Day 2 of Bench Fashion Week 2025 Holiday Collection last September 20 at Space, One Ayala, signaled a generational shift, with designers treating Filipiniana not as relic, but as raw material to bend, splice and rewire.
Bree Esplanada staged a gothic fantasy, HA.MÜ turned Pinoy school elements into cheeky streetwear with HUMAN, and Daryl Maat threw a full-blown birthday party on the runway.
The results were playful, subversive and distinctly modern, showing how Filipiniana can thrive inside everyday imagination.
HA.MÜ X HUMAN
Alumni of the fashion department of De La Salle–College of Saint Benilde, Abraham “Ham” Guardian and Filipino-Japanese Mamuro “Mamu” Oki form HA.MÜ, a quirky fashion label whose name is a portmanteau of their nicknames.
Abraham “Ham” Guardian and Mamuro “Mamu” Oki
Abraham “Ham” Guardian and Mamuro “Mamu” Oki with Ben Chan
Guardian described HA.MÜ’s aesthetic as both chaos and control, a mash-up of maximalism and minimalism. The label blurs gender lines, pokes fun at fashion’s tendency to be too serious, and embraces a childlike sense of freedom—creating without limits.
For their first collection for HUMAN streetwear brand, they fused HA.MÜ’s DNA with HUMAN’s familiar silhouettes. Sweatshirts and pants were splashed with HA.MÜ’s signature fried-egg prints, topped with bold topstitching for texture. Embroidered flowers—another calling card of the duo—sprouted across shirts and denim skirts. Graphic men’s shirts featured caricatures: one of a winking Guardian holding two flowers, another of Oki himself.
Even the logos got playful. The HA.MÜ x HUMAN collab logo appeared as scrambled letters in a checkered frame, while a striped shirt carried a bold red “H” across the back. Denim caps bloomed with embroidered poppies while other petals were sewn on like floppy ears. Other flowers doubled as skirt pockets. One look paired a frothy HA.MÜ tulle-and-organza dauphine petticoat with a simple HUMAN t-shirt.
School references ran throughout. Quilted sashes bore embroidery of watchful eyes and HA.MÜ’s signature crown. White shirts were patched with floral appliqués and edged with black embroidery in the duo’s patterns. Flowers were stitched in stripes and polka dots. Oversized ribboned medals were flipped as cheeky badges of honor, with titles such as “Best HA.MÜ” and “Best Human.”
One took to a surreal extreme: Guardian described a giant medallion worn slung from behind, like “Christ carrying the Crucifix,” except this one smiled, with a trailing ribbon that read “Best HA.MÜ.”
Gender play was another recurring thread, obvious in menswear. For the runway, a pair of HUMAN jeans was deconstructed into an apron layered over a blue tiered organza skirt. Denim shorts came with frilly tiers, styled with an androgynous button-down shirt bursting with appliqué flowers. One male model wore a black T-shirt stamped with the collaborative logo with a matching skirt in black with godets of denim, tulle, and zippers, swishing as he walked.
“It’s playful design that can be worn by all ages,” Guardian said.
BREE ESPLANADA
Bree Esplanada, an alumnus of the Fashion Institute of the Philippines in Cebu, was a finalist in Ternocon 2023 and has dressed celebrities like Anne Curtis-Smith. His BFW collection, Phantasmagoria, dives straight into fantasy.
Bree Esplanada
Bree Esplanada with Ben Chan
Known for his macabre illustrations in stark black and white, Esplanada created digital artworks of death such as a skeleton gazing at the sun, dragonflies (his favorite insect), a tarot card, and even a line from Dante’s Inferno.
The showstoppers were floral cutouts soldered into sculptural blooms, then pieced together into a dress, skirt, skimpy terno top, corsage, and exaggerated blazer sleeves.
Esplanada’s Filipiniana veered deliciously dark. A cropped white blouse with butterfly sleeves bloomed with black dahlias, paired with a dahlia skirt. A white terno revealed skeletal rib cutouts and callado embroidery, matched with a skirt printed with dead anime children in barong. Menswear joined in: A men’s jusi tunic with extended sleeves was printed with ravens, black butterflies, arrows, and a crescent moon.
Other looks leaned into the uncanny. A crisp white suit, digitally printed with dragonflies, clouds, black birds, and a “Third Eve,” came with an oversized black-dahlia corsage. One black shirt featured skeleton-printed sleeves under a sleeveless vest, styled with a skeleton of a tilapia necktie made from fabric scraps.
The finale was pure gothic romance: a long coat depicting skeletons of a couple in an embrace, the male figure in a white long-sleeved shirt patterned with macabre prints, the female marked by black terno sleeves. “That’s the traditional proportion we learned in the Ternocon workshop,” Esplanada explained.
His inspiration has always leaned toward the dark. “When I was growing up, I got hooked on horror movies,” he said. “And when I discovered Tim Burton, I fell in love with the whole concept of dark fashion, dark fantasy. But I’m not depressed, ha! I just like dark, creepy things for some reason. It’s a weird fascination.”
DARYL MAAT
Daryl Maat had never experienced the thrill of a school birthday party, so he staged it vicariously through his latest collection—a cheeky interpretation of Filipiniana. Drawing from childhood nostalgia, he turned inabel and silk cocoon into a full-blown celebration, complete with loot bags, party hats, and even school-supply trinkets. A stylist by training, Maat knew how to pull a total look, down to the tiniest detail, much like a child obsessing over a perfectly set party table.
Daryl Maat
Daryl Maat with Ben Chan
He favored inabel for its tactile quality and silk cocoon for its luminous finish, transforming both into whimsical pieces that looked like parlor games stitched into fashion. “Think sensory toys, but wearable,” he said.
Imagine the scene: a checkered inabel terno with a scalloped apron skirt, worn with red-and-white vertical striped socks and doodled platform shoes, like a birthday girl all dressed up for cake. A silk cocoon barong sparkled with colorful embroidery of childhood classics: the dangling pabitin, skewered hotdogs on pineapple, and frothy crystal ball drinks. An inabel shirt had pockets that recalled colorful alphabet blocks.
Menswear joined the party with equal flair. Culottes in binakol patterns came with bright yellow balloon-shaped pockets, mimicking loot bags. A polo barong resembled yellow pad paper, with Maat remarking, “We will let the audience imagine what they want to do with this.” Yellow scalloped shorts softened with ruffles were worn with a blue binakol shirt trimmed with scallops and pockets shaped like the roof, door, and fence of a house. A blue striped shirt-and-pants set embroidered with stars was topped with a crisp Peter Pan collar, a nod to children’s clothes from the 1920s. An inabel shirt had pockets that recalled colorful alphabet blocks. A formal barong top was embellished with an inabel kite and matched with a silk cocoon skirt embroidered with stars.
The playful spirit continued in a green jumpsuit embroidered with chalkboard doodles: “1 + 1,” a sun peeking from clouds, and a stick figure waving a flag. Brooches shaped like chalk sticks pinned the look together, while shoes painted with florals and suns gave the utilitarian cut a quirky counterpoint.
Other looks riffed on the party theme: a skirt inspired by banderitas strung across backyard, teddy bear shorts with plush pockets, ice cream embroidery on barong, and red-and-white and checkered green-and-white tablecloth skirts knotted into balloon shapes like the aftermath of parlor games. They are topped with cropped blouses with short, pleated butterfly sleeves
No Filipino party is complete without giveaways, and Maat made sure of it not just in pockets inspired by loot bags. The designer tied it all together with witty collaborations: knitted party hats and teddy bears by Knitting Expedition, candy-colored earrings and pencil charms from Tropic Picnic, and braided nylon belts and neckties from A to Z. Each detail drew applause not only for its whimsy, but for its total look—the finishing touches of a stylist-turned-designer who knows how to make play feel polished.
By the finale, the collection felt like stepping into a child’s birthday bash frozen in time, complete with loot bags, decorations, and playful nostalgia.
“I’ve been designing since 2016, but it was only last year that I launched the Daryl Maat brand,” he said. “Now I want to focus on barong and Filipino fabrics, and make them contemporary.”
Day 2 was capped with the collections of retail agenda-setters Cotton On, MLB and BENCH Workwear—the runway turning into a laboratory of ideas to mix-match, to layer, to dress down, to dress up, or to undress judiciously and with taste. Parading them were the country’s popular stars like Jameson Blake, David Licauco, Francine Diaz.
