Out of the Shadows

The beauty and emotional power behind Jinggay Serag's silhouettes

- MARIAN SAN PEDRO

Armed with a new fiery passion for creating, Serag joined several design competitions, including the MEGA Young Designers Competition, where she was a placer, as well as the reality TV show Project Runway Season 4 and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts Fashion Competition.

Architecture was a solid design foundation for Serag. It’s all about volume and contrast, together with structural and architectural shapes that complement the body. She saw the magic of how beautiful weaves, knit, and structured fabrics, when executed and manipulated, create volume, texture, and silhouette.

At the onset, Serag’s point of view was just to provide the market an option of highly feminized looks—simply, her perspective as a woman. Today, she still uses soft tailoring and volume to change body proportions and create different silhouettes. And now that she is in the academe, at the De La Salle College of Saint Benilde’s Fashion Design and Merchandising Department, Serag has the golden opportunity and responsibility to mold fashion’s future.

“I believe and teach a strong value proposition: A design or brand should have a commitment to a certain ethos, may it be sustainability, accessibility, inclusivity or diversity, and that it shall always be translated in both aspects,” Serag shares.

FASHION AS A RESPONSE

For Serag, design always starts with an idea, a curiosity. It may be influenced by art, movement, or something as organic as what’s happening in society now.