Imelda Marcos to launch her own jewelry collection (10:30 p.m.)
Sun.Star, Philippines
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.
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 a 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 November 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.
Imelda says the items will be inexpensive, costing around US$20 (euro15.67) to US$100 (euro78.37). But her daughter says prices and details about the collection are still being ironed out.
“The accessories are just an excuse. It’s just a visual and tactile reminder of this attitude she wishes to share, the Imelda spirit, the Imelda way and that’s what it will represent,” Imee Marcos added.
For sure, their value will be a far cry from the dozens of suitcases of genuine diamond tiaras, ruby brooches, emerald necklaces and other jewelry pieces the government has confiscated from Marcos and which officials plan to auction off.
“(The government) got everything. If they want to get it, good,” Marcos said, referring to her less expensive collection. “Maybe they will change their attitude and they will be more positive and they will see beauty (as) its own reason for being.”
The Marcoses have been accused of amassing ill-gotten wealth and were driven out of the presidential palace by a military-backed nonviolent “people power” uprising in 1986. The ousted strongman died in exile in Hawaii three years later.
The government has recovered about 80 billion pesos (US$1.6 billion; euro1.25 billion); in cash and assets from the Marcoses and their associates over two decades, including Swiss bank deposits now worth about US$680 million (euro534 million).
Ricardo Abcede, an official of a commission recovering the Marcoses’ wealth, said about 220 billion pesos (US$4.4 billion; euro3.45 billion) worth of assets are tied up in criminal and civil cases in the Philippines against the Marcoses and their associates. The total amount of the Marcoses’ assets abroad is unknown. (AP)
