Festival Queen Makers
One of the Sinulog Festival’s highly-anticipated highlights is the Sinulog Festival Queen Runway Competition, which is essentially a lead-up event for the Sinulog Festival Queen Coronation Night that’s traditionally held on the Friday before the Sinulog Grand Parade. More than a pre-pageant for the Sinulog-oriented tilt, the event is the first public appearance of the year’s entrants to the tilt in their festival regalia, and this has traditionally served as the unveiling of the aesthetic ethos that’ll come to underscore a given year’s holding of the Sinulog.
Before we dive into the vibrant details of the costumes that’ll be worn by the entrants of this year’s Sinulog Festival Queen tilt, lets set our viewfinders on an often-overlooked aspect to the festival – its costume designers.
For this piece, we’ll focus on some of the creations by master costume-makers Malayka Yamas and Aldo Loquinario – designers who’ve largely been characterized as two of Cebu’s leading “festival queen makers”.
Aldo Senining Loquinario
For more than twenty years, Aldo Senining Loquinario has crafted festival costumes that’ve been showcased in and outside of the Sinulog stage.
Widely considered to be one of Cebu’s festival costume pioneers, he is noted to be among the first to incorporate LED lights into costumes, as well as popularize the use of non-woven feather-like materials in the making of costumes.
He won big last year for designing the festival regalia of Sinulog Festival Queen 2023 Kiara Liane Wellington. In an interview, the designer cites the 2013 costumes that he designed for the Lumad Basakanon troupe as among his favorite creations.
Malayka Yamas
The name Malayka Yamas has become synonymous with “festival queen costumer” owing to the many award-winning pieces and designs that the costumer has made over the years.
Having dressed several now-accomplished beauty titlists, Yamas’ creations have gone beyond the Sinulog stage, what with several Yamas originals garnering approving nods in local and national beauty pageants.
But as closely-tied as the designer’s oeuvre is with intricately-detailed festival costumes, Yamas has also gained a following as a couturier who works with different materials and fabrics to come up with elegant fineries.