STAY AT HOME GLAMOR FROM RAJO LAUREL

RAJO knows that fashion should serve to enhance and bring out one’s inherent style and personality, and not vice versa. 

In the past two years of the COVID-19 crisis, we have restricted our work, dining, and leisure movements and activities within the safety of our homes.

The challenge is how to resist the tendency to remain in sweats, shorts, and house clothes, or worst of all, bed clothes all day!  These new habits have a detrimental effect on our self-esteem and over-all mental well-being.  They can increase the peril of cabin fever, anxiety, and even depression.  Working from home poses the challenge of how to present a professional appearance during zoom or virtual meetings, and how to choose clothes that would put us all in a productive and efficient mode while still being relaxed and comfortable but chic and stylish.

In this issue, Philippine fashion giant RAJO LAUREL, trust and go-to designer of A-listers, the country’s top movie and TV stars, celebrities, top political figures, movers and shakers of all fields and persuasions.  He surely and stylishly dresses them with his signature understated and elegant classic style that is also current and slightly edgy  as well.  

RAJO knows and understands only too well, that for clients of this calibre, fashion should serve to enhance and bring out their inherent style and personality, and not vice versa.  This keen instinct was borne of the early influence of and admiration for his grandmother, Mrs. Betty Castillo-Laurel who, as an ambassador’s wife, had many occasions to wear beautiful clothes and gowns.  Moreover, coming from a family of well known and highly regarded thespians of the performing and visual arts, RAJO’s sense of the drama and unerring understanding of the power of the costume had its epiphany as a young stage actor himself at age 6 in a Repertory Philippines’ production of ‘The King and I’.

The elan and flair unique to RAJO’s fashions comes from his belief that true elegance comes from cultivating an authentic sense of personal luxury not just in the clothes we wear, but in the way we live: how we decorate our spaces, what we surround ourselves with, what and how we eat, what we wear to and how we sleep, how we entertain, and how we relate to all the people we are close to and encounter everyday.  His unbridled curiosity leads him to be inspired by his interests in horticulture, literature, and art.  The irrepressible RAJO has also made forays into other design directions such as a children’s line called RAJITO, as well as fashion and home accessories.  He also has plans to go into collaborations with other designers like ITO KISH, designing for the gaming community and entering the food and beverage industry.

In this spread, we unveil THE HOUSE OF LAUREL’s cool, minimalist take on chic loungewear and work from home attires against the backdrop of CASA BELLA’s breathtakingly fabulous collection of iconic and timeless furniture pieces from masters like Frank Lloyd Wright, LeCorbusier, and Marco Zanuso from Cassina and Italian stalwart Moroso as well as other European brands from its Karrivin Plaza showroom in Magallanes.  This is the ultimate testimony of the adage, “Living well is the BEST revenge…!”  Amid the challenges and weariness of limiting life to our homes, RAJO and CASA BELLA inject a bit of color, pizzazz and fun to the details of daily life.

Welcome and embrace this renewed lifestyle as an opportunity to appreciate a simple but more positive and grateful outlook.