FLY too high and you get altitude sickness, but fly too low and you get bored. There was some altitude sickness caused by a few designers who flew too high at the just-concluded Holiday 2011 edition of Philippine Fashion Week (PFW).

Not a few style watchers suffered bouts of indigestion from absorbing too many shows in a span of a week. But when runway pieces threatened to be too theatrical for a wearable wardrobe, you inevitably ask, “What else was new?”

The circus wasn’t in town. There were no masked balls. And yet some designers couldn’t shake off the nasty feeling that they were still sauntering like Tinkerbell in Wonderland. Not that fantasy is bad per se but some designs were too alienating, or too antique, for the fashion watchers who were tired of the Baroque.

But within the realm of fantasy, some PFW collections showed sci-fi influences and received the general nod of the younger crowd, which easily made up 85 percent of the audience.

Bravo to them for bravely giving cake fit for today’s youthquake. Crowd-pleasers do not necessarily have to be critical losers. In fact, providing good-looking clothes is the most fashionable way to make money in retail.

A different take on holiday

WITH the recent superhero movies raiding the box office and the continued integration of technology with our lives, it was inevitable that a home-grown clothing brand would pay homage to what’s super and what’s techno. (No, they didn’t resort to dressing up models like geeks. Fashion did some time travel instead.)

Showing a different take on holiday clothes was the home-grown brand Oxygen (www.oxygenfashion.com), now synonymous with sophisticated, minimalist and totally unpredictable fashion. The label directly answered a local need for more experimental club wear that neither flew too high nor too low. It wasn’t merely a holiday collection; it was a time-traveling holiday selection.

From Oxygen’s use of live-mixed deejay music—provided by The Misshapes—to the fast segue of models on the red-painted ramp, the label betrayed a fiery spirit whose surface was as cool as a cucumber and yet throbbed with the heart of a supernova.

The uncanny X-cars

Oxygen stormed the runway with free-form knits, contrast panels and concrete tailoring. There were studies in symmetry and asymmetry with various design victories that played with outsize proportions of collars, diagonal placement of front zippers, and the cropping and lengthening of jacket and shirt lines. Also, futuristic was the manipulation of sleeves, the addition of rubber panels, and the use of color-contrasting, bias-cut fabrics to create color-field patterns. From this mash up of elements, sharp lines came into focus and did not harken to a boring past. Oxygen was able to show both structure and nonstructure, form and formlessness, and a bit of life and death on the evolutionary ladder of fashion. It wasn’t a collection for standup comics and jokers; this was serious clothing for the young.

In fact, right after the show, the brand took its guests to an afterparty at Kyss Lounge on Makati Avenue. Revelers were herded inside Mini Coopers, which bore decals of Oxygen’s X. It wasn’t really uncanny or peculiarly strange, but we wonder if they felt like heroes or villains, mutants or mere men, as they flew into the night in their X-cars. Every afterparty needs an afterparty, after all, but will fashion find a future? This brand’s mutation can make you proud.