Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 7

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 7 - Skatetown

Skatetown came into being after a conversation I had in the early 80's with Jorge Araneta. He thought that Cubao needed an image shift. He was right! The problem with Cubao was...well, Cubao was in Cubao and not Makati or Greenhills where all the "smart" crowd went. Or so the theory went. Here was a chance to get wild and wild I got - in many ways!

Well, the ONLY way to get people to see Cubao in a different light was to do something way out of the ordinary - so I bought a 1957 Cadillac convertible and painted it bright pink. A good start. Then I crashed it into the plate glass window next to the entrance. The concept was Roller Disco. The lights, the music and Bose speakers with a hell thumping bass that made your hair stand on end...none of that anemic Muzak and neon strip lighting of normal roller rinks where glazed matrons watched with horror while their siblings crashed to the floor in convoluted heaps. This was meant to be SERIOUS. It had to be because to some extent roller skating under a raft of screaming lights to loud disco music in semi darkness produces an effect not guaranteed to be the best recipe for safety! I mean it was all very well luring the crazies from Makati to go all the way to Cubao (like it was the NORTH POLE in those days) but put them on skates to Donna Summer and you've got a serious potential problem. And that was only the start. I remember well nearly dragging one of the disc jockey out of the booth since the atmosphere inside the booth had become rather enveloped in a haze of marijuana fumes. Fun perhaps but dangerous. Dangerous.

This is an original invitation to the opening of SKATETOWN which opened in the early 80's. It was my project with Jorge Araneta.

The space up on the third floor of Ali Mall was cavernous and screaming for development and apart from an actually extremely good Italian restaurant where I once had lunch with Paul Anka, (who had the great misfortune to compose the favorite song of all bad singers in karaoke bars in the world: My Way) the rest of the floor was one great space waiting to happen.

Electro Systems were brought into create the lights and install a high-tech sound system and we worked, therefore, from the top down; working on the ceiling first since it was this cacophony of coordinated lights that would hopefully not disorientate the skaters too much that would create the mood for Skatetown. The DJ booth jutted out into the rink so that the disc jockey could see what was happening (unless he was stoned out of his mind) and was clad in mirrored sheets as was, in fact, quite a lot of the sidings. The original rink was painted with clouds but with the thousands of skaters that besieged the place they quickly faded into obscurity. Silver padded edging surrounded the rink itself and that lasted about a month only since bewildered skaters zoomed, temporarily blinded perhaps, into the sides at speed = shredding everything in their path! They were replaced with industrial strength vivid pink vinyl and the problem was solved.

At the far end of SKATETOWN there was, somewhat incongruously, a real Australian outback saloon that Jorge Araneta had purchased complete in Australia and had shipped over to Manila. It was as far away from a disco as you could imagine but it worked. Crazy was what was needed and crazy we got. Bit too crazy. The Araneta management decided that we needed to have periods every hour when the lights (the neon srip lights I hated) were turned on and the sound turned down so that more normal people who just liked skating could enjoy themselves without risk of brain damage or a broken arm or leg! It became the headquarters of an important skating club and these were serious skaters! They wore uniforms and not like the scarlet red one piece, zip up coveralls that I designed for the Skatetown staff either. It was a culture clash: me wanting wild and then wanting wholesome. But all in all - it worked!

The opening actually did attract the glitterati, I mean there really was, for all to see, Chinbee Monotoc, all the way from Makati in her Saint Laurent gliding across the rink hemmed in by A Listers from the "better" areas. They had made it to Cubao without getting mugged! Ernest Santiago of the famed Coco Banana arranged a show on skates and anyone who remembers Coco Banana will have an idea of how it was - outrageous comes to mind. So it was a great success and I wanted it to spread. I wanted to do the whole top floor as a sort of crazy, young vibrant place that would have all linked in together like cool Lego but it was too advanced a concept for that period. But Skatetown remains a great memory for many people. It was a spark. It ROCKED.

Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!


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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever & Nicholas Stoodley Photos

"Sure Enough it was STOODLEY". Well, it may have seemed sure enough to everyone else but it sure wasn't sure to me..... we didn't even know each other's names the first time we practiced as a team and THAT was just a few days before the first game in a school gymnasium - Thomas Aquinas School I think it was called. There they were these big, lanky black guys (and one shorter white guy) dripping with sweat in the tropical heat and with brains made soggy with jet lag figuring out who was who and....."hey man, who's the English dude looking worried in the corner?" That would be me! There was nothing sure at all!

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Sonny Jaworski leaps into the air with amazing ease in a bid to outwit a Stoodley player. Despite such elegant playing though Toyata was finally beaten by the Nicholas Stoodley team - the first foreign team ever to win the a PBA championship. Of course it wasn't exactly popular; in fact a wave of nationalism almost spelt my end since, for good luck, I had to watch all but two of the games in the series confined amongst rabid Toyota fans up in the "cheap seats" so far from the action you needed a telescope to see what was going on. Well, it WAS the INVITATIONAL Conference. My team was invited, we came, we won. End of story but start of me becoming one of the best known foreigners in the country. So famous I ended up dancing with Elizabeth Ramsey on TV and that is something I pray doesn't exist somewhere in the archives!

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Hail Nicholas. How the hell did we do that? At the time it seemed miraculous. Besieged at the end of the final match I had been surrounded by a phalanx of security guards and hauled down to the court protected from the baying Toyota fans who would have probably ripped me limb from limb. Dazed, I had faced an array of reporters wanting to know how I had done it! Me? What had I done? Did I even know what a technical assist was? Sure it was my name emblazoned on their shirts but I was a designer... I'd never even played Basketball once in my entire life. I stood there bathed in light, the focus of awe, respect, scorn and outright rage and words failed me. That night we got extremely drunk indeed.

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER SCAN)

Somewhere among the throng on the court is me. It was the beginning but also the end. I had arrived from Rome and Australia and opened a shop selling Ready to Wear that was, well, a bit different. I had fun, it was a crazy time back in the late 70's and I guess what I did and how I did it fitted in well with the almost manic desire to make hay even though the sun wasn't exactly shining on the country at the time. That one shop soon became three, four then five and then THIS. PBA Champion and soon I was on the six o clock news every day talking about clothes and was allover the media. But even though I won, was a champion, I also lost something big and that was what made the whole Nicholas Stoodley brand. I was becoming too big, too well known and therefore just another brand name!

This is part of a promotional flyer sent to stores carrying the Nicholas Stoodley brand in the Philippines. If you look closely you can see me on the cover of Mr and Miss magazine with a mustache for God's sake - can't stand facial hair - and then, of course there's that iconic group VST & Co wearing Nicholas Stoodley. VST really encapsulated the Disco Sound in those days.... and buy were they underrated as was, in general, Pinoy music!

Can you believe the HAIR! We all seemed to have it then (luckily I still HAVE hair). Here Nicholas Stoodley looking Oh so cool models one of his army inspired shirts. Leaning casually on the front terrace of what was the first house I rented in Manila in Scout Magbanua, Quezon City. It had seemed like a zillion miles from Rome and Valentino and it WAS. Believe me!

Casual Ready to Wear Clothes. Nicholas Stoodley really took off though because we were the first company to make jeans specifically for girls......before women would buy men's jeans and then have them taken in at the waist at a tailor shop with the result that...well, they looked exactly like that was what you had had done! It was hell in pattern making but at least the pants fit and fit they DID. WELL.

Lounging in my back garden.


Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part Two

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Part 2 of Chapter 6

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part Two

For reasons that were not really clear to me (for I didn't know how to play basketball and had only a vague perception that somehow getting the ball through the hoop – and not the "goal" as I had embarrassingly called it when interviewed by a newspaper – was a good way to score a lot of points) we actually managed to win the third game. This state of events didn't exactly go down too well with the Toyota supporters but my fate was sealed! Since I had been sent up to sit with them in the "cheap" seats about two kilometers from the court and we WON, then obviously THAT was what changed our luck! Well, great for the team but not so good for the Englishman; not only could I hardly see what was going on below me in the far distance but if anyone discovered who was sitting in their midst disguised with dark glasses and a basketball cap pulled down low over their face (thus almost totally obscuring what little vision I had of the game - I may as well have stayed at home) then I was history. Toast!

A rather fat but energetic lady sat to my right screaming "Get that ball!" at every opportunity… Get that Ball… Get that Ball. It was driving me crazy. Hell, lady…do you realize that's MY team down there somewhere…… but that was a fantasy………. I would be lynched. Anyway, it was my team that got the damn ball and slammed it through the hoop more times than Toyota. So there!

Incredibly we continued to win every match we played even beating the somewhat arrogant Addidas team from France that obviously thought that Addidas was a MUCH bigger brand than Nicholas Stoodley (true) and that their superior experience as a team (well, we had almost none) would allow them to crush us into the floor of the Araneta Coliseum. Tough Luck Addidas. No contest. We blitzed them and I stayed hemmed in by an increasingly irate crowd of "Let's kill Nicholas Stoodley" fans. I was the LUCK we needed. Actually I think it had more to do with the midnight party I had held for the team at my house, THAT was what created the team spirit - but I was still in disgrace for that episode.

The final was an out of world experience for me. I looked to my right and there was a huge scoreboard with my name, STOODLEY and to my left was another scoreboard with the name TOYOTA. Was I really THAT important? It didn't seem right somehow. What the hell did I know about the game – though I was learning more and more; it was just marketing and GOOD marketing at that. Suddenly my name was everywhere. Who WAS this enigmatic Englishman and his unknown team of American misfits that were sweeping through the opposition? I was even signing autographs! People were buying Nicholas Stoodley T-shirts at an incredible rate and production was running into three shifts. What had started out as a bit of a lark on the way back from Australia was now a fast expanding business. But was it still "a bit of a lark?" It was scary!

The famous "last two minutes" were almost the last two minutes of my life as the game hung in the balance. My heart raced as Larry Pounds, the star player (who also happened to be about nine feet tall which helped) basically propelled the ball through Toyota's hoop with the force of a thousand tons of TNT. A huge roar erupted and it was a roar of disappointment. Of revenge, of, "Let's kill STOODLEY!"

I was immediately surrounded by twenty security guards and hustled out of the cheap seats to the astounded stares of the Toyota supporters who never realized that the quiet Englishman with the racing heart was none other than their nemesis!Basically dragged down to the court with my feet hardly touching the ground I was pushed in front of the TV cameras and asked how I did it. God knows….what could I tell them? I can't even remember what inanities I proffered but I do remember trying to leave the Araneta Coliseum through the back entrance. They were waiting for me! Despite the many guards, rocks were smashed down on the roof of the car as others rocked the vehicle from side to side cursing the foreigner cowering in abject terror inside. "GO HOME" they cried. "You are not welcome here!" Yes, my team won but in many ways I felt as though I had also lost.

Previously: Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part One

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 6

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 6 - Basketball Fever Part One

In 1980 it was decided that what the brand "Nicholas Stoodley" needed a bit of spectacular publicity and hence there emerged from Los Angeles the Nicholas Stoodley Basketball team which, according to the meeting in question, would arrive in Manila, play in the PBA 2nd conference at the Araneta Coliseum and, hopefully, slaughter the opposition and make the brand into a countrywide phenomena!

The players were assembled from NBA hopefuls who were hanging around hoping to be picked for a team later in the year or they'd end up serving burgers in McDo. The chance to play in Manila (wherever in the world that may have been) sounded like fun – a free trip, pocket money and hey... isn't Manila famous for R & R? A place the American troops went wild in whenever they escaped from the Vietnam War!

The first practice session they had upon arriving in the country was actually the first time they had actually played together as a team – they didn't even remember each other's names... and it wasn't as though they were going to play second string teams in Manila either; apart from the Addidas team from France, local teams like Toyota ruled and under the 2nd conference rules they were allowed to field imported players! I was doomed. We would be routed and I'd be a laughing stock allover Manila; my name emblazoned across every players chest on National TV. That first practice was enough to convince me that my initial instincts were correct: Yes winning the championship would be great publicity but LOSING with a ham-fisted team of uncoordinated players who seemed more interested in local girls than playing…well there goes my marketing genius!

The first game loomed. It was humid. And HOT. They had jetlag and LBM. They still couldn't remember each other's names. And then there was me. I WAS Nicholas Stoodley and I knew nothing about basketball at all... never played the game. What an idiotic idea. I sat just behind the players and could feel the tension vibrating inside me as we crashed to a humiliating defeat which the newspapers described in relish the following morning lest you missed it on TV live! The second game came and went in the same manner. We were slaughtered. A meeting was held and it was decided that me sitting behind the players on the court was bad luck so to improve our chances I was sent up to the cheap seats and placed among a group of rabid Toyota supporters.

Totally dejected I decided that what was needed was a party at my house before the third game and consequently, under a full moon a team of almost naked black basketball players cavorted drunk in my swimming pool to disco music and a little too much fun! The following morning the maid found a scene of carnage before her horrified eyes: a body behind the sofa, possibly dead, two more on the patio. Vomit here and there. The other maid was discovered in a condition that is best not described in detail and the phone was ringing off the hook! Where were the players? Didn't I realize there was an important practice? Do I know what will happen if we lose the next game. Was I INSANE?


Previously: Chapter 5 - An Alien Culture

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 5

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 5 - An Alien Culture

The early days were a bit of a blur. Here I was in a foreign and sometimes truly alien culture sweating it out in a climate more suited to alligators than Englishmen! Outside there were an amazing amount of people with guns! There were check points and Martial Law and I was opening a store selling RTW clothing with my name outside - I was even decidedly unsure about the whole venture! And then there was the publicity! I wasn't really used to that. I'd had publicity before in Europe and had even appeared (drunk unfortunately and telling a dirty joke to the Premier of New South Wales) on TV in Australia, but the Philippines was so "personal". Everyone seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time just gossiping about everyone else: who was bonking who and why and when and even HOW. It is hardly surprising that the Philippines ended up as the text capital of the world!

In the mid 70's there wasn't much choice when it came to press publicity because Marcos had closed down a lot of newspapers for not being too friendly to him so one was very much left with the Bulletin Today and it's magazine, PANORAMA. Chelo Banal interviewed me one afternoon – a delightful young lady – and soon I was chatting away nineteen to the dozen with no thought at all. As far as I was concerned we were just gossiping. Wrong. "And what did I think of our local actors?" I had been asked. "Well," I had stupidly said with no thought at all, "I think Christopher de Leon has about as much talent as a dead slug!" It had been a throw away line designed, I guess, to make me seem both clever and superior. Such is the naiveté of the young and inexperienced. Actually Christopher was the ONLY actor that I knew about at that time and he was, in fact, a good actor; but I was just having fun. Gossip. I was enjoying this. Christopher de Leon wasn't. As far as he was concerned it was libel or slander or whatever, but it wasn't Kosher and I was in for big legal trouble.

Life WAS casual in the Philippines and it was so easy to become ensnared in a situation without even realizing you had slipped down a honey-coated slope into an abyss of unfathomable proportions. There was NO SCRIPT to life in Manila – it was a crazy hodge podge of events that spontaneously erupted in the face of the unwary with alarming regularity. Invited to appear on a game show called SPIN-A-WIN I was suddenly grabbed in the full glare of God knows how many people on TV and made to dance with Elizabeth of the crazy hair Ramsey. Me, a reticent English virgin that had, up to that moment, thought himself adventurous. Was THAT ever my baptism of fire! And it was constant. Everyday brought new heart stopping events bubbling to the surface.

Drinking beer one evening with a friend at one of those open air bars on M.H. del Pilar (well kiosk would be more appropriate) I had gone off for a few moments to try and find somewhere I could buy a packet of Dunhill cigarettes and returned fifteen minutes later to find that, apparently, my friend had been taken away in a Police van with several others. Directed to the Western Police District Headquarters somewhere near the Hilton Hotel, I finally found him languishing in a filthy, smelly, crowded, locked room full of various miscreants and a few well dressed individuals looking both scared and out of place. Demanding to see the policeman in charge and summoning up all my British courage I was directed outside where a sloppily dressed man with a bulging belly, sweaty armpits and a presumably loaded gun was lounging across a table, obviously in the latter stages of a drinking contest with his buddies – also all with loaded guns. I was toast. But England didn't become the World's leading Imperialist Power for nothing and I managed to crack a meager joke that had all the cops laughing hysterically and inviting me to get as drunk as they were. "Well, just ONE bottle then". Four beers later I had won my friend's reprieve. His crime? None. It was beer money that's all; who wouldn't pay to get out of that hell hole? They even offered to drive me back to the bar from where I'd come but by then I doubted if they could even stand, let alone drive! Yes, it was an alien culture alright!


Previously: Chapter 4 - Curfew Passes

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 4

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 4 - Curfew Passes

Jeans were jeans were jeans. But not designer jeans. Not DESIGNER jeans! It was a new concept back then and I happened to land in the middle of Manila just at a time when Ready to Wear was about to burst forth in all its glory. Considering that jeans were the new "uniform" then it was about time to inject a bit of pizzazz into the arena. The first good idea I had was to make jeans for women in women's sizes! Not an outlandish idea but something that hadn't been done before. Previously they'd have to buy a pair of men's jeans and have the waist taken in two or three inches. Great for the customer but hell for production double the patterns, double the everything. "How come," I was asked, "is it REALLY necessary?" "After all." etc etc etc. Bahala na. How often was I to come across THAT particular expression!

The second good idea was that jeans should get away from the Levis flat arsed approach that tended to desex the wearer. Using a few techniques I had picked up from the Valentino couture department I therefore taught the cutter techniques on how to get the jeans to actually fit and flatter the body to mold themselves around ones nether regions in a sensual and highly profitable manner.

This of course was all a bit of a revolution in Manila in the middle of the 70's where if you had wanted anything that was even remotely stylish you went to a tailor with a sketch or a photograph ripped from a magazine and hoped for the best or you got a pair of Levis that desexed you. And desexing wasn't really on with the sensual throbbing of the disco enticing you into the darker corners of the night; that's if you were lucky and got a Curfew Pass!

Ah the Curfew Pass! Strange how something so onerous can actually engender nostalgia when viewed in retrospect. They were a sort of status symbol you could always tell the best parties because Curfew Passes were handed out like confetti ..the more passes, the more important the celebrant. There were the days when you had to rush home cut off very much before your prime in order to escape the police but there were other, glorious nights, when armed with a curfew pass you could roar through Manila's deserted streets at top speed without seeing anyone or anything, except perhaps the odd road block or two. That's why it paid to stay focused. No good speeding down Aurora Boulevard at 160 in a semi-alcoholic haze if a group of police had erected a barrier across the road and were attempting to slow you down by waving a dimly lit flashlight wildly in your direction that obviously needed new batteries. I didn't even see them until it was too late! And they had guns. Lot's of them. Driving, as I did in those days, a Mach 1 Ford Mustang with a V8 engine, the only sensible thing to do was to accelerate as fast as possible and turn off the main road at the first opportunity. I still live today but it was close. They shot people that did that. But not me that night thanks God!

The third good idea I had was deciding that if I was going to start something new then I might as well go for it and make it ALL new. Not just the clothes but the marketing as well. So I did it myself.

DON'T BUY MY CLOTHES ran one advertisement with nothing else on the page except my signature and my trade mark: a sensual red kiss mark. NICHOLAS STOODLEY CLOTHES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE. Again nothing more on the page. This was probably the clincher. The shop was packed with people after that came out. It was a fun time. I was playing around defying convention and getting away with it.


Previously: Chapter 3 - Playboy Magazine

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 3

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 3 - Playboy Magazine

How in God's name did I end up sitting at a desk in a house in Scout Magbanua designing (or attempting to design) clothes in a country so far from home a country most people couldn't even find on the map! Turgid gray clouds were obscuring the sun (and my mind) and an extremely odd maid outside was attempting lunch that was even odder. Food certainly was, how shall I say, VERY experimental in those days. Being English I had informed Elving, my maid, that rice was all good and well but NON STOP rice? Could she cook potatoes? She had duly asked around and discovered exactly what a potato was (obviously a rare and exotic delicacy in those days) but unfortunately neglected to find out how one cooked this particular vegetable. They arrived, small hard bullets lurking at the bottom of a bowl of dark, yellowish brown liquid in which was suspended a few lumps of what could only be described as disgusting. Ah pork! I was told. Unfortunately the poor pig hadn't shaved well before it met its maker and therefore a number of bristles protruded from the flesh. So much for lunch! So much for being a superstar from Rome . It wasn't a good day.

I hadn't even intended to work for Valentino and yet it was this fact that had so entranced my financial backers in the first place. I MUST be good if I'd been his assistant. So ran the logic. My original plan though had been to get into movies. Sitting under a tree in Hyde Park in London and feeling very strongly that my life needed a bit of excitement, I had asked myself what would I like to do if I had a free wish? Anything in the world! So I decided I wanted to be a Film Director. Simple really well it WAS a wish. The best way, I had thought, was to start as an assistant to a successful, well known Director and I'd take it from there.

I placed an advertisement in the Times newspaper that read FRANCO ZEFIRELLI PLEASE CONTACT NICHOLAS IN LONDON URGENT. With the callowness of youth combined with an over-optimistic personality, I fully expected him to contact me and he did. A few days later, I got a letter telling me to call a number in Rome. I spoke to a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn who informed me that "Franco don't know any Nicholas in London ." I had laughed and explained and she had laughed and that was that. Simple. The next day I was in Rome getting drunk with her. It wasn't to be though. There were too many Americans saturating the Italian Film Industry at that time and work permits were impossible to get. The only possibility was for me to work in an allied field, say design, and then transfer to film after a year or so.

Perpetuating this fairy story, (for this is how it sounds) I just happened to know someone who worked for Valentino so I applied for a job. I recall clearly the first time Valentino himself saw me, his head peering almost shyly round the corner of his office . Mmmm, Nice English boy but dresses like shit! he had thought. There was no mistaking THAT look. Can I design a chair? I had been asked. Why not I had replied, honest enough to mention that this was something I had never contemplated before and surprisingly this answer was enough to get me the job.

Obviously Valentino had wanted a fresh new approach infused into his line of Home D cor and he certainly got it, resulting in my being summoned to his office to explain the front cover of Playboy Magazine. Two scantily clad nymphets posing with a chair. It was MY chair. I was proud! It was though HIS chair. A Valentino chair! I had designed what looked amazingly like a phallic symbol. It had been entirely sub conscious on my part but there, with two nearly naked girls well, let's just say it wasn't very Valentino!

Thousands of miles away from Rome I was still struggling with an empty sheet of paper, a dull mind and a bad stomach. What price an adventurous spirit?

Previously: Chapter 2 - Cold Turkey!

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 2

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.

Chapter 2 - Cold Turkey!

Waking the next morning in a strange bed in a strange house surrounded by strange people I was assured that we had all had a wonderful time: but HOW I wondered, and who with and what do I do now? And yet unknowingly I had already sown the seeds of my fate. Through the complicated maze of people who knew people who knew people, plans for my future were already being drawn up without me having to do anything at all.

I was, after all; so it had been discovered by someone during the previous evenings alcoholically fuelled reverie; an assistant of Valentino in Rome – even then one of the top designers in the world – and as such I was therefore a potential vehicle by which fame and fortune could be bestowed upon those lucky enough to get in quick. And get in quick they did. A few hours later I was already being offered money to open up one of the first – if not THE first - Ready to Wear Clothing stores in Manila.

Endulgence is his favorite occupation. On the terrace of his apartment in Rome with another Valentino assistant, 1975.

Not wishing to disabuse these moneyed potential backers that I had in fact been designing furniture, textiles and home decor for Valentino and NOT clothes, a deal was quickly signed. I was young and adventurous and besotted by the somewhat eclectic charms of a city that appeared to be both exciting and dangerous, exotic and insane and generally uncivilized compared to the much more structured existence I had vaguely enjoyed in Europe.

Thus was born NICHOLAS STOODLEY. I opened the first shop in Goldcrest Makati which in those days was reasonably smart and anyway one of the few places you actually could have a store in Makati! There was Rustans and Shoemart was just about to open but apart from that there were still green fields in the center.

It had been that simple and that fast! In a matter of weeks after arriving I had installed myself in a rented house in one of the Scout streets in Quezon City, had acquired a taciturn maid named Elving and an absolute terror that I must have gone soft in the head. For what did I actually KNOW about designing clothes? True I had once made a silk patchwork shirt for Picasso (another story) and was a designer but not of clothes please. Fashion actually bored me. I had spent much of my formative years rebelling against convention, fashion and the air-headed fixations of those that could not be seen in public without "dressing" for the occasion. It had been so fast and I had been, as so many foreigners were that ended up in Manila, flattered and feted and adored: my fabulous blue eyes and straight nose and Valentino. But reality bit deep one damp, gray morning in Scout Magbanua when I realized for the first time that a shop bearing my name would be opening in eight weeks and I had rather high expectations (mostly built on air) to live up to. Cold turkey!


Previously: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Start from the beginning! Read: Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

Read More

Nicholas Stoodley - Living in the Twilight Zone Chapter 1

Nicholas Stoodley was born near London and has lived at one time or another in the South of France, Rome, Sydney, Tagaytay, England, Paris and Manila with plans to move to Ibiza shortly. A former assistant to Valentino in Rome, he arrived in Manila in 1976 and pioneered Ready to Wear in the Philippines with the NICHOLAS STOODLEY brand of casual clothing. During his stay in the Philippines Nicholas also won the PBA Invitational Basketball Conference in 1980 with his team from Los Angeles, designed and manufactured a Stainless Steel Sports Utility Jeep that was featured in the Frankfurt Motor Show and opened "Skatetown", a Roller Disco with Jorge Araneta in Cubao. And that was just the first course!

Tune in every Saturday as Nicholas recalls the Disco Decade in Manila when Martial Law, Cuban heels, Donna Summer, Coco Banana and a lot of hair combined in a frenzy of uncertain excitement.


Portrait of a legend, Nicholas Stoodley.
Chapter 1 - An English Virgin

Living and working in Rome, Italy I first came to the Philippines in 1976 on the way to Australia. It was meant to be a two day stopover – just to catch my breath - on my way to an uncertain future in a continent where we used to send our convicts and who often professed a distinct suspicion of their English forebears, declaring recently arrived English as effete, effeminate and just effing snobs! So bad in fact it was that when I finally got to Sydney I inadvertently held the door open for a belligerent looking man in khaki shorts, the requisite beer belly, knee high socks and a bush hat pulled low over his scowling jowls: "Fucking poof" he muttered in response to this politeness. One doesn’t hold doors open for "men" in Australia. At least not in the mid seventies!

Looking around for a bit of culture to alleviate the gnawing suspicion that I may have arrived in the country a couple of decades too early, I was aghast to find that there was no opera at the Sydney Opera House. No concerts. Just BIG BILL'S BICYCLE BAND from Adelaide. Not quite what I had in mind. In comparison Manila was….wild. Of course there was still Martial Law in those days so one expected a somewhat unconventional arena and one wasn't disappointed; that is after you got over the shock of arriving at the airport (for that is what it claimed to be) and being accosted by the limpid, damp furnace that the locals call a climate, the crescendo of screaming voices as relatives in their thousands screamed for their pasalubongs and grabbing hands that tried to make off with my bags and haul them in the vague direction of a taxi that if you'd actually had the courage to drive it on the streets of London would have got your arrested in two minutes flat. In short, a nightmare with one’s first instinct being to turn back into the relative safety of the airport and wait for the first flight out!

But the city had its charms. M.H. del Pilar and Mabini for one. Being an English virgin (well, compared to what was going on in that area of my life I most definitely WAS a virgin) I was caught between terror and excitement as I was physically dragged into dimly lit boxlike clubs by three or four nearly naked girls, willowy transvestites, schoolgirls in uniform….the varieties were endless and enormously available. Compared to England the beer was free and the general raucous bonhomie overwhelming. A tall, slim, blond haired, blue eyed Englishman alone in the night. There is little more to be said of this and the fickle finger of fate thus tapped me on the shoulder before I had managed to venture more than a few hundred meters down that sizzling, steamy and sinful strip.


Technorati Tags:70s, stories, nostalgia

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