This ain’t your grandma’s piña — unless your grandma is the Philippine Queen of Knits herself.
Lulu Tan-Gan’s latest collection unveiled at Bench Fashion Week Holiday 2023 highlighted piña so fluid and flowy that a floor-sweeping opening number on the radiant and seven-months-pregnant Xandra Rocha-Araneta billows to Canto at Gabelmeister’s Peak by Alexandre Desplat.
“I envision piña with harmonic possibilities,” says Lulu Tan-Gan, beaming with that post-show high.
Tan-Gan is known for beginning her design process at the fabric manipulation stage. We last saw this at her art installation, “Yarn Bomb, Art Bomb” at the Ayala Museum in 2018, where she wrapped the surrounding trees and boulders with sculptural knitwear. And while the pandemic in 2020 put the world on pause, she has pivoted to digital retail and popups, releasing smaller, more intimate collections, including Bench’s Katutubo Market starting in 2021.
These days, she finds inspiration from “My grandchildren, art, museum visits, books, good restaurants, traveling with friends and family members you connect with,” she shares. Fashion, in all its forms, isn’t too far behind. “Working on craft and textile. Shopping — window or actual,” she says with a laugh.
It shows in the collection’s youthful attitude that’s very current. Piña floats with the athletic spring in trending content creator EJ Nacion’s step as a racerback tank, cinched by a piña belt bag and paired with wellies — an unexpected iteration for the luxurious fabric once stuck with rigidity and stuffiness (in every sense of the word).
Tan-Gan let the natural dyes from Abra pop by silkscreen printing and hand-blocking the gilded patterns of tropical flora and fauna. The swathes of neon that caught everyone by surprise? It first caught her eye in active sportswear, gear, and her grandchildren’s toys.
“I used bright French lace as an underlay to give piña a bolder statement,” she explains about a look that got everyone excited on the model, photographer, designer and muse Jo Ann Bitagcol in a rich indigo blue and fire flower-green piña with gilded tuko prints, brightened by a vibrant stripe of neon chartreuse French lace.
Allowing piña’s intrinsic sheerness to shine through by doing away with lining is key in the collection. Audrey Tan-Zubiri and her daughter Adriana layered white tank tops and trousers with gilded white piña for a look that’s cool and effortless. Blush piña that would otherwise appear washed out under the spotlight was layered with stretchy neon yellow chiffon.
“To me, layering — more than lining — is preferable. With this, one can show piña’s ethereal beauty. Layering adds depth to any outfit,” she explains.
We’ve come a long way in innovating and modernizing the piña, but Tan-Gan notes more is to be done. “More innovation on the usage of piña as a garment, possibly amalgamating with other materials to be skin-friendly, with knit and lace. To reimagine piña as fluid, not rigid. Piña as luxury wear,” she says. “This could lead to globalization.”
It’s piña for all ages and occasions, but also as a tool for economic growth. “Piña fabrics must be correctly labeled, in percentage, so that users can apply proper design. Only in this way can we truly trickle down the economy to the indigenous communities long-term.”
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