Please don’t haggle with the weavers, he says. IN A fashion show last year at Malacañang’s Goldenberg Mansion, designer Avel Bacudio showed off clothes with indigenous weaves, their use and the discussion around it fashionable today due to discussions on heritage. In a clever move, Mr.
Bacudio combined that and the issue of sustainability by making them out of agricultural scrap: fibers were extracted and made into yarns and threads from banana trunks and pineapple crowns from plantations, as well as water lilies. Mr. Bacudio told these stories to students from iAcademy on May 31, as the second of a series of talks called iAcademy: Insights from Fashion Innovators.
The first was a talk by designer Puey Quinones on May 22 called Creative Leadership: Defining and Redefining Your Designer Brand, while Mr. Bacudio’s talk was on Heritage and Advocacy. Mr.
Bacudio discussed his innovations in textiles, made with a collaboration with the DoST-PTRI (Department of Science and Technology – Philippine Textile Research Institute). After taking up a short course in Clothing Technology at the Fashion Institute of Technology last year, Mr. Bacudio approached the institution.
Together, they worked at making fabrics from saluyot (jute mallow; a rather sticky vegetable), and water lilies, owing to Mr. Bacudio’s own origins from Lake Buhi in Camarines Sur. In another project, they also made fabric from pineapple crowns (pineapples for culinary use; not the ornamental pineapples from.
