In recent years, the annual State of the Nation Address (Sona) has not just been about the most-anticipated speech of the president. It has also become a sort of fashion show where some of the biggest political figures in the country walk down the congressional red carpet dressed to the nines, wearing their interpretation of traditional attire. Some lawmakers go for pomp, while others have used the occasion to make a political statement and express their advocacies.

This annual spectacle of guests, particularly women, parading like peacocks in embroidered, beaded and puffed-up versions of what passes for Filipiniana attire nowadays has somewhat provoked an issue. Most view it as a silly display of extravagance, completely inappropriate in a country where the poor outnumber the rich in overwhelming numbers.

Sen. Miriam Santiago even stated in 2013 that she intends to file a resolution prescribing an official Sona uniform for lawmakers “obsessed with bling.”

How did such an event turn into a “dress parade”?

The dress code for the Sona has always been Filipiniana. During earlier years, like the Cory and Ramos administrations, it used to be only the territory of political reporters.

Show biz and politics

But since the line between show biz and politics has started to blur, the mood and the media coverage started changing, particularly during the Estrada and Arroyo administrations. Media started paying attention to former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Filipiniana attire, made by the country’s top designers, as well as to the fashion worn by celebrities who had jumped into the political arena.

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Many women followed suit, ditching smarter pant and skirt suits in favor of Filipiniana finery, with jewelry and bags to match.

While everyone is free to wear whatever one pleases, personally, I would like to see a little bit more restraint. It’s not even an issue where the money for such clothes came from (I will leave that to the more seasoned investigative journalists). It’s a matter of what is appropriate for the seriousness of the occasion, even as simple as what is suitable to the time of the day—all that embellishment and jewelry in broad daylight? It’s like me attending a business meeting in a feathered gown; no one would take me seriously if that were the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I love fashion and I, too, support local designers—I wouldn’t be a lifestyle columnist if I didn’t. But the Sona is official business for the government—not an awards ceremony, gala premiere or state dinner.

Filipiniana is usually interpreted in very limited ways, as a long terno or Maria Clara, but one only has to look at how the Maria Clara was interpreted at last year’s Inquirer Face-Off fashion show to see that there are other ways to adhere to the prescribed dress code without much pomp and circumstance.

Or perhaps, the dress code can simply be changed to business attire. After all, if the argument for wearing such fashion to the Sona is to show support for local designers, one can also show support to designers with business attire—or with any attire, for that matter. Only this time, such fashion will bring back the real purpose of the Sona.

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A royal wedding! Nothing is more exciting than that. Nothing is grander, nothing is a more valuable reminder of our own lowly stations in this world, than the union of one prince or princess and his or her well-suited, carefully chosen, family-approved bride or groom. Of late we’ve become accustomed to the British variety of royal wedding: stiff, pomp-and-circumstance-y state affairs that bring all the sallow-skinned, thin-lipped people of old England scurrying out of their crooked houses to clap their brittle, knobbly hands together as their betters roll by in gilded horse-drawn carriages. (The horse, of course, being a symbol of the British people.) A British royal wedding is a wonderful respite from the gray gloom and drear, the mud and pox, of daily English life.

But a royal wedding further south in Europe? Oh my, is that a more wondrous, sun-splashed thing. Luxe and lavish, not so ordered and buttoned-up as a royal wedding in the United Kingdom, but still refined and almost hideously elegant. And we’re being treated to one this coming weekend! Pierre Casiraghi,dashing (and occasionally bashing) son of Princess Caroline of Monaco, the eldest daughter of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, is set to wed Italian aristocrat Beatrice Borromeo in Italy on Saturday. So won’t that be a memorable do, the Monegasque prince taking a beautiful Italian bride, all of Monaco’s elite looking on, content in their own wealth, but maybe not content enough. Oh, would that we could be invited. A prince of Monaco’s wedding! Just imagine.

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But really, Pierre Casiraghi is not the intriguing half of the couple. That title belongs to Borromeo, who is the descendant of an Italian noble house (“ancient,” Wikipedia calls it), whose lineage includes a cardinal turned saint—an actual saint. The Borromeo family—of old, old Milanese wealth—has owned several islands in sprawling Lago Maggiore for centuries, since the 1500s. One of those islands, which includes a palace, is where Beatrice Borromeo will marry her prince this weekend. Borromeo is also, wonderfully, a dogged journalist in Italy. She studied at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and now does hard-hitting interviews on Italian television. Also, her dad is a count, so does that maybe make her a countess?

Countess Casiraghi. Now that’s a name! Countess Borromeo is pretty good too, if she wants to keep it. Either way, this is one fancy lady that Pierre has snagged. And together they will rule all the glamorous parts of Europe together, for several centuries. Because surely people like this, with the richest of old blood coursing through their veins, do not age and wither as quickly as we mortals. I’d have to imagine that Pierre and Beatrice, benevolent super-beings, will reign on long after all of our ashes have been scattered in the CiCi’s Pizza parking lots of our choosing. At least I hope so. Some things should be ancient, everlasting. A tradition like the House of Borromeo should live on forever, and what better way to ensure that than for its proudest daughter to live for hundreds and hundreds of years?

And just think of their children! I mean, these kids will really be something. Glorious, chestnut-haired gods on Earth, born wearing the finest of silks, learning to pilot wood-sided speedboats before they can walk. Their names will be Giancarlo and Abbondanza, Castafiore and Bertolucci. They will know no common ground, their feet only touching the crystal snows of Gstaad, the exotic sands of Naxos and Lampedusa. They will go to a Swiss boarding school so exclusive that even the students haven’t heard of it. They will see private jets and just think “jet.” They will see regular-sized bottles of champagne and ask why they’re so small. They will forever be sea-legged from standing on yachts. These are going to be some fine children, is what I’m saying. Real high-class, top-of-the-line kids.

And it all begins with a wedding, on an island in a lake. This Saturday. Oh what a life is about to begin.Tanti auguri, belli ragazzi! Why didn’t you invite me??

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