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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-18/ramon-valera.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Ramon Valera" />
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(Ramon Valera)
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Valera finished his primary and secondary education at the <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/2843/today-in-philippine-history-june-16-1911-the-de-la-salle-brothers-opened-in-paco-manila-the-first-la-salle-school-in-the-country" class="news_link">De La Salle College</a>, but dropped out of college at Far Eastern University due to financial problems when his father died. Valera never had any formal training in fashion design, but he studied under Mina Roa, who made Ternos (formal gown) for the elite before World War II. Roa taught him European construction and draping techniques.
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Valera is said to have given the country its visual icon to the world via the Terno. 
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In the early 1940s, Valera produced a single piece of clothing from a four-piece ensemble consisting of a blouse, skirt, overskirt, and long scarf. He unified the components of the baro't saya into a single dress with exaggerated bell sleeves, cinched at the waist, grazing the ankle, and zipped up at the back. Using zipper in place of hooks was already a radical change for the country's elite then. Dropping the panuelo–the long folded scarf hanging down the chest, thus serving as the Filipina's gesture of modesty - from the entire ensemble became a bigger shock for the women then. Valera constructed the terno's butterfly sleeves, giving them a solid, built-in but hidden support. To the world, the butterfly sleeves became the terno's defining feature.
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Today in Filipino History, August 31, 1912, Ramon Valera, the first National Artist for fashion design, was born in Santa Cruz, Manila