Never Lose Sight of your Market - 1

Ready to wear tilt emphasizes the subtly fashionable.

As part of its 60th anniversary celebration, Cinderella returned to its roots with an open fashion design competition for aspiring Filipino designers. The brand, known in its early years for supporting several generations of Filipino designers, is once again opening its doors to young talents, offering a chance at a year-long scholarship at the School of Fashion and the Arts (SOFA) and a venue for distributing their creations.

Constants were tasked to developed ready-to-wear, day-to-night casual women or men’s clothes in the theme “Innovative, Global and Fashionably Sumer 2009”. A key aspect of the competition was maintaining the particular aesthetic Cinderella is known for-that is, consistently wearable and well-designed.

For the most part, “well-designed” refers to a largely semi-conservative or basic style infused with trendy twists: timely, wearable translations of international trends for the local market. In a previous interview with Marielle Santos, Ladies Local merchandising manager of Cinderella Marketing Corp. remarked, “Our market isn’t after avant-garde designs, and they look for what is practical to wear everyday. They keep up with trends and infuse a number of high fashion items into a local line, but know what the market wants, and they want to be able to give them that.