Roy Gonzales’ Sketches Evolve Into Stories of His History in Design

A Paris-based creative team casts an artful gaze on Froilan “Roy” Gonzales, the first Filipino chief designer at a French couture house.

Had the internet existed back then, we would have been more privy to the highs of Roy Gonzales, the first Filipino chief designer at a French couture house. Now in his early 80s, the Manila native left behind an economics degree in his sophomore year of college to pursue fashion studies at the Institut Français de la Mode, where he graduated at the top of his class. Roy quickly became the sole designer to work under Pierre Cardin at only 20 years old, after one of his professors urged him to present his final collection to the French couturier.

His time at Cardin was characterized by “pure creation.” Eventually, Roy moved to Patou in 1976, where he designed under the creative direction of Angelo Tarlazzi. When Tarlazzi left abruptly the following year, his position was offered to Roy. “I don’t know why I became very brave!” Roy exclaims to Vogue. “They asked me if I could do it, and I just said, ‘Yes, I’ll accept.’ And I did collections until 1982.”

These lesser known facts fascinated Rylé Tuvierra, a Filipino digital creator based between Paris and Barcelona. She came across Roy when her friend, French archivist Séverine Breton, was in the process of researching Patou’s history for a project with LVMH. “She said there was a Filipino creative director, but she couldn’t find much information about him, so she asked for my help in reaching out to him and obtaining his sketches,” Rylé recalls.

The team became inspired by Roy’s original sketches. Photographer Max Vm looks back at seeing them for the first time: “I was immediately transported to a whole different time, a dreamed era that I had only seen in movies and archives. So I wanted to convey that feeling of frozen time, of peacefulness and the slight mystery of a memory that’s not yet faded away.”

Inspired by the drawings, Stylist Juan Camilo Rodriguez gathered looks from the likes of Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Diotima, which served as canvases for art director Ebony Lerandy’s freehand overlays.

“Without access to the original garments, drawing became the most direct way to engage with his work,” Ebony explains of her process. “It allowed me to stay close to his line, his proportions, his way of constructing silhouettes. Illustration became a way to bring his presence back into the image, rather than recreate it.”

What resulted are vivid snapshots of Paris and the Philippines, then and now, whose blurred lines evoke curiosity and wonder. Ultimately, images that reflect the unadulterated joy of finding home in the act of creation, on a land miles away from your own. “All I did was create, create, create,” Roy reminisces of those years. And they were some of the most exhilarating of his life. 

By TICIA ALMAZAN. Photographs by MAX VM. Styling by JUAN CAMILO RODRIGUEZ.