MANILA-Former first lady Imelda Marcos, notorious for an extensive shoe collection and eye-popping jewels accrued under her husband’s dictatorship, is launching a jewelry collection she “recycled” using castoffs from her old wardrobe, according to the Associated Press.
The AP story continued:
Marcos, known for her shopping trips to ritzy shops in New York while the country wallowed in poverty, made the one-of-a-kind pieces from her old accessories and clothes, mixed with newly bought stones and other materials.
Her daughter, Representative Imee Marcos,
said that unknown to many people, her mother shops for trinkets and accessories
at flea markets, and keeps earrings with a missing pair or brooches that have
some missing stones.
Using her own glue gun, scissors or
pliers, Imelda “can combine them with her vintage items in a way that comes out
beautiful," Imee said during a promotional photo shoot that journalists
were invited to.
The 77-year-old grandmother and widow of
Ferdinand Marcos took time out Monday to talk to reporters in between hectic
photo shoots for brochures that will launch “The Imelda Collection” of fashion
jewelry later this month.
Lying on a divan in a Manila
hotel’s seaside garden, Imelda was clad in gossamer top with a butterfly design
and black pants for the photographs. For the brochure, she modeled several
chunky necklaces, rings and bracelet sets, some made with fake tiger eye
stones.
Pointing to a set of matching earrings
and brooch made of blue imitation tiger eye stone she was wearing, she told
reporters, “This thing I wear now is something I recycled."
Imelda said the jewelry collection was
the idea of her grandson Martin “Borgy” Manotoc, who was directing the photo
shot.
Manotoc, Imelda said, told her, “You are
creating beautiful things, like jewels from practically garbage."
The collection will be officially
launched Nov. 18, most likely in Manila.
The first designs to be shown to the
public are the accessories and the jewelry and will “not yet” include shoes,
her daughter said. But a close aide of the Marcoses said there are plans to
expand the collection to include shoes, clothes, and maybe furniture.
Describing how the collection came to be,
Imelda recalled, “One day my grandson came to me and said, ‘Mama Meldy, I would
like to use your collection to tell the world the real Imelda and the spirit of
my grandma.’ “
“What we are selling is not something
valuable, but ... it is something invaluable because it’s only beauty that can
feed the spirit," she continued.
“Even Plato said God is made real in what
is beautiful,” she said.
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