For Mariton Villanueva, founding Himaya meant creating a model that functions as a full antithesis of quickly trend. However it was officially started in 2019, with Villanueva’s university capstone project serving as the brand’s very first selection, Himaya seriously has its roots in Villanueva’s childhood, when she would visit her extended family’s apparel factories.
There, she witnessed some of the industry’s far more unethical methods firsthand, from the workers’ lowly payment to the exorbitant total of waste. At first, she attempted to upcycle scraps, turning them into every thing from yoga bolsters to hair ties. But she before long grew exhausted and disillusioned, never ever truly in a position to capture up to the total of squander generated.
Then in 2016, she was launched to the Filipino tradition of indigo dyeing by her friend and trend designer Luisa Jimenez of World of Patterns. She fell in adore with how the dyeing practice was so deeply rooted in the natural environment, utilizing components effortlessly discovered in mother nature to produce vividly dyed fabrics. “It’s really a passion of mine to do the job with my surroundings,” she claims. “My father is a farmer, so I have usually been incredibly passionate about indigenous flora and fauna and how they can be integrated into my occupation as a style designer.”
Immediately after getting her education in purely natural dyeing from the Philippine Textile Investigation Institute, Villanueva traveled to Abra province, the pure-dyeing money of the Philippines, to study beneath the Itneg tribe. As she observed their Indigenous dyeing and weaving tactics, Villanueva observed the risk of creating a really sustainable model. “I observed this new hope in the fashion sector, in how the Philippines’ sustainable fashion can progress around time,” she states.
Villanueva’s dyeing products for Himaya consist of vegetable scraps collected from sector sellers or foraged plants from her neighborhood. Previous calendar year when a storm felled eucalyptus trees at a university campus, Villanueva traveled to the internet site to assemble the fallen leaves. For her canvas, she buys ruined rolls of textiles from outfits factories, treating and upcycling them herself. When she needs to use by natural means woven fabrics like piña or abaca, she resources them right from artisan weavers in Aklan, Abra, and Ibaan. “My solution is truly about performing with the neighborhood, the folks, and mother nature,” she suggests. “It’s about creating a whole ecosystem.”
