A study in becoming
There is privilege in choice—in being able to define who you are, rather than simply accept who you are told to be. For women, that privilege is hard-won and still uneven. That is what celebrating Women’s Month each year is all about. And where this privilege exists, it carries responsibility: to shape an identity is not only to claim space for yourself, but to widen it for others.
At Rustan’s Shangri-La, that act of making takes physical form. The familiar language of beauty—products, light, reflection—is reconfigured into something more introspective as three Filipina creatives interpret “I Create, Therefore I Am” through photography, movement and textile.
At Rustan’s Beauty Source’s seventh GRLPWR celebration, beauty is not a finished image but a process—an accumulation of memory, culture and becoming. The space does not dictate what femininity should look like; it holds space for what it already is, in all its contradictions.
Filipina photographer Shaira Luna returns us to the earnest beginnings of selfhood. In “Days Are Long (2015),” girlhood unfolds in fragments: children pressed close in whispered confidences, small hands experimenting with adornment, the unselfconscious play that precedes awareness. There is tenderness here, but also recognition—that identity often takes root long before we have the language to name it.
For multidisciplinary movement artist Alison Black, movement becomes a way of unlearning. Her dance film resists the rigidity of perfection, choosing instead to dwell in presence. The body softens, then strengthens, then yields again—an articulation of femininity that is neither fixed nor performed for approval. It feels lived-in, reclaimed.
In “Kundiman” on silk, artist and designer Martina Lebron translates longing into texture. Sampaguita blooms drift across a structured grid, echoing the rhythm of a love song carried through generations. It is romance, but also memory—heritage rendered wearable, intimate, and close to the skin.
The experience unfolds less like a retail space and more like a gallery of selves. Monolithic pillars frame sightlines that draw you inward. A photo wall invites you to step into its oversized frame, not as subject but as composition—an acknowledgment that you, too, are part of this ongoing act of creation. Even the act of making—whether in small gestures like trying on a bold lip combination or a new fragrance that’s outside your usual go-to—becomes a way to reconnect with something instinctive, something unpolished and true.
Because to create is not simply to produce. It is to remember, to question, to assert. It is to take what has been handed down and decide what remains, what transforms, and what is entirely your own. In a space that reflects you back to yourself, the question lingers: Woman, how do you create the truest version of who you are?
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Until May 31, every P5,000 purchase at Rustan’s Beauty Source entitles Beauty Addict members to one e-raffle entry for a four-day, three-night stay for two at a five-star luxury hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, inclusive of round-trip business-class flights. Learn more at: https://rstns.shop/GRLPWR2026-BARaffle
Until March 31, Beauty Addict members can continue the GRLPWR celebrations by earning 5× Beauty Addict points on purchases of P1,000 or more at Rustan’s Beauty Source.
Receive the sleek Umbra Wavy Jewelry Organizer with a minimum spend of P25,000 at Rustan’s Beauty Source until April 30.
Shop at a Rustan’s near you, online at Rustans.com, or via a Personal Shopper at 0917-111-1952. For updates and announcements, follow @RustansBeautySource on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and @rustansph on Instagram and Facebook.
