On Day 2 (September 20) of BENCH Fashion Week Holiday 2025, most of the designers were making their first appearance in this seasonal runway showcase, though they had been honing their craft for years. Jaggy Glarino, however, was the lone seasoned name in the line-up.
Having shown on other BENCH platforms before, the 2017 BENCH Fashion Awards winner returned with a 31-piece collection that fused childhood memory, street grit, and cultural codes into a raw, campy image of the urban Filipino.
The story began with a haunting tableau: a young man under a tulle net, with a maternal figure outside walking ahead of him. He wore a floral suit crafted from vintage tablecloths embroidered with cross-stitched flowers. It was a direct reference to Jaggy Glarino’s childhood—an innocent boy under the kulambo (mosquito net), with his grandmother keeping watch outside. Then the mood shifted. The air filled with cacophonous sounds and images of Manila’s urban madness.
“I’m tapping into different nostalgic Filipino codes,” Glarino explained. “I sit down with my photo album and look at the memories, the codes in there, and I use them as codes for the brand (Jaggy). Before, I’d done collections that felt Japanese or French. Now I’m arriving at something that can be influenced by Western fashion, but still feels like home.”
Call it Urban Pinoy with an edge.
The music carried the same sentiment—nostalgic notes from the ’60s radio soap, Ito ang Inyong Tiya Dely, with the voice of Dely Magpayo, the legendary radio host. “I’m really digging into my history, my family album,” he said. “People resonate with authenticity. Their kumot (blanket) is my kumot. We’ve all had those nights under the same blanket, the same mosquito net. My lola would even sleep outside the kulambo so I wouldn’t get bitten by mosquitoes, choosing to be bitten herself rather than let her grandson suffer. That’s what the opening look was about.”
From there, the narrative moved to culture shock: a young man entering the city and confronting its chaos. Glarino turned everyday Filipino images into high fashion. Dresses took cues from sando bags—the jumbo striped plastic carriers used by wholesalers—transformed into silk pieces with armholes and wire-extended shoulders.
‘The storyline is really about a person with one bus ticket to the metro, no turning back. I have a big dream, so I need big pockets to carry it in’
A male model appeared in a blazer and puffy bloomers with exaggerated cargo pockets, also made from vintage cross-stitched tablecloths. It was another memory—this time of a gay boy playing dress-up in the matronly silhouette of a bloomer skirt.
More wide pants and even wider pockets carried the theme forward. “I want to play with proportions,” Glarino said. “This is my take: I don’t have a bag, so I’ll carry everything with me. The storyline is really about a person with one bus ticket to the metro, no turning back. It’s either I make it or break it. I have a big dream, so I need big pockets to carry it in.”
Then came the shock of the city. The ubiquitous galvanized iron sheets that patchwork Manila’s shanties appeared on the runway through fabric manipulation and braiding techniques sprayed with metallic finish, catching the light like shards of metal. To mimic the corrugated effect, pleated gold cords were distressed and air-sprayed, then fashioned into tops and skirts. On one female model, the treatment lent the outfit the weight of body armor, a shield fashioned from the same material that shelters the poor.
The collection also referenced the giant black trash bags that dot the city streets. A male model wore very loose black pants in “trash-bag” fabric, paired with a woven top that recalled the mats and rags peddled by sidewalk vendors. “We wanted to combine natural elements like basketry with something very industrial,” Glarino said.
Urban clutter continued to appear as motifs. Electric posts and TV antennas were carried by a male model in bloomers with large drawstring pockets. Denim, the unofficial Pinoy uniform, was deconstructed and reworked: two-way jackets made of Japanese denim, with zippers that opened from both top and bottom, were layered on overskirts over extra-loose slacks.
The chaos of Manila’s visual noise surfaced in loud prints. One male model wore a wild suit while carrying a placard that read “Actually bawal umihi dito (don’t pee here),” like the hand-painted warnings nailed to concrete walls. The prints had the kitschy quality of mantels or linoleum floors in ramshackle houses, splashed across gowns for a female model and a suit for a man, turning domestic nostalgia into a kind of street spectacle.
More weaving techniques appeared, each one more intricate than the last. Glarino, who first popularized solihiya weaving in fashion, has watched as the technique was adopted by other designers. But instead of resting on that achievement, he pushed the process into more challenging terrain. “Let’s make it more difficult,” he said. “Let’s add more strips, the kinds that are harder to invert.”
He experimented with unruly fabrics such as lamé and delicate weaves, whose loose structures resist order. One female model appeared in a deceptively simple mesh-woven lamé gown. In fact, it went through laborious process: soaked, sewn, reversed, then painstakingly inverted by hand. The strips were ironed flat so they wouldn’t curl, then braided into place like basketry. The same treatment gave form to a bandeau with metallic copper finish.
Another piece, a vest in corrugated lamé, echoed the rippling surfaces of tin sheets but softened into pliable, wearable form. Basketry reappeared in a plant fiber-like material woven in black and white. Each strip was inverted, then hand-woven one by one, until it resembled the painstaking bias weave of mats and street baskets sold by hawkers.
Crochet also found its place in the collection. A model emerged in hand-crochet stretch piece worked from copper threads, its sheen recalling the wire and metal often seen in Manila’s streets. What could have been rough or makeshift was instead transformed into something sleek, showing how Glarino mines the grit of the city and turns it into wearable polish.
With rainy season in mind, Glarino recast the kapote into a raincoat plastered with city advertisements, a sly wink at Manila’s flooded streets. He followed it with the vakul, the traditional Ivatan headdress and rain gear from Batanes. “There’s flood in the Philippines,” he said. “If I’m an Ivatan going to the city, I have to wade through it. This is what I’d wear in a storm back home, but now it’s for the metro. It’s about mixing city codes with cultural codes, absorbing both and turning them into something you can’t quite pin down.”
His instinct is always to provoke. “I like to trigger people with the familiar,” he explained, “and at the same time shock them by elevating those elements into a fashion statement.”
Asked how Bench has helped him, Glarino replied, “Bench Fashion Week is huge. They support your vision and make it happen. Everyone else was doing 15 looks, I did 31—and they let me. Big, crazy ideas? Go for it, they’ll give you the platform. The number of models, the showmanship, the lighting, the music curated by director Robbie Carmona—I could never stage something like this on my own.”
