The Cosplay Themes at Philippine Fashion Week - Weak?

Today one of the more interesting topics that anime geeks are talking about are those pseudo cosplay stuff that models wore during this year's Philippine Fashion Week. Let's take a look then I'll give my two cents.

Baby Doll from Sucker Punch

So as I was saying, the ramp models that appeared for Dickies got some people riled up because it's obviously cosplay but at the same time NOT cosplaying. Get my point? Take this guy that did Final Fantasy VII's Vincent Valentine:

Brownie points for brandishing what looks like Death penalty while walking down the catwalk. However I'm not so happy seeing a couple of missing elements that makes the model really get that Vincent vibe. The bandana is missing, the necklace and a whole lot more.


I get that they're trying to get the best of both world. I actually applaud the idea of using anime/ video game characters as source material for a fashion show. Being a geek, I also understand how hard it is to see people just blatantly take on something that we love and just 'skewer' it.

It's that kind of mainstream-ization (if there's such a word) of things from Geek culture that riles up fans now and then. GMA-7's Ibilib is getting flack because they keep dressing up their female guests as some anime character [in worse scenarios, they just slap a panda ear at their guest and then try to pass it off as an anime character]

Gallery:

You know what, I think it's okay to see this and to have this (whatever its supposed to be, the hell do I know, I never got invited to Philippine Fashion Week, nor will I ever anyway). Why? It's an acknowledgement that here in the Philippines, cosplay is starting to becoming a big part of life. Not only cosplay, things that are usually reserved for us geeks are now getting the spotlight. Nevermind that there are a couple of epic fails here and there; what's important is that it gets introduced to new people, new crowd. Plus, the models are lookers, so that may (or may not) be a factor to consider. Let's reserve the nerd rage for something else, like this whole Gates-of-hell-vice-ganda-jessica-soho hybrid that's being thrown all over the local Facebook scene. That's the good side. 

The bad side to this is that it seemed like this was done in bad taste. It's like masabi lang na may cosplay and such and then boom, models are walking up and down the ramp with the 'ibilib' mentality for cosplaying. 

Oh and speaking of Epic Fail, this has got to be the worse one of all the cosplay-related stuff that ran in PFW. Am I really supposed to believe that this is Kingdom Heart's main kid Sora? Highly unlikely.

Photo Source: SM Mall of Asia