Collaborations between fashion designers and ready-to-wear retail brands have become useful strategies worldwide to attract a larger consumer market. In the Philippines, labels such as Folded and Hung utilize this symbiotic relationship not only for marketing but, more so, to raise the bar for the local fashion industry and to give consumers new style directions.

“I do think that designer collaborations with retail brands are beneficial to both the designer and the retail brand, as well as to the local retail scene,” allows Folded and Hung president Ronald Pineda. “It gives designer clothes a retail feel and it makes the designers’ clothes more accessible and, since they’re at retail price, more affordable.”

But, more important, designers, Pineda explains, benefit from collaborations in that they learn the business side of the trade more than the design aesthetics involved in fashion. “We want to help them translate their designs to sales by teaching them how to interpret the behavior of the consumers. We’re also giving them an opportunity to both tap into and influence a larger market by showcasing their designs in our stores so as not to limit their exposure to the occasional fashion runways.” As for retailers, Pineda says designer collaborations “help generate customer excitement over the brand” and that they “add more premium to the collection.”

In a country with no solid fashion infrastructure, designers  welcome the hard-nosed training involved in commercial production that such collaborations afford them.  Emerging young designer Jerome Lorico, who is fast gaining a reputation as an experimental minimalist, has been tapped, along with colleagues Eric Delos Santos, M Barretto, and Marlon Rivera to design various collections this season. He says working with Folded and Hung has given him new skills and insights into the trade. “At the end of the day, you have to make sure that your clothes are selling, too,” he explains. “I have nothing against designers who are artistically oriented toward edgy pieces and the avant garde aesthetic, because I’m also a fan of those, but for designers to grow and develop, they have to make sure to have something in them that would continuously support their craft and that takes into account the receptiveness of the audience. That basically means being able to sell and turn your art into something that can be marketed.”

For the Folded and Hung collaboration, designers have to follow the brand’s concept or theme for the collection, bearing in mind to keep brand identity intact. It’s an instructive creative process on both sides. “Having designers on board gives us additional inputs, ideas and design temperaments but we make it a point to make our ideas and theirs meet to reach a compromise in terms of the designs that we will bring to the market,” explains Pineda.

Lorico says that Pineda and his team are open to the designers’ suggestions and are sensitive enough to keep in mind the artistic temperaments involved.

“Folded and Hung never stops designers from sharing their views. There is unity and consistency because we have the same inspirations using the same scheme of colors. Our head designer, Robi Lolin, is supportive if we need some advice regarding certain designs, styles, fabrics... it’s more of a team effort,” adds Eric Delos Santos.

The result of the synergy is a collection intended for the Filipino who is secure of his or her best assets and one “who lives life to the fullest and who believes in endless possibilities.”

As with most RTW, the pieces are designed to complement each other. Pineda elaborates that “the idea is to urge customers to pair items with other items ... that every piece can go along with another piece.” Layering is also encouraged, he says.

 Expect a wide array of versatile tops and bottoms made in knits and lightweight fabrics such as cotton, lace, and wool playing along with studs, sequins, zippers, among others. The color palette revolves around neutral and dark colors such as white, beige, black, gray, camel and purple.

Womenswear  will  feature shirts that can go from day to night. Delos Santos’s current take comes in black, sequined cotton shirts that can be accessorized and arranged in a multitude of styles along with shorts and pants. There are also cutout, cotton dresses and dresses made with mesh and lace.

For  menswear, Barretto has “elevated” streetwear “by using high-density cotton for polo shirts, cotton twills for pants and hints of denim for blazers.” Lorico, on the other hand, was inspired by “the fusion of rural and urban elements” as hinted by the lifestyle of nocturnal animals. The result is a set of day wear that is more relaxed and a set of evening gear that is more formal and sophisticated. Lorico used light materials such as cotton, light wools and denim matched with “experimentation and fabric manipulation” to get the look and feel right.