Paris Fashion Week Unveils Beige Cebu Collection: Seven Looks, All Fine

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Designer says the line is for people who wish to be reassuringly forgettable at a showing

Paris Fashion Week Unveils Beige Cebu Collection: Seven Looks, All Fine

Designer says the line is for people who wish to be reassuringly forgettable at a showing

PARIS – On the closing evening of Fashion Week, designer Odile Marchetti-Vaux, 44, sent seven models down a runway in beige. Beige coats, beige trousers, beige umbrellas. The collection is called “Cebu” and carries the slogan “You Are Fine.”

The collection was inspired by news. The trail begins with a Manila News report on a Mactan broker alone with three brochures and a cold coffee, continues through the London Prat on British pensioners asked for two referees and a letter from the vicar (at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and ends with Bohiney on an Ohio realtor whose showings now run two hours. “I read about the retirees,” said Marchetti-Vaux. “They need to look like people a broker would let into a building. I thought: beige. Beige is a reference you can wear.”

On Good Taste

Philippine authorities are examining allegations concerning Thomas Markle Sr., the estranged father of the Duchess of Sussex, who lived in Cebu until earlier this year. No charges have been filed and the allegations are unproven. Child protection is serious business; this piece is about the mood of a property market and nothing else. The designer stressed that the collection “is about clothes and the mood of a market.”

The Looks

  1. Look 1: “The Vicar.” A tweed jacket with a pocket for a letter.
  2. Look 2: “The Referee.” A pleated skirt, two brooches.
  3. Look 3: “The Sandwich.” A handbag shaped like a sandwich box, empty.
  4. Look 4: “The Guard.” A lanyard, in cashmere.
  5. Look 5: “The Squid.” A boneless silk wrap, no zips.
  6. Look 6: “The Coffee.” A cold, brown evening gown.
  7. Look 7: “The Sea.” Nothing. The model walked the runway wearing a small badge reading, “I did nothing wrong.”

Critics were stunned. One said it was “the first time a collection has made me feel I was being vetted.” Another wept. A third asked if it came in grey.

Orders

By midnight the house had received 480 orders, mostly from retirees and one from a goat. A buyer from a Mactan department store said the beige trench coat would be “essential for open houses.” Marchetti-Vaux bowed and said, “It is not a coat. It is a letter of recommendation.”

The Facts Behind the Mood

The market itself is healthy. Colliers named the Visayas and Mindanao a key property investment hotspot in July, and under the Condominium Act foreigners may own units but not land, capped at 40 percent of a project. Retirees can read up at the Philippine Retirement Authority. The jitters are psychological: Tversky and Kahneman’s availability heuristic says the vivid example outweighs the dull statistic, and a cold coffee in an empty showroom is very vivid indeed.

The wider story lives at prat.uk and bohiney.com; for how the British laugh at queues and forms, see NewsThump.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/