Born in Bataan province, fashion designer Oliver Tolentino became the first Philippines-based designer to expand to the United States when he opened a Los Angeles boutique on Melrose Avenue in 2009. Within a year, he was chosen as one of nine finalists in the Motion Picture Academy's Oscars Designer Challenge at Downtown Los Angeles Fashion Week.
Eco-friendly materials have become an important part of Oliver's fashion sense, and he promotes his native country's fabrics internationally by including them in his collections. "My country has been green long before it was fashionable," he explains. "The Philippines has been turning pineapple leaves and abaca plant leaves into fabric for hundreds of years; so out of national pride, I want to show how elegant 'green' can be. ... Piña, what we call the fabric from pineapple fiber, is naturally off-white with an organza texture. It creates vintage-looking gowns, but also can be dyed vibrant colors."
Tolentino's piña gowns have been featured at L.A. Fashion Week, the Oscars, the Peabodys, and in Geneva, Milan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He introduced piña to Hong Kong's Green2Greener, which used his gown at U.N. headquarters as the finale of its 2010 show. The gown was featured in July's issue of Hong Kong Tatler magazine.
Interestingly this features a remix of Sylvia La Torre's Waraywaray with Eartha Kitt. Sylvia La Torre is the grandmother of Camp Rock's Anna Maria Perez De Tagle