LIFESTYLE FASHION AND BEAUTY - LIFESTYLE FASHION AND BEAUTY FASHION AND BEAUTY
Bagful of art Stefanie Cabal Philippine Daily Inquirer
June 04, 2010
Yvette Floro brings her fascination with Picasso, Gaudi and Klimt to her bags. No wonder, aficionados like Oprah and the Faber-Castell countess of Germany collect them like art HER HUSBAND REFUSED to buy her the latest designer signature bag, so she ended up making one for herself. Yvette Floro, who has been in the business of exporting fashion accessories, took her husband’s challenge to heart and for over 20 years now, she hasn’t stopped producing gorgeous arm candies under the label Yours by Yvette.
Just like heavyweight Filipino bag designers Rafe Totengco, Bea Valdes, Rocio Olbes and Tina Maristela-Ocampo, Floro is a designer Filipinos can be equally proud of, with celebrity clients to boost her designer status, including Paris Hilton, Teri Hatcher, Barbara Walters, Kate Hudson and Oprah Winfrey. She was even told that a countess of the Faber-Castell business group in Germany has some of her bag designs.
In spite of Floro’s success as a designer, the University of Santo Tomas Fine Arts graduate remains significantly grateful doing what she loves best and doesn’t consider her bags as works of art. She humbly refuses to call them such, “it might appear as sheer arrogance,” she says. “I’m just grateful to hear compliments from my happy clients on the work that I put into each design.”
True artist
Because of her background in fine arts, Floro brings her fascination with great artists like Picasso, Gaudi and Klimt to her handcrafted bag designs. She mentions art movements like Bauhaus and Art Nouveau as constant inspiration references.
Floro believes, in a world crowded with mass-produced luxury goods, “The bag should speak for itself.” And her unique designs do that exactly —fused with kaleidoscope of color combinations, mixed with graphic shapes from curves to swirls, with loads of embellishments and various textures, and made from the finest leather (her fave material), mixed with pewter and metal accents, developed by her husband and business partner Greg.
Just like a true artist, focused and consumed in her work, Floro describes her design time as “quiet and undisturbed.” She doesn’t even allow cell phones and phone calls to disrupt her concentration. “I truly believe that inspiration comes when the mind is uncluttered and the mouth is shut!” she says.
On a good day, she finishes an average of four to eight bags. And these beauties land on the arms of her prestigious list of “beautiful” clients, or would land on the hands of women whom she calls “bag addicts,” who are avid collectors of her bags. “They even have private showrooms full of my bags,” she says in astonishment.
Yours by Yvette is available at SM Kultura, Makati; Lulu Tan Gan, Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center; jewelledbags.multiply.com
