Veejay Floresca's Design Class

Fashion designer Veejay Floresca teaches garment construction in a design class in St. Benilde. The Ed Calma designed building of the school looks amazing. Just goggle it. In the chaos that is Manila urban planning it actually juts out like a sore thumb. Anyway, Veejay invited moi and Bo to critic the works of his students. In an earlier class Philip Tampus was the guest critic.

I love the challenge of mentoring young designers. I'm a self-taught designer and I really valued the lessons I learned from senior designers like Frederick Peralta who give nuggets of wisdom culled from his experience. I have mentored some of the more exciting young designers in Iloilo and I'm happy that most of them are doing great in designing.

Project Runway Philippines season 1 Bo Parcon and Veejay Floresca.

I truly felt Veeejay's passion to teach. Baka sya na ang susunod na Dean of Philippine Fashion ala Mang Ben Farrales?

It's so funny how the students feel so nervous presenting their designs that they made themeselves. It has to represent their own style, also. It's really obvious though who has a grasp of 'fashion' versus those who are not sure of their own style. But it's expected that young designers should experiment and explore at an early stage. That way they'd be able to discover what style they have an affinity with. One lesson that helped me greatly is to learn fashion history. It's also important to discover how garments are constructed so you can develop your own technique later on. I enjoy the process of creation when I'm designing more than the presentation and actual product, actually.

One designer that stood out for us was this student who did a feathered skirt. She needs to polish more of her construction technique but it's unmistakable that the skirt she made has potential, non?

It was indeed an enriching afternoon sharing our thoughts to Veejay's student and I hope we were effective in communicating some lessons that they can apply in their quest for greater fashion design. Hope to be invited again.