roots DEEP

Twelve designers from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

- MARBBIE TAGABUCBA.

FASHION WAS NEVER JUST ABOUT CLOTHES. Yet, it is because of clothes that we’re all still here. Clothes protect. They liberate, they reinforce identities, and transform—but they can also alienate and pollute.

Coming of age in the era of globalization and stepping up to the task amid the blaze of climate change, it’s as if to be a designer today, you have to save the world. For this new generation of Filipino designers, there’s no other way around it.

While those before them paved the path to the fashion capitals of the world, these 12 designers took root deep, to grow. They create striking pieces and construct technically sound clothes, that is a given. As an archipelago divided by water and terrain, once driven further apart by industrialization and its consequences, their visions serve as bridges to rediscover our roots.

They lead conversations, shifting mindsets away from consumerism-driven homogeneity and excess. They are dismantling oppressive social constructs and whipping up the possibilities by giving them a form. They champion our own kind of beauty.

From indigenous communities and their wearable heritage to the distinctly Filipino silhouettes shaped by our shared experiences, these are at the heart of this new chapter of Philippine fashion. This is a glimpse of the world these 12 designers are creating from across the Philippine islands.

ELLIS CO OF. ARCHIVES 
Manila and Bicol