HEADS turned at Casa Buenas as Filipino fashion designer Jor-El Espina unveiled his latest designs for ready-to-wear pieces, all made from local fabrics and boasting art-deco elements.
The collection is meant to kick off a series of pocket celebrations that will lead up to his 20th anniversary in the fashion business next year. Some of the pieces will be showcased in the main show scheduled for May of 2025.
The show, Adaptation: 20 years of design, filled the restaurant space with fashion personalities, well-known industry clients, and the designer’s friends and family, some of whom came all the way from Iloilo.
Mr. Espina grew up in that province and opened an atelier there in the mid-2000s. His Iloilo clientele consisted mainly of relatives and their friends.
Notably, the bespoke evening wear he designed at the time already incorporated local fabrics such as piña, abaca, and hablon — way before many Filipino designers made the switch from imported to local.
The collection celebrates these origins. At the preview BusinessWorld attended, the runway became a colorful homage to locally made tops, tapis, and cover-ups that adorned the models’ bodies in distinctly modern silhouettes.
Many designs featured mother of pearl, giving the pieces a smooth and crystalline quality, as well as intricate beadwork for a classic feel.
This unique take on Philippine artistry woven into contemporary designs is pretty much Mr. Espina’s claim to fame. In 2017, the artisanal trade fair ArteFino saw his signature bomber jacket-barong hybrid, the Bomberong jacket, garner widespread attention.
The fair’s 2024 edition, slated for Aug. 22 to 25, will once again have a showcase — this time of the art deco-inspired, Filipino fabric pieces in the newly unveiled collection.
“I actually don’t design entire looks. I design piece by piece, per skirt or top, and then make a look after I complete it,” Mr. Espina told BusinessWorld after the preview. “My direction is retail with a designer touch, so people can buy my pieces off the rack and pair it with others.”
As for how he incorporates local fabrics into modern styles, he revealed that his approach is genderless: “I have a diverse set of clients. There are male clients who want to wear tapis; there are female clients who want to wear barong-like tops for men. I design for all genders and I design for myself.”
He added that using a wide range of materials, from piña and hablon to mother of pearl, is an enjoyable challenge.
“I like to create things that are unusual out of them, like a modern silhouette, some beadwork, and different techniques and mixtures of fabric,” he said.
With access to online resources, beautiful materials, and talented artisans that have emerged in the wake of the “love local” movement, it is impossible not to treat fashion design as a continuous learning process. For Mr. Espina, there is a feeling of “being very new to the industry every single day.”
“I still want to learn more. I want to learn from other artists and from my clientele. They are my inspiration for everything.” — Brontë H. Lacsamana
