Things are not what they seem in the fashion world nowadays. Sure, appetites for designer labels are increasingly ravenous, but an uprising—led, surprisingly, by industry maverick Hindy Weber-Tantoco—against mindless covetousness has begun. Vanni de Sequera uncovers her tricky juggling act: turning out coveted clothing designs while warning against fashion obsession

A decade ago in New York, a friend’s sartorial ritual thoroughly perplexed Hindy Weber. Hindy’s Chinese-American flatmate, you see, donned dour variations of black and gray outfits every single day. The monochromatism was an affront to the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) undergraduate’s credo that fashion should be a celebration of life. Poor girl, Hindy thought, maybe she’s financially challenged; hence, the simplistic wardrobe. What else could possibly explain this travesty?

One remarkable day, Hindy’s flatmate—maybe inadvertently, maybe pointedly—left a document exposed inside their shared apartment. The bank statement revealed that the young, determinedly black-clad girl was worth over $200,000 of equity in stock certificates alone. Here I am, Hindy thought, squeaking by on a meager budget yet somehow managing to sneak in shopping excursions at Barneys, when this woman could buy an entire department’s worth of clothes without batting an eyelash. “I felt like such a loser,” she confides. The epiphany planted a subversive seed in Hindy’s psyche. The seed would incubate, and then in 2008 finally germinate, leaving her fashion acolytes very confused.

“The products themselves are unquestionably beautiful and well crafted,” she argues. “But there are so many women who obsess over them, dressing head-to-toe in designer labels. I mean, thousands of dollars for a bag? But isn’t it just a bag?”

Events transpired to transform Hindy Weber—by now Hindy Weber-Tantoco—from a somewhat idealistic FIT Fashion Marketing graduate into a no-nonsense workhorse in Manila, D-I-Y capital of the world. Rustan’s, the influential retail empire owned by the Tantocos, invited her to revive its moribund Young Adults section. Hindy agonized, even if it was obvious to most she was destined to eventually work for what was now essentially the family business. Before she gave her inevitable assent, the pressure was already palpable. Whispers of nepotism, Hindy accepted, would fill the hallways of the half-a-century-old company. Somehow, with her tremulous, little girl’s voice and her big-city moxie, she would have to validate her credibility.

Eventually, in 2000, Hindy took the plunge. It meant working grueling hours to prove she deserved to be there on her own merits—expectations were as high as the tall poppy syndrome that awaited her entry into the insular, brutal world of Philippine fashion. She would, of course, eventually exceed them, but it wouldn’t be easy.

“I had to do everything,” she remembers about her start in U, Rustan’s in-house clothing and accessory line for young adults. “I had to style for the photo shoots and oversee the packaging, logos, models, store design, and store display. I even concerned myself with how employees should be treated.” Apparently, being a Rustan’s in-house designer entailed much more than merely designing.

The paradox of her crusade, of course, isn’t lost on Hindy. She’s not biting the hand that feeds her,  only urging a sense of balance. An insider like her, after all, is always more acutely aware of the industry’s excesses.

While her extracurricular accomplishments escaped most of the buying public, her creative output did not. Her designs in U, U Swim, and especially Cult Femme, were well received. Presciently, Hindy anticipated trends and incorporated them into her designs; but always, a “Hindy flourish” distinguished her clothes, making it notably wearable even after the trend had passed. Staid Rustan’s had, to its credit, enlisted a designer who could help make them hip again. The general consensus: Hindy Weber-Tantoco’s clothes stood out. How could items like Daisy Duke denim cutoffs in acid pastel colors not?

“I realize it can be frivolous, but I just love clothes and fashion,” she says. “It’s just that I don’t like seeing women victimized.” The relentless marketing employed by the giant fashion labels, she says, “has turned some brands into demigods whose products women have put on a pedestal.”

What’s going on here? The golden girl of Philippine fashion’s turned iconoclast?

“The products themselves are unquestionably beautiful and well crafted,” she argues. “But there are so many women who obsess over them, dressing head-to-toe in designer labels. I mean, thousands of dollars for a Hermes bag? But isn’t it just a bag?”

“Isabella Blow,” she beams about the recently deceased magazine editor and style icon who discovered Alexander McQueen, “would wear flowing gowns to the office, then attend galas barefoot.  How liberating is that? Screw the fashion rules!” 

She goes on to relate how there are women in Japan and Taiwan who sell their bodies to buy the latest minaudière; she then exhorts women “to take a stand already” against and “to break free from the chains” of luxury goods rapacity. New York, for surprising reasons, seems to play an important influence in Hindy’s quest to demythologize high fashion. “There’s a higher level of consciousness there,” she says. “In New York, people from all walks of life—the girl behind the juice bar, the bike messenger—have their own personal style that’s not dependent on labels.” She talks of Graydon Carter, the imperious editor in chief of Vanity Fair, who owns Waverly Inn, a low-key establishment that’s militantly anti-design, “but the drinks they serve—wow!”

Then there’s the story of Hindy’s Buddhist friend who committed to not purchasing a single fashion item for an entire year. On her birthday, she decided to break the abstinence by visiting a well-known mall to reward herself with a present: she promptly departed, unable to bear the materialistic oppression.

The paradox of her crusade, of course, isn’t lost on Hindy. She’s not biting the hand that feeds her, only urging a sense of balance. An insider like her, after all, is always more acutely aware of the industry’s excesses. And, to be fair, she never once questioned the artistry that animates the wares of the fashion titans. Bear in mind: she undergoes her own painful design process before each new Rustan’s line is introduced.

Habitually, Hindy stalls her brand merchandiser, whose duty it is to badger her to get her own design exertions going. Then, only after the inescapability of deadlines hits her, do ideas that had been percolating in her head take their initial form (at least on paper) in a two- to three-day burst of sketching frenzy. Sometimes, the mental vision does not come to fruition: uninspiring fabric is the usual culprit. It’s Hindy’s pet peeve, this dearth of competitively priced local materials. (In due course, she plans on streamlining the look and colors of her clothing designs: the mélange can be overwhelming, she concedes, when experienced inside the cacophony of a department store.) If you think about it, this future strip-down is a natural progression given her current anti-fashion-obsession stance.

“Isabella Blow,” she beams about the recently deceased magazine editor and style icon who discovered Alexander McQueen, “would wear flowing gowns to the office then attend galas barefoot. How liberating is that? Screw the fashion rules!”

These heretical photos? They were born out of Hindy’s vision. She proposed it, and Rogue embraced her idea posthaste (the impudence of it all proved too irresistible). Hindy Weber-Tantoco, fashion heroine, has somehow solved the ultimate retail brainteaser: how do you scorn the consumerism of label-obsessed Filipinas yet build your own brand credibly enough to entice them to whip out their credit cards? The balancing act would make a tightrope walker proud.