MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Eight Filipino fashion brands—Bagasao, Feanne, HA.MÜ, J Makitalo, Jill Lao, Kelvin Morales, Lorico, and Neil Felipp—will debut new collections, which sprung from a pioneering fashion mentorship program, in a three-day showroom exhibition in Lifork Harajuku in Tokyo, Japan. From July 7 to 9, communication-solutions firm H3O Fashion Bureau and LIT Fashion Consultancy will present the designs to Japanese buyers, press, and influencers.
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The showroom exhibition is the culmination of PHxTokyo where market specialists Jason Lee Coates and Hirohito Suzuki of H3O Fashion Bureau and Tetta Ortiz-Mattera of LIT Fashion Consultancy equipped the eight participating designers with essential skills that spanned marketing, branding, and the rudiments of Japanese retailing. Spearheaded by the PHxFashion Group and the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM), PHx Tokyo is an eight-month program that, due to the pandemic, was conducted through digital means.
“Alongside aesthetic, of course, there was always the commercial component that they had to consider. Under the watchful and expert eye of Jason, Hiro, and Tetta, our PHx Tokyo designers were also able to tailor their sartorial voices for the discerning Japanese market,” CITEM Executive Director Pauline Suaco-Juan shared.
Coates explained that while the Japanese fashion industry, which accounts for billions of US dollars in sales annually, is one of the best platforms in the world for a young brand to launch, it also proves to be inscrutable and impenetrable. “Japanese buyers are always fascinated to look at new brands. So hopefully we can have that knowledge with respect to quality, with respect to cut and fit, with respect to fabrications and pricing,” he remarked.
“They know their design aesthetic, their market. But we need to pivot and make them understand that what they know in the Philippines does not necessarily apply to the Japanese market. So the mentoring program addresses that,” Ortiz-Matera said of the mentoring sessions. “The designers we are working with are very receptive. They acknowledge that what they already know is not the end-all and be-all of fashion. And there’s also the mutual respect between us and designers,” she added.
Feanne, one of the mentees of the program, said that PHx Tokyo arrived at an ideal point in her career. “Having been self-taught and self-directed for so many years, I feel that structured guidance from industry veterans could help me take my creative career to the next level,” she said.
PHxTokyo was developed from a 2019 iteration of the PHxFashion Conference, an initiative by Seph Bagasao, Esme Palaganas, and Trickie Lopa in coordination with the Philippine Trade Training Center (PTTC) to spark conversations on how the Philippine fashion industry could move forward. The conference in 2019 featured a talk by H3O and a portfolio review by Coates, Suzuki, and Ortiz-Matera, where they also saw the potential of Philippine fashion designers’ sensibilities to appeal to the Japanese market.
Following an introduction of the program and its participants in the October 2020 launch of FAME+, PHx Tokyo commenced in November, with one-on-one sessions with designers and a different topic every month until June 2021. To date, the PHx Tokyo designers have produced a 292-strong and Japanese market-ready collection of apparel and accessories.
All PHx Tokyo brands are also housed on FAME+, CITEM’s digital platform for the country’s home, fashion, and lifestyle (HFL) sectors.
