Designer's Dream Home

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

(Orson Welles)

DESIGNER Ito Curata brought out the grand and regal through his work. Just ask two of his most prominent patrons, actress Sharon Stone and President Gloria Arroyo. They'd agree: his creations convey class and dignity.

Ito recalled his fashion foray into Hollywood started when he met a guy from Miramax Pictures, who ignited a chain of connection to the stars. After meeting key people, he was asked to send several of his gowns to Stone, and pretty soon, he found himself being flown in to the actress' mansion for a fitting.

Upon his return to the Philipines, his amazing eye for detail caught the attention of Jo Ann Zapanta, who handled President Arroyo's fashion and wardrobe makeover. Before her most recent State of the Nation Address, Ito was again asked to dress the president.

"The president just arrived from Italy and I only had 3 days to work on the gown. I worked day and night to finish it in time for the State of the Nation Address," he recalls with a laugh.

Ito kept the his signature panuelo over the president's gown. Instead of blue, the president's appointed color in 2005, she addressed Congress and the nation in fiery red. Ito also modified her necklace, from a single round piece, to three.

The president personally signed a "thank you" message for Ito on the gown's sketch spread.

GLEANING from his evening wear pieces, it's no wonder that from the outside, Ito's home is also the picture of regality and grand proportion. Inside, Doric columns and

wide spaces paint a breath-taking vista.

Ito said what started as a strictly "Tuscan" design for his home has been modified to accommodate pieces he shipped from his crib in San Francisco.

A combination of select French and Italian pieces lend an "eclectic" Mediterranean feel, as he would describe it, to his home.

Ito designed his space himself. He drew his inspiration from unforgettable houses he found in his travels. His walls are full of authentic paintings, sketches and lithographs of honored painters like Picasso and Salvador Dali.

Particularly eye-catching are Picasso's lithographs hanging by his washroom on the ground floor. Freshening up at the washroom also meant communing with the bold, eccentric painter.

Ito said he won his art pieces in auctions, including a handwritten executive order from the president of the first Philippine Republic, Emilio Aguinaldo.

Going into the kitchen, nostrils are filled with the appetizing smell of sandwiches and cold lemonade. Ito loves to cook, and prides himself on baking his own biscotti.

Leading to the second floor is a grand staircase, with a replica of a classical painting midway.

Ito's taste for the grand is also reflected in his bedroom. A large bed with two bed posts
reigns over a room with a view to a golf range.

When asked if this is his dream home, "Yes! This is it. I set out to build my dream house in the Philippines because I can't afford to build something like this in San Francisco," said Ito.

A modest quip from a grand designer.

(The full story appears on Urban Zone, 12 midnight, December 10, over ABS-CBN Channel 2 =)

A Stormy Beginning

It’s what Bruce Wayne’s father said to him after a traumatic event: "Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. The winners pick themselves up and learn from their mistakes. It’s what you do after you make a mistake that shows character.

I came in from the cold, wet and lightless. "Milenyo" unleashed powerful winds and rain that left Manila's streets a virtual no man's land. There was no escape from its fury. I didn't feel any safer inside my building. The storm was beating down the glass walls and windows. The floor was trembling from the sheer might of the elements. Emergency light flickered while an uneasy dampness slowly blanketed the place.

There was no stopping the storm. Walls and windows fell down from their frames and carpeted the floor with glass shards. Navigating the halls meant skipping one spot to another to avoid sharp edges. The elevators were useless. I looked up the flights of stairs, twenty four sets of them, before I could reach my place. The climb to the top, without light and broken glass everywhere, was risky but a better prospect than staying with strangers in a dark, rain-drenched lobby.

Lightning lit the the angry skies. Amid the blue capillaries of light, one step at a time, I slowly made my way up. On the seventh floor, my thighs were aching but there was no rest. I pushed myself forward. Being alone and in the middle of a storm gave me pause, a fleeting reflection of my own worst fears, and triggered a fight-or-flight response.

In this case, I was fleeing. Looking around, I am reminded of a scene straight out of Batman Begins. A young Bruce Wayne fell into a deep hole, and opened his eyes to disturbed, gruesome, winged creatures that became his greatest fear. They inhabited his nightmares. We all know worst things had yet to come, like losing your parents in one night, murdered in cold blood, and abandoned with their lifeless bodies.

Same scenes of dark halls and stormy skies surrounded me when I got a knock on my dormitory door at a Church compound, back when I'm attending university in Manila. Hours before dawn, I was roused from my sleep, and I was surprised to see my uncle allowed to go as far as my room. He was crying when he laboriously told me my father passed on during the night, and he was taking me home. I did not believe him, until I saw my father in a coffin at a chapel near home.

On Sunday afternoon, I was playing hoops with him. He was alive and kicking. Monday morning before dawn, he's gone. From this point on, like Wayne's first blows with towering fear and death, I knew life would never be the same. There was no turning back.

Back in my ascent to my place, driven by the crashing sound and gloomy lights of powerful "Milenyo", I snapped out of my reverie. More glass windows came tumbling down the floors, and I could see tree leaves and trunks whirling around outside. A few more steps, a struggle to my door, a frantic search for the light, and cocooning in my bed, lifted my spirits.

My aching thighs and numb feet didn't matter anymore. The blood from cuts I received during my climb had dried. The pallor in my room was still a welcome a sight. Through it all, and though the experience indelibly changed me, I'm good. I'm home.