From manufacturing the world’s fast fashion to producing
its own high-end couture, Cebu’s style evolution is only just beginning.

This past February, lifestyle writer and fashion stylist Stephanie Zubiri and I spent a handful of days in Cebu, the Philippines’ “Queen City of the South”, photographing the designs of some of the country’s leading fashion creatives.  As Stephanie expounds in our April 2019 SilkAir Silkwinds magazine feature, “as you travel across the sprawling downtown, inching your way through heavy traffic past weathered warehouses and fading monuments, it’s hard to believe Cebu City’s reputation as a design-centric town.  However [Cebu] is now home to some of the Philippines’ leading creatives.  Decades of manufacturing for the world’s biggest furniture and fashion labels have given Cebu a unique advantage — an extremely skilled and highly

professional workforce.  Cebu is now moving away from fabrication for others to creating their own unique designs that rival the overseas labels that once employed them.  The city, and the surrounding ocean that makes Cebu a popular resort destination, clearly have an influence on these designs.”  To learn more, Stephanie spoke to four leading designers —  Kiko Kintanar, Hanz Coquilla, Arcy Gayatin and Jun Escario — about how the city inspires their aesthetic and what makes Cebu a centre for Filipino fashion.

Read the interviews in this month’s SilkAir Silkwinds fashion feature below.  And click here to browse the entire destination fashion shoot, including outtakes that did not appear in the magazine.