Time is Ticking on Luxury

Location: Casa Luis Barragan Studio in Mexico City, Mexico
Subject: LORETO in GANNI dress, TMC Digital Revolution scarf, Nike ZoomX shoes, Givenchy shades, and Dries van Noten clutch
Photograph by Ryan Winston

I’m not a runner, runner like the Patagonia and poodle population of our upper-left state –– just a 36yr old with shin splints and a wide toe-box. Gradually, I’ve become accustomed to a specific pair of sneakers that I’ll co-dependently throw into my suitcase anytime I travel. On my last trip to Seattle to celebrate my sister’s birthday –– in classic PNW fashion, we tortured ourselves with a casual 5-mile hike amidst the dinners, drinks, and 40-degree walks in the rain. Hiking boots seemed like overkill for the trek (crowded with leisure hikers, the climb feels more like a long line at Disneyland) so, I sacrificed my favorite and only pair of sneakers for both function and aesthetic reasons.

When I returned to LA, realizing I’d left them caked in mud in my sister’s laundry room, my first instinct was to just buy another pair. Coincidentally, before I had to endure the Grove’s herd of stroller-moms, my mom called to make sure I’d landed safely and reminded me that my uncle from Jersey would be flying into Seattle that weekend. So, when I asked her to overnight ship me my shoes, she offered an alternative solution that favored an Ilocano mom’s sensibility and hustle economics.

Location: Casa Luis Barragan Studio in Mexico City, Mexico
Subject: chair made with found objects, artist unknown
Photograph by LORETO

My cousin –– also from Jersey, planned to visit me in LA for her birthday mid-month. It only made perfect sense to my mom that she send my sneakers back with my uncle to Jersey so he could give them to my cousin, who would then bring them with her to LA in a couple of weeks. Aside from cringing at the thought of my crusty ass shoes traveling across the country and back without me, I was mostly embarrassed that I found that process absurd. In the 31 years of living in America, I’d convinced myself that I was above waiting. That I had somehow earned the privilege of convenience, access, and Prime shipping –– a luxury that apparently outweighed my family’s willingness to hand-deliver my worn-down sneakers to my doorstep.

Seven years after I emigrated to America, I visited my birthplace in the Philippines. I flew with my dad to accompany the body and casket of my auntie who had just died of Leukemia. When a family member dies in America, it’s customary to travel with the body to ensure their journey Home. My auntie never married or had kids of her own and treated me like her daughter. It was my turn to reciprocate the sentiment. The youngest of my mom’s nine siblings and the first of them to die; she was 33yrs old when she was diagnosed and eight months later, we were burying her in a gravesite next to my maternal grandparents who both died in their 60’s. On the day of her funeral, my family led a marching band, a hearse, and more than half the population of the province of Curimao from the church my grandparents helped build, passing the house they raised their ten kids in, to a gravesite less than a kilometer away. That day, and for the rest of the week, the surviving family members wore black ribbons around the crowns of our heads to signal our grief and to memorialize the luxury not afforded to my deceased auntie –– time.

Curimao is an intimate beachside province on the northern most tip of the island of Luzon –– it’d take eleven hours on a Jeepney to get from Manila to Curimao and even longer if you took a bus. These days, I’d recommend renting a car and driver or taking a flight, but in 1997 most of my family members weren’t traveling to Manila on a lick. We spent almost three weeks in the Philippines and I met more cousins than I’d known existed. Beyond it being my first time back since 1989, I was rockin’ Nikes, so regardless of age, my cousins treated me like a lowkey celebrity and museum artifact. I didn’t tell my cousins that the Nikes were my first and only pair –– thrifted by my dad at this joint in Seattle called Chubby and Tubby. Thrifted or not, my cousins were hyped, and if you know my country’s relationship to basketball, you understand why.

Location: Casa Luis Barragan Studio in Mexico City, Mexico
Subject: Metal Dining set, artist unknown
Photograph by LORETO

You won’t find another country, other than the US who has played basketball as seriously since we adopted it into our culture only 19 years after it was invented. Originally, introduced by the American colonial government as a Girl’s PE activity –– they proposed it as an alternative to track and baseball because it was considered a less aggressive sport. We ended up taking this girl’s sport and turning it into a cultural rite of passage. The Philippines has the second oldest basketball association in the world, the first Asian country to start a pro basketball league, and according to Nike, “the nation takes the No. 1 spot outside of the U.S. for activity on their Basketball’s social media platforms”. The Philippines has always shown out as die-hard basketball fans, but they still didn’t see a local Nike store until 1998; almost a year after I pulled up to Curimao wearing air maxes and a sundress.

The concept of luxury has been hoed out across industries for decades to convince consumers that a product can replace what already exists within us. A buzz word in fashion, beauty, travel, sports, and even tech –– each co-opting their own manufactured definition of what it means to provide luxury to the masses. The more time I spend buying into the propaganda, the deeper this hits –– flexibility and time is the ultimate and most coveted form of luxury. My cousins didn’t know it back then, but they didn’t need Nikes as badly as I did. I was an immigrant living in America, the father of capitalism and clout. They could walk outside, go to school, and even throw a few jump shots barefoot and it wouldn’t be a thing to look at twice. As soon as I got those Air Maxes, the other 12yr olds were feenin for Air Force 1’s.

We were born with a finite amount of time as a currency and have been conditioned to spend it frivolously; working for corporations that pay us very little just so we can attempt to buy back the luxury we can’t afford; time to do whatever we want. The “Great Resignation” is evidence that our generation’s motivation to buy luxury goods has lost its luster –– at least not if it costs us to wage a deficit on our precious time that most corporations pay us a dime-on-the dollar to formulate excel spreadsheets and write banal emails.

Before returning stateside, my aunties took me to Greenhills in Manila –– a mall built in the 60’s made famous for housing the flea-market mecca for knock-off luxury goods in the Philippines. For less than a thousand Philippine pesos (roughly $20USD) I came up on a fake Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker, FILA tracksuit, and a pair of Calvin Klein jeans. I started junior high fitted with a different perspective –– unconcerned that my Tommy Hilfiger was missing an “m” and left my Nikes in the Philippines with my cousins.

LORETO is an architect, disruptor, and critic that has merged her Master of Architecture degree with a background in Journalism to fill a void in the design industry.

loretolovesyou.com