CLOCKING IN

With an ode to his early 2000s design sensibilities, Patrick Galang is most definitely back

- MARIAN SAN PEDRO

Multi-hyphenates really do exist. Stylist, editor, and fashion designer Patrick Galang is proof of this. With his return to his creative nature, after his long and quiet hiatus, how was he able to ease himself in with the idea of reinvention? When Galang went to Slim's Fashion and Arts School to study fashion design in 2003, he didn't expect it's where he'd meet his best friends: Anna Leah Salvador, Niño Asejo, and Martin Bautista. Eventually, they formed their own design collective called Eccentricity and Subversion. As young design students, he shares that the collective served as their playground for reinventing garments.

"I can still recall how obsessed I was with deconstruction and upcycling clothes," says Galang. "It introduced me to what freedom in design meant and became an integral part of my fashion identity."

At his own rebranded label Rafglang-a shorter version of his full name Patrick Rafael Galang-clothing has three tenets: reassemble, reengineer, and repurpose. Each one formulates a specific design in terms of structure, form, and function. His envisioned creative output? To regenerate what has been done before.