Filipino designer Carl Jan Cruz rethinks Filipiniana and fosters Filipino creative communities at a one-day-only multimedia presentation of his 2023 collection on July 17
Designer Carl Jan Cruz partners with Silverlens Gallery for a one-day event featuring longtime creative collaborators and a new 24-look collection of three-edition-only garments.
READ: Carl Jan Cruz’s conscious acts of creation
“International Interbarangay,” which will take place at Silverlens Gallery on July 17, is a one-day-only presentation with photographer Renzo Navarro, music producer King Puentespina aka Crwn, and film director Judd Figuerres. The show also coincides with the gallery’s 20th anniversary.
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“After 10 years of collection-making and research as a brand, we realized that we are deeply influenced by the individuals who wear our clothing, recognizing their innate ability to express their own visions through our clothing,” said Cruz in a press release. “Seeing the brand not just as a wardrobe of garments, but as a way of living and being.”
Deliberate craftsmanship
Cruz has made a name for himself for his designs that meld Filipino dress elements with techniques he’s learned from his time at the London College of Fashion and Phoebe Philo’s Céline, where he interned. For this upcoming collection, he sets out to question what Filipiniana is and who it is for by recontextualizing iconic styles through surface design and fabric manipulation.
The collection also marks Cruz’s return to collection-making (although his atelier has never stopped creating, releasing capsules that include considered everyday wear, one-off customwear as well as accessories in the last few years). This, he said, signals the brand’s “independence from fashion seasons and calendars,” calling it a collection centered on process, untethered to retail expectations.
“We now prioritize nurturing our creative process, taking a proactive stance in determining collection-making timelines, depth of thought, and level of detail until we achieve satisfaction with our work,” the designer said. “This shift represents a significant evolution in our philosophy and practice, emphasizing quality, creativity, and deliberate craftsmanship.”
The 24-look collection still bears signature CJC design elements, most notably their house-developed patterns and fabrics including denims, piques, poplins, and silk linens, manipulated in ways uncanny to conventional garment-making.
Sense of worth and beauty
For the show at Silverlens, his collaborators also toy with the brand’s core values through their respective practices but still seamlessly integrate their outputs with the collection.
Navarro, who is also Carl Jan Cruz’s image director, created compelling character studies that capture personalities that transcend time across all kinds of “Filipino-ness.”
The brand commissioned Figuerres to make a film that blurs the line between the show and its inception. The film director integrates the crew’s movements—hours of fittings, intimations, and celebrations—into a “choreography of the work,” fusing fashion and film, highlighting emotion, beauty, and rawness by harmonizing the digital and analog.
And to set the multisensorial stage for the show, Crwn will do a live music set anchored around themes of home and community, using sounds found in La Union’s beaches and markets.
“I think it was about the urge to create a space for us to reinforce to each other the value of our work,” Cruz said of the multimedia collaboration. “It’s a translation of our relationship as Filipino creatives and hopefully, a deepening sense of worth and beauty.”
