Tina Maristela-Ocampo Is Gracing Magazines Again After Nearly 40 Years
After a forty-year pause, Tina Maristela-Ocampo is naturally back to modeling again. But her return is less a “comeback,” and more a meditation on gracefully aging.
It was seemingly almost inevitable that Tina Maristela-Ocampo would step in front of the camera again. It wasn’t so much a comeback as it was an arrival long in waiting, one that time, in its sweetness, simply delayed.
On set, her presence is immediate, yet unforced. With each pose, you would never think she’d been away for nearly 40 years. Her actions are deliberate, her expressions poised, her grace intact. Watching her work feels like witnessing a butterfly flutter back to its garden: She belongs there.
“I don’t know what happened,” Tina says with a small laugh, still half in disbelief. “In a month’s time, I did four shoots, different magazines, and I’m amazed, how come I’m already back?” She pauses, smiling. “I feel like I’m going back full circle, and it’s a nice feeling that I’m able to, again, feel that passion, that lost passion.”
From runway to legacy
Tina was only 18 when she became a professional model, one of the faces that defined Manila’s fashion scene in the late ’70s and ’80s. She remembers being entrusted with the finale gown, the wedding dress that closed a show, an honor she did not take lightly.
“Those things are very precious to me, special to me,” she recalls. “It helped me build my confidence. Being at [such an] impressionable age, I openly faced it and made myself a better model until I retired. And I think I earned that.”
Her career was never just about wearing clothes. In 1987, she co-founded the Professional Models Association of the Philippines (PMAP), the first of its kind in Asia. “As a union we are vocal with our rights, as an association, we have a vision of what we want to become in the future,” she once stated. PMAP became an advocacy as much as an organization: it sought to uplift Filipino models at a time when their craft was often undermined.
By 1989, Tina retired from modeling, but she hardly disappeared. She married Ricco Ocampo, raised four children, and together with her husband, built multiple ventures: from retail concepts like Sari-Sari Store, i2i New York, and Anonymous, to her luxury evening bag line Celestina Maynila in New York, which brought Filipino craftsmanship to global fashion.
Behind the camera
The Tina people meet away from the spotlights, however, is not someone you would expect from an untouchable fashion icon of the ’80s. Off-camera, she is gentle, smiley, nurturing, elegant without effort. There is no diva energy about her, no intimidating air that keeps people at arm’s length.
She laughs easily, greets everyone with warmth. “I love smiling,” she says. “I practice my smile six to ten times a day. I go down and say, hello, guard. Good morning. Hello, driver. Good morning. Hello, everyone,” she demonstrates. For her, it’s a practice. “If you practice smiling every day, then that’s a natural facelift.”
Her kindness radiates like an aura, the kind you feel unmistakably before a word is spoken. “People can feel you if you’re a bad person or if you’re always angry,” she reflects. “But if you’re a peaceful person, if you’re graceful and you’re kind, I think even without speaking, they feel that.”
Notes on aging and beauty
With time, Tina’s idea of beauty has evolved from the purely physical to something deeper, shaped by experience, kindness, and the grace of embracing age.
“When I was younger, surrounded by beautiful clothes and beautiful people, I thought beauty was very physical and very material,” Tina reflects. But life redefined that definition. By her 50s, she says, “I met a lot of people who were beautiful, but unfortunately, not so beautiful inside. That changed my perspective. I started to put that beauty inside me. It’s more inward, it’s more experiential. I try to make myself the best I could be, not only for myself, but maybe for the world.”
Now, at 63, she has come to see aging not as something to resist, but as a gift. “Aging is a process,” she says matter-of-factly. And the physical changes that come with aging? “I embrace it because it’s inevitable. You don’t have to resist aging.”
Every morning she faces the mirror, aware of the new changes time brings. “Every day I see myself in front of the mirror, I find something else that’s alien from last night,” she says with a laugh. “[But] I don’t resist it anymore,” she reiterates
Rituals of grace
Her days are anchored in mindfulness. Each morning begins with prayer, meditation, and deep breathing exercises, sometimes guided by Dr. Joe Dispenza, or podcasts by Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty. “I make sure that I’m not stressed by so much chaos around me,” she says. “If something comes against me, or a criticism, I’ve already adjusted myself in a way that I know how to react, how to stay calm.”
Her skin care and wellness routines are equally intentional: weight training to build strength, stretching to stay lean and flexible, hydration she admits doesn’t come naturally but insists on, and skin care that adapts with her needs. She never sleeps with makeup on, a discipline she says she owes to her longtime friend and makeup artist Henri Calayag.
Even in beauty, she has learned the gentler way. “Before, they [would erase] my whole [face],” she laughs, remembering the makeup chairs of the ’80s. “Now, I discovered from Lala Flores that all you need is your ring finger, just keep on tapping concealer lightly on the creases.”
A full circle moment
What does it mean to model again after nearly four decades away? For Tina, it’s not about reclaiming youth, but embracing presence. “The space I’m revolving in now is no longer the beauty world or the fashion world,” she says. “But because I was a model before, I was able to also acquire a lot of good taste, a lot of fashion sense, a lot of beauty skills to make myself really more like knowing how to take care of myself.”
Her return to the spotlight is not an act of resistance against time, but a meditation on its gifts. She carries the memories of the past forward, not as anchors but as threads woven into her life’s larger tapestry.
“That will not get lost in my journey, even after 63 years old. It stays in my heart, and it will help me go through the next part of my journey in life,” she continues.
Art direction by Nicole Almero. Beauty direction by Trina Epilepsia Boutain. Modeled by Tina Maristela-Ocampo. Special thanks to Henri Calayag. Makeup by Lala Flores. Hair by Cats del Rosario. Styling by Geno Karlo Espidol and Jia Torrato of Qurator. Nails by New Lounge. Jewelry by Bvlgari. Special thanks to Jesha Abad. Photographer’s team: John Phillip Nicdao, Villie James Bautista, Arsan Sulser Hofileña, Crisaldo Soco. Hairstylist’s assistant: Marj Cabarrios.
