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The Slim’s Legacy Exhibit is Coming to SM Aura

Get the rare opportunity to view the visionary work of National Artist Salvacion Lim โ€œSlimโ€ Higgins at the Upper Ground Level Atrium of SM Aura Premier from September 5 to 14, 2022!

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Photo from SM Aura

The exhibition, Salvacion Lim Higgins: National Artist for Design, celebrates the preeminent designerโ€™s creative genius that has revolutionized โ€“ and continues to influence โ€“ Philippine fashion.

โ€œObserving her at work while I was growing up is what made me realize that fashion is actually both an art and a craft. The art lies in the vision and the craft is in the application. The art, is in the dream – the craft, is in making it real.โ€, says her son and artist Mark Lewis Higgins, who curates the show. โ€œShe would create these masterful confections of her imagination that would either defy gravity, or succumb to it.โ€

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Photo from SM Aura

In June 2022, Slim was honored as a National Artist in the Design category. The Order of National Artists Award is the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts and letters. She is the only Filipino designer with gowns in the archives of both the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Exhibition visitors can look forward to a stunning selection of dresses and photos from a career spanning more than four decades. These are exquisite gowns and ternos worn by the fashion icons of their time: Edith Nakpil Rabat, Chona Recto Kasten, Lily de las Alas Padilla, and Diana Jean Lopez in breathtaking black and white photographs. Higgins describes these as โ€œdresses in marvelous states of suspended animation, or others where she manifested her organic, fluid draping of fabric cascading sinuously over the body.โ€

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Photo from SM Aura

The exhibition, which also includes her timeless gowns and dresses, showcases Slimโ€™s enduring signature style: intriguing silhouettes, groundbreaking design, and exquisite technique. โ€œIn creating a garment, she would apply two elements to her process: Architecture and Sculpture. The architecture would surface in the building of the form – the scaffolding, construction, and engineering that would support this masterpiece. Always thinking in three dimensions, her final touch would be molding and manipulating the fabric onto the human form – transforming the wearer into an elegant human sculpture.โ€ adds Higgins.

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Photo from SM Aura

Salvacion Lim Higgins was born in Legaspi, Albay in 1920. She studied Fine Arts in the University of Santo Tomas under National Artist Carlos โ€œBotongโ€ Francisco, but never finished her studies due to the outbreak of WWII. In 1947 she opened the Slimโ€™s atelier, and in 1960 founded Slimโ€™s Fashion &amp; Arts School with her sister Purificacion Lim, which is today headed by Mark Higgins as Director.

As the oldest fashion institution in the country, it has mentored tens of thousands of designers all over the Philippines. Alumni include fashion luminaries Oskar Peralta, Joe Salazar, Cesar Gaupo, Oliver Tolentino, Albert Andrada, Joey Samson, Martin Bautista and Michael Cinco.

SM and the Slimโ€™s Fashion & Arts School have had many exciting collaborations over the years, notably in exhibitions of the works of graduating students which were held in premier SM Malls. Salvacion Lim Higgins: National Artist for Design is one of the exciting fashion events at SM Aura Premier.

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