PHx Fashion Group and Comme Ci’s Multi-Designer Showcase

Experimentations in Filipino fashion through jewelry, knitwear, and urban storytelling

Across Philippine fashion, designers are exploring new ground, working with heritage materials, hybrid techniques, and narratives that connect local histories with global currents. Still, for Filipino designers, this vibrant experimentation is not without hurdles, ranging from local production and logistics issues to the complexities of bringing concepts to market. 

Set against this backdrop, PHx Fashion Group and Comme Ci are presenting a multi-designer retail activation from 18 August to 18 November 2025 at Comme Ci, 2F Power Plant Mall in Makati City. The showcase brings together four practices spanning jewellery and textiles, each at a distinct stage of creative evolution.

Snapshots from the PHx Fashion Group and Comme Ci Showcase opening at Power Plant Mall, Makati. Images courtesy of PHx Fashion Group.

For contemporary Filipino designers, the boutique offers a space to engage audiences, trial ideas, and navigate the business of fashion. But it also extends beyond commerce, offering a space to highlight their experimentations in craft, materials and narrative, while nurturing a shared sense of community and dialogue.

Adam Pereyra

Adam Pereyra presents ‘World’, a collection of unique jewels inspired by his travels. He sees each piece as a memory captured in precious materials, grounding his practice in Filipino goldsmithing traditions such as the barter ring, once used as portable wealth across islands and trade routes. Each piece in his latest collection draws conceptually and materially from different sources, reworking traditional symbols, ancient forms, and historic currencies.

Adam Pereyra’s barter rings in silver. Image courtesy of Adam Pereyra.

Adam Pereyra’s gear bead quartz necklace. Photo by Colin Dancel. Image courtesy of Adam Pereyra.

Adam Pereyra’s forged coin pendants. Image courtesy of Adam Pereyra.

“The contrast of hard metal with woven thread creates a tension that feels both raw and refined,” Pereyra explains, noting the trial-and-error process of balancing silver with fibre alongside goldsmith Ely Arcilla II for some of the pieces. For him, the PHx showcase is a chance to show jewellery as a practice that can stand alongside fashion, one capable of offering a new perspective on heritage, identity, and the place of craft within contemporary fashion conversations.

Rod Malanao

Rod Malanao’s 2022 ‘Knit Study’ Collection. Images courtesy of Rod Malanao.

Rod Malanao enters the retail space with his collection ‘Knit Study’, revealing the fibre’s tensile possibilities in saturated oranges, lilacs, aquas, and blues. His vivid yet delicate silhouettes demonstrate knit’s ability to expand, contract, and adapt—a quality that takes on added significance in a local context where the medium has rarely been explored experimentally.

For Malanao, knitwear is less about comfort than about tension, a negotiation between structure and softness. “Knitwear often gets confined to the idea of comfort, but I wanted to stretch it, something that holds the body yet still breathes with it,” he explains. This showcase affirmed the vitality of imperfection to Malanao. He says, “It reminded me that fashion is alive precisely because of imperfections, because the human hand leaves a trace.”

Eugene Malabad (Killjoy Studios)

Kill Joy Studios’ Pabebe tops. Photo by Eugene Malabad. Image courtesy of Kill Joy Studios.

Kill Joy Studios’ RTND Vest with twist knob buttons. Photo by Eugene Malabad. Image courtesy of Kill Joy Studios.

Kill Joy Studios, founded by Eugene Malabad, anchors its language in the everyday objects and improvisations of Filipino culture. Jeepney twist-knob locks reappear as fastenings for cropped vests. Contrasting denim and thread are pushed against each other in seams and panels, as in the jolting colour clashes and rough textures of Manila’s streets, while the ‘Pabebe’ tops draw from street slang that frames a specific kind of playfulness. These details, lifted from lived culture, make his pieces feel both irreverent and precise, translating the city’s textures and traces into design.

For Malabad, the PHx activation extended his practice into retail for the first time, shifting his work from one-of-one pieces toward a direct dialogue with wearers. “Being part of this initiative not only gave me guidance but also opened up an invaluable opportunity to experience the retail floor,” he says. “It allowed me to see how my pieces resonate with people in real time, to learn from their reactions, and to understand the dynamics of presenting a collection outside of the studio.”

Behind the scenes at the studio. Image courtesy of Kill Joy Studios.

Allan Matudio

Allan Matudio’s Bakunawa necklace, Summer 2025 ‘Eskinita’ Collection. Photo by Zach Lata. Image courtesy of Allan Matudio.

Filipino-Canadian designer and illustrator Allan Matudio, known for his graphic novel Kasama (2021), reimagines the manananggal in the fictional city of Orkidias. For his Philippine debut, Matudio translates this narrative into sculptural forms of silver through his Summer 2025 collection, ‘Eskinita’, which refers to the narrow passageways that run through Manila’s streets. 

Fusing punk–futurism with Filipino mythology, the anchor of the collection is the Bakunawa Necklace, a 16-inch sterling silver piece shaped after the moon-eating sea serpent of Philippine mythology. Its links are modelled on Canadian snake vertebrae, while the clasp takes the form of a Southeast Asian vine snake skull, closing only when the serpent swallows the moon at the chain’s tail. “This piece encapsulates how my Filipino-Canadian background and my love for Filipino stories influence my art practice,” he shares.

Allan Matudio’s Summer 2025 ‘Eskinita’ Collection. Image courtesy of Allan Matudio.

For Matudio, this collection represents the margins where community is formed and shared values come to life. “In Canada, it was easy; I was Allan Matudio and I made Filipino-inspired jewellery. That line obviously was not enough when presenting my work in the Philippines. We looked introspectively on who we were and the people that surrounded us. We are community-driven, we are DIY but most importantly, we are the fringes of society.”

The showcase runs at Comme Ci, Power Plant Mall in Makati City, until 18 November 2025. Follow Comme Ci on Instagram to keep up with the latest from the boutique and its featured designers.