Designers come out to play
Has fashion become too bland? Many fashion critics, editors, and consumers have been asking that question after many major fashion houses have emphasized wearable tailoring, neutral colors, commercial outerwear, and quiet luxury rather than dramatic concepts. After years of economic uncertainty, brands often prioritize pieces that can sell broadly rather than highly experimental runway statements.
Quiet luxury is still influential with its emphasis on fabric, cut, and craftsmanship rather than visual spectacle. While elegant, it can appear too restrained if not downright boring compared to the maximalism of the 1980s, the theatricality of the 1990s, or the avant-garde experimentation of the 2000s.
Designers must have felt this, too. That’s why several of them pushed back against the season’s prevailing mood by bringing creativity, wit, and in case you’ve forgotten—fun.
God knows we can have some of that with the present crises in the economy and the political landscape. Our own designers bring a lot of those good vibes, channeling the Filipino’s predilection for humor and a fiesta spirit even during the most trying times.
At the Bench “Threads of Dreams” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum Manila, Jaggy Glarino has a lot of eye candy, mixing vivid colors and patterns of indigenous fabrics and Japanese silk brocades in gender-fluid designs—a joyous celebration of Filipino-Japanese friendship inspired by the unique cultural exchange in “Little Tokyo” at Mintal, Davao, in his native Mindanao.
The Carl Jan Cruz x Atomic World collab line is a pop-up of absolutely fun clothes and footwear featuring Cruz’s signature weaves and edgy tailoring intersecting with Atomic World’s streetwear sensibilities. Those platform sandals of multilayered flip flops alone are a scream and will bring you to fashion nirvana.
HA.MÜ, another independent Philippine designer brand known for its bold, whimsical, and gender-neutral aesthetic, plays with textured patchworks and upcycled, deconstructed designs that blur the lines between traditional wear and contemporary art with their “blob” pants, oversized puff sleeves, and sculptural 2D round shapes in clashing colors, distinct prints, and layers.
At the FW2026-27 runways, designers were also at play. In their second collection for Loewe, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez embraced their inner child with slip dresses rubberized like water balloons, shearling jackets that were like chichi poodles, scarves inflated around the face, and coat linings reminiscent of life rafts.
Daniel Roseberry always gives us a reason to smile with his out-of-this-world, surreal fantasies at Schiaparelli. How could you not with his version of tongue-in-cheek kitten heels with furry kitten faces? On the understated side but amusing, nevertheless, were the strips of cable knits on transparent tulle that appeared to be floating on the naked body.
Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee of Vaquera, in a homage to Rudi Gernreich’s 1964 breast-baring monokini, subverted a ladylike cropped jacket with a sculpted green pubic hair thong and thigh-high leather boots while their bridal suite was an abstract geometric take on the traditional.
Hodakova, who works in repurposed everyday materials, did a meditation on interior life through wearable home furnishings like “chair” dresses with hanging curved legs, one set framing the face, another enveloping the arms. Three models sat down on Persian rugs and walked off in a new dress, skirt, and cape.
Furnishings also figured in the debut collection of Daniel del Valle for Thevxlley called The Narcissist, employing all manner of materials from ceramics to glass or flowers to create surrealist sculptures for clothes: vases repurposed as tops, T-shirts made of discarded Victorian-era ceramic pipes, his mother’s wedding dress embellished with waxed flowers.
At Matières Fécales, the English heiress Daphne Guinness, who famously wore Alexander McQueen’s sky-high heelless platforms, was no match for their perilous footwear and had to be escorted off the runway twice, illustrating the significance of the collection’s title, “One Percent,” a dissection of elite codes and their ability to empower or leave powerless. In another ensemble, a model in a shredded Chanel-like suit loses her voice with a pearl-ball mouth gag.
Junya Watanabe was also pure satire in his upcycling of everything but the kitchen sink, incorporated into pieces that exude couture glamour, belying their components, which ran the gamut from gloves and snowboard binding to Mylar blankets, stuffed toys, and even knee-high leather boots for a cape. They were amusing yet artful assemblages with a dash of biting social commentary, showing how even if designers could be playful in poking fun, there can still be undertones that are deathly serious.
