Light and Salt: For His MNL Fashion Week Debut, Jerome Lorico Takes Us Home
Photographed by Jom Ablay
Jerome Lorico first saw the colors of his aura in childhood, during summers spent in his hometown’s many beaches. For his inaugural MNL Fashion Week show, he takes us back to those moments in the water.
Growing up in Legazpi, Albay, Jerome Lorico describes his hometown as one where there is a beach at every turn. Despite summers spent in the water, Jerome was the only one among his siblings who never really learned how to swim. He didn’t fear the water, though, and gamely waddled in with his eyes closed, vividly recalling the colors black, white, and blue behind his eyes.
“I’ve read somewhere recently that the color you see when you close your eyes is actually the color of your aura,” the designer marvels. “This is actually part of the inspiration where the concept is anchored.”
These muted hues find 51 iterations in Lux et Sal or Light and Salt, Lorico’s debut collection for MNL Fashion Week. “I don’t need a lot of colors to speak of the story that I want to tell,” he further explains of the restrained palette, “and that’s always been how I design. I want to speak less, in a way, but also speak more.”
Having lived in Manila for over two decades, Jerome’s provincial homecomings have become scarce, limited only to holidays and special occasions. The rarity of his visits is a part of what makes each one so special; his origins offer a distinct belongingness and comfort as a reprieve from urbanity. He expounds, “This new collection is sort of a return to that kind of feeling. I want it to be a return to home, a return to nature. A return to being able to be in touch, not just with your own self, but also with the world and with other people.”
What better way to immerse the audience in this narrative than to take them there?
Upon entering his show venue, ocean waves swell on an expansive LED screen, and heels sink into a floor of… sand? No, salt—rough, raw cuts of it all covering the ground, little white crystal hills pooling at our feet. “Is this real salt?” we question over and over before lights go down, playfully goading each other to taste it.
“It’s real,” confirms Franco Saycon, PR Director at Yellow Brick Media, the agency that helped stage the show. Sacks and sacks of salt were sourced from two provinces in Luzon (they had depleted the supply of one province so a second one was necessary), then transported by jeepney to the city over two trips.
A scenographic dedication to the concept isn’t far-fetched for someone like Jerome, who has always prided himself as a born storyteller. Having taken up literature and language in college, he cites this as a manifestation of how he has always felt compelled to connect with people not just visually, but also emotionally.
Though he started off as a womenswear designer, Jerome’s shift to menswear early on became an exercise in navigating freedom and restraint. If his knit womenswear is characterized by balance and symmetry, menswear is “the polar opposite of that. There’s more freedom in a way that I can actually create a story about imbalances or asymmetry.”
He’s not so occupied with binaries anymore though, and instructed his show stylists to do whatever they wanted with the clothes. His only request was to follow a gradient color story of darkness to brightness, beginning with blacks and ending on a light note with grays.
The show opens with symmetrical noir knits, before transitioning to draped navy blue pinstriped sets, then asymmetrical matelassé and pleated coordinates. Men and women were garbed in skirts and dresses alike; sensual cuts expose slivers of skin with each step, comparable to currents that momentarily conceal then reveal the shore with every ebb and flow.
Like with any creative project, all is up for interpretation. “I feel like in modern times right now, we are spoon fed a lot of things, emotions included,” the designer laments. “So I want [the audience] to see [the clothes] as a blank canvas where they can actually feel for themselves. The collection is not going to tell them how to feel, but rather teach them how to feel.”
He goes on: “I think every creative has this innate longing to share something, to inspire someone. I want to do it one step at a time. I think that’s kind of weird to hear from an industry player like me who’s been in the industry for a long time, but I still want to take things slowly. I believe that I still have a lot of stories to tell.”