a delicate DUALITY

Fashion designer VANIA ROMOFF on embracing sentimentality and mastering the balancing act

- TICIA ALMAZAN

WALKING INTO VANIA ROMOFF’S STUDIO may as well be described as stepping into a cabinet of curiosities. Except the studio is impressively tidy, with the fashion designer’s sentimental trinkets scattered strategically on shelves and tables in each room. On two separate surfaces, one will find identical bulbous figures fashioned out of marble, in the shape is of a woman’s form.

With a softness in her tone, Vania recalls that when these sculptures were made, she happened to be pregnant with her twins.

It turns out, the nostalgic lilt in her voice wasn’t conjured up by my imagination. Because later on, Vania confesses, “I am an emotional woman. Being a fashion designer is emotional to me.”

Her taste for romance makes even more sense; it’s not just a facet of her brand’s DNA, but also her daily life. Her atelier itself is a bastion of love—floor-to-ceiling windows and beige tones all around (love for light), old sketches within reach (love for memory), mounds of finished and unfinished garbs in the workshop (love for craft).

Underlying that love is an earnest passion, one honed over time thanks to a family of fashion designers. Her late grandmother Viring Romoff is widely considered to be Cebu’s first couturier. “She would often tell me that she started learning how to sew in the Second World War, stitching hospital gowns out of used parachutes,” Vania tells Vogue Philippines. “She quickly found that she enjoyed the craft, and later became who the Cebuanos fondly refer to as the ‘Doyenne of Fashion.’”

Viring’s sartorial career would be passed on like an heir loom: first to her daughter Virginia, then onwards to Virginia’s children, Anthony and Vania.