for use in a multiscreen slideshow. Luce agreed on the condition that Eames might pay him back someday. The exhibition is remembered by history as a resounding success, a brief moment of comfort between two superpowers and their peoples. The next year, Eames returned the favor, designing for Luce what was initially called the Time-Life chair. Eames himself furnished Luce’s executive floors with his creation, until it gradually found its place in other offices around the world. In a 1972 match between chess grandmasters Bobby Fischer of America and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, held during a period of détente, both demanded that they be seated on the Eames chair.
Largely considered by popular culture as the modern day throne, what is now known as the Eames Executive Chair (Herman Miller, 2/F Unit C224-C22 Serendra Retail, McKinley Parkway, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig; 659-6449; cwc.com.ph) has always been the seat of choice for those in power. Its lounge chair cousin has been featured in many Bond films as well as in Tony Stark’s personal workshop. But beyond its position in the furniture world as a symbol of high rank, the Executive Chair remembers the circumstances of its creation as a tool of negotiation, upon which powerful men relax their defenses and recognize those in front of them as equals. No surprise, then, that the chair has become an absolute necessity in today’s conference room.
SPACE ARCHITECTURE
Take Shelter Launched at 2015 Pioneer’s Festival in Vienna, the Ecocapsule gives new meaning to living off the grid WORDS BY MIGUEL ORTEGA
IT LOOKS LIKE a miniature submarine or a child’s first attempt at a helicopter drawing—but don’t let its appearance fool you. The Ecocapsule, designed by Slovakbased architectural studio Nice Architects (nicearchitects.sk), is a well-crafted mobile house that maximizes spaces and energy generation. It comes complete with a folding bed, a kitchenette, toilet and shower, and ample storage space. The capsule is spacious for one, comfortable for two, and awkwardly intimate for three—depending on whom you bring along. Based on ideal situations, the capsule can sustain its occupants’ energy requirements for up to a year. Its battery carries a maximum capacity of 9,744 watt-hours— roughly equivalent to 10 car batteries—that can be sustained by the capsule’s built-in 750-watt wind turbine and 2.6 sqm of solar panels. Water utilities are addressed by
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the capsule’s spherical shape, which efficiently collects rainwater and dew, affording its occupants the convenience of running water. The Ecocapsule also boasts worldwide portability. The entire capsule conveniently fits in standard shipping containers without the need for any special preparations, making shipping and airlifting a breeze. Its 1,500 kg frame can be towed, pulled by pack animals or, in our case, carried easily during times of bayanihan. These selling points are what make the Ecocapsule flexible enough to have a wide range of applications. It can be used as a small research station or even a tourist lodge, but more importantly, its designers claim it can be used for emergency housing in times of disaster. Although this humanitarian aspect of the Ecocapsule is yet to be confirmed (its price hasn’t been released yet,
CAPSULE SHOW
Above: Inside the Ecocapsule, amenities are similar to a standard high-end hotel room. Below: The Ecocapsule is flexible enough to adapt to different living conditions.
and isn’t expected to go on the market until the end of the year), offers a possible new option for countries that are regularly struck by calamities. But perhaps the most interesting thing about the Ecocapsule comes from one of its concept art pieces, showing the house atop buildings. Bringing these off-grid houses into urban living could come into play in the near future, creating self-sustaining mobile neighborhoods for employees who can’t find a place to stay in the city. Because if you’ve tried looking and paying for your very own place in the country’s CBDs, you know those people might need humanitarian help as well.
PULL & BEAR
ALDO
BERSHKA
CHARLES & KEITH
Brown leather satchel 2nd Level, Mega Fashion Hall
Colyn ďŹ&#x201A;at Upper Ground Level, Mega A
Brown quilted bag with gold chain 2nd Level, Mega Fashion Hall
Brown leather ankle boots 3rd Level, Mega A
EVER NEW
CALL IT SPRING
FOREVER 21
MINELLI
White clutch with gold handles 3rd Level, Mega Fashion Hall
Black sandals 2nd Level, Mega B
Cream clutch with gunmetal detail 2nd Level, Mega B
White leather loafers 2nd Level, Mega B
ARANĂ Z TĂ&#x161;
JEFFREY CAMPBELL
HEDGREN
ZARA
Amber clutch 4th Level, Mega Fashion Hall
Gray suede pumps with chrome heels SM Store, Mega B
Gray quilted laptop bag Ground Level, Mega Fashion Hall
Black cage studded sandals GL & 2L Mega Fashion Hall
A pair of shoes in an interesting shape or a handbag with elegant details can easily freshen up your everyday wardrobe.
!!!
Ju l y 2 0 1 5
E DI T E D BY
GINO DE LA PAZ
THE EYE FA S H I O N + S T Y L E + G R O O M I N G
A MAT T E R O AT T I T U D E ound in a secluded section of an ise busy central business district gnet, a specialty store filled with nder-the-radar menswear finds
WORDS BY GINO DE L A PAZ / PHOTOGRAPHED BY PATRICK DIOKNO
FULLCOUNT JEANS, GOODWEAR T-SHIRT WITH POCKET, TCB SEAMAN JACKET, DOEK CANVAS SLIP-ON SNEAKERS
ISSUE NO.
89
THE EYE STYLE
RING JACKET SAFARI JACKET, THE ARMOURY LONGSLEEVED POLO SHIRT
THE STORY OF
SIGNET TUCKED IN A QUIET CORNER of bustling Legaspi Village is a treasury replete with cool menswear finds. The time-tested pieces at Signet (U102C Windsor Tower, 163 Legazpi St., Legazpi Village, Makati; info@signet-store.com), however, are a little more special than the classics you may be used to. “Most of our brands have two things in common: heritage and craftsmanship. They are run by small, family-owned companies with a rich artistic tradition,” shares store manager Kevin Yapjoco. Eagle-eyed enthusiasts will notice shoehorns and collar stays by the UK’s Abbeyhorn, for instance, sharing space with premium jeans by Fullcount—the first “Made in Japan” denim company to use Zimbabwe cotton denim fabric—and Breton shirts by Saint James, which has been spinning some of the world’s finest knits out of its Normandy-based factory since 1889. These items, even the stools by Heima, whisper their refinement. “Filipinos are into fine shoes. Our customers love Carmina from Mallorca, Spain. They are made to the same standards as their English counterparts but are more shapely,” continues Yapjoco. “Our customers also love our suits and jackets by Orazio Luciano and trousers by Ambrosi Napoli.” Polo shirts by English heritage label Sunspel, a version of which was tailored for Daniel Craig for his role as James Bond in 2006’s Casino Royale, are easy favorites as well. Founded by Kelly See, Edmond Lim, and Jason Qua, Signet has managed to attract the attention of gentlemen who appreciate the quality and understated styling associated with the brands they carry. Ultimately, Signet hopes to be the one-stop shop for men. Says Yapjoco, “We can dress men for the office and their wedding day with our suits and separates, as well as the weekend with our more casual offerings such as jeans, sneakers, and swim shorts.”
MODELED BY MANUEL ALEXANDER HAASIS / GROOMING BY GIL OF FELIPE & SONS, 122 SAN AGUSTIN ST., SALCEDO VILLAGE, MAKATI; 949-7703
CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: RING JACKET SPORT JACKET, THE ARMOURY LONG-SLEEVED POLO SHIRT, DRAKE'S POCKET SQUARE; FARFALLA TASSEL SLIPPERS; SAINT JAMES NAVAL SHIRT; FOX UMBRELLA MALACCA HANDLE STEWART TARTAN UMBRELLA
THE EYE STYLE
THE
ROGUE REGISTER
BAND OF BROTHERS Luca Rossetti, CEO of Fratelli Rossetti, the Milanese footwear brand he manages with his siblings Diego and Dario, on the power of well-made shoes INTERVIEW BY GINO DE LA PAZ
“WE ARE QUITE PROUD to be one of the independent Italian brands that still carry a message and manufacture a product that is 100 percent made in Italy,” says Luca Rossetti. Working along with his brothers Diego and Dario, the second-generation shoemaker serves as the CEO of Fratelli Rossetti (Assembly, City of Dreams Manila; 0917-6626875), the footwear label founded by their father Renzo on the outskirts of Milan in 1953. From the first men’s designs 60 years ago, produced with the same techniques used to create sports shoes, to the Winter 2016 collection inspired by the iconic 1980s television series Dallas, the company has remained true to tradition while pursuing innovation. “Whether you y want to feeel casual or dressy, and no matter th he clothes you go for—sartorial, reeady-to-wear or vintage—a good pair of shoes guarantees the su uccess of an outfit. Like a cherry on the pie indeed,” Rossetti saays. “Whenever designing a new style, we always focus on th he customer: his habits an nd tastes, and abbove all the idea of elegance that Fratelli Rossetti em mbodies.” For th hese passionate brothers, style seerved with a dose of comfort is a foormula that will never go out of fashion.
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What was your earliest ambition? To go to the moon.
Necessary extravagance: A nice watch, a hint of color.
What is your most treasured possession? Memories of my childhood and family. Who are your favorite writers? Most classic American authors, such as Ernest Hemingway, and contemporary Italian ones like Elena Ferrante. What would you like to own that you don’t currently possess? More time.
Second-generation shoemakers Luca, Diego, and Dario Rossetti
Favorite hotel: The Grand Budapest!
What drives you on? Every collection is itself an achievement. What are you working on now? A casual version of our Icons. What time of the day are you most inspired? Early in the morning.
Favorite city in the world: New York
Roy Lichtenstein, Painting with Statue of Liberty, 1983
Ideal playlist: Reggae meets indie music; the sound of leaves rustling in the wind at dawn.
Any pets? Three dogs.
Favorite artist: I like Pop Art.
Footwear: Our own, of course!
Favorite gadget: Smartphones Neighborhood restaurant: Terrazza Triennale Osteria con Vista by our friend Stefano Cerveni. Favorite cocktail: I am just a casual drinker so I enjoy wine better.
Jeans: Chinos are better.
Watch: Anything from Swatch to Rolex, depending on the occasion. Favorite designer: I like Boglioli at this stage. Wallet or money clip: Wallet, definitely. Cologne: I like all citrus scents.
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THE EYE ACCESSORIES
IN THE LOOP From one with a fine black leather band to a reversible cinch in colored suede, belts offer an easy way for men to express their personality WORDS BY ISABEL BINAMIRA / PHOTO BY PATRICK DIOKNO
Dolce & Gabbana A classic black belt is a finishing touch fit for any occasion
Y-3 The D-ring buckle brings the belt together and is completely adjustable
J. Lindeberg Featuring the Swedish brand’s signature buckle, this taupe belt can be worn both on and off the tee
J. Lindeberg Braiding dark blue leather is a unique way to update a trusted style
Original Penguin This solid suede belt is reversible, delivering twice the versatility
Dolce & Gabbana The pebble-grained leather pairs perfectly with everyday denim
Alexander McQueen A twin skull buckle gives the houndstooth pattern a cool edge
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WHETHER PRACTICAL or playful, belts do more than just hold up your trousers. No matter how plain your pants may be, belts allow you to dress up or dress down any outfit accordingly. But more than that, they give you the opportunity to express your mood and personality. Throwing on an interesting belt—from Dolce & Gabbana’s textured leathers to Y-3’s rugged woven polypropylene—is the quickest way to liven up your look.
SEE SHOPLIST (PAGE 118) FOR STORE INFORMATION
THE EYE ACCESSORIES
BURNING BRIGHT Onitsuka Tiger relaunches its Asics Tiger line as a tribute to its heritage and indomitable spirit WORDS BY GIO DIONISIO
KIHACHIRO ONITSUKA founded his namesake Onitsuka Tiger (Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati; 729-9451) brand in 1949 on the principle of cultivating health through sport after World War II. Despite the former military officer’s lack of shoemaking experience, Onitsuka was able to glean inspiration from other facets of everyday life—the suction cups of an octopus in a salad, for instance, influenced the design of the soles of the country’s first basketball shoes, nicknamed Bashu. Soon, his emphasis on delivering superior technology made his name synonymous with quality products in Japan. In 1977, after a merger with a fishing and sporting goods company and an athletic uniform maker, the company was renamed Asics, an acronym derived from the Latin phrase “Anima Sana In Corpore Sano,” meaning “a sound mind in a sound body.” Only in 2002 did the Onitsuka Tiger lifestyle label emerge, attracting a global street fashion-savvy demographic with a keen focus on both design and manufacturing excellence. This year, Onitsuka Tiger’s sports luxury line was renamed Asics Tiger, a tribute to its heritage, traditional values, and fighting spirit. The lineup features reinvigorated versions of footwear favored by athletes as well as new models inspired by casual urban fashion. Remaining true to its essence, the designs have been lovingly recreated using original materials and colors. The 66-year-old company’s commitment to technical distinction, top athletic performance, and promoting a healthy, active lifestyle has resulted in success. Anyone familiar with Onitsuka Tiger’s trademark stripes can attest to the premium performance, reliability, and endurance of its products.
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BORN IN JAPAN FIRST LAUNCHED IN 1990, the iconic Asics Gel-Lyte III celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, monthly limited editions and special general releases—from sleek laser cuts to speckled packs—are set to be unveiled. Initially developed by Shigeyuki Mitsui, the signature split-tongue running shoe is noted for its lightweight triple-density sole, innovative cushioning, comfortable fit, and overall polished design. Asics revived the retro silhouette in the last quarter of 2006 to the enthusiasm of fans. In the succeeding years, the GEL-Lyte III gained traction with numerous redesigns and exclusive collaborations, most prominently with American sneaker colorist and footwear boutique owner Ronnie Fieg, whose 2007 releases with New York sneaker store David Z bolstered the market for Asics and kickstarted Fieg’s industry acclaim. Since then, the shoe has earned a covetable reputation for optimum function and timeless appeal.
GEL-LYTE III
White/White
GEL-LYTE III
Dark Gray/White
THE EYE STYLE
A CASUAL ENCOUNTER Harlan + Holden launches a new collection that illustrates uniform dressing at its most relaxed and finds the perfect woman to embody it: Bea Valdes INTERVIEW BY GINO DE LA PAZ / PHOTO BY MARK NICDAO
HARLAN + HOLDEN, known for tailored women’s clothes that work from weekday to weekend, has unveiled B.C., a collection composed of 15 timeless essentials. From shirtdresses and trousers to pleated skirts and cowl-neck tops, B.C. is Harlan + Holden “stripped to the core.” While she admits that the bags and necklaces she fashions aren’t very subtle, Bea Valdes tends to gravitate towards simplicity when it comes to her everyday clothing. That Harlan + Holden has asked her to be the face of B.C. comes as no surprise, given her pared back approach to dressing is just what the capsule wardrobe is all about.
You’ve become known as a muse to a lot of people in the fashion industry. Is that something you’re comfortable with? I don’t think about it too much. I know I’m close to Inno [Sotto], but that’s mostly because I grew up with him. I have two kids and we’re pretty busy, so there isn’t really time to think about that. I’m just trying to get to the next thing. Was it difficult to go from designing spaces to designing fashion accessories? My background is in industrial design, which is more systems design than fashion design. I think that gives me more play because I look at something in terms of the structure and not necessarily that it’s a bag, a shoe, or a dress. I look at it from a construction point of view. You now appear in the campaign for Harlan + Holden’s BC line. How did that come about? They showed my sister Marga [Valdes-Trinidad] the pieces and she told us about the philosophy. That’s what appealed to us very much. The pieces were easy and could go from day to night. At the same time, the material was really nice. Did you start mentally bookmarking items that you wanted? I wanted everything because they all were really so easy, and you can wear them anywhere. What do you hope to teach your children about personal style? My kids are very young and at this point, I’m just trying to teach them hygiene. If I get through that hurdle, it’s a big one already.
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HARLAN + HOLDEN IS AVAILABLE AT ADORA, GREENBELT 5, AYALA CENTER, MAKATI; POWERPLANT MALL, ROCKWELL, MAKATI; AND SHANGRI-LA PLAZA, MANDALUYONG. HARLANHOLDEN.COM
THE EYE ACCESSORIES
TIME MACHINES The Tambour collection was Louis Vuitton’s first entry into the watchmaking industry in 2002, and the new Tambour éVolution shows how far the luxury fashion house has gone since. Vuitton unveiled three new masculine timepieces at Baselworld 2015: the new black GMT, T Chronograph GMT, T and Spin Time GMT. Sportier than its predecessors, the Tambour éVolution has a black diamond-like carbon coated steel case, red accents, and a bezel made of MMC, a hard mix of metal and ceramic particles.
TAMBOUR ÉVOLUTION GMT IN BLACK The basic model of the collection is a dual time zone watch with a 43mm case that comes with an ETA caliber.
With La Fabrique du Temps, a gleaming watchmaking facility in the outskirts of Geneva, Louis Vuitton signals its entry into the world of high horology WORDS BY STEF JUAN
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LOUIS VUITTON (Greenbelt 4, Ayala Center, Makati; 756-0637) and the art of travel have always gone hand in hand, a journey that began in 1854. The French house has since expanded to become a leader in global luxury fashion. In 2002, Louis Vuitton entered new territory and announced its entry into the world of horology with the Tambour, a collection of timepieces for men and women that paid tribute to Japanese Kodo drummers and their taikoo drums. The Emprise line followed in 2014, then came the Louis Vuitton Escale Worldtime earlier this year, with its innovative mechanism and colorful dial inspired by vintage luggage labels. To express its commitment to high-end craftsmanship in the art of watchmaking, Louis Vuitton has gathered the finest specialists under one roof in a workshop in Meyrin—on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland—fittingly called La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. In this 4,000 square-meter space equipped with traditional and state-of-the-art equipment, Louis Vuitton has created an environment conducive to shared creative energy. Master watchmakers, engineers, and designers are encouraged to forge new paths in an industry rich in both tradition and innovation.
TAMBOUR ÉVOLUTION CHRONOGRAPH GMT IN BLACK The Chronograph GMT is 45mm in diameter and has a second time zone function.
TAMBOUR ÉVOLUTION SPIN TIME GMT The most interesting of the three, the Spin Time is a unique dual time watch made in-house by La Fabrique du Temps with an ETA 2892 movement. The local time is indicated by the hour hand but the home time is shown on rotating cubes around the dial marked with arrows.
Ju l y 2 0 1 5
E DI T E D BY
JACS T. SAMPAYAN
THE SLANT
ISSUE NO.
89
OPINIONS + IDEAS + PERSPECTIVES
My Friend Sepp
Elections Inc.
Diana Limjoco
Bambina Olivares Wise
Wilson Lee Flores
Decades since the 1986 EDSA Revolution, a photographer recounts how she documented the seized jewels of Imelda Marcos.
Having spent two years with the former FIFA chief before his fall from grace, one writer remembers a less villainous persona.
In order to be competitive, political candidates must be willing to shell out huge sums of cashâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and there in lies the root of a social problem.
AFP PHOTO
R The Roumeliotes Affair
Diana Limjoco ON THE SEQUESTERED MARCOS JEWELS
The Roumeliotes Affair In 1986, a Greek national attempted to smuggle a king’s ransom worth of gems and jewels for Imelda Marcos before being seized by Philippine customs. One photographer recalls her role in the documentation of the confiscated Roumeliotes collection
S
tories from the Marcos era of Philippine history always seem to have one ending: inconclusive. This one is another. On February 25, 1986, President Ferdinand Marcos and his First Lady Imelda fled the Philippines for the United States, leaving behind their treasures at Malacañang. Eleven days later, on the 9th of March, Philippine customs officials followed up on an anonymous tip and detained a Greek national by the name of Demetriou Roumeliotes right before he boarded a flight to Hong Kong. The passenger was found to be carrying 60 pieces of fine jewelry addressed to Imelda Marcos. These were confiscated immediately and taken to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for safekeeping and itemization, henceforth called the Roumeliotes collection. As an act of transparency, the Philippine Commission of Good Governance (PCGG), created by President Corazon Aquino to recover ill-gotten wealth accumulated during the Marcos regime, wanted the Roumeliotes jewels properly documented. PCGG Commissioner Ramon Diaz began looking for an outside photojournalist to cover the jewel appraisal by Christie’s. At that time, I was a freelance magazine photographer, and I had a cousin working at PCGG. He set up a meeting with Diaz, and in 1988, I was given the assignment. Upon arrival at Bangko Sentral for the appraisal, I received a copy of the Bureau of Customs’ (BOC) inventory list so I could match the jewelry to my photos. Numbered to match the BOC’s list, the jewels all came out of a series of Matryoshka doll-like suitcases. Some pieces came in their original cases, many in boxes or zip lock bags, but others were simply taped to paper with scotch tape that had already yellowed. Loose stones were wrapped in small pieces of paper folded into little packets. The 64 J U LY 2015
jewels weren’t so delicate—many of the pieces were broken and needed repair. We became an assembly line of sorts. Two women from Malacañang would take out each numbered piece following the list’s order and then check them off. Although ungloved, they handled the jewels with great care, treating them as both evidence and treasure. Each piece would then be handed to the appraisers, who were VPs from Christie’s. The appraisers—Russel Fogarty, who founded Kazanjian & Fogarty in 1991 to buy and sell important jewels for private clients, and François Curiel, who would later head Christie’s Asia—were constantly abuzz with anticipation. They looked at each and every piece under a jewelers loop, measured every stone with a
caliper. It was only after these appraisers were done that the jewels could be photographed. This was the extremely tedious part. Even though I was the designated photographer, I couldn’t touch the pieces at all. Circumstances were less than ideal: I had brought my own cloth backdrop, but I wasn’t allowed to use it. The jewels would’ve been shot on the ugly dark wood desk if I hadn’t asked for the sheet of blue typing paper, which was hardly an improvement. If I didn’t like the way a piece was set out, I had to ask one of the ladies from Malacañang to rearrange it. If I made a move to touch any of the items, everyone in the room would jump up right away. Three days in, I gave up. I didn’t bother to photograph most of the minor pieces, which
DIANA J. LIMJOCO/JEWELS-OF-IMELDA-MARCOS.BLOGSPOT.COM
When the larger pieces came out, there was a collective sucking in of breath in the room. One bracelet from Bulgari still had a $1 million price tag attached to it.
were loose stones and trinkets I surmised Madame Marcos used as giveaways. I left before they were finished as I felt I had seen the best of the lot. But the “best of the lot” was exactly that. When the larger pieces came out, you could hear a collective sucking in of breath from everyone in the room. There was an emerald and diamond choker that I can only describe as huge, and a bracelet from Bulgari that still had a price tag of $1 million on it. I was later told by
ALL THAT GLITTERS
Above: The author, photographer Diana Limjoco (center), and the Christie’s appraisers sift through the pieces confiscated from Demetriou Roumeliotes, Mrs. Marcos’s Greek accomplice, at Bangko Sentral. Top: Françoise Curiel of Christie’s examines an emerald-encrusted compact. Top left, from top to bottom: Some of the pieces scrutinized that day included a ruby diamond brooch, a persian canary diamond necklace, and a ruby necklace with brooch. Opposite: Mrs. Marcos and her three children in the gardens of Malacañang Palace, early 1960s. Previous page: Marcos arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris, May 1976.
someone who knew Madame Marcos well that these were some of her favorite pieces. After the appraisal, I offered the photos to many notable titles—Time, Life, National Geographic, among others. The magazines paid to see the slides, but the story was never picked up: at that time, Madame Marcos vehemently denied the jewels were hers, and no one wanted to run a story based on “allegedly hers.” She has since come forward to claim them, and even sued the government to get them back. It has been 26 years since I photographed the Roumeliotes jewels, and still there has been no resolution. They haven’t been displayed nor auctioned, as originally planned. In 2000, I wrote a formal letter to PCGG requesting information on their whereabouts. Sec. Renato C. Corona passed on the information to then PCGG Commissioner Jorge V. Sarmiento, and I received a stamped letter bearing Sarmiento’s signature that indicated all confiscated jewels are in the vaults of Bangko Sentral pending sale, as there was legal issue with the Roumeliotes collection specifically. I have never seen the Roumeliotes collection on display or in the news, nor have any government agencies been forthcoming with the inventory list. On the subject of the Marcos jewels, it’s always about the two other collections: the Malacañang collection, which were seized from their private chambers when they fled the Palace in 1986; and the Hawaiian collection, which were removed from the plane carrying them into Honolulu. I recently read an article claiming that together all three collections was worth $8 million, but I don’t know how accurate that valuation is: the Roumeliotes collection alone must be worth at least that much in today’s market, especially with a $1 million price tag still attached to that one Bulgari bracelet. Even Imelda Marcos can only wonder what is left at the Bangko Sentral vaults. I have run into her at various parties in Manila, and she always asks if I know where her jewels are. My answer is always the same: I have no idea.
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Bambina Olivares Wise ON THE UNSEEN SIDE OF SEPP BLATTER
My Friend Sepp Since May, things have steadily gone from bad to worse for Sepp Blatter. As he reels from recent controversies, one friend recounts the warmer side of FIFA’s embattled president
“A
When the news broke about FIFA officials being indicted for corruption, I believed that Blatter would escape if not exactly unscathed, then comfortably inoculated from prosecution. When I heard Jack Warner’s name, I was hardly surprised; there had been talk about him for years. Ditto for Chuck Blazer, and a sprinkling of other officials. But when Jerome Valcke, FIFA SecretaryGeneral, was implicated, I thought it was a matter of time before someone would uncover some kind of link to Blatter. After all, Valcke was the Eminence Grise to Blatter’s Pope. And now, they’re both pretty much fucked. From 2008 to 2010, football was very much a part of my life, thanks to my relationship with, shall we say, a FIFA old-timer. In fact, he was of the old FIFA gang from the 1970s, a tight group of colleagues-turned-friends, along with Blatter, back in the days when the organization was like a family. Then, FIFA was not much more than the little engine that could, armed with meager funds and lofty ide-
INNER CIRCLE
The author with Blatter in his hometown of Ulrichen, Switzerland, August 2009. Below: Last June 2, Blatter resigned as FIFA president as a mounting corruption scandal engulfed football’s governing body.
als about the sport that would unite nations. In my case, it was the sport that dictated our schedule, especially when I was in Zurich. On Wednesday nights, we watched Bundesliga; on Saturdays, La Liga. On Fridays, my boyfriend played football at FIFA, or worked out at the gym there. Some days he toiled in the bowels of the building, in forgotten cavernous rooms that doubled as photo studios. I doubled as photographer’s assistant, draping the national teams’ uniforms on muscular mannequins coated in grey, as my photographer-boyfriend clicked away, painstakingly cataloguing every jersey, every pair of shorts, every set of socks. I noted the tight weaves and impeccable finish of the richer nations’ uniforms, festooned with the largesse of sponsors—Adidas, Nike, Puma, and wanted to cry at the raspier cotton
STUART FRANKLIN/GETTY IMAGES. COURTESY OF BAMBINA WISE
re you over 18?” Sepp Blatter asked me when we were introduced. There was a time when an introduction to Sepp Blatter was a coveted thing. You could chance upon him on the football pitch on a Friday at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich when staff members would play friendly matches against each other. Or you could bump into him at the glittering Ballon d’Or gala, alongside Leo Messi or Xavi. You could also get an invitation to play golf at his annual tournament in his hometown of Ulrichen, deep in raclette country, the Valais. Nowadays, I wouldn’t be surprised if the invitations have dried up for poor Sepp. Embattled, beleaguered, mired in scandal, and tainted by corruption allegations, the recently resigned president of the beautiful game’s governing body is unlikely to be on the top of anyone’s guest list. And it could well be that invitations from him are not the hot commodity they used to be.
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All in all, Blatter seemed fairly innocuous, hardly the megalomaniac the press has portrayed him to be. Or the sexist lecher. But then again, the fact that he named a tournament after himself was a pretty obvious clue. of the poorer nations’ jerseys, the flimsier fabric of their shorts. I first met Blatter in the summer of 2008, at the annual tournament that bears his name— sponsored by FIFA, naturally—in Ulrichen, where he was born. As Swiss towns go, Urlichen is a postcard-pretty cliché. Lush, green mountains, clear blue skies, cows grazing in the pasture, narrow roads dotted with the stolid stone houses particular to the area. The hotels—more like inns—were basic and unpretentious, yet a cappuccino still set you back 14 Swiss francs. The annual Joseph S. Blatter Tournament, held on the last weekend of August, used to be a big deal. Former football stars like the now portly UEFA chief Michel Platini—he who was gunning to replace Blatter, and Franz Beckenbauer, known as The Kaiser in his heyday with Bayern Munich, would often show up to play golf, together with Blatter’s friends and cronies. The next day would see a series of exhibition matches between members of the Swiss national team, past and present, and what was called the FIFA All-Stars. Despite his Humbert Humbert-esque opening line, I found Blatter jovial, approachable, even charming. Perhaps in his hometown, among friends and FIFA’s very international staff, he could let his guard down a bit and relax in between rounds of raclette and slices of air-dried beef chased down with local Fendant wine. We spoke about football in the Philippines; he lamented the fact that basketball was a far bigger sport. I mentioned the late Chris Monfort and Rene Adad, recently deceased, both pillars of Philippine football in the late 70s and early 80s. He spoke fondly of them and in fact told me that Monfort had passed away and his untimely death was a huge blow to Philippine football. All in all, Blatter seemed fairly innocuous, hardly the megalomaniac the press has portrayed him to be. Or the sexist lecher. But then again, the fact that he named a tournament after himself was a pretty obvious clue. Blatter, after all, is a seasoned FIFA politician; being Swiss, he knows how to play the inscrutability card. And, as Ulrichen’s most famous son, the small town lapped up the glamour and celebrity he bestowed upon it, courtesy of his sophisticated friends in football and beyond.
GAME CHANGERS
Above: UEFA chief Michel Platini with Wise at the annual Joseph S. Blatter Tournament in Ulrichen, Switzerland, August 2008. Platini publicly supported Blatter’s decision to step down from his post. Below: With football star Lionel Messi at the FIFA World Player Gala (now the Ballon d’Or), held at the Kongresshaus of Zurich, December 2009.
I saw him many times after that over the course of the next two years. Sometimes, while shooting at the FIFA headquarters—quite a stunning architectural structure, I must say—my boyfriend and I would swing by his office for a quick chat. He always had a bowl of Swiss chocolates—the assorted miniatures—next to the coffee service. In August, we were back at Ulrichen for the annual raclette-laden tournament, and in December 2009, at the Player of the Year Gala, he found the time to detach himself from Queen Rania, the guest of honor, and Leo Messi, the evening’s golden boy, to say hello with a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek—three of them, in fact, as is customary in Switzerland. He came to South Africa several times, too, in preparation for the 2010 World Cup. Once, he
even played courier for my boyfriend and me, taking back with him to Switzerland a small package. If I dig up my old Nokia, I believe I’d still find his cellphone number in the phonebook. During the World Cup, my boyfriend sweetly arranged for my children and myself to attend the opening ceremonies, which included a match between South Africa and Mexico. Our VVIP tickets included complimentary transfers on the specially designated FIFA VIP bus. We waited as instructed by entrance to The Michelangelo, the hotel preferred by Blatter when in Johannesburg. I spotted Jerome Valcke and asked him what time the bus was leaving, as the roads would surely be clogged with traffic and the opening was in two hours. He wasn’t very helpful. Thankfully, I spotted a few Blatter cronies, including his brother and his sister-in-law, and a charming boutique winemaker and his chic wife, with whom I’d become quite friendly at those Ulrichen tournament weekends. We were all herded into the same bus, which then zoomed through the streets of Johannesburg, wang-wang style, with a police escort alongside us, sirens blaring. Of course we got to Soccer City in good time. I’d always wondered if Blatter had a hand in the corruption that seemed to be rampant in the organization, particularly in the Caribbean. Tales of Jack Warner’s crooked ways were legion, and there was talk—there was always talk—of greased palms and sticky fingers. One senior FIFA official, a most personable Frenchman with the coolest wife, whom I really enjoyed hanging out with, was suddenly dismissed. Corruption, some whispered. And yet his tenure lasted a fraction of Jack Warner’s. Go figure. There’s also been talk lately that Blatter may seek the presidency once more, emboldened by the fact that there seems to be no sign of the FBI indicting him for corruption. But with major sponsors and former supporters cutting ties with FIFA in the aftermath of the scandal that broke out in May, it seems inconceivable that Blatter, wily as he may be, will ever be able to bounce back. Even the Nobel Peace Prize is no longer within his reach, with the Nobel Peace Centre announcing that it was “terminating” its relationship with FIFA “as soon as circumstances allow.” It’s quite a spectacular fall from grace. I’m guessing this year’s Joseph S. Blatter Annual Tournament has been canceled until further notice.
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Wilson Lee Flores ON CAMPAIGN WAR CHESTS
Elections Inc.
O
ne of the most daunting challenges that must be faced in order to have a shot at the presidency or the senate is preparing an election war chest. Not only is our republic scattered into thousands of islands, we also have the world’s 12th largest population with a lot of dialects; that’s why 2010 vice-presidential bet Jojo Binay had to spend for airing TV and radio commercials of his supporter Senator Chiz Escudero in different ff major dialects nationwide. Even icon Fernando Poe Jr. needed funds. In fact, almost all politicos have “Jose Pidal” bank accounts. National popularity in opinion surveys alone is not enough to translate into votes and victory,
68 J U LY 2015
as shown by the exceedingly popular late actor FPJ in the 2004 election. Political advertising and mass rallies are only one aspect of a campaign. There are many other expenditures, from poll watchers to all sorts of expenses for local ward leaders. A young tycoon told me that in the homestretch of that election, FPJ reportedly ran out of funds and had to ask help from close friends as well as supporters. However, a top movie producer told me that FPJ was different from other politicos: after receiving several million pesos in donation for a certain need, he had an excess of a few million pesos. FPJ remarkably returned the balance to the shocked film producer. The movie producer said: “In
all my many years of dealing with all kinds of politicos, some even forgetting to say thank you after the election, FPJ was the only candidate who returned excess donations!” Before we delve into the nitty-gritty financials of what it takes to win a national election, I wish to reiterate what a major politician told me at the height of the “Jose Pidal” scandal on alleged fake names for exFirst Gentleman Mike’s bank accounts: “The costs of campaigning for politicians can vary within a big range. Why? A popular politician needs to spend much less, but a less popular candidate has to spend more. That’s the reason I am telling you that almost all of us political leaders have our own ‘Jose Pidal’ bank accounts,
ILLUSTRATED BY MENEER MARCELO
To build a case for oneself in this country’s forthcoming national elections, a candidate requires charisma, connections, and billions of pesos in campaign funding
“How can we have a good political democracy when you need P2.5 to P3 billion to run for president and that position only pays a salary of P200,000 a month?” said an 80-year-old businessman, who wished to remain anonymous due to his political friendships.
not just Mike Arroyo. Like in my case, I have high survey numbers, therefore I get to receive more campaign donations and also I need to spend less. With my excess funds, the bankers themselves would call us to advise us to open ‘Jose Pidal’ accounts. A lot of these criticisms by my fellow politicos is plain hypocrisy for news headlines.” That said, how much does it really cost to win an election as senator or president, in general? Minimum price tag for presidency: P2 billion to P3 billion? “A national candidate for president, vicepresident or senator needs a minimum of P2 billion to run,” Dr. Temario “Temmie” C. Rivera, former chairman of the political science department at the University of the Philippines and now Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) senior research fellow, told me last June. Dr. Rivera and his fellow UP Political Science Professor Bobby M. Tuazon discussed election campaign costs as part of their analyses of the 2016 election at the “Kapihan at Pandesal sa Kamuning” media forum, which was organized for the purpose of helping elevate issue-based political discourse. Both men said that the present political system is lopsided in favor of entrenched political dynasties, celebrities, and politicians connected to vested interests, due to the extremely high election campaign costs. No wonder political corruption remains endemic. Why spend billions to win a job that pays so much less? An 80-year-old businessman based in Makati agreed to grant me an interview on the condition that he remain anonymous due to his friendship with many national politicians. When I asked how much one needed to run for president or senator, he readily replied:
“A candidate needs at least P2.5 billion to P3 billion to run for either president or vicepresident. For a senator, a candidate needs at least P400 million upwards.” What about the cost of running for a congressional seat? The businessman laughs and says, “It depends where you are running. Maybe you need only P500,000 to run for congressman in a barrio in Bontoc, but as much as P30 million to run in Makati.” He added, “How can we have a good political democracy when you need billions to run for president and that position only pays a salary of P200,000 a month? Do you know former Senate President Manny Villar said he spent P3.2 billion to run in 2010 and he didn’t even win? In a country like Singapore with a political system institutionalized by the late Lee Kuan Yew, they pay their cabinet ministers $42,000 per month! “My friend, the late Jobo Fernandez, used to earn P27 million a year as president of Far East Bank, but when President Ferdiand E. Marcos appointed him Central Bank governor, do you know he only got paid P50,000 a month? Then his son wanted to go to Harvard at that time, with annual tuition costing $16,000. Do you see how absurd our political system is and how badly we really need to reform our so-called democratic system?” Personally, I still have faith in the self-renewal possibilities of our flawed American-style electoral system, despite the seemingly pervasive dominance of money politics. Why? The rise of social media democratizes access to information, and the steadily expanding middle-class of the Philippines and millions of Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) will hopefully create more discerning voters. A demographic shift towards younger voters will hopefully make them more critical of our broken traditional politics.
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J U N E 2015 69
T H E
Alain Delon with Austrian actress Romy Schneider in Saint-Tropez, August 1968.
P L AY
B O Y S
WOR DS BY ARI A NNA LI M
To be a playboy once meant to be counted among an elite breed of men distinguished by their wealth but defined by their gallantry and charm. Over 50 years since the emergence of the Jet Set, Rogue looks back at the inimitable men who ruled a bygone era of high-profile affairs, international travel, and the unabashed pursuit of pleasure
1935 – present Nationality: French Notable women: Romy Schneider, Nathalie Barthélémy, Nico PHOTOGRAPHED HERE ON THE SET of the 1963 film Any Number Can Win, the legendary French actor was his country’s definitive answer to James Dean. Apart from stellar performances in the likes of René Clément’s Plein Soleil and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L'Eclisse, Delon’s appeal hinged on a beauty almost feminine in its intensity. It was a defining characteristic he seemed to offset by instinctively keeping out of step with authority, from getting himself expelled from several schools and being tied to a murder investigation to blighting his romantic relationships with one affair after another.
PHOTO BY RDA/GETTY IMAGES / PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHOTO BY KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES
ALAIN DELON
PHOTO BY REG INNELL/TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES
1928 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2000 Nationality: French Notable women: Jane Fonda, Annette Stroyberg, Catherine Deneuve THE STORY OF ROGER Vadim PlĂŠmiannikov always begins with Brigitte Bardot. In 1956, he placed the budding actress and first of his five wives at the center of his sensual directorial debut, And God Created Woman. Overnight, he transformed her into an instantly recognizable sex symbol while also putting himself on the map, challenging what was considered acceptable to show on screen. In the years that followed, however, he remained an important figure less for the eroticism of his films than for the impassioned relationships he had with a succession of young, beautiful actresses. Most notable among them was third wife Jane Fonda, pictured here with Vadim, to whom he was quite frank about his incredulity towards monogamy.
PHOTO BY ARCHIVIO CAMERAPHOTO EPOCHE/GETTY IMAGES
R O G E R VA D I M
DA D O R U S P O L I 1924 - 2005 Nationality: Italian Notable women: Mara Lane, Francesca Blanc, Nancy de Girard de Charbonnières, Debra Berger, Patricia Genest
PHOTO BY KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
IMPRESSIVE SOCIAL CIRCLES comprise
the backbone of a jetsetter’s stature, and Prince Alessandro Ruspoli kept only the best company. The paragon of the era’s aristocratic extravagance, he was a good friend of Orson Welles, an occasional co-orgiast with Salvador Dalí, and flatmates with Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda on the French Riviera. The consummate partyboy maintained he “never had time” for work, but he was far from a vacuous socialite. He occupied his time with far-flung adventures and eccentric explorations into spirituality and the arts, as well as a well-publicized addiction to opium. His relationships bore the weight of his reputation as a maverick as well, with his first two marriages—to aristocrat Francesca Blanc and then to artist Nancy de Charbonnières— both shattered by his relentless infidelity. Only during his third marriage to former model Patricia Genest did he reel himself in, though his socialite inclinations stayed put. With a party planned on the night of his passing, his last instructions were, “Please, don’t cancel anything.”
PORFIRIO RUBIROSA
PORFIRIO “RUBI” RUBIROSA delighted in a fast and loose lifestyle occupied by expensive tastes: Formula One racing, polo, and gracing the
most important parties in his relentless pursuit of women, preferably those with deep pockets. That he himself was not wealthy proved inconsequential; securing ties with a notorious strongman of the Dominican Republic, he seduced his way up the social hierarchy until his irrepressible charm and good looks—including a physical giftedness that lead some to nickname sizeable peppermills “Rubirosas”—won him tempestuous marriages and profitable divorces with Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton, the world’s most desirable heiresses. Yet he was untroubled by the concept of fidelity. “One woman is not enough for him. A man like him needs a harem,” said Danielle Darrieux, his second wife and one of the highest paid actresses in France. It was fitting then, that he died just as he lived: reeling from a night of heavy drinking to celebrate winning the Coupe de France polo cup, culminating in a spectacular car crash. At the time, he was married to his fifth wife, Odile Rodin, photographed above. As he once said, “I am, and will always be, a man of pleasure.”
PHOTO BY PICTURE POST/GETTY IMAGES
1909 - 1965 Nationality: Dominican Notable women: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Marilyn Monroe, Christina Onassis, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford
A LY K H A N
R.A./ GAMMA / EYEDEA PRESSE
1911 – 1960 Nationality: British Indian, Pakistani Notable women: Grace Kelly, Joan Fontaine, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Judy Garland, Simone Simon PRINCE ALY KHAN was born the expected successor of his father, the longstanding spiritual leader of their Islamic denomination—a position that eluded him when his son was named next in line instead. Official explanations claimed otherwise, but many were wont to suspect that it was Khan’s frivolous lifestyle that lost him the title: though he proved himself a successful breeder of fine racehorses as well as an impressive amateur jockey who spoke Oxford English, French, and Arabic, his reputation was built upon the women he wooed. Counted among them were English aristocrat Miss Joan Yarde-Buller—to whom he reportedly whispered, “Darling, will you marry me?” on the night they first met, when she was still Mrs. Guinness—and American actress Rita Hayworth (pictured above with Khan), perhaps the most publicized of his many romances. Ironically, his life’s passions were tied in with his abrupt demise: Khan died in an automobile accident coming from the Longchamps races with the beautiful model Bettina Graziani by his side.
G U N T E R SAC H S 1932 - 2011 Nationality: German Notable women: Britt Ekland, Queen Soraya Esfandiary of Iran, Athina Livanos-Onassis
industrial families, heir to the Opel and Fichtel & Sachs automotive fortunes. Though his time in school was spent preparing for a career as an industrialist, Sachs instead built his name as a respected figure in the art world as well as one of the most gentlemanly of his fellow womanizers. In regard to the former, his collection comprised works by the likes of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Magritte, and Kandinsky, to name a select few. As an example of the latter, he was so taken by Brigitte Bardot that, a day after they met, he had a helicopter scatter hundreds of roses over her SaintTropez home. The couple, pictured here in Bavaria, were married two months later, though their relationship was dotted with infidelities from both parties. The New York Times once described him as “someone who has been linked romantically at some time or other with half the great beauties in Europe.” Apart from his classically handsome face and striking blue eyes, Sachs’s appeal was built on being the poster boy of a well-heeled European: unfailingly gracious, fluent in several languages, adept at skiing and bobsledding—with a bend on the St. Moritz Olympic run named after him—and blessed with the wherewithal to spend his life doing only what he most enjoyed. Fearing that early signs of Alzheimer’s would rob him of the memories of his wild youth, he took his own life with a single bullet to the head in 2011. On a suicide note to his family, he wrote, “The loss of mental control over my life was an undignified condition which I decided to counter decisively.”
PHOTO BY JEAN-CLAUDE SAUER/PARIS MATCH VIA GETTY IMAGES
GUNTER SACHS WAS THE SCION of two wealthy
the last seduction of
ISABELLE DAZA PHOTOGRAPHED BY MARK NICDAO / STYLED BY MJ BENITEZ
You’d think that with the shadow of her lineage still looming over her head, Isabelle Daza would feel weighed down, as though pressured to follow the template of her mother’s career. But showbiz is an industry that banks on change, and Daza is more than happy to do what she would’ve easily done for herself—deviate. Miguel Ortega bears witness to a star in the middle of her transformation
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“I DON’T WANT THIS TO BE ABOUT MY MOM. IT’S ABOUT ME,” she says earnestly, though peppered with a hint of frustration, as we discuss her second coming as a Rogue cover girl. Her complaint is my fault, I admit. Her first shoot had a surprise visit from her mother, Gloria Diaz, who was . . . concerned for her daughter’s well being, to put it lightly. With all the whispers that surrounded what was probably the magazine blockbuster drama of 2012’s first quarter, I couldn’t help but pry just a bit, though I might have asked one too many questions about the former Miss Universe. It’s 10 in the morning as I walk through the doors of a secret shoot so undisclosed that I half expect someone to ask for a password by the entrance. In the same studio where she received a scolding from her mother, Isabelle Daza sits leafing through the Playboy issue with Kate Moss sporting bunny ears and a cottontail; ready to commit the same mistake she got berated for three years prior. The uneasiness in the studio was palpable but at the same time exhilarating, a rush reminiscent of the times you snuck out while your parents were asleep. It was an opportunity to go crazy, to experiment, to make mistakes. “I felt I was old enough to do something like this, to make a decision like this for myself,” the 27-year old model and actress explains. “I’m going to do this but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be a sexy star. It doesn’t mean I’m going to pose for other magazines doing this. It’s for myself because I don’t want to have regrets in the future thinking, ‘Shit, I should have done . . . whatever!’” Prior to the interview, Belle asks me to try and veer away from the topic of beauty pageants. “Just ask me something I don’t usually get asked—like what Skittles flavor I like most!” It was an understandable request. “Have you ever thought of joining a beauty pageant?” the all too predictable question goes, in those words exactly, or in some semblance of its humdrum inquisitiveness. She has been asked this question countless times and her answers have ranged from the simple, “I just don’t want to,” to the satirical, “Thirty seconds to solve world peace? No, thanks!” It is, however, a question that she has already outgrown. Also, for the record, she likes the blue Skittles best. Fresh out of high school, Belle was asked to be the new face of Human. “I was like, ‘Why me? I don’t get it. Why me?’” But the head of Bench saw something in her and, in spite of her doubts, she was set to model. “That’s how my career started, when Mr. Ben Chan gave me that opportunity. I’ll always be grateful to him.” There are, of course, some things that are unavoidable. “I did my first shoot, of course my mom was there, you know, co-directing me—so embarrassing,” she says while shaking her head, the flush of slight embarrassment tiding over her ever so slightly. It took a while for her to recognize the role she’s been put in, even after seeing her first billboard on display at the end of a major avenue in the city. “I saw George, Georgina [Wilson], and she was beautiful, obviously, and then I saw me and I was such a tomboy. I never ever imagined myself to be that. I didn’t even have my own pair of heels! They had to provide [a pair] for me,” she recounts. Belle is on the floor now, mimicking photographer Mark Nicdao’s movements. She grabs her heels and arches her back; her eyes focused on the camera lens as she holds the complex pose. “This is when Yoga comes in handy,” she blurts out, momentarily breaking the intensity of her face with a smile. It’s the last layout—an unplanned and impetuous one—and,
minutes later, Nicdao calls it a wrap. Belle heads for the dressing room and opens her lunch: a towering burger, which she tears through unmercifully in a matter of seconds. All this caught on her phone and uploaded to her Instagram account, where close to a million followers lie in wait. She tells me the big responsibility that comes with being an Instagram celebrity. “Well, definitely, I shouldn’t be posting hashtags with controversial words,” she jokes, as we recount the #siquiWhores hashtag she used to label her recent photo with Sunnies Studios creative director Martine Cajucom. “I think there’s some sort of responsibility that you carry—but, at the same time, people can become so judgmental that there’s a certain point where you can’t be yourself anymore,” she goes. It’s a big risk to be yourself in a world where a celebrity status requires an online presence. Everything is constantly scrutinized, your thoughts, your opinions, your inside jokes, and, worse, context often comes from the viewer rather than the owner. It’s an uncomfortable situation, but Belle is no stranger to making uncomfortable decisions. “It was a risk to transfer to ABS-CBN because they have so many beautiful, talented tri-media artists already,” she tells me. Belle had built a solid hosting career and, in a way, found her second family in the form of the colorful cast and characters of Eat Bulaga! It was comfortable. It was secure. So why drop all that? “I’m a competitive person—and to be the best, you have to go against the best right? But what really convinced me was when my mom told me, ‘You’ve already done hosting. You’ve made a lot of memories but now it’s time to take it to the next chapter and challenge yourself with acting. You don’t know yet what it’s like to act and be fulfilled by your hard work. Thirty to 40 years from now, you want to look back and be proud that you tried it out.” Right now, Belle is fully committed to exploring the world of being an actress, having fun in the process with her character in an ongoing TV show. “It’s very comfortable for me because the character is intelligent, sosyal, things like that, and that’s the very kind of stereotype that I am in,” she admits without flinching. “I really want to break away from my typecast of the sosyal fashonista who is never loved by the guy.” She then jokes, “Do I not look lovable?” Our little talk then drifts to the actresses she admires. Meryl Streep is part of that list, as is Coney Reyes whose talent leaves her in awe—“She can do a long monologue in one take!” She explains why Miles Ocampo is such a generous actress, and has nothing but praises for her friend Iza Calzado. It’s an admiration born from ambition, an underlying drive to set herself apart. “But I don’t want to be like them,” she affirms. “I admire them but I also would love to have my own style.” Belle Daza has made it clear from the very beginning that she is no pageant contestant, nor does she have any intentions of being one. And it would seem that she’s in the right place. She’s in an industry that is, to an extent, forgiving with personal flaws—heels can be bought, “whores” aren’t frowned upon, and stereotypes are more than welcome. Here, you are never really yourself, but that’s enough to find out what kind of person you are. You can go crazy, experiment, and make mistakes. Because in this business where every host wants to be an actor, every actress wants to be a singer, and every star wants to do an indie, does anyone really want to be the beauty queen?
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ROBBIE PIÃ&#x2018;ERA
BRENT SALES
Stylist Assisted by
JAIME ABELLA
Photographer Assisted by
AND
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PHIL NICDAO, JACK ALINDAHAO,
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E G OY
were Last May, over $20 million in jewels and watches stolen from a La Croisette boutique in Cannesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Pink latest in a string of robberies linked to the notorious che Panthers. Alice-Azania Jarvis inquires into the psy behind the heist and the fate of the stolen pieces
CATCH ME IF YOU CANNES
A Cartier boutique in Cannes was hit by thieves just days before the 2015 Cannes Film Festival last May. After gathering millions worth of watches and jewelry, the robbers sped off in a Mercedes, which was later found incinerated.
arrested nine men in connection with the affair. The identity of the Cannes perpetrators may never be known, although the involvement of established criminal gangs is a given. The case in particular bears the hallmarks of Europe’s notorious Pink Panthers—a loose, many-headed network whose origins lie in the Balkans mafia of the 1990s. Known for their brazen but meticulous robberies, its members often hail from military backgrounds (such as the elite, now disbanded, Serbian unit, the JSO). They were given their name by The Daily Mail, due to similarities between a heist at Graff, the New Bond Street jewelers, and Peter Sellers’s famous Inspector Clouseau film. It has also been suggested that the Panthers may have been involved, behind the scenes, in the Hatton Garden raid. Whatever the truth, one thing is certain: the recent spree is evidence of the rapidly growing—and ever more unwieldy—black market in jewelry and precious stones, which Jim Dickie, a former detective superintendent within the Specialist Crime Directorate at New Scotland Yard, estimates to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars: “It’s becoming more organized— crime groups have always been involved in thefts, but because banks no longer have large amounts of cash on the premises, they’re targeting other areas.” For those behind raids, the first priority, once the crime is committed, is usually to take the loot abroad. A prearranged contact will be met—known as “the courier”—to take it across borders to buyers usually in cities where diamond trading is widespread, such as Antwerp. Payment will be in cash; the criminals will have an idea of the loot they’ll be passing on and will have normally arranged a price—around 20 percent of the legal market value—with the buyer in advance. Thieves keep three-quarters of that sum and the rest goes to the courier, says filmmaker Havana Marking,
PHOTO BY IVAN DMITRI/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES / ALICE-AZANIA JARVIS/LONDON EVENING STANDARD/THE INTERVIEW PEOPLE
hen the world’s most glamorous film stars, including Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman, gathered for the 68th annual film festival, all eyes were on Cannes. But while the Ruinart flowed and the Chopard diamonds twinkled, there was one shadow looming over events. Just days before festivities began, the French Riviera city had been hit by a violent jewelry heist that shocked its 70,000 inhabitants and caused alarm around the world. At 11 A.M. on May 5, a masked man wielding a pistol burst through the front door of the Cartier store on Cannes’s palm-fringed thoroughfare, La Croisette, followed by two accomplices. They seized $20.5 million worth of jewelry and watches before escaping in a stolen Mercedes getaway car driven by a fourth gang member. The crime—which, ironically, wouldn’t have been out of place in a Hollywood script—is the latest in a string of similar attacks. In February, a $153,000 Calvin Klein dress, studded with 6,000 pearls and worn by Lupita Nyong’o at this year’s Oscars, was taken from The London Hotel in West Hollywood while the actress was out of the room. A month later, some $10.2 million worth of jewels and art were stolen after a 15-strong gang held up two armored vans in Burgundy. In April, robbers snatched $5.7 million of Chanel jewels from a collector’s car while it was stuck in traffic near Paris. And then, of course, there was the audacious Easter raid on the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company in which some $94.4 million worth of precious stones and cash was stolen in an operation that lasted more than 50 hours and saw thieves use an industrial power drill to bore a 45 cm-wide entry hole in the underground vault. This week, Scotland Yard
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS
Scenes from Havana Marking's 2013 documentary Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers. The film made use of closed circuit television footage from some of the international robbery syndicate's heists. Marking was able to interview actual members of the group, who were still loose at the time in Europe. She says that they turned to crime as a result of the struggles from the Yugoslav War.
“If you’re talking about a large heist, they’re still making $150,000 to $300,000 out of a weekend’s work.”
who spent a year investigating gang members while filming her acclaimed documentary Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers. “It’s not as profitable as it might appear, but if you’re talking about a large heist, they’re still making $150,000 to $300,000 out of a weekend’s work.” The identity of the buyer is unlikely to be known to the thieves, and vice versa. Instead, the liaison will be organized by a remote—and again anonymous—individual. Dickie likens this to the way spy rings operate: “It’s a cell system, and only certain members of each cell will know each other.” Should one member be arrested, the others are protected. This first buyer—known as “the fence”—will then process the jewels. Gold will be
COPS AND ROBBERS
Clockwise, from top left: The thieves who broke into the Harry Winston boutique in Paris' Avenue Montaigne in 2008 disguised themselves as women in order to gain access; it is hard to track stones—even ones that are distinguishable, such as this recordbreaking blue diamond from Sotheby's in 2009—when they are stolen, since they are processed beyond recognition; European authorities, including Scotland Yard, are at a loss on how to prevent these jewel heists even when they are brazenly executed.
melted down and precious gems extracted (diamonds are the biggest earner and usually the focus of any operation). Where stones are particularly large or distinctive, the fence will recut them, though whole stones are preferred since the larger they are, the more they’re worth. From there, the gems have one of two fates: they may be returned to the legal market, being resold multiple times—Marking says the fence will receive around 30 to 40 percent of the market value, with the price gradually rising as the jewels pass from one dealer to the next—or they may remain in the underworld, used as currency to buy drugs, weapons or people. Part of the beauty, from the criminals’ point of view, is that carrying
PETER MACDIARMID/STAFF. OLI SCARFF/STAFF. VIEW PICTURES/CONTRIBUTOR
The gems have one of two fates: they may be returned to the legal market, or they may remain in the underworld, used as currency to buy drugs, weapons, or people.
THE
D WBUIL NCH Several high-profile robberies have been linked to the international jewelry thief network The Pink Panthers. But who are they?
The group, given its nickname by the British tabloid The Daily Mail, is said to have hundreds of members in their organization, mostly soldiers with Balkan roots and violent pasts.
There hav e been speculatio ns that the Panth ers made use of appe arancealtering pr osthetics in a $65 mill ion heist in New Bond Street.
The group’s most lucrative heist was in 2013, when a man wearing a baseball cap and a scarf over his face made off with $136 million in gems, diamonds, and jewelry at the Carlton hotel in Cannes.
gems is unlikely to arouse authorities’ suspicion. Metal detectors don’t pick them up, they’re lighter in weight than gold bars and less conspicuous than suitcases of cash. As Marking puts it: “You don’t even need to hide them— they’re just in your pocket.” They also retain their value while national currencies fluctuate; both Al Qaeda and the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab are thought to trade in diamonds. Given the sprawling and global nature of the “industry,” it’s little wonder that stolen jewels are rarely recovered. There’s no single, comprehensive register of legally bought pieces. The Kimberley Process, the UN-backed certification scheme aimed at eliminating blood diamonds, stipulates that rough-stone shipments are accompanied by a uniquely numbered certificate. But once batches are divided and gems cut, they’re no longer accounted for. Some owners will register their possessions privately. Organizations such as the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), which has an outpost on Great Russell Street, offer certification services, recording stones’ unique features, cut and color. But even when jewels are registered, the system is far from foolproof, says Julian Radcliffe, founder of the Art Loss Register: “While, if it was resubmitted, it might be able to be matched, if it has been recut, it would almost certainly not be.” Likewise, if a stone is damaged in a raid, its distinguishing characteristics are altered and its traceability diminished. Nor is there a single record of looted items. The Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of missing art, antiques and collectibles, includes 70,000 pieces of stolen jewelry and 50,000 watches, while industry bodies such as the London Diamond Bourse circulate details of stolen goods in an attempt to prevent them being resold. But the onus is on individual victims to register the missing items. Which is not to say there’s no hope for victims. Very occasionally, when a stolen gem has re-entered the market, someone identifies it. This happened recently in New York when a grader at the GIA noticed characteristics in a newly purchased yellow diamond that matched a
The Panthers have been responsible for over $500 million in thefts around the globe, including Dubai, Switzerland, Japan, France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, and Monaco.
The group is known for daring, almost cinema tic heists. One 2005 Saint Tropez theft had the Panthers wearing flow ery shirts and escaping on a speed boat.
One of two high-profile heists of the Panthers in Ginza was that of the $24 million Comtesse de Verdonne necklace from a Tokyo jewelry store.
On December 2008, the group dressed themselves up as women and looted a Harry Winston store in Paris after being buzzed in.
One 2007 Dubai heist was a ram raid using two stolen Audi A8s. The cars were driven through the doors of the Wafi City mall and $3.8 million in Graff jewelry was taken at gunpoint.
stolen stone. The client who’d brought it in was unaware of its illegal provenance—as was the trader who sold it to them. A private settlement was reached. Meanwhile, the past decade has seen growing cooperation between European police forces. Both the Met and the French police will be collaborating with Interpol, which set up a dedicated Pink Panther working group in 2007. One promising line of inquiry in the Hatton Garden case has been DNA samples which were taken in the wake of a similar raid on a Berlin bank two years ago. And lately there have been some high-profile arrests. In February, eight criminals were sentenced to terms of up to 15 years for stealing more than $102 million in watches and jewelry, including one ring set with a 31 carat diamond said to be worth more than $6.3 million, in dual heists at the Harry Winston shop on Paris’ Avenue Montaigne. In one robbery, which lasted less than 20 minutes, the gunmen disguised themselves as women, sporting wigs, skirts, stockings, and high heels. The same month, four suspected Panthers were arrested in Vienna with stolen jewelry worth more than $566,000, including 18 watches that were stolen during a robbery in Montreux, Switzerland, in January. The most expensive is worth $63,000. And as the black market booms, there is evidence that criminals may be getting sloppy. In their rush to make a getaway, the Cannes raiders dropped several expensive watches on the pavement. It has also been claimed that those behind the German heist left bottles of beer at the scene. Still, those who lost their gems in Cannes shouldn’t hold their breath. Michael Levi, Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University, says that, barring a disgruntled whistle-blower coming forward, the chances of retrieving stolen loot are minimal: “It just gets mixed up in the general trade.” As for Scotland Yard’s promise of a $30,000 reward for information leading to conviction—well, that’s little more than wishful thinking. As Dickie puts it: “If you consider the potential value of what was stolen—$30,000 is minuscule.”
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THE
S ecret History of
SOCIAL
CLIMBING A Filipino dynasty? No such blue-blooded animal ever existed. Every storied fortune in our infant republic can be traced, only a few generations back, to an impoverished Basque or Fujianese ancestor. In this savagely funny account with a sting in its tale, biographer Nelson A. Navarro debunks the origins of â&#x20AC;&#x153;old moneyâ&#x20AC;? and the mythology of inherited wealth in the Philippines
It’s no great surprise that Filipinos are hopelessly mesmerized by royalty.
98 J U LY 2015
Social inferiority complex could not but define Manila society from the day the Quezons ascended the grand staircase of Malacañang as the first Filipinos or locally-born colonials to occupy the seat of Spanish and American power. Manuel Quezon latched on to the brutal truth: there was no such thing as Manila high society apart from the incumbent governor-general who was the “fountain of all blessings.” When the man representing the crown decamped, the scramble for invitations to the Palace ball and the new proconsul’s ear began all over again. Such was Spain’s neglect and low regard for its lone Asiatic colony that no governor- general bothered to live permanently, post term of office, in the Philippines, much less set up a Manila dynasty. No such animal ever existed. This explains why the peninsulares-only color line against the Chinese and Indios— and Spanish itself as the language of society—could not be sustained over the years. Too many came from mongrel stock and spoke pidgin Spanish. After the US conquest, English became the lingua franca, forever deflating the Castilaloy’s linguistic trump card. Still, the pretense of Iberian superiority was maintained in rear-guard bastions like Casino Español, Polo Club and Jai Alai. These would be taken over by Visayan sugar money, immigrant Chinese wealth, and politically generated fortunes. Go to Polo and Manila Golf and behold the Celestials and Brownies now ruling the roost. Because Quezon had risen to the top of the crumbling colonial pyramid, it was he who assumed the power to extend and withdraw favors. Under the Jones Law of 1916, the Governor-General, Francis Burton Harrison, was in command, but Quezon always had his way. Harrison inexplicably obliged Quezon’s megalomania, subject only to distant Washington’s seldom-invoked veto power. This point was later validated when Quezon, still Senate president, bitterly fought the imperious Leonard Wood, who sought to undo Harrison’s concessions, only to suddenly expire of cancer and leave de facto power in Quezon’s hands for good. Every landlord and politician worth the name danced to Quezon’s music. They secured Philippine National Bank loans when PNB was the only bank worth the name, sugar quotas, cabinet posts, and seats in the legislature for their conspicuous fealty and indispensable talent for sip-sip or flattery. Those who fell out of line like Aurelio Montinola and Juan Sumulong sank to genteel oblivion. But of course, the elite took care of its kind and some of the latter’s descendants survived and flourished, two at last count ascending to Quezon’s throne by another family name. Indeed, there was no salvation or great fortune outside of Quezon’s incestuous circles. The Castilaloy cronies—Soriano, Elizalde, Madrigal, Roces, Ayala—plus the Chinese mestizos— Jorge Araneta and Jose Yulo—formed a jealous aristocracy that endures in the 21st century as a pale but still potent shadow of itself. Post-war tycoons created by succeeding presidents came up, among them Jacinto, Toda, Lopez, and Cojuangco. But only the last two and their heirs survived the Marcos Reshuffle of the 1970s and 1980s. Monosyllabic Celestials, many unlettered and born in Amoy, rose to prominence and mega-billions after the 1970s, thanks to instant naturalization granted by the crony-creating dictator.
MAICA/GETTY IMAGES. ALICE-AZANIA JARVIS/LONDON EVENING STANDARD/THE INTERVIEW PEOPLE
For some 300 years, they were very distant subjects of Spain’s Habsburg and Bourbon rulers. America’s pseudo-royal Roosevelts and Kennedys took turns binding them to Washington during the American colonial years and long after independence was granted in 1946. Manila arbiter Maurice Arcache calls the bluest of the non-blues “our royalettes,” a few embarrassing bars below royal. Manila never boasted of any royal presence or even a royal visit. Until the now-disgraced King Juan Carlos was restored to Spain’s long-vacant throne in the 1970s, nobody in the direct line of succession bothered to come over to these desolate islands in the farthest corner of the world. The ruined Ayuntamiento in Intramuros featured a grand throne room that never was occupied, even for a minute, by any monarch. Only faceless governor-generals, many serving just a year or so, presided over a ragtag court of fawning bureaucrats, merchants, and planters from the provinces. No incumbent US president bothered to drop by in 48 years of direct rule. In 1935, Manuel Quezon crept into the yawning royal vacuum and all but proclaimed himself uncrowned king. Never mind if as commonwealth head he exercised no sovereign powers, reported to Washington, DC, and merited only 19-, not 21-gun salutes. Subjects of white rulers in faraway capitals, Manila high society always suffered a deep inferiority complex that has carried over into the republic period. Part of the reason was that not too many full-blooded Spaniards bothered to immigrate or, after the empire collapsed, sought refuge in these parts. Those who stayed and claimed precedence were mixed bloods or mestizos, hardly anybody with bragging rights of any passable aristocratic lineage. By definition, they were mostly dregs or remnants of empire with no status in the Iberian Peninsula or South America to go back to and no prospects of advancement anywhere else. The mother country itself was ravaged by war, pestilence, and hunger. In 1939, Francisco Franco seized power and turned Spain into an impoverished fascist state for 46 years. By these standards, Manila high society of the Quirino era was far wealthier in reparations deals and sugar quotas, although bereft of overrated titles of nobility. One Quirino granddaughter could only become Condesa de los Arcos, only to lose rank by being shortly divorced. Most of Manila’s Castilaloys, particularly the forebears of those who pass for democrats hovering around Noynoy Aquino, once deeply angered Quezon before his American patrons by staging noisy Falangist rallies, complete with fascist uniforms and salutes at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran and San Beda. To be fair, a very limited number of mestizos were patriots who fought in the 1896 revolution on the side of their Filipino mothers. But they were invisible compared, for instance, to the high-profile Voluntarios de San Miguel who stuck by Spain to the bitter end and then wormed their way into the favor of the perfidious Yankees. Just look over the mestizos who joined the Federalista Party demanding American annexation. Appointed as key justice officials or registers of deeds, they secured Torrens titles to former friar lands they either bought at fire-sale prices or just took over under various ruses. That explains why thousands of hectares of prime land in and around Manila fell into the hands of parties that were to become the core of today’s permanent elite based on ever-escalating real estate valuations.
PRIDE AND PEDIGREE
Clockwise, from top left: President John F. Kennedy and his ďŹ rst lady, Jacqueline BouvierKennedy, view the Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cup races aboard the USS Joseph Kennedy in Newport, Rhode Island, 1962; international socialites Babe Paley (left) and Gloria Guinness (right) on a Mediterranean holiday aboard the Guinness yacht, Calypso, in the 1960s; the young king, Juan Carlos of Spain, at age 21, training with the Spanish Air Force in Murcia, May 1959; Prince Charles at a 1982 polo match in Smiths Lawn, Windsor, with his Aston Martin DB5 Volante, a 21st birthday present from his mother, Queen Elizabeth; Manhattan grand dames Gloria Morgan-Vanderbilt Sr. (left) and her twin sister, Lady Thelma Morgan-Furness (the one-time mistress of Edward, the Prince of Wales), in New York, 1958; Prince Rainier and Princess Grace aboard their yacht, Deo Juvente II, a wedding gift from Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, in the bay of Monaco, April 1963.
FORTUNE'S CHILDREN
Clockwise, from above: The future heir to the Ayala Corporation, Jaime Zobel de Ayala (center), then a 22-year-old student of Harvard University, at the Sheraton Plaza ballroom in Boston, November 1956; shipping magnate Vicente Madrigal, the wealthiest man in the Philippines when he passed away in 1972, in his Balete Drive, New Manila home, October 1949; Socialite Chona Recto Ysmael Kasten, daughter of Senator Claro M. Recto and wife of steel scion Johnny Ysmael, photographed with her 1967 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow in Forbes Park; a party at the home of Negros social figure Nena Lacson-Garcia—“the queen of Bacolod’s best parties”—in the 1950s; a 1953 Fernando Amorsolo portrait of Margarita Soriano Rebullida-Araneta.
Maurice Arcache calls the bluest of the nonblues “our royalettes,” a few embarrassing bars below royal. Thee first Tuason was supposedly “knighted” and some descendants imagined that this was a title of nobility. PETER MACDIARMID/STAFF. OLI SCARFF/STAFF. VIEW PICTURES/CONTRIBUTOR
With hardly any exception, none of these plutocrats can date ascendance before the Quezon era; although, to be sure, a couple had been in possession of extensive landholdings and traded in sugar by the late 19th century. It was once said of Manila high society that the snootiest of them all were “no more than one or two generations removed from the plow or the bedroom of some lecherous friar.”A good number descended from penniless vagabonds conveniently wed to Chinese women who sold fish in the market or struck it rich operating pawnshops of Dickensian horrors. Except for a handful of favorites Quezon turned into senators or speakers, the rest wielded no real power in any government and had been kept at arm’s length by previous colonial overlords. Those who claimed pre-Quezon stature held no more than glorified counselor or ersatz advisory positions that depended on the whims of forgotten governor-generals or rabid influence peddling at the Ayumtamiento. For instance, the originally-Chinese mestizo Tuasons (long since Castilaloyed) were awarded vast landholdings extending to Marikina, all but worthless until the commonwealth and republic eras turned the cogonal mayorazgo into a gold mine. The first Tuason was supposedly “knighted”and some descendants imag-
IN GOOD COMPANY
ined that this was a title of nobility or someAbove: Social arbiter and thing grander. Take note that any tourist in society columnist Maurice Arcache (center) with Madrid may purchase a coat of arms in souveRosemary Lopez and nir shops off ff the Puerta del Sol. Ditas Lanuza at a party in the Roxas Boulevard The more savvy Mexicans knew this was all home of Rene Knecht, pure fantasy. The Spanish kings were wary of 1962. Top: Richard and setting up any rival nobility in the colonies but Pat Nixon (center) at the Manila International trafficked in debased titles (nothing beyond Airport with Imelda and count or marques) to filthy-rich colonials willFerdinand Marcos and their ing and able to pay the price. The conquistachildren Irene, Bongbong, and Imee, July 1969. dor Hernan Cortes was grudgingly declared Marques de Valle de Oaxaca but quickly fell out of favor in court. He died disgraced. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi was named Adelantado de Filipinas, which only meant he was governor of an unsettled region. This title was subsumed to the Counts of Calimaya and was extinguished, like all Mexican titles, by the 1812 revolution. Indeed, whatever can be regarded as titles or prominence in the Philippines date no earlier than the Quezon period, the zero-hour of nationhood J U LY 2015 101
The snootiest of them all were “no more than one or two generations removed from the bedroom of some lecherous friar.” A good number descended from penniless vagabonds conveniently wed to Chinese women who sold fish in the market.
when Manila’s social pecking order was supposedly cast for all eternity. Sergio Osmeña Sr. and Manuel Roxas once thought they could defy El Jefe over the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Law (1933). They had to beat a hasty retreat and crept back to favor. After Quezon died in exile in 1944, the OsRox team turned on each other in a vicious fight for the vacated presidency, which Roxas narrowly won. However, he died too soon and his would- be dynasty never took wing. After Quezon and Roxas, presidents came and went but with no lasting social impact until Ferdinand Marcos, Quezonian in every sense, came along in 1966. The Marcoses provided another dizzying whiff of splendor that tamed the entrenched order and, for some 14 years and beyond, all but remade it in the Marcosian image. The new copycat royals loved to pose in Ruritanian regalia seated in gilded thrones. But they stopped short of donning crowns that would have completed a scene straight out of comic opera. Not for want of trying, Marcos’ five déclassé successors just couldn’t pull off the defining tricks of the trade. What’s really behind the social order or precedence that Quezon installed and which Marcos brought into the modern period with equal gall and ruthlessness? First, today’s Manila aristocracy drew its fictitious origins from the Spanish period when it was non-existent or brushed aside for being of unacceptable racial antecedents, many with Chinese and a few of Jewish blood. The Spaniards were frankly racist and, even among themselves, boorishly tribal and regionalistic. As heirs to Ferdinand and Isabella who merged warring kingdoms into the Spanish empire, the Castilians thought of themselves as the master race and looked down on, among others, the mercenary Basques and separatist-prone Catalans. In 1492, they expelled “impure” Jews and Muslims. In the presence of more despised Indios and Chinese, however, Spanish pride dictated denial or muting of historic and petty differences. But it was clear that the Basques, not Castilians, predominated, by as many as 90 percent, in the dying days of empire in the Philippines. Most would trace roots, according to an irreverent heiress of one of the oldest families, to four obscure peasant villages west of Bilbao along the stormy Gulf of Biscay. A few came out of the rocky foothills of the Pyrenees and one family would grandly insist it came out of still-rural Alava in southern Vizcaya, close enough to the Castilian border. The much-reviled Chinese mestizos, destined to supplant the Castilaloys through sheer numbers, were also 90 percent drawn from five dirt-poor villages outside Amoy (now Xiamen) in Fujian province. The rest came from equally turbulent and hard-scrabble Guangdong province (the Boxer rebellion and all that), which was nearer to Manila across the South China Sea.
102 J U LY 2015
Grinding poverty and endless civil wars drove the bulk of Basques and Fujianese to Philippines shores in the closing decades of the 19th century. They crossed over just as the sugar trade was transforming the colony from stagnation created by the long- vanished galleon trade monopoly and being integrated into the global export economy. As planters, traders or loan sharks in the surging sugar, abaca and coconut industries, they were bound to constitute the two biggest groups, if not the dominant sector of the leftover elite of the Spanish conquest. Second, and not to over-emphasize the obvious, the bizarre consolidation of this parvenu elite only jelled as late as 1935-41 during the Commonwealth period. Quezon and his ilk were there on Day One of the emerging Philippine state and, as the saying goes, “Present at the Creation.” This separates selfproclaimed “old wealth” from the hordes of social alpinists and gold diggers down the years. Taking a leaf from the Boston Brahmins or the White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), “Old” (a few decades or less) Filipino wealth simply could not resist creating its own founding myths and noble order of precedence. Contradictions and inconvenient truths would come in the way of consistency, respectability, and honor. Quezon, to begin with, was no conqueror or monarch ruling over territory he conquered by force of arms. He was a clever lawyer, an American creation chosen under laws and procedures dictated by Washington. The bigger problem was that Quezon’s crowd, for the most part, did not fight in the revolution (nor against Japan in World War II) and, in fact, collaborated with the people’s enemies. They were being rewarded, like Quezon himself, for playing along and sucking up to the new colonial masters who took the place of Spain. Unlike the Boston Brahmins and WASPs, for whom patriotism against the British crown was the price of admission to the aristocracy, the Filipino Brahmins were bred by proximity to Quezon and sheer opportunism. At best, they paid nothing but lip service to the nationalism they never practiced in the battlefields or in daily life. In the Quezon years, nationalism involved dancing the Rigodon de Honor in Malacañang attired in exquisitely embroidered ternos and barong Tagalog as well as staging “Barrio Fiestas” glamorizing peasant life. Until 1970, the glitziest balls were staged by the sugar bloc’s Kahirup Club. The ladies came dripping in diamonds and precious gems, their patronage turning lowly seamstresses into “haute couture” designers who, with the breathless purple prose of media arbiters of manners, defined how Manila high society now behaves. The Quezons evoked the House of Windsor, the uncrowned couple acting as George VI and Elizabeth with the two princesses plus the little prince in sailor suit to complete the regal portrait. They sailed on the sleek Casiana around the islands and even made a six- month world tour that notably brought them to Mexico. There the Quezons found themselves in the bosom of Hispanic delusions of grandeur. The Marcoses simply could not resist emulating the Quezons in just 30 years. On a more perplexing note, there was the annual extravaganza of Quezon’s master showman, Arsenio Luz of the Manila Carnival, the most glittering event of the American years. In the name of charity, the carnival queen and her court were chosen through the rather uncouth method of selling votes to the highest bidders. This was how fair-haired heiresses achieved glory in faux coronations and got addressed as “Her Majesty Queen Pacita I” for a magical week or so in December. The first beauty queens could not but be drawn from sharp-elbowed land-owning families in the provinces. Brown pulchritude of more humble pedigree would come after World War II. Thus begun the enduring Filipino mania for beauty queens who, along with lower-class boxers, and in the absence of Nobel Prize winners, have become the very symbols of national pride and unity. Time and nostalgia would prove kind and indulgent to Manuel Luis Quezon and the grasping elite he ennobled in his wake. The charade continues. Only the harsh facts of history get in the way of fantasy and the grand life that the Filipino royalettes assume belong to them forever in this bemused but unfortunate nation.
ADAP TED FROM THE HALF-REMEMBERED PAST, BY NELSON A. NAVARRO; © 2015 BY NELSON A. NAVARRO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPUBLISHED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AU THOR-PUBLISHER.
MOGULS AND MADMEN
Clockwise, from top left: Eugenio Lopez Sr., owner of Meralco and the Manila Times, dancing with his wife, Pacita, during their Ruby Wedding Anniversary celebration, which was attended by European nobility, in January 1968; a 1968 portrait of Conchita Laâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;O Lopez by Chilean society painter Claudio Bravo; real-estate tycoon J. Amado Araneta in the driveway of his Cubao home, Bahay na Puti, with his 1952 Ferrari Barchetta; First Lady Eva Macapagal (far left) with Demetria Cojuangco, PuriďŹ cacion Lopa, and Tingting Cojuangco during the inauguration of their bank, First United, May 1963; a Claudio Bravo portrait of art collector Luis Ma. Araneta; statesman Jose Yulo, owner of the Canlubang sugar estate, campaigning for president in 1957; business mogul Danding Cojuangco and his wife, Gretchen, during a yachting trip in Santa Catalina Island, 1960s.
DESIGN BY SERIOUS STUDIO STORIES BY IAN ROSALES CASOCOT,MARGUERITE ALCAZAREN DE LEON, ADAM DAVID, AND PETRA MAGNO
Elections aren’t just a democratic process—they’re gambles. And through these stories, four acclaimed fictionists imagine the Philippines in particular states of disarray under the possible presidencies of 2016’s viable candidates: Grace Poe, Rodrigo Duterte, Jejomar Binay, and Mar Roxas
Grace Poe
By Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon
R
onald. Allan. Kelley. Poe. Like four children crammed into one marble tomb, she thought. As she touched the inscription on her father’s grave, a quick rustling of equipment, then a dozen LED lights from behind lighting her fingertips. “Madame President, we have to go,” whispered Alessa, one of her many alarmingly youthful Comms people, fresh out of Ateneo, who always seemed to shoot sterile rays of hope from her tight little pores. She stood up and let her throng of barongs scuttle her off to the cemetery gates. She had a meeting with Wali Ayoub about getting firearms back into the MILF’s hands. Rumors roiled about Chinese attacks on different parts of the archipelago after she called Premier Kiang an “oppressor” at the Hague. Sometimes, she wished her entourage could physically surround her at these meetings too, not so much to block out her foes but to avoid looking at her own Cabinet folk, their facial expressions gorged with advice, the “yes” swimming in their eyes, the “no” flaked and crackling on their lips. The mass of protesters outside had grown. Last week they said she was pussyfooting China; this week she was the Moro’s whore. She saw more protesters clambering out from the brand-new subway exit and felt a spasm of pride. She turned away from the SUVs and towards the underground, and the barongs silently followed suit. “We’re taking the fucking train again,” she overheard Alessa tell someone on the phone. “Oh God, I don’t know. For symbolism.” Marguerite Alcazaren De Leon is the author of People in Panic. Her stories have been anthologized in various publications including Philippines Free Press and The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction: 2005-2010.
Rodrigo Duterte By Adam David
P
resident Duterte spearheads significant constitutional amendments, and moves the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Philippine government to Panay Island. This move to the geographic middle of the country helps jumpstart the further political, economic, technological, and cultural development of the Visayas and Mindanao islands. The President’s new palace in Aklan is named Laguinbanwa, and it enforces as primary law of the land what it calls the Duterte Deal: do not bully, do not steal, do not kill. Security and law enforcement generally fall under federal jurisdiction, but citizens are encouraged to directly report to Laguinbanwa any and all perceived crimes, from high-stakes corruption to simple theft. It is said that President Duterte drives a random cab under the national regulation of 30 kph in a random city in a random sakup—the new term for the country’s four states—to get the lay of the land from the perspective of the citizens. He talks to his random passengers, asks questions, reminds them of the Duterte Deal. It is said that passengers unknowingly report on their neighbors, their co-workers, their classmates. It is said that some people disappear. The President encourages the dissemination of this story; it keeps people honest. Adam David is the author of more than a few books, the more famous being The El Bimbo Variations, which is a book-long Filipino application of Oulipian writing constraints.
Jejomar Binay By Petra Magno
I
was surprised to learn that Lord Jejomar did not, in fact, reside within the First and Honorable Estate FKA (formerly known as) Makati, but rather in a nearby outcrop of faux-provincial land called New Valley. “We come here to relax, and we thought the name ‘Nuvali’ was too proud,” said VP Nancy Binay as she walked me through the third Iron Gate, flanked by young male members of the gentry. If I squinted at their uniforms, I could see the modified insignia of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. VP Nancy sat me down in a manicured garden, possibly one of the last green spaces in the country. “We’re a simple family, you see,” she said, as she climbed onto a palanquin and was carried away on the shoulders of repentant bloggers. As I waited for the Lord, my phone beeped with dispatches from the outer regions: the class war in Parañaque had come to a head as insurgent forces seized it in an attempt to break into FKA Makati, Quezon City was now the property of the newest rich—all barons of construction companies—and the provinces had gone dark long ago, with Davao being the last to fall. The Binay clan had been dividing up the capital to drain it in the name of innovation, finally barring themselves within the fully-airconditioned FKA Makati. Nancy returned. “I hope you get the position,” she said, “his previous Self-Esteem Coach has just been removed to serve time in Tondo.” Before I ascended the staircase of kneeling human beings, she gave me one last bit of advice: “Call him by his first name, okay? It’s Jesus.”
Petra Magno is a winner of the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for her poetry. Once a fellow of Siliman University’s National Writer’s Workshop, her writing has appeared in various print and online publications.
Mar Roxas By Ian Rosales Casocot
I
t was the year of blandness and boredom. Manang Biday, the town’s best fish vendor, is irritated. The President came again this morning. He was checking on the price of her tilapia and making sure it was properly iced before the whole caboodle of it found its way to the market baskets of the masang people. “How much are you selling your tilapia?” the President asked again and again, while the press cameras around them flashed like a thousand dying suns. He was being perfectly masa, making sure his best angle was on full emphasis. Borrowed instinct from a television wife. “P200 ang kilo, po,” Manang Biday said quietly. “How much? How much?” “P200 per kilo, po.” “The tilapia is masa!” the President boomed. Later, the President also wanted to show off that he could direct traffic like a pro, and demonstrated as much—everything social media’d to perfection. Meanwhile in the new Negros Island Region, the two provinces suddenly yoked to each other prepared to go to war over which capital should rise above all. Bacolod? Dumaguete? But the President was too busy being hands-on with other things. He was checking the water meters of houses along the road to Malacañan, in tsinelas, for an Instagram photoshoot. Manang Biday sells only half her tilapia today. She tells Manang Nonon beside her: “Maybe I’ll try to find another stall tomorrow.” But Manang Nonon tells her halfheartedly: “There’s no such thing as another stall. It’s always the same smelly stall.” Manang Biday is bored. Ian Rosales Casocot is the author of four collections of short stories, including Beautiful Accidents and Heartbreak & Magic. His novel Sugarland was longlisted in the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize.
Ju l y 2 0 1 5
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114 J U LY 2015
Slip-On Sneakers (P7,700). TCB Type 2 Denim Jacket (P11,500). Sunspel Pique Polo Shirt (P6,950). Fullcount Socks (P1,200). PAGE 50 Ring Jacket Doublebreasted Sport Jacket (P38,500). Drake’s Pocket Square (P4,500). The Armoury Long-sleeved Polo Shirt (P12,500). PAGE 51 Ring Jacket Sport Jacket (P65,500). The Armoury Long-sleeved Polo Shirt (P12,500). Drake’s Pocket Square (P4,50). Farfalla Tassel Slippers (P16,000). Fox Umbrella Malacca Handle Stewart Tartan Umbrella (P6,000). Saint James Naval Shirt (P4,550). Ring Jacket Safari Jacket (P13,800). The Armoury Long-sleeved Polo Shirt (P12,500). All available at Signet, Unit 102C Windsor Tower, 163 Legazpi St., Legazpi Village, Makati; 894-3934.
IN THE LOOP, PAGE 58 Dolce & Gabbana Black Leather Belt (P18,060); Adora, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati. Y-3 D-Ring Belt (P4,098); Power Plant Mall, Makati. J. Lindeberg Suede Belt (P6,795) and Blue Leather Belt (P5,995); Power Plant Mall, Makati. Original Penguin Reversible Belt (P2,750); Anthem, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati. Dolce & Gabbana Leather Belt (P12,900); Adora, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati. Alexander McQueen (P39,500); Rustan’s Makati.
BREAKING THE SURFACE, PAGE 40 Kohler Dexterton Corporation: Greenbelt, Makati, and Quezon City; Wilcon Builders Depot; nationwide; kohler.ph. Gruppo Treesse 3/F Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati; 217-5388 dexterton.com. Grohe Wilcon Builders Depot; wilcon.com.ph; Axor Kuysen Enterprises Inc., 236 E. Rodriguez Senior Ave., cor. D. Tuazon, Brgy. Don Manuel, Quezon City; 740-7509; kuysen.com.
Ju l y 2 0 1 5
FAMOUS ROGUE HENRY SY, tycoon
“While I am not big with words, I am big and bold in dreams and vision.”
moved to the Philippines when he was 12. He spent his formative years manning his father’s sari-sari store in Quiapo, making a bed of the store counter every night. It was an upbringing that toughened his character, molding a mindset in which efficiency, hard work, and trust are among the highest virtues. He later made plans to build a store of his own, countering people’s ridicule of its probable failure by establishing what is now the first of a nationwide and near-invincible, if sometimes controversial, retail conglomerate. All the same, Sy had always intended for it to be far more than a profitable venture: he was building an experience. And whether or not one endorses his approach, one would be hard-pressed to say that Sy has not succeeded.
ED QUIN / CORBIS
HENRY SY’S goal was never to build a kingdom or live a life of excess. At present, the 90-year-old mall tycoon is the only Filipino to hold a place in the top 100 of Forbes’s 2015 Billionaires List, maintaining his eight-year run as the country’s wealthiest man and ranking high above well-known moguls such as Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, and Roman Abramovich. Yet Sy’s life remains far removed from the stereotype of the typical Filipino magnate, one who lives in the glare of the media’s spotlight and clinks glasses with the kingpins and parvenus of polite society. If anything, aside from his riches, Sy is known for being unknown, a deeply private figure who prefers to live behind the walls of his empire. Born into poverty in Xiamen, China, Sy’s family