“FWP 2011 Open Letter”

It was 1:15 p.m. (to be exact) when the bell rang, i soon grabbed my backpack, throwed my hoodie on my back and started running to my mom’s car, she was there gently waiting for me to jump in. I reached home at 1:45 p.m., ate almost nothing and started to get ready trying to set a record so i could get early to the place where Fashion Week Panama was been held. As soon as i finished, i, again, jumped back into the car and my mom and i hit the road (with Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album as a soundtrack). When i finally reached the location where everything was going to take place, i fixed my shirt, tucked it into my jeans, cleaned my reading glasses and got out of the car literally running of joy to the tent, because after a tumultuous way to begin the year, finally Fashion Week was getting ready to go out and have fun (think of it [Fashion Week Panama] as a new “IT” girl). When i got in, i marched my way to the press-booth, took my sit and waited for everything to start. As soon as the lights turned off and the music started, the first model walked in, I felt joy. With everything I said above, I wanted to exorcise how those 3 days were for me, yes it was awesome and joyful, yet there were some issues. I’m a strong believer that my country, some day, will be ready for high fashion, yet now we must support what’s happening with fashion nowadays here. Yes we’re still in diapers, but that’s an awesome pair of sequined diapers. Another thing that I noted was that many of us, Panamanians, think of national designers as the worst thing in the planet, and let me tell you that you won’t even believe the amount of creativity those people inject into our society, into our culture, a much needed cultural injection. Fashion is world wide movement, influenced by everything, I just cant help myself but I have to say that I blame partly the ignorance and of course the lack of knowledge about that world [Fashion], a thing that makes most of the people in my country reluctant about it. There’s a few amount of people who actually care, understand and try to inject fashion into our culture (designers, some editors, and mostly national fashion bloggers). And yes, how could I forget about Physical. The only model agency that actually tries to set everything together, and who were the ones responsible for Fashion Week Panama happen. I would like to conclude saying that we, as Panamanians, instead of criticizing our national designers, as patriots, we must applaud them and support them for doing something that not everyone was born to do. And not only national designers, also the bloggers, and not because I am one (well partly because i am one), because we literally inject fashion in a deep personal way into our culture for free. Now let’s be more open minded.

Sincerely:

Antonio E. E. Feuillebois.