In the studio with mark Higgins...
‘MY STUDIO IS MY FAVORITE SPOT, BECAUSE IT’S WHERE THE MOST PERSONAL SIDE OF ME COMES OUT’
Toutside, I wanted to bring that in.” he Legazpi Village apartment where Mark entertains visitors and hangs his paintings used to belong to his dad, Hubert Lewis Higgins. After his mother Slim died in 1990, his dad insisted on getting his own place. “He’s a western dad,” Mark says about his Irish father. “People are always like, ‘Your dad didn’t live with you?’ But my dad said, ‘You guys have your own lives so I’m going to get a condo.’”
Today the condo looks nothing like when his father lived there. Though he says some of the furnishings don’t conform to his taste, Mark filled the three-bedroom with pieces he’d inherited from his family. “We had this whole generation of my mom’s younger siblings who eventually passed away, and there was this enormous house full of stuff that we had to clear,” he recalls. “So a lot of it I put here because at least there would be stuff in the apartment. I didn’t have to start from zero.”
PCINEMATIC INTERIOR DECOR
ieces like the red Chinese cabinets in the sala came from his aunt’s house. “It’s not stuff I would buy, but I thought, I’ll just put it there and have fun.” The blue-and-white chairs in the dining area “are those typical Betis, Pampanga, dark-wood things, so I just made them fun. I just decided to make this apartment fun,” he reiterates.
Any gaps in the interior décor he filled with objects he’s gleaned from a lifetime of collecting; living abroad in cities like Rome, New York and Hong Kong, and shopping in the flea markets and bazaars of Istanbul, Paris, and Tokyo.
His dad’s old master bedroom is now a red room that reminds me not only of The Last Emperor but also the Wong Kar Wai movie In the Mood for Love. “The opium bed is from Java but someone happened to be selling it here,” Higgins says. “The little blueand-white statues were very inexpensive in Hong Kong. Those plates are from Landmark; the rugs are from SM.”
A yellow Chinese costume he had custom-made in Xian 20 years ago is now framed and hung on the wall. “I said, okay, this is looking very Last Emperor already, so I wanted to relax the Chinese theme by putting the abaca rug so that it looks more Southeast Asian.”
Mark is also fond of repurposing old furniture so that they gain new life, like the striking pair of lamps he fashioned from rusty old brass candlesticks. “I was about to throw them out, but thought the height is perfect for the bed, so I had Palayan make a base, and the lampshade is the transparent curtain version of the bed fabric.”
He also reupholstered an old chair with Chinese brocade and trimmed it with an antique horse bridle he’d acquired in Istanbul. “Nothing here has monetary value but they all have stories behind them,” he says.
His knack for interior design and putting objects together to create visually compelling tableaus didn’t escape the curators of Ayala Museum. “When they came to look at the framed paintings for the exhibit, they said, ‘Oh, my God, we want the exhibit to look like your apartment,” laughs Mark. “That became the running joke. It was really mixing all the elements of Southeast Asia up, which I did here. I’m not an interior decorator, so all my references are from an artist’s or a historical perspective.”
‘MY MOM DIDN’T LIKE OLD STUFF’
Growing up, Slim Higgins took Mark shopping with her constantly. “My mom was not into interiors; she took me shopping for fabrics everywhere we went,” he says.
He’s also the antique collector in the family. The Lims weren’t fond of antiques,
perhaps because they possessed secret histories that were impersonal, and possibly negative. “The only antiques my parents owned were the things given to them,” Mark says. “My mom didn’t like old stuff.”
The most literal clues to Higgins’ vocation are the paintbrushes — both gigantic and small — that hang everywhere in the studio. “I collect these porcelain brushes all around,” he says. “There’s an art supply store in Hong Kong that’s been there for more than 30 years. I went in there when I was 11 years old and I’ve been buying art supplies from them since.”
Mark started getting into history at around the same age, after buying and reading his first book, The Tomb of Tutankhamun. “My mom was convinced I was an old soul because I was reading books on history ever since I was third or fourth grade.”
Exposure to the fashion industry also made him a snappy dresser when he was a teenager. “I was wearing Giorgio Armani and Versace when I was 14,” he recalls. “My classmates had no clue who those people were. I paid for it with my allowance. My mom used to say, ‘Do other kids your age dress like that?’”
When it came time to go to college, Mark took up fine arts in Canada before studying fashion design at Parsons in New York. “I was always painting but decided to do fashion because I thought, what living are you going to make being a painter? I thought fashion was more feasible as a career, so I did that for a while and worked with my mom, but then gravitated back to painting because it’s what I really love the most.”
He now runs Slim’s Fashion and Arts School in Makati along with his sister Sandy. “We didn’t have the heart to close the school because it has helped so many people,” Mark says. “If you think about the percentage of successful designers in Philippine fashion, how many of them came from that school? I’m talking about early generations like Oskar Peralta and Joe Salazar to Michael Cinco, Joey Samson, and Cesar Gaupo. I don’t think it’s something we can run forever. And to be an educator is like being a nun or a priest: it’s a calling.”
Though he lives with Sandy in a house in San Lorenzo Village that is also “eclectic” but slightly more restrained (the walls are taupe), Mark plans to turn one of the rooms of the Legazpi Village studio into a place where he can actually paint. “I’m going to start spending time here because I paint very late at night,” he says.
He plans to continue adding to his “Gold In Our Veins” series because he had such fun doing it, and is also thinking of what the next step might be.
“It takes me years to put together a show,” he admits. “‘Gold In Our Veins’ was three years of work. If I had my wish, that warehouse would travel. It would tour the nation, the region, and the West, because everyone would get something different out of it.”
On the way out, a row of plates on the wall catches my eye, and I ask Mark where he got them.
“Aren’t they hysterical?” he replies. “It’s Bollywood Fornasetti in India. I think I saw them in Chennai. I love them because, ultimately, I think the point of this place is, ‘lighten up.’”
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What is the first thing you do upon waking up?
MARK HIGGINS: Have a coffee and a cigarette.
What is your favorite spot in your home and why?
My studio, because obviously it’s where the most personal side of me comes out — it’s where I work. And the kitchen, because I’m Cancerian and ever since I was a little kid, I was in the kitchen cooking.
How would you describe your homemaking style?
Do you mean entertaining people? Very relaxed. I do all the cooking usually for guests. I know I don’t look like I eat a lot, but I cook. I do a lot of Italian food because I spent a lot of time in Italy and some other parts of the Mediterranean. I cannot cook Asian food to save my life. I cannot do adobo or stir-fry — my sister says it tastes mestizo.
Which pieces of furniture or home accents have sentimental value to you and why?
It’s not my taste, but the mirror that was given to my lolo, who was Chinese, on his 70th birthday. (On it are) his name, and the greetings are “long life.”
And these manuscript pages because I’ve collected them for over 25 years.
And this doge’s hat. In Venice there’s this store called Bevilacqua, which is a really old
passamaneria (passementerie) where they have all these hand-woven velvets and brocades. For some reason they were selling that, and of course, who else would buy it but me?
These porcelain brushes because I love them and they’re very rare.
What books are on your night table? What are you currently reading?
I tend to read several at a time, books like The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books by Edward
Wilson-Lee, and Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medieval Mediterranean World by Stephen O’Shea.
Is there any interior designer or architect you like or follow?
No, I don’t really follow interior designers.
What about fashion designers?
My mom was very progressive in her thinking, so in the ’80s she and I both adored Issey Miyake. In fact, she met him. He came here and they had lunch together with some friends, and I was really upset because I was in college in New York.
In case of fire, what’s the first thing you would save?
My paintings, because those are irreplaceable. I learned this from my grandfather; they were in Bicol during the war and hid for two years in the mountains from the Japanese. He always took with him photographs. He said, “You can never replace these.” I still have the album at home.
What is the last thing you do before going to bed?
Smoke a cigarette.