Models Jo Ann Bitagcol, Lukresia and Rina Fukushi cover the September 2023 issue of Vogue Philippines [IG], celebrating the magazine’s first anniversary.

Bitagcol is a veteran of the fashion industry, photographer and creative director of her own clothing label; Fukushi is a Japanese-Filipino model. Lukresia, is a queer model and designer from Cebu, who creates couture pieces made out of scrap fabric, plastic wrap, and whatever else she could find in her chicken-filled backyard.

Sharif Hamza [IG] is behind the lens, so proud of this anniversary issue cover story styled by Melissa Levy under fashion director Pam Quinones. / Hair by Mong Amado; makeup by Gery Penaso

Once again, Vogue Philippines allocates major editorial space to the very relevant, luxury-market focus on the best clothes made with homegrown, high craftsmanship and artisanal techniques.

In the words of Ticia Almazan, the first anniversary cover story ‘Origins: Retracing Our History in the Highlands’ invited over a dozen designers and artists to interpret their beloved country’s homegrown high craftsmanship and artisanal techniques.

More intimately, we see phalaenopsis orchids from a grandmother’s garden. Cockfighting roosters encased in neon green cages. Picasso, jellyfish, and sea life.

Not to sound too romantic, we also see the ravages of bubblewrap as it builds its own unsustainable fiefdoms across the natural landscape.

VP takes us to Batanes.

In Batanes, “a microcosm of a sustainable world,” we find our people’s beginnings—a story of earth, sky, craft, and boundaries broken.

Often compared to Scotland or New Zealand, Batanes exists as a visual contrast to Philippines’ beaches. Almazan returned for the first time in 14 years. This visually exquisite terrain is home to the Ivatan people, the first settlers of the Philippines who arrived 4,000 years ago in small boats from the island we now call Taiwan.

Their spread didn’t end there, and they continued to travel to other nearby isles and toward Luzon, then outward, settling all of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands to the east, and Borneo and Madagascar to the west. The Maori of New Zealand were among their most recent progeny, establishing themselves only 800 years ago.

Anne of Carversville has long studied the migration patterns out of Africa and into the world. Those patterns continue to reveal themselves, while taking twists and turns of intellectual discovery that cause scientists to step back and reconsider earlier hypotheses about the paths of early humans and how they fused and interacted with other people.

Marian Pastor Roces understands the migration patterns of the Ivatan people with expert status. “Nearly all of today’s Filipinos, Malaysians, Indonesians, Polynesians, and a significant majority of the people of Madagascar share one parent stock,” she writes in her book A Delicate Balance: Batanes Food, Ecology, and Community. “The descendants of the Ivatan are now more than an astounding 400,000,000 people.”

Return to the top of page for a link into the English language story that is the best kind of longform writing. All the product credits from these images are discussed in detail. ~ Anne