Fashion Icon Plus
Her name is Spanish for ‘Moon’. And just like that heavenly body in the night sky, Luna is as riveting as she is multifaceted. Her life story is a cycle of waxing and waning, of trials and triumphs, blue moons, fire moons, new crescent moons and lovely full moons
These days, Luna Mogueis Cameron is the ultimate fashion icon in the Pinoy Perth scene. Twice this season, she has been adjudged as hands-down ‘Best Dressed’ in party events. She politely turned down the acclaim. Luna realises she has an unfair advantage. She is, after all, a fashion stylist, having been involved in apparel for almost 30 years, and enjoying a stirling track record in the industry. For about a decade or so, whilst living in New Zealand, Luna traveled to the fashion capitals of the world to acquire gold labels, including Hugo Boss, Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, and Max Mara, for SAKS New Zealand. Then on one fine day, as the SAKS store was launching the Armani lines, Luna sold $80,000-worth of merchandise. Impressed, the Giorgio Armani house plucked her out from Auckland and offered her a plum job in Sydney.
In fact, Giorgio Armani was not the first to offer her a job in Sydney. Some years earlier, Escada had made her an offer, which she turned down because of her children, in their teens and enjoying Auckland. Luna moved to Sydney in 2010.
Although the Armani offer was more timely, Luna soon felt a sense of discontent. It seemed Sydney was not her cup of tea, and shortly, she moved to Bondi Junction to work for Hugo Boss. In hindsight, she says, “I thought it was the job that I didn’t like. But when I moved to Hugo Boss in Bondi, I still had the sense of dissatisfaction.”
In the summer of 2012, at the invita- tion of her friend Scott, Luna visited
Perth to repaint his house. She arrived on a scorching 40-degree day! One would think she would be turned
off. Far from it. Venturing out in the days following, Luna was ecstatic to find mangoes in abundance. And she absolutely loved the warm weather. Moreover, when on her subsequent forays into the markets, she found ochra, malunggay, and tanglad, Luna felt like she transported back to Hinunangan, her hometown in Southern Leyte. And as she absolutely loved the warm weather just like in her home- town, she fell in love with Perth and decided to stay.
The plan to repaint Scott’s house? Never happened. Instead, Luna has been welcomed by Scott and his beautiful family to have a run of the house in Bayswater. Scott’s job as a ranger required him to be away most of the time and the house really needed some sitting. Of course, Luna was up to it. She has a knack for fixing up a place. When Luna came to New Zealand in the late 1980s, she had been hired as an export officer for an import-export furniture and interior design store. She arrived in Auckland and found that the place where she would work was not an office but a warehouse. Within three months, she had converted the warehouse into a showroom. Within a year, Luna had set it up as a retail store and a tribal art shop, dealing with antiques and curio items from overseas. The success of the business had Luna’s face shining its light, that the moonstruck employ- er, asked her to be his wife.
“Just like that,” Luna recalls. “No courtship. Straightforward.” Ah, but perhaps, the man had taken the cue from Luna herself. When that little ad in the paper in Manila appeared and Luna Mogueis sighted it while having breakfast that morning, she took out her CV and, instead of sending it in to the business office of the hotel as the ad had instructed, Luna person- ally delivered the CV. “Didn’t you see the instructions on the ad?”, she was asked. “Well, sir, with all due respect, which do you prefer to have: a piece of paper or a person in front of you?” She was instantly hired.
Assertiveness is probably a character trait that Luna would have to develop if she was to get things her way growing up in a huge household of 12 brothers and 3 sisters. She was the youngest of 16 children, born to a father from Victorias in Negros Island and a stunning beauty of a mother from Leyte. She went to high school in Holy Rosary Academy in her hometown. She then spent one year at University of San Carlos in Cebu City before moving to the University of Negros Occidental – Recoletos and there finished her degree in Mass Communications.
Instead of going out on with boys on weekend dates, the young, talented and intelligent Luna would practise with her college dance troupe part of the time, and then hang out with the nuns the rest of the wekend, the Deb- bie Reynolds movie “The Singing Nun” constantly in her mind. In 1979, at the age of 18, she entered the convent at the Daughters of St Paul in Pasay City, became a nun. She would lead the cloistered life of prayer, meditation, household duties, and apostolate until a prolonged bout with tuberculosis forced her to leave the convent in 1983.
The waxing and waning of Luna’s moon would continue. After convent life, it was dance and physical fitness that she would choose to pursue, winning the national aerobics mara- thon championship and becoming a full-time aerobics teacher for Joanne Drew Salon in Makati. It was then that a Mr Philippines would sweep her off her feet. She fell in love, and had 2 children. Sadly though, the relation- ship did not end in marriage, and Luna struggled hard to keep herself strong for her children. Friends in un- expected places became her anchor in her weakest hours and in the most depraved of circumstances. “That is why, to me, life is nothing if not a celebration of friendship”, says Luna.
Soon, through friends she had made while engaged in physical fitness teaching, she was offered a job with a garment company as a merchandiser for two international clients. Thus began her romance
Would you be able to guess what her favourite fashion bag would be, though? A Louis Vuitton perhaps? Wrong. “I love my Filipino ‘bayong’ best of all.” That’s Luna Mogueis Cameron for you… enigmatic, multifaceted, always a bag full of surprises.
Luna and her Charities
You can’t tell by the looks of her now, but yes, Luna was once upon a time a nun. And the vestiges of the dedicated life have remained with the woman throughout her life. Especially when it comes to the charities. In 2013, after a successful business trip to Dubai, she headed to Leyte to spend her birthday with her people. It was then that the strongest typhoon to ever hit land struck. The havoc was unspeakable. Luna was heartbroken but not defeat- ed. With the money that she had earned from her recent trip, she helped with relief and went on to the construct a few houses. But she realised that massive help would be necessary. She phoned her media friends in Auckland who jumped on a plane and filmed the extent of the humanitarian disaster for New Zealand television. The kiwi community responded to Luna’s appeal for assistance in a huge way.
Several years before, when a whole village in Leyte was buried under that terrible mudslide in Guinsaugon, St Bernard Southern Leyte, Luna had also gotten into the thick of fundraising for relief and rehabilitation work for the calamity-stricken village It was then that she started funding scholarships, with those children orphaned on account of the calamity. The scholarships ongoing until today. She currently supports 48 through high school in Leyte.
In addition to helping folks back in the Philippines, Luna is also a believer in paying back the community that feeds you. For many years in Auckland she helped fundraise to support a hospice. Luna is excited to do the same in Perth. Already she is working out a calendar for fundraisers in 2016 to benefit a local hospice. As usual, she will bank on a little help from her close friends.
And as usual, she plans to do it in style.#
