Not exactly a comeback, but a necessary picking up from where he last left off four years ago, Roland Alzaté is shifting gears for his MEGA Fashion Week debut.
Related: Designer Spotlight: Yves Camingue On Fusing The Old And The New
In an immensely creative world such as fashion, one that exists on a mutually beneficial symbiosis with emotions, sabbaticals are nothing new. In fact, if you are to track the timelines of many fashion greats, there will be pockets of time taken away from the temperamental tempest that is the industry. A circumstance expected, designers or creative pundits take this as an opportunity to recalibrate, recharge, and more of then not, remind themselves about their purpose and passion. While this remains true, Roland Alzate refutes the notion of time-out.
“While I always luxuriate in putting out collections on shows, for the past four years, I concentrated on life, traveling, living abroad, and being a father. I continued making collections without fashion shows,” he begins. “Also, I opened a grand Queen Street West in San Juan City with my partner Noel Crisostomo. It was a mammoth project that took years of planning and setting up. So happy how it turned out.” Needless to say, Roland Alzaté didn’t go anywhere—he just actually lived life at its most essential, side-stepping from the frenzied and frenetic pace of the incessant industry, stacking up the building blocks of his future according to his own design.
This shift in focus has not only accorded him a sinewy drape of calm and peace, it also allowed him, as well as of Noel Crisostomo, to grow their business beyond the cultural made-to-order system. “Queen Street West is a realization of a dream where everything is just beautiful. It is like a mother who continues to push me to work harder and do my best, and rewards me after,” he muses. “In addition, QSW has a Home section now that houses beautiful oriental objet d’ arts.” Today, the brand is a visceral experience of style and sensibility tucked away in a quaint and quiet side of town, clearly reflective of the life he now leads.
So, he was always just there, tending to his own day-to-day and that of his clients, but just as the heavenly bodies that glitter the tapestry of the universe would know, it will always, always relent to the persistent pull of gravity, making one orbit right back to the center of it all—as it was meant to be. This season, Roland Alzaté makes his long-awaited return to the runways of fashion for MEGA Fashion Week Holiday 2019 with a collection that has been simmering in the back burner for quite some time now.
“I had the original concept for the collection right after my last showing in 2015, but life happened. So now, I am putting those beautiful ideas in the new collection,” he begins. “I love Tamara de Lempicka’s work and I am obsessed with Cartier diamonds, not that I own Cartier diamonds, but since the collection is a dream, I get to marry these two and re-imagine Tamara having an over-the-top obsession with Cartier. I want this collection to delight its audience and be on a journey of luxury and crazy love.”
Always well-referenced and realized in unquestionable quality, Roland Alzaté is taking his penchant for irony and juxtaposition and lacing it with a firmer grasp on his growth as a designer, inevitably displaying a level of understanding that is equal parts whimsy and restraint. A return four years in the making, this show will remind the us why his point-of-view is necessary in the continuous conversation of fashion in the local landscape, but more importantly, it is a reflection of his extended introspection. “It used to be an easy peasy affair for me, but the collection right now challenged me in so many ways, shape and form. It almost feels like an unfamiliar territory I would need to conquer again, which I am confident I would be able to,” he says. “I hope to win it with the audience, with the press and win it for myself.”
With a much more refined lens focused on the things that matter, this stands to be a comeback worth looking into. While he is understandably on pins and needles up until the last model saunters down the lit path at MEGA Fashion Week, Roland Alzaté is more than ready to bask in that spotlight again, punctuating his perceived return with a promise of persistent permanence. “Much farther and further this time,” he swears with a smile. Merely picking up where he left off, this won’t be the last we’ll see of him, for sure.
