Green Fashion Revolution 2016 comes to Manila

Jene-Anne Pangue, Hannavi Franco

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Green Fashion Revolution 2016 comes to Manila
The fashion competition challenges students to create clothing, footwear, and accessories which make use of recycled materials

MANILA, Philippines – Cebu’s favorite college fashion circuit in the past 4 years is now in Manila.

Aboitiz Equity Ventures debuted its first ever Green Fashion Revolution at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City on Saturday, January 30, challenging students from schools in Metro Manila to create clothing, footwear, and accessories out of recycled materials.

The  Green Fashion Revolution was first staged in 2012 in Cebu. Aboitiz Equity Ventures Vice President for Sustainability Malou Marasigan said that the event has been very successful in Cebu, making them decide to bring it to Manila.

“Why not in Manila? There are lots of colleges and universities here that can promote our advocacy and increase awareness.”

Carrying the theme, “ECOTURE: Greener Design for a Better World,” the participants’ designs were derived from an estimated 200 kilograms of materials from various Aboitiz business units.

“We can do well by doing good, always making the right long-term decisions that balance the interests of people, planet, and profit,” Aboitiz Foundation Chairman Erramon Aboitiz said.

The competition has been an annual favorite within Aboitiz Foundation, whose CSR efforts are focused on education, enterprise development, the environment, and health and well-being.

Participating schools conveyed their own design concept through a fashion collection presented on the runway.

College of Saint Benilde won the competition. Aside from the grand prize, the winning group also bagged all of the 5 special awards: Best Clothing Design, Best Accessories Design, Best Bag Design, Best Footwear Design, and Best in Design Collection.

The group also got the chance to implement a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project for their chosen beneficiary.

Placing second and third in the competition were University of the Philippines Diliman’s (UPD) Living in Pisoville and Asia Pacific College’s (APC) Payo design collection, respectively.

Fashion for a cause

The winning group from DLS-CSB presented its ‘Eiron’ design collection that aimed to tackle how people are polluting waters.

“Our inspiration is named Eiron –‘flowers by the sea’. It is also a Greek word for ‘irony’, that when translated into its irony means ‘trash by the sea’,” Ammiel Avena, one of the designers for the collection said.

The presentation of the design was described as a progression from whites and blues, turning darker and darker towards the finale.

“That’s how we want the people to see. These are the waters and this is the effect on waters – polluted little by little,” Avena added.

“The biggest irony is that we, its caretakers, are the very source of its pain and destruction…Something everyone wants to turn a blind eye on, something we choose not to see,” an excerpt from the participants’ brief read.

UP Diliman’s ‘Living in Pisoville’

On the other hand, participants from the UP Diliman’s ‘Living in Pisoville’ children’s wear collection based their concept on a social commentary on the wasteful culture.

Their design concept, which was so named after a fashion interpretation of consumerism in the Philippine context, made use of materials from grocery shopping wastes. The collection also aims to teach its audience to be more mindful of the wastes created every single day, reminding everyone that saving the environment can be both fun and fulfilling.

The said collection seeks to reach out to young people and to inform them that they are never young to step up and start saving the world.

Asia Pacific College’s ‘Payo’

The third participating group from the Asia Pacific College focused their design on the ‘Payo’ (Ifugao word for rice field) concept, encouraging people to help restore the health of the environment.

Their clothing designs were based on the image of the Banaue Rice Terraces, hoping to raise awareness on the worsening condition of the natural wonder and the urgent need to restore it.

The designs were judged by some of the country’s fashion icons including topnotch designers Ma Rosanna Ocampo and Ito Curata, Philippine Tatler’s Mia Borromeo and People’s Asia’s Paolo de la Cruz, Philippine Textile Research Institute’s Celia Elumba and Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc’s Melissa Aboitiz- Elizalde. – Rappler.com

Jene-Anne Pangue is a Mover who works as a medical technologist at the Divine Word Hospital in Tacloban City. 

Hannavi Franco, a Communications Research student from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) is a MovePH intern.

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Jene-Anne Pangue

Jene-Anne Pangue is a community and civic engagement specialist at MovePH, Rappler's civic engagement arm.