“I’M AN ARTist. I’m a dressmaker. I’m a gardener,” said Patis Tesoro in a documentary about her, Filipiniana is Forever, launched on March 9 at the Makati Sports Club; along with her book, with the same title. And may we add, she is totally bewitching: we spent the afternoon sniffing the scent of sampaguita, a trail she created with the sampaguita garland wrapped around her arm. “And I create beautiful things. I thank God that he made me a conduit for his creativity.”
It’s one thing to make a book; it’s another to be placed in a textbook to define a whole genre. We remember as a child in grade school that her name was already used as an example of what a fashion designer was. Born Maria Beatriz Pamintuan, she said in the documentary that her grandfather was Dr. Jose Fabella, the first Secretary of Health of the Philippines during the Commonwealth period. She had many more illustrious relations besides, saying, “The history of my family is intertwined with this country: my beloved Philippines.”
In an interview, she told us how she dropped “Maria Beatriz” in favor of Patis — fish sauce. “I never answered to Maria Beatriz or Bea. My parents said, ‘Well, if you don’t, you might as well be Patis and Toyo (soy sauce).’ And I answered to that.”
Known for her embroidery, she recalls learning it in her school years at the Assumption Convent in Iloilo. From there, she went to several illustrious schools: Maryknoll (Miriam College now), then a girls’ school in Detroit, then back to Maryknoll, and eventually, the Ateneo de Manila University, where she met her husband, Jose Claro Tesoro.
Jose Claro, known as Tito, aside from being a prominent lawyer in his own name, was a scion of the Tesoro clan, who championed Filipino handicraft after the Second World War. “It became even more apparent that this was where I was going to grow old,” she said of her art.
Bored and bursting with a largely unused education in art, Ms. Tesoro boarded a calesa to go around Divisoria, then and now a large bustling market, a section of which was devoted to cloth. Chancing upon a local toile, the shopkeeper provided it to her on credit. Inspired by a cigarette ad, she made an embroidered blouse through the help of one of her mother-in-law’s embroiderers — her first piece. “My mother-in-law (Salud Tesoro) was a very good mentor. She didn’t coddle me,” she said. She began to consign pieces at her in-laws’ store, and as the cliche goes, the rest is history.
Well, not quite.
Lacking formal training in sewing, she said in the documentary that she met with the initial disappointment from her first customers, especially with procedures like fittings, so she went to sewing school. News about her clothes spread, but her world was about to get bigger when she met impresario Conrado “Ado” Escudero, founder of Villa Escudero, and behind some of the country’s wildest parties — but also of cultural preservation. He commissioned her to do pieces for a museum he was planning, the Casa Manila in Intramuros: there, she got a deeper understanding of Filipiniana.
Her relationship with Filipino clothing became even deeper when, along with weaving advocate Lourdes Montinola and Mr. Escudero, the three of them revived pina — as the source of the fabric, a different pineapple from the edible variety, was slowly disappearing. Thanks to her preservation efforts on traditional craft, her work has preserved her own name for generations to come.
The book weighs about 4 kilograms, riotous with photographs of her colorful designs (there was a peek through a fashion show during the afternoon). “It’s meant to be copied. It’s meant to be an inspiration,” she said in a speech of her work. “This legacy has to continue.”
In an interview, she talked about the process by which she picks things up and learns about them, then becomes very good at them. “I think I’m a workaholic. I like to learn new things. My passion for life is very big. I think that’s what drives me.”
She made an Eden out in Laguna, after leaving her San Juan atelier in the 2010s. Sure, her pieces are all over the place, but so are her recipes and her gardens — marking a second chapter in her life, while fighting illness, to boot. Asked how she knows she’s made it (despite everything she’s done), she says, “I think it’s not ‘made it.’ That’s the end of your life. I think it’s more like a new chapter. You keep on adding chapters to your life.”
“It’s never finished. Especially when you work with traditions and our culture: it goes on to the next generation. So you have to keep on doing and creating. I thank God every day that he gives me that,” she said.
Because the book is titled Filipiniana is Forever, we asked what the phrase meant for her. It also becomes a summary of her work and her legacy: “It goes on, even when you’re not there anymore. Our culture must go on.”
The documentary will be shown again at the end of April at the Negros Museum in Bacolod, which is currently holding a retrospective of her work. To order the book, contact @patistito on Instagram. — Joseph L. Garcia
