What’s in and what’s out in 2024?
Circularity, collaboration and kindness are the way to go in the New Year—and every year, really. Part forecast, part wish-list, part teaser, we asked the very creatives behind what makes our industry so exciting today about what’s to come in 2024. Happy New Year!
Fed Pua
Owner and creative director of It’s Vintage (195 Salcedo Street, Legazpi Village, Makati) and Atomic “What’s in?
- Vintage, thrifting and secondhand
- Rider boots in Manila
- Supporting small, independent businesses
- Reworked jewelry
- Sheer everything
What’s out?
- Fast fashion
- Uncomfortable clothing
- Athleisure outside the gym
- Apathy.
SLO Lopez
Makeup artist and creative makeup visionary at Issy
I think keeping skin more natural is still going to be big in the coming year, maybe a slightly more natural matte version vs. the glassy skin that’s taken over in recent years. I also think that the natural clean makeup will be integrated with soft feminine touches like bows and washes of pink and peach. I think we will also see more hybrid skincare-makeup or makeup with actives in as well.
Jodinand Aguillon
Founder of Glorious Dias (First United Building, Escolta Street, Manila)
For 2024, more designers and brands will continue shifting towards circular fashion practices. More clothes that make us feel good. What’s out? Anything goes!
Joan Cantemprate
One-half of design boutique Guava Sketches (3/F, Greenbelt 5), pictured with her dog Pascal
I see a trend wIth designers in general, including fashion and beauty, going for more natural, genderless designs and more thought out in sizing. A piece can fit from XS to L. Sustainability is getting stronger. Designers are minding more of the waste contributed by fast/mass production. As for colors, I think designers are also moving towards the bright and fun side—pastels, neons, tartans.
Esme Palaganas
Designer and one-third of PHx Fashion Group (2/F, Greenbelt 5)
What’s in? With the world on a TikTok speed of virality, what I will observe as “in” for the coming year can be passé by the next week. So here’s an attempt: textured minimalism. Everyone went ‘quiet luxury’ this past year, now we might see minimalism with a little extra hint of pizazz like textures seen on designers such as London-based Standing Ground and Filipino designer Renz Reyes. 2024 is going to be a beautiful sweet middle ground, a start of that slow pendulum swing back again to maximalism and I’m all here for the surprises that comes with it.
What’s out: being out of touch, be it in fashion campaigns, practices or themes. We are living in a highly sensitive and connected world; some actions, words and thoughts have to be considered especially when things can be published in seconds. High sensitivity can be a creative’s caveat that could’ve made New York Times’ Cathy Horyn state that there is a “feeling of sameness, that things are stuck in place” in fashion now. Nevertheless, customers are smarter than ever before, and they won’t tolerate insensitivity. Won’t, can’t, shan’t.
Madge Reyes
Founding director of Fifth Wall Fest
In: Capri pants! Romanticizing your life.
Out: Y2K. I’m tired of the whole copy-and-paste aesthetic. Not setting boundaries.
Jude Macasinag
Fashion designer
The fashion and creative community in the Philippines is in a slow but steady start of retail advancement which includes younger and more experimental brands, so I’d expect to see more venturing into this type of commercial model. More Gen Z designers will emerge, and hopefully they/we will be able to pave their/our own identities beyond the traditional image and practices of a Filipino fashion designer. I don’t think that this persona of a “celebrity fashion designer” is as relevant as it seemed to be, and I hope that the newer generations of designers focus more on the quality of the output more than their status in the social scene and the people they dress. I expect to see a more inclusive approach towards casting models and how we view the ideals of beauty beyond our colonized preconceptions. I want to see a stronger merging of fashion with other creative forms as well, from film to dance to performance.
I want our fashion media and publications to tap beyond their creative social circles and to put more effort into looking for talent, often hidden and hindered by the lack of accessibility to be championed. I hope we stop using AI-generated imagery, which takes jobs from our large available pool of creatives, for which I thus also highly expect more funding for the creative industry.
I am also hoping to see a less-literal approach to research and design (i.e. the notion of “X dress is in color blue because it represents the Philippine waters” feels highly dated) and that more designers will take a more abstract or anthropological approach to Philippine fashion, in which Philippine fashion can actually be regarded as a study of our lives, as a recording of our contemporary culture, and as a lens into the social fabric of the country beyond just constant rehashing of tokenized cultural symbolism. Philippine fashion is getting more and more global, so it’s important that in 2024 it’s no longer just about making pretty dresses.
