The Filipina and Jewelry

December 2, 2012 at 12:00 pm (1800s Filipinas, 1900s Philippines, 2000s Philippines, Comedy Relief, Current Events, Humor, Personal, Random memories, The Batanguenos, The Bicolanos, The Bulaquenos, The Cagayanons, The Cavitenos, The Cebuanos, The Davaoenos, The Global Crowd, The Ilocanos, The Ilonggos, The Laguna Tagalogs, The Leytenos, The Manilenos, The Negrenses, The Novo Ecijanos, The Pampanguenos, The Pangasinenses, The Past, The Samarenos, The Tarlaquenos, The Tayabenses / Quezonians)

I find it hypocritical of the ladies to say that they won’t buy expensive fine jewelry these days because they cannot wear them anywhere and because nobody wears them anymore.  Bull.  The real reason is that they cannot afford it, cannot afford to go where it’s really worn, and cannot afford to go with the crowd that really wears it.  Inside every real Filipina lady who has the real $$$ wherewithal is a voice that cries out:  “I want big, bigger, & biggest.  And I want more of it.”  Come on, admit it, ladies.  “Magpakatotoo kayo!”  as the local slang says it.

The Filipina ( and Filipino! ) fascination with ”blings,” with jewelry, stretches back centuries to the pre-Hispanic period.  The conquistador Spaniards were actually awed when they came across the natives practically encrusted with gold jewelry from head to foot.  The natives were even buried with hammered gold funeral masks.  So one can safely say that the Filipino interest in jewelry is, well, “genetic”…  Thus, Imelda Romualdez-Marcos is really not an enigma as far as fine jewelry and affluent Filipinas are concerned, she was just a truly world-class, albeit shocking, example.

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Wife was very much loved by Superrich Husband and he occasionally gifted her with modest pieces of French and American jewelry during their milestones.  However, since he was a principal in The Family’s business empire, his siblings were very sensitive to matters of personal acquisition and they hounded his poor Wife every time he gave her jewelry, as if he were stealing from them, specially his 5 sisters.  It came to the point that Wife simply kept his gifts of jewelry in their vault, declining to wear them until the day she died decades later.   

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Dona collected everything, including fine jewelry, contemporary and antique.  Off her bedroom, walk-in closet, and bathroom was another room, actually a vault, accessed through a secret narrow corridor, unknown to everyone except for her, her husband, and their 6 children.  Inside, in elegant glass-fronted cabinets backed by mirror, were suites upon suites of sumptuous jewelry on display:  diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls, and other precious gems.  It was a room that could have existed in a Russian imperial palace.  After Dona passed away in the 1990s, the jewelry was distributed among her children — 3 gentlemen and 3 ladies — and the room and the cabinets taken down.  A grand era had ended.    

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Because she felt that her sister had cheated her of her rightful inheritance, including some of her mother’s fabulous and famous jewelry in the late 1970s, Visayan Socialite accumulated her own spectacular collection of jewelry since…

“I like to have a dozen of everything, of every kind and color:  earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, whathaveyou.  It makes me feel secure and happy.”

Oh.

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During her heyday, when she glided like a swan and wasn’t yet tottering like “Pick-Up Stix,” the wife of a Marcos era tycoon, accompanied by a small retinue of lady friends, would walk into Ronald Abram Jewellers in Hong Kong and request, nay demand:  “I want to see your best pieces.  Only the best.  Show them to me.  Now.”  And the sales staff would immediately acquiesce, as they recognized her as a regular client.      

Decades later, a daughter-in-law (not her own daughters) is into the same thing… 

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“I really don’t have much… ”  a longtime politician’s wife said as she pulled out a clotheshanger draped with more than a hundred gold chains, some rather thick and heavy, with different gem-encrusted and studded gold pendants.  “These are my everyday wear…”

She pulled out an old Danish biscuit can from the jumble in the closet.  “Well…  I have some rings too.  Not many, I’m afraid…”  The red can held many small packets of synthetic Chinese silk and brown paper envelopes grouped by rubber bands…  She opened some of the packets in succession…  “This is my everyday ‘solo,’ it’s 10 carats (round).  It’s H-I color, VS2.”  (“Ay, pangit pala.”  I thought to myself.  “10 carats nga, H-I color naman, VS2 pa…”)  “This is my usual emerald cut, it’s 8 carats.”  “Ay, I like this so much, it’s my antique ‘lanzadera’ which I bought from some ‘dona’ gone poor with land reform in the 70s, see how many big ‘gulugud pagong’ diamantes it has?  This is hard to find!”  Actually, the ‘lanzadera’ ring looked freaky because it was so big.

“Earrings?  For everyday?  Oh, I don’t have many…”  she said deprecatingly.  She reached deep into a pile of cashmere sweaters for a big packet of synthetic Chinese silk.  Inside were many silk packets and brown paper envelopes.  The first packet she opened yielded a pair of 16 mm white pearl earrings.  “Pearls are so practical for everyday, I don’t have to think…”  she said unselfconsciously.  The next packet held a pair of 5.0 rosecut diamond earrings.    These I bought from that ‘dona’ with the ‘lanzadera,’ so pretty right?”  The third packet held a pair of big Asscher-cut diamond earrings.  It was getting very interesting…

“You know me, I’m a simple woman.  What would people say if I have fabulous jewelry?  That my husband is a corrupt politician who has stolen from government coffers???!!!  My conscience could not take that!”

But obviously, her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers could…

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“But why buy just unset, ‘the-bigger-the-whiter-the-better’ diamonds?  Don’t you want jewelry to wear?”

“Because it’s easy to run away with them during a revolution.  And start a new life elsewhere.  Trust me.  It’s been proven time and again throughout world history…”  replied Senator’s wife.

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Eldest Sister, in her late 80s, has spent her life dutifully shepherding, safeguarding, and enlarging her multibillionaire family’s various businesses.  She divides her time only between their offices and their factories.  Her only diversion through the decades has been her constant collection of fine jewelry.  Although she is always just in one of their offices or one of their factories, the city’s top jewelers regularly send her their best stocks.  She is happy to buy most everything presented with cold, hard cash.  South African diamonds, Burmese rubies, Colombian emeralds, Kashmir sapphires, South Sea pearls, pieces by big-name Paris, London, and New York jewelers, modern jewelry, and everything else is fair game.   She merely brings them home to her bedroom, where fine jewelry practically spills from her closets.  She is safe because the family compound is guarded by a veritable army of guards with high-powered firearms, not unlike a maximum security prison.  She merely looks at and appreciates them every now and then;  she never wears them, protesting that because of work pressures, she has no time to socialize.  Eldest Sister possesses one of the most magnificent collections of fine jewelry in the city.         

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During her youth, Billionairess Socialite was taken by her aunt Heiress to all the important jewelry shops during their travels, where she watched her aunt accumulate her magnificent jewelry collection.  They were yearly regulars at the jewelers on Fifth and Madison avenue, Via Condotti, Bond Street, and at the Place Vendome.  “She really informed my taste for jewelry.  And I am collecting what I like until today.  I really am into jewelry!” said Billionairess Socialite.   

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“When Ninoy (Aquino) was shot on 21 August 1983, the next day my sister and I raced to the airport in a taxi with 2 boxes of our jewelry bound for Hong Kong where our parents were waiting.  2 ‘balikbayan’ boxes of  jewelry, that was it.”

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“During the attempted coup d’ etat in 1989, renegade soldiers occupied our apartment building (Ayala Twin Towers).  I emptied my 2 vaults of  jewelry into a folded bedsheet and knotted it.  I even asked a soldier to help me carry it to my car.  On hindsight, he was goodlooking.  Hahah!”

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During her heyday of activity, Formidable Mother made it a habit to buy jewelry, often serious, at fashionable jewelers in world capitals during her travels every year.  Cost was never an issue to her industrialist husband, who enjoyed her absences anyway, because he could canoodle with his intellectual girlfriend.  Falconer and Ipekjian in Hong Kong, Tiffany’s and Harry Winston in New York, Asprey and Garrard’s in London, Mauboussin, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier in Paris, et. al. were all familiar haunts.  To appeal to her intellectual side, she also accumulated an important collection of excavated Filipino precolonial gold jewelry.  Today in late age, she hovers in and out of memory surrounded by 80 years of shopping for the best…    

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At the Hong Kong Jewelry Show last year 2011…

“Hija, why do you look like a pauper?  Why didn’t you dress up, for chrissakes?  You look like you can’t buy anything!  Don’t sit beside me.  You’re distracting.”  Mother looked straight ahead, nonplussed.

Mother was in full “war gear.”  On every finger, save for her thumbs, were magnificent diamonds, both white and fancy-colored, in every shape, in sizes that ranged from 5 to 10 carats.  Her wrists were wrapped with (aggressive) bracelets of diamonds and more diamonds;  as a concession to her Chinese ”sukis,” among the wrist blings she wore a superb, late Ch’ing dynasty bracelet of imperial jade.  The Chinese salesmen were agog and very eager to show her their wares, although the store owners promptly took over when they saw her, an important client.  She gamely went through their stocks, criticizing everything, including their business suits, as they politely persisted with their presentations.  She liked some extraordinary pieces and bargained hard, but also paid hard.  She and her $$$ money were irresistible.

Back at the presidential suite of the Peninsula hotel, Mother received a series of sales representatives from private sellers showing their latest stocks.  Bored, she told her mayordoma to turn on the TV to see if any of her fave “telenovelas” were showing.  Her mayordoma had arrived 3 days earlier from Manila, to make sure everything was prepared well for her senora.  She made sure that the suite was very clean.  Immaculate.  Once, in Bangkok, Mother pulled a grand tantrum and immediately stormed out of the presidential suite of a top hotel, 7 staff members, 36 LV Louis Vuitton suitcases, and all, because she saw a mosquito — one little mosquito — in the living room.  A mosquito in a 6-star hotel!!!  She berated the German general manager as if he were her muchacho.  She immediately took the top suite at the next 6-star hotel, where she was welcomed by the GM like royalty.  

Expensive flowers from HK’s top florist were ordered by her mayordoma for every room in the suite, including the bathrooms, but unscented ones, as Mother was allergic to fragrant blooms.  Boxes of tissues, in elegant cases, were installed in the corners of every room, along with discreet trash bins.  Rolls-Royce limousines were reserved for senora’s use, white for day and black for night.  Restaurant reservations were made, often at Fook Lam Moon;  Mother was definitely not into “fusion cuisine.”  The mayordoma was kept busy as she made the rounds of Hong Kong — Tsimshatsui, Central, Admiralty, & Wanchai, buying everything in her senora’s long shopping list that would be sent back to Manila.  And of course, mayordoma also had her personal shopping to do, usually at Lane Crawford.  After all, mayordoma was taught by her senora that “a well-off mayordoma makes for a very rich senora.”  Thus, mayordoma’s “modest” 800 m2 house in Ayala Alabang. 

Abroad, Mother was always attended to by a retinue of staff like her Makati residence:  mayordoma, 3 maids, 2 houseboys, 2 drivers, 2 nurses, and a doctor.  If some members of her family accompanied her, then there was a corresponding increase in staff.              

After lunch on the first day, it was Mother’s custom to check on her SDBs at the HSBC.  Her drawers were from top to bottom and back to top and down again, and again.  All were filled with magnificent jewelry, all with corresponding papers, updated with current market values every yearend.  There were several classical parures of diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl jewelry which included tiaras and czarina necklaces “just in case one of my daughters marries a prince…”  Sometimes she wondered why she had “vulgar” and ”ugly” things, then laughed to herself.     

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Congressman’s wife looked at all her diamonds laid out on a tray.  A truly busy lady, she no longer had the time to wear them, at least one by one.  A big political wedding was coming up, so she thought of carting them to her jeweler and have all of them set into just one big necklace sure to get all the congressmen’s spouses carping…

“After all, it will be so extravagant it will look fake.  And that’s good.  I won’t be investigated, right?”

Touche.

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In her sleek and slick, Art Deco-style, black, brown, and beige dressing room in Forbes Park, Taitai casually picked through drawers of extravagant costume jewelry, many by Chanel and Prada, which usually cost as much as real jewelry.  Lots of real Bulgari too, which she considered as daytime wear, worn with casual tops and jeans and flats (of course, “casual” tops and jeans and flats which, per piece, cost an average Joe’s entire year’s salary).  “It’s just costume jewelry every day for me.  My friends and I don’t wear our ‘armory’ or ‘arsenal’ except when we have to, like the weddings of the family and our friends.  It’s only then that we bring out the “serious blings” — the big white and the fancy colored diamonds.  Rubies, emeralds, sapphires, pearls???  Of course… But we all prefer diamonds, the bigger, the clearer, the better!!!  Of course, it’s all new, we wouldn’t think of wearing ‘vintage’ lest we look old!!!  And most of the time, it’s more fun to do it in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing… rather than here in Manila.” 

*unfinished*

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