FORCE sensitive

Designer Kelvin Morales premieres his latest collection, translating resonance in barongs, structured pieces, and a neutral palette spliced with ultramarine.

- CHELSEA SARABIA

Kelvin Morales is sensitive to energy. It’s a trait he noticed he developed over the past year, and he’s even got a neat trick to show for it. “Actually, I can read auras,” he says, bursting into laughter. It happened suddenly on a random night out, he explains, when he began seeing colored light spill over the tops of his friends’ heads.

Even now, as he speaks to Vogue Philippines within his brightly lit studio space above Taft Avenue, he wears tiger’s eye beads around his wrist; and in the desk drawer by his seat, he keeps a strip of palo santo wood, to break up the air once he feels it’s grown thick. “I cleanse my energy,” he says.

Meditative rituals have become something of a necessity for the 28-year-old designer. Presently, Kelvin is at a point in his career where he’d like to expand his team, tackle releasing one more collection than usual within a year, and in the near future, push his eponymous label toward a global market. “Slowly,” he breathes out. “I’m trying it out.”

His brand is known for its contemporary riffs on the Barong Tagalog. His spirited gestures are emblazoned across dyed silk cocoon: Twisting vines and florals, jagged lines collaged over Basquiat iconography, and weaving landscapes are embroidered in electric hues.

There is a childlike sensibility to the way they are sporadically strewn over open spread collars. It’s somewhat attributed to manual hand-guided embroidery, the technique his team has used since he discovered it as a student designer. “It’s kind of becoming a dying art,” he explains. When he first tested it out on barongs, even the artisans he’s worked with were surprised it could create a modern look. “It’s like painting, only using a machine.”