Recycling: 70s Style

Long before the advent of global warming and environmentalism, recycling had always been fashionable in my family. No, it had nothing to do with saving the world we lived in, but everything to do with saving moolah at every opportunity.

My elder sister Pie was an angel in one of those Santacruzans in the town where I was born. She wore my mother's old dress that was reworked into a little girl's gown. Lovely.

The next year, Pie and I were Ave Marias in the same Santacruzan. Our gowns were rehashed from used frocks straight from my grandmother's ancient baul. I wasn't very sure if these were my Lola's, my aunts' or my mother's. But one thing was sure though, these were freaking old, probably as old as time itself. The sewing was taken care of by my two old maid aunts—yes, the same aunts from Children of the War—who were very good with the sewing machine. Our gowns were not bad at all, really. But to wear them when all other kids were decked in new ones at a time when vintage was still uncool! Okay, so we were different. (Together with us in top photo are our cousins Ron, now based in Canada, and Ate Margie, also known as Little.)

The following Santacruzan, I was again an Ave Maria. This time my mother bought applique flowers and beads and I was only too glad to finally see her buying new stuff for my new gown. But lo and behold! the new materials were for last year's outfit. My ever resourceful aunts were merely replacing the blue trimmings with red ones. That's the picture on the left. Take note, I was headless here but the pic still managed to find its way in the family album. Sayang daw e. The two photos on the right were taken when I was among the angels in another Church celebration a few months later. There were no major rehashings or reworkings for this occasion. My mother simply made me "re-wear" my old recycled gown.

Pie was a hila, like some sort of sagala, in one of those religious feasts in August and my mother asked an artist friend to create a gown for Pie and handpaint it. It actually turned out very nicely. Besides it was new—not previously owned, not previously worn—as in brand new. (That's the picture at the bottom.) Come December, Pie was chosen as class muse. What my mother did was to have the same friend take out the poncho and sew in a pair of the mandatory butterfly sleeves. (Top photo.) My mother was becoming creative.

Nah, not really creative. She used the same idea twice, right? Just look at the two pics of six-year old me above and see a re-application of the sew-in-butterfly-sleeves-to-old-gown technique. It's what ad people call two executions of the same concept. Maybe that's why I ended up in advertising...