Our Story

Ready Since Birth. PhFW was founded in 1997 by the Espino Brothers, Audie Espino and Joey Espino under Runway Productions, Inc. Both Audie and Joey are veterans at conceptualizing and staging event productions in the Philippines and abroad, at the same time when the US and Europe were witnessing the meteoric rise in popularity of fashion weeks such as the Big Four (NY, Paris, London, Milan).

During a stint in New York, Audie & Joey saw the gap in the Asian fashion scene, where at that time, no country fashion weeks existed. In the Philippines especially, fashion designers work in isolation of others in their trade and often meet creative and business challenges which make their craft unsustainable. So, why not Philippine Fashion Week?
A ‘why not’ that turned into three decades of fostering what Joey Espino calls ‘The Culture of Fashion.’

Its inception in 1997 makes PhFW the pioneer in large-scale fashion events, not just in the Philippines but across Asia. Each year, especially at its peak, PhFW ran two anchor events mirroring the biggest fashion seasons abroad, the Spring & Summer Collection and the Holiday Collection. Each anchor event lasted for 5 days and featured 25 designers each season – a feat still unmatched by any named fashion event today.

Each season, Runway Report, a 200-page large-format, glossy magazine produced by PhFW served as reportage of the big four fashion weeks (Paris, New York, London, Milan) together with PhFW season’s collections. The Runway Report pages were graced with big-named brand sponsors and runway celebrities, from both local and abroad. It showed the world that PhFW, even in its early years, was poised for global destiny.

The Culture of Fashion. PhFW instilled among its designers and talents the ‘culture’ or discipline of the fashion business, as practiced in the global fashion frontiers. Discipline meant going beyond creative whims to produce new collections, season after season, consisting of pieces that are excellently crafted, sellable, duplicable, and at the same time inspiring – thus requiring an extremely rigorous creative process matched by a courageous business mindset.

The culture of support and teamwork, among co-designers and all involved in production up to staging of the events, reverberated within and beyond the PhFW runways. To participate in the PhFW was to be part of this culture of fashion.

PhFW’s Legacy and Future. The pride with which the phrase ‘I walked the Philppine Fashion Week.’ is said compares to no other fashion runways in the Philippines and in Asia. PhFW provided the fashion industry with unlimited windows of opportunity to unveil and inspire on-stage and behind-the-scenes talents – designers, tailors, models, production teams, craftsmen, and craftswomen. All of them in different capacities are considered to have walked the PhFW runway.

PhFW gave birth to and catapulted to the global stage many of the now illustrious Filipino designers and models, with thriving careers and fashion businesses in the Middle East, US, and Europe. To walk the Philippine Fashion Week runway is to open one’s global destiny.

As the Philippine Fashion Week embraces the broader stage of style as a launchpad for what’s fresh in seven (7) territories where exquisite style is most intrinsic: Fashion, Dining, Beverages & Spirits, Home, Travel, Arts & Entertainment, and Wellness – the runway opens up to vast opportunities for creative and meaningful collaborations in a constant rhythm of reinventing the runway to showcase the best that both parties will offer.

Suddenly, the runway is as wide as your imagination. And many more deserving talents from the Philippines and beyond, or vice-versa, will ‘walk the runway.’

We invite you to stay tuned for upcoming collaborations.