Former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos is launching the own fashion jewellery collection. Marcos, the flamboyant widow of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, is famed for her extravagant and excessive lifestyle, which included owning 3000 pairs of shoes, the alleged world’s largest gem collection and five-million dollar shopping sprees to New York and Italy.
The Imelda collection, a made for-the-masses line based on her own jewellery and closet, also features trainers, accessories and clothes. The line is aimed at a younger generation, not familiar with the extravagances of the Marcos family. The line will be as glitzy as its designer, however at a fraction of the price of her originals.
Imelda dismisses criticisms of her extravagance, saying it was her “duty” to be a star for the poor. “You have to be some kind of light, a star to give them guidelines,” she once said. She is adamant that there was nothing ill-gotten about her wealth. “My husband was rich before I met him,” dismissing claims that she raided the treasury, squeezed businesses and pilfered World Bank loans to finance their lifestyle.
Decades before hip hop artists came up with the term “bling bling” to describe gaudy ostentation, Filipinos used the phrase “Imeldific” to describe acts of excess, a term Marcos hopes will go down in the dictionary, according to the Associated Press. Imelda Marcos still faces hundreds of cases accusing her of illegally transferring millions of US dollars overseas, and was once charged with over 1000 years of imprisonment for corruption, which she successfully appealed.