Cary Santiago is more of an artist than a designer. From Beirut to Dubai and Paris, he comes back to Manila, bringing with him a piece of Japan in his origami-inspired creations for Spring/Summer 2013. Redefining paper crafts, he exemplifies his tricks of art and architecture while staying within his limits and trademark.

The show opened with an instrumental as haunting as Cary’s black and white satin dresses—draped, flowy, and folded. It was then followed by jewel-toned gowns with intricate touches of Rorschach-ish patterns, basket weave skirts, caged midriffs, fabric-wrapped metalworks, cutouts (that sometimes scoop either at the back or in front), and creased details (I liked how some forms resembled lizards, butterflies, and birds) to adorn the sleeves and hems of rompers, tube tops, and asymmetric voluminous dresses that bring Marchesa to mind.

Without beads, sequins, flowers, and all those other shiny things, Cary was still able to showcase both fragility and femininity, rigidity and restraint in his collection. It was a refreshing pause to anything too traditional. Summing it up, the collection was grand in craft; it was glorious in detail. Very clever, very immaculately made, very well thought out.—HITGIRL

 Photographed by Bruce Casanova