Anna Bayle, the Filipina who was one of the world’s top 10 fashion models in the ‘80s on to the ‘90s, is coming to Manila from New York to walk the runway of the Paul Cabral gala show in late September at the Goldenberg Mansion, Manila.
Patrick Rosas, Anna’s friend and the makeup/hair artist who’s been organizing the series of fashion shows at the historic Goldenberg Mansion in the Malacanang vicinity, called us yesterday to break the news, and shortly after, Anna herself spoke to us on the phone.
She told us how excited she is—this is her first homecoming since before the pandemic. But more important, this is the first time she’s walking the ramp since she retired in 1994 (!). The fashion runway was the world she “slayed” for more than a decade—in New York, Paris, Milan, Rome, Tokyo. It was 17 years of cutthroat competition, world fame, glamor, strict discipline and daily grind. Her league of models paved the way for the world’s supermodels.
Now on the phone she sounded as if to make me understand that a walk on the runway would be like a walk in the park. But of course, after all she spent a great part of her life on that runway—as Yves Saint Laurent signature model, as the choice model of the world’s top designers, from YSL to Kenzo. She graced the covers of Vogue, W, having been photographed by icons such as Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and having been the good friend of Thierry Mugler and Azzedine Alaia.
The New York Times even coined the phrase “the Anna Bayle walk” to describe Anna’s signature movement on the runway.
She hasn’t met the shy Paul Cabral, but she’s looking forward to wearing his collection. This is Cabral’s first solo complete collection.
Anna has been living in NYC with son Callum, and the achiever that she is, has been recognized as one of NYC’s top real estate brokers.
And it should be interesting how the millennials and the GenZ — they who usually shrug off the past or reading about it—will discover that Anna Bayle experience.
I am publishing here a 1993 story I wrote about Anna Bayle, which became one of the profiles in my book i’m afraid of heights (or why i can’t social-climb) published with Inquirer books in 2012.
1993
Manila fashion scene is meandering along. No new faces. No intrigue—or nearly none.
So whenever Anna Bayle comes home, as she did three weeks ago, the fashion circuit assumes a fresh face, and not only figuratively.
Her contemporaries, the catwalk goddesses of the ‘70s such as Pat Cleveland and Dalma, have long receded from the glitzy scene—Pat to open her own modeling agency and Dalma to settle down in some posh domicile—but Anna Bayle remains in international high fashion orbit.
After 17 years in the fashion industry, Anna has kept not only her fresh features but also, more importantly, her energy and perspective. She has reached that enviable stage when the tangible and intangible attributes fuse quite gracefully, and what reigns is character.
The Anna Bayle of the ‘90s has the edge of character.
Our Chronicle Plus staff is winding up lunch arranged by good friend Annie Ringor at Roma, Manila Hotel, when a staffer freezes halfway into his sip of coffee, his stare fixed on the carpeted foyer beyond the door. We all follow his gaze. Anna Bayle is making her jaw-dropping entrance at Roma—with neither effort nor self-consciousness.
Unmindful of the eyes collectively taking in her 5 ft-10 1/2 figure that is adequately bared in a body-hugging Azzedine Alaia, Anna walks up to our table, air-busses me, settles down on a chair.
Suddenly it feels like old times.
…. the only Filipina to this day to have scaled the peak and stayed there the longest
I first met Anna in the early ‘80s when she was about to be the toast of the runway in Paris, and through the years I have written about her as one of the top 10 fashion models in Europe and later New York—the only Filipina to this day to have scaled the peak and stayed there the longest.
Since she left for abroad in the late ‘70s, Anna has been coming home regularly.
Each time, her visit had been fleeting but always memorable, sometimes for reasons beyond her control. She was here when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, lolling on the beach in Boracay and waking up one morning out in the open air to see her body all covered with white powder—not Boracay sand but Pinatubo ashfall.
The Mt. Pinatubo eruption left her stranded for days after the flights were canceled. Meantime her New York agent had been burning the lines to her friend Auggie Cordero (Anna couldn’t be reached in Boracay), frantically asking when she could take the first flight out since the New York collections were about to begin and Anna was booked in almost all collections.
She barely made it in time for the New York shows.
In 1989 she was about to take the flight to Manila, just as the December military coup attempt was underway. She aborted her homecoming in the nick of time, and spared her New York agent from cardiac arrest.
So now I chide her, what disaster has she brought? “Nothing” she laughs, “ordinary typhoons.”
Anna, in fact, brings us laughter, sweet relaxing laughter, more so on this visit, her longest in years, when for a change, she is not poised to hop on the next flight to catch a collection in Tokyo or in New York.
Anna is taking a breather from the New York-Paris grind in a way she’s never done.
Here, when she’s not out with friends like interior designer Johnny Ramirez, she spends quiet nights at (Auggie’s) home, taking a late evening stroll in the not-so-friendly neighborhood which causes Auggie some anxiety and compels her fashion designer friend to send his domestic help out to tail Anna.
Expectedly, when Anna strides down Balagtas street, she draws a tail of street urchins. Be they the well-heeled Roma diners or Balagtas night creatures, she is unmindful. For nothing and no one could barrel itself into Anna’s space of solace while she’s in Manila.
Anna has carved out this space for a purpose. “I’ve come home to think,” she tells us. After all, it’s been 17 years of cutthroat competition, fame, glamor, strict discipline and daily grind.
“I like to spend quiet nights with Auggie just too really talk, think, look back and look forward.”
We blurt out the question that must be on everyone’s mind: is she finally retiring?
“Nobody wants to hear that you want to retire,” she says.
But is she tired?
“My mind is never tired. I’m always thinking and planning. If you stop this, you cease to exist, to live.”
However, the body has every cause to get tired. All her contemporaries have stepped down from the catwalk, and even the fashion icons, who came after her, such as Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington, now have to jostle with the new faces in Vogue, the Waif Generation of Kate Moss.
Anna has graced the covers of the world’s top fashion magazines (from Vogue to W). She has been photographed by the world’s best (from Avedon to Helmut Newton). She has modeled for the fashion gods (from Saint Laurent to Isaac Mizrahi). She has introduced to world fashion the image of the exotic Filipino beauty and thus has paved the way for the demand for Oriental beauty in world fashion. The New York Times has coined the phrase “the Anna Bayle walk” to describe Anna’s signature movement on the runway.
Indeed Anna has nothing more to prove.
Today’s conditions are not exactly kind to top fashion models. Like everything else, the world fashion industry is reeling from global recession. The death knell is often sounded on Paris haute couture. Even big New York designers such as Geoffrey Beene are refraining from holding shows using top models, opting instead for mannequins to hang their clothes on.
Now that super models such as Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer command astronomical rates, even the fashion giants are seeing the wisdom of getting newer faces to model their collections—for much cheaper rates. And catwalk queens such as Anna Bayle are bound to feel the crunch.
Apart from these, Anna is intelligent enough to perceive other realities, primary of them the fact that the fashion world is fickle.
Now Anna believes that the reign of the ingénue has another year to go before the fashion world tires of it
Fashion is all about change. The seductive, ultra sophisticated look of the Linda Evangelistas has given way to the Waif Generation of Kate Moss. Now Anna believes that the reign of the ingénue has another year to go before the fashion world tires of it.
“A year from now, they can go more for the mature look again, like what Calvin Klein or Chanel is starting to do—the look with soul and the more accomplished personality,” Anna says.
But Anna is not the type to be daunted by change.
Seeing how she’s steered her career or even her life, I realize that if there’s a secret to her success it is her fierce sense of independence. Anna is never one to follow the standard course. She always feels the compulsion to be different. She thrives on competition. And this is probably why, while her contemporaries have opted to retire, Anna is plotting yet another stage in her fashion career.
Just look at her background. The third in a brood of seven, born to a chemist mother and civil engineer father, Anna had been an honor student all her life, from Stella Maris to Philippine Science High School and finally at UP, in pre-med.
On her third year in Biology, she got waylaid into the Miss RP beauty contest where she ended a runner-up. It was in late 1975, while she was doing the Miss RP fashion show at Philippine Village Hotel that designer Auggie Cordero spotted her. “This very tall, dark Filipina attracted me,” Auggie recalls.
Auggie called her over to his table and asked if she wanted to be a beauty queen or to try modeling
Auggie called her over to his table and asked if she wanted to be a beauty queen or to try modeling. She chose the latter, so Auggie put her in his luncheon fashion shows at Hyatt, which in the ‘70s was the venue of fashion shows—the breeding ground of designers and models.
After two months of luncheon shows, Anna was tapped to do Auggie’s gala show and then Imelda Marcos’ famous Bagong Anyo series.
As early as then, Anna showed how driven she could be—she’d commute by bus daily from her UP class to the Hyatt show.
“I encouraged her to be confident,” Auggie says—an advice that was apparently heeded, for in two years, in 1978, Anna had enough guts to move to Hong Kong and try out the modeling scene.
At that time Hong Kong was already a ready-to-wear hub. Anna modeled for department stores, Hong Kong designers, other foreign shows and even galas.
In 1979, she came home to do Auggie’s gala and had a run-in with the then god of fashion shows, the choreographer Gary Flores whose word was law, even among top designers. His friction with Anna brewing, Gary, on the eve of Auggie’s gala, made Auggie choose—junk Anna or he wouldn’t have a show. A tearful Auggie had no choice—Anna had to be dropped from the roster. Anna relented and became just part of the gala night audience. In deference to Anna, Auggie “killed” all the clothes Anna was supposed to wear on the show, instead of letting other models don them.
That night Anna told the victorious Gary—“I’ll never let this happen to me again. I’ll be the best f—ing model you’ll ever meet in your life.”
Anna made good that vow. From Hong Kong, she went to New York where Auggie introduced her to his friends in the rag trade, such as fashion illustrator Maning Obregon, who could push Anna on into the modeling industry.
But then no neophyte model ever starts in New York; the Big Apple is only for the famous ones—a model starts in Europe where she can build her portfolio and only from there can she hope to crash into cutthroat New York. Anna learned this the hard way. She had a year of rejections in New York.
It was at this point that she decided to try Paris. There she would meet the Thierry Mugler who took her in as a cabin model. (Interestingly, while Anna was starting out as a Mugler model, Mugler’s assistant designer was Azzedine Alaia. This shared beginning explains Anna’s bonding with the now famous Alaia.)
In those early days, Mugler would tell Anna that she couldn’t be booked with other designers because she “looked different.” Europe then was not that adventurous when it came to exotic beauties.
‘I’ll be what you want me to be—an Asian, a South American, a black’
This inspired Anna to develop her now famous approach to modeling— “I’ll be what you want me to be—an Asian, a South American, a black.” Anna’s ability to change her looks became known and good copy for global fashion media. She would be the fashion world’s most accomplished chameleon.
In two and a half years, Anna made a name in Paris—through rigid discipline, strict work ethic, and incredible aggressiveness.
By 1984, she was one of the top 10 models in Paris.
Few really know what it took Anna to climb to the top.
For months, she virtually starved in Paris, living in a pension place and paying $20 a day for lodging, subsisting on nothing but mineral water, French bread and cheese. This she did, not merely to keep a 23-inch or less waistline but more so, to save money to build the best wardrobe she could wear when she went to a “go-see” with a designer.
Apart from such cunning, Anna followed a physical regimen that would faze even prizefighters. She’d take six kinds of vitamins every morning—four of each kind or a sum of 24—to keep her looks and stamina for a grueling schedule: fittings with a designer from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. or from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Throughout these hours, she’d be on her feet.
By 1984, she was doing shows for all major Paris designers, except the Japanese (she restricted herself to Kenzo and Issey Miyake). By 1985, she was the signature model of Yves Saint Laurent.
(From Anna Bayle FB)
In 1987, at last, she felt she was ready for New York.
Without an agent, she walked into Elite (its runway modeling unit) in New York. She preferred to do this herself, instead of letting her Paris agency do the advanced work in New York, not because she was that daring but because like a full-blooded Ilocana, she wanted to save. She didn’t want to spare the 15% for her Paris agency.
At Elite’s door she stood with her portfolio….
That same day, Anna did all of 550 Seventh Avenue and in less than 24 hours, got 27 bookings with such major designers as Oscar de la Renta, Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, Bill Blass.
That day, New York met Anna Bayle. The Big Apple was ready for the conquest by this Filipina.
Over the years, Anna has been photographed by the best in the field—Helmut Newton, Norman Parkinson, Peter Beard, Scabullo, Avedon. In one season, she was signature model of Bloomingdale’s. And in what many would consider the ultimate accolade—there’s the New York Times’ term, “the Anna Bayle walk.”
Anna, the master planner, is also into film clips and movies. She appeared in the Mizrahi collection for the J. Michael Fox movie Concierge, tried out for the role of the Japanese computer whiz Theresa in Rising Sun (the role another Filipina, Tia Carrere, bagged), and is seen in the British Airways video ad.
Anna Bayle is ready for the ‘90s.
