connecting THREAD

How can craft survive and flourish for generations to come? It's all about respect and knowledge.

- DEVI DE VEYRA

PHILIPPINE FASHION IS YEARS INTO A GOLDEN ERA, marked by nationalistic leanings as seen in the emergence of local weaves and Filipino motifs, both ancient and contemporary. The trend has created curiosity for our diverse historical manner of clothing and helped revitalize craft traditions. The groundwork had been laid decades before by those who saw the urgency to preserve our material heritage. These visionaries realized that Filipino traditional crafts need to be financially viable by being able to serve a market through an equitable exchange. They saw the importance of documenting and preserving craft’s histories so that present and future generations can have a deeper understanding of their cultural significance.

Designer Patis Tesoro was an early purveyor of cultural sustainability who, just after the EDSA Revolution, noticed the precarious situation of the piña cloth when she received a call from then Far Eastern University chairman Dr. Lourdes Montinola. "She told me, 'do you know piña is dying?"" Tesoro recalls. "And I told her I know it's dying because my mother-in-law, Tesoro's co-founder Salud Tesoro, was buying piña fabrics and putting them in her walk-in safe. Kasi daw nawawala na, and piña's the lifeline of the family business." ["Because they said that it was disappearing, and piña's the lifeline of the family business."]