slow LIFE

These women share what it means to be a SLOW FASHION brand today.

- TICIA ALMAZAN

In order to arrive at Holy Carabao Farm, visitors must abide by a detailed set of instructions. How it starts: Do not follow Waze. How it ends: Park outside. And enter on foot.

Contrary to what you might expect, what greets you immediately through the nondescript black gate isn't a vast grassland (although there is one), but rather an events place to the left, a school to the right, and a cafe straight ahead. Enter the former, called The Farm Shed, and you are welcomed by Hindy Weber, fashion designer and co-founder of Holy Carabao-a regenerative farm that offers classes, tours, and events centered around nutrition and biodiversity. It's "where nature thrives, and connections flourish" their website reads.

Inside, the usual flurry of a Vogue shoot is exchanged for a leisurely pace. It's siesta time when Jessica Choy Daez, Ariana Coronel Go, and twins Eya and Nana Uy-the co-owners of minimalist brand Apara-arrive, while womenswear designer Dona Lim and knitwear designer Ana la O' join them not long after. They meet each other for the first time, then gather around the center table for a meal.

Their late lunchtime topic of choice? Personal histories, recent undertakings, then eventually, the reason they came together in the first place: slow fashion.

The movement, which is often simplistically defined as the antithesis of fast fashion, was shaped in large part by the Slow Food Movement founded by Italian activist and author Carlo Petrini in 1986. Research professor and design activist Kate Fletcher essays its roots for The Ecologist in 2007: "Slow Food links pleasure and food with awareness and responsibility. It defends biodiversity in our food supply by opposing the standardization of taste, defends the need for consumer information and protects cultural identities tied to food."