Happy 24th birthday to the STAR!
Today's paper is especially thick and filled with stories about people we admire.
You could read it online—but you'll be missing out on great photos.
Besides my story on Gilda Cordero Fernando, Bea Ledesma's feature on Inno Sotto is one that touches me because I didn't even know he had a baby.
Ever since his partner Richard Tann died in 2005, I worried that Inno had lost that sparkle in his eyes.
Reading this makes me so happy for him.
How a baby changed Inno Sotto's life
By Bea LedesmaThere’s a new guy in Inno Sotto’s life.
After the death of his partner Richard Tan in 2005, it seemed like the rest of Sotto’s life was mapped out. Work, family (most of whom live abroad) and a few friends pretty much filled his time.
“We would have been together 29 years today,” Inno says of his late partner, “if he were still alive.”
Richard Tann (with red twibbon) and Inno Sotto watching the first Mega Young Designers Competition in 1994Then Joseph Marco came into the picture.
“He changed my life,” he says. “If you looked at my life, say, a couple of years ago and now, it’s unbelievably different.”
At a little over a year and half, Joseph Marco isn’t what you’d call Inno’s type—but then toddlers rarely are.
“I’ve always loved children,” Inno tells me, “but it never occurred to me to raise one or have one of my own.”
The toddler, dressed in a crisp button down and shorts, has charming slanted eyes, pillow lips and hair neatly combed to one side, like a young less-nerdy Jose Rizal.
“He looks like a little Vietnamese boy,” Inno says, his arms wrapped around the child.
Photo: JO ANN BITAGCOL
“I wanted to call him Phnom Penh,” he says jokingly. “But that would have been too long for a nickname.”
This is said half-seriously.
Christened after St. Joseph (“I have a devotion to him,” he says) and Inno’s nephew Marco, the toddler goes by his second name.
When I first see Marco at the children’s section in Rustan’s Makati, he is recovering from an illness (cough or cold or one of those common ailments children are prone to). Inno is carrying him around, pointing out babies to him.
“Look there,” he says, pointing to a corner where a baby lounged indolently in a tricked-out stroller like a pasha garbed in Ralph Lauren Kids. Marco’s head swivels in that direction, his attention fixed on the infant. He rewards Inno with a small smile.
A solemn and smart boy, who refuses to be fooled by the people clowning around behind the camera for this profile’s portrait, he often turns to Inno and murmurs something intelligible only to him.
Marco is the grandson of Julie Abalos, Inno’s helper who has been by his side for 27 years, keeping house and managing errands for him. When her daughter gave birth to a son before graduating college, Inno offered the child a home.
“I told Julie to let him stay with us,” he says. “Goodness, Julie is like family to me. She’s been my support from the very beginning.”
When Marco moved into the Sotto residence, things began to change, slowly yet inexorably.
Immediately, Inno fell in love with the child. “There was something about this baby,” he shares, “that made me want to take care of him.”
Raising Marco was a no-brainer. “I take care of him the same way Julie has been caring for me over the last 20-plus years,” he says.
Soon, modifications began at home.
Hoping to sidestep the awkwardness that could result from growing up in a household and hearing his grandmother called Yaya, Inno instituted some politically correct changes. Since Marco’s introduction to the household, everyone’s referred to Julie as Nona, Italian for grandmother, and Inno as Aya, Chinese for older brother.
A more laidback atmosphere now prevails. Instead of sitting down to dinner in the dining room and served by helpers, Inno helps himself to food in the kitchen and takes it to his work desk where he now eats. No longer the sole responsibility of household help, chores are to be more equally divided by the household occupants.
He’s made a conscious effort to eliminate any social tension from the home. “I don’t want Marco to grow up and see that there are some people who do chores and others who don’t.”
Inno at his studio. (Photo: KAI HUANG)No one tells you about the sleep deprivation, Craig Ferguson once said about parenting on The Late, Late Show. “The caring of young children would technically be against the Geneva Convention,” he half-joked.
Inno experienced that first hand during the recent Typhoon Basyang.
With the city in black out, he spent most of the night fanning and humming lullabies to a tetchy toddler suffering from a mild fever.
“The first concern is always his wellbeing,” he declares. “Sleep comes second.”
Marco, who sleeps by Inno’s side, has a tradition with his not-quite father. After changing into pajamas, he watches TV with Inno, lying at the foot of the bed, then they read a book together before he nods off.
But the highlight of the evening is always Marco’s post-prayer ablutions.
In the corner of Inno’s room stands a life-size cutout of a shirtless Derek Ramsay, a gift from Virgie Ramos when Inno spied the head-turning image of his crush at a Swatch store.
Before Marco gets tucked in, he says goodnight to the Sto. Niño on one side of the room, plods to the 2D Derek Ramsay and does the same.
It never fails to crack Inno up. “He is the sweetest boy,” he says laughing.
Inno spends most of our interview peppering his statements with the word “normal.” He’s concerned about Marco growing up and having to deal with his less-than-normal circumstances.
Coming from an unconventional single-parent home with a gay father figure, he worries that kids at school will treat Marco differently, that he won’t have a typical childhood and will suffer social rejection.
“Let’s face it,” Inno says. “Not everyone accepts gay people.”
This anxiety—that Marco could possibly be subject to the same intolerance, from parents of classmates perhaps—is what furrows his brow when he talks of his child’s future.
“I just want him to experience a normal life,” he says.
When I tell him that normal is overrated and that a loving parent is all that matters, Inno is not convinced.
“Plenty of kids grow up with straight parents,” I say, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean their home life is perfect.”
And conventional families aren’t precisely the norm either. (A glance at all the single parents of my generation and it’s easy to see that the fate of traditional, two-parent households isn’t as secure as people would like to think.)
In a study on teens in gay households published by the Society for Research in Child Development, University of Virginia psychologist Charlotte Patterson noted that it was “the quality of the parent-child relationship, and not the parents’ gender, that affected the teenagers’ development.”
A story on children raised by gay moms by NewScientist cited University of Arizona sociologist Stephen Russell. “This confirms what most developmental scientists have suspected,” he says. “Kids growing up with same-sex parents fare just as well as other kids.”
Inno in 2006Then there’s the gay question.
“I don’t want him to be gay.” When I hear the words coming from Inno’s lips, I feel surprise. “If he becomes gay, of course, I’ll support him. Hundred percent,” he says. “But I want him to be a normal guy.”
There it goes. That word normal again.
Though Inno’s parents weren’t unsupportive (in fact, he shared a close relationship with his mother), he’d seen plenty others with less-than-wonderful experiences.
“It’s very hard to live a life untouched by hardship if you’re a gay man,” he says, “and I want Marco to have a good life, a great life.”
Inno likes to call himself Angelina Jolie these days he’s so devoted to his kid. He imagines himself turning into one of those aggressive PTA parents, slavishly dedicated to their progeny’s wellbeing.
The past year has been life changing. And 2010 is turning out to be a milestone year for the designer—not just in his personal life.
This November, he’ll be celebrating his 30th year in fashion with a huge gala show. He’s mum on the details since everything’s still up in the air but he promises this one won’t be more of the same.
“It’s a different adrenaline rush,” he says of putting this show together.
His last presentation was the well-received collaboration in October 2007 with accessories designer Bea Valdes.
A QTV-produced documentary on Inno, shot during the construction of the collection he dubbed Alhambra, aired in 2008 and later won an award at the New York Festivals.
When asked what people can expect of the anniversary, he says, “This show is about what I can do at 2010 that I couldn’t do at the age of 29.”
In short, he’s celebrating his evolution, his growth—and the wisdom and skill that come with all that experience.
There’s a sense of wonder on his part that, three decades later, he’s still at the game. “I’ve always had a sense of adventure that’s taken me through 30 years,” he says. “And I’m looking forward to what will happen next.”
Though he likes to joke that he’s 800 years old, (“I’m ancient!” he says more than once, “I was here when dinosaurs roamed the earth”) he fears that he won’t be there to see Marco grow up and experience all the highlights of his life: seeing him graduate from college, congratulating him on his first paycheck,
designing the wedding gown of Marco’s future bride (“Oh, the things I could make for his wedding!” he says fondly, “but I’m getting ahead of myself”), holding his first grandchild.
But Inno has dreams. “I want him to be a good person—thoughtful, responsible, generous, considerate, gallant to women and kind to others,” he says. “Most of all, kind.”
That seems like a lot to expect.
“Well, I can only hope,” he says. “As a parent, that’s all I can do really. That and love him as well as I can.”
Via:
Philippine Star![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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