HAPPY ANDRADA looks like she is just the same age as her career — in an interview after her 25th anniversary retrospective, she credits that youthfulness to her “chubby cheeks.” This writer first saw her work 15 years ago, and the collection she showed back then at Philippine Fashion Week showed off preppy pink and green outfits with a tier here and a flounce there that made the outfits bounce. The designer’s name certainly fit her collection then.
It turns out there’s much more to the designer, and a recent retrospective of her clothes showing 25 years of her career highlighted the different styles that she could do, all with the significant effort and intelligence showcased throughout her clothes.
Ms. Andrada’s fashion show was held at the Globe Auditorium in BGC as part of Pinoy Playlist Musikahan 2026. Musical groups The Company and Anima Tierra played alongside her, serving as background runway music.
Due to her keeping an extensive archive (despite selling a lot of her clothes and parts of her archive), the collections shown on Oct. 17 stretched way back.
Most of the clothes came from significant career milestones, such as from winning competitions and representing the country abroad. For example, her winning dress at the Fashion Design Council of the Philippines (FDCP) Young Designers Competition showed off a balloon skirt that resembled a minaret, combined with trapezoidal cuffs that looked like lanterns. A dress she showed at the Fashion Art Biennale at The Hague showed three-dimensional flowers forming a skirt, complementing a gold bodice and a ruff done in the same style as the skirt. A dress from her first fashion show had layers of iridescent fabric printed with flowers, forming a dress with an asymmetrical neckline and topped with a sash made with the same fabric flowers. Joining Perya: A Whimsical Fashion Gala, she showed a black cage dress with sculpted dice forming the sleeves, accompanied by a striped dress resembling a circus marquee in yellow and purple.
For an appearance at Philippine Fashion Week, she showed a dress constructed from numerous silk ribbons, forming a stiff skirt under a sheer black bodice with dramatic sleeves. A dress shown in Paris meanwhile, was a dramatic black printed with white flowers, while a collection that won her the International Artist of the Year at the Fashion Art Biennale in Seoul featured dresses printed with an aerial view of Manila, a capelet topping it resembling the native panuelo (she revived this collection at this year’s MaArte Fair).
Other striking dresses include one she did for Marriott Manila’s wedding fashion show, Marry Me at Marriott, a figure-hugging white dress strewn all over with feathers.
Various dresses at the retrospective were shown internationally, in Miami (where she won International Emerging Designer of the Year), the Czech Republic, and Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Amsterdam, featured an aesthetic inspired by insects, seen in fabric forming plates and armor resembling that of a beetle.
In China, she presented a dress resembling paper, and in London, she showed a blue-and-white dress incorporating indigenous fabric, but especially in the skirt where she used binakul (a weave from Northern Philippines showing a psychedelic pattern said to confuse bad spirits).
She wrapped up the retrospective with her collaboration with Fundacion Sansó, featuring the late artist Juvenal Sansó’s work and a Philippine landscape richly embroidered onto barong bibs.
To show something new to wrap up the show, she presented long coats trimmed with native fabrics, bomber-jacket style barongs, ruffled blouses, and lots of sequins. These were modeled by prominent senior citizens (we counted three columnists in the mix), and the clothes showed volume and movement. In a group interview after the show, she said about the significance of working with seniors for the show, “I think it’s something to look forward to — being timeless. Aging, it’s a part of it, (having) 25 years in the fashion industry.
“It’s also about being accepted for who you are,” she said. “Anyone has their time to shine, and it’s never too late.”
We noted Ms. Andrada’s use of indigenous textiles and weaves, sourced from all over the Philippines directly from the communities who make them. “I’ve been using indigenous fabrics since 2004,” she said. She noted that in her ready-to-wear lines from that period, “I didn’t have a lot of people buying it.” Now, however, “I’m super happy that there are more and more people supporting the weavers.” She noted that she used the fabrics back then to help revive a dying craft, but with the recent surge in their use, the craft has been revived.
Asked which outfit was closest to her heart, she decided that it was all of them. “I was teary-eyed. I was crying. I didn’t expect this would happen. I remember the moments when I showcased them, and look where it got us.”
Ms. Andrada will show her clothes in London next year. — Joseph L. Garcia