Wear your fashionalism with pride

MANILA, Philippines - Filipino pride is everywhere. The overwhelming triumphs and world-class achievements of our fellow Filipinos, as well as the recognition of the Philippine wonders spark our pride for our country wherever we are located around the globe. This Christmas, what better way to spread this spirit than by giving gifts rich with creative Filipino talent.

Imagine owning and giving meaningful gifts immortalized with artworks from our National Artists, fave Pinoy pop cartoonists, and talented young Philippine designers. These will be valuable as they are on short limited exclusive series run.

This holiday, Freeway features the work of our beloved National Artist for Visual Arts, Vicente Manansala. Freeway has blazed a trail by re-introducing the Philippine arts and culture to the younger generation with its Freeway loves Art: National Artist Collectors’ Series, making fashionalism more hip and relevant. The popular collectors’ series has featured great National Artists Nick Joaquin, Ang KiuKok, Jose Garcia Villa, Ramon Valera, and its first living National Artist, prolific writer F. Sionil Jose. This year’s holiday collection featuring Manansala offers a wide variety of keepsake — from tailored dresses to workshirts, easy tops, signature accessories, watch and tote bags, all showcasing Manansala’s various mediums of cubism-inspired paintings and pen and inks.

For dressier holiday needs, Ensembles highlights its creative collaborations with celebrated fashion designers with its Young Designers Series. The collection focuses on bringing out the best for the empowered women. Already featured are James Reyes, Debbie Co, Louis Claparols and this holiday, the design duo Choc and Yvette Religioso.

Solo celebrates Pinoy pop culture through its Pinoy cartoonist memorabilia. It’s a clever showstopper for the young while arousing nostalgia for those who grew up with the witty and playful Philippine comic characters we all loved. The series featured Larry Alcala’s Slice of Life last year, and for this holiday, Solo features Tony Velasquez’ Kenkoy with fun characters such as his beloved Rosing. Tony Velasquez has no doubt been very influential in our Pinoy pop culture after his character Kenkoy became popular in Philippine lingo. His language became fashionable among the youth at that time, which was a mixture of Spanish, English and Tagalog. Thus were born Kenkoy’s trademark lines like “Halo, how is yu?”, “watsamara” (what’s the matter), “dats oret” (that’s all right), “nating duwing” (nothing doing), “okidoki” (okeydokey), “lets tek ewok” (let’s take a walk), “is beri nesesari”, and “bay gali”. Enjoy his cartoon strips on clothes and on gift items such as vanity kits, watches, lighters and accessories.

Know more about the brands by visiting their website and Facebook and Twitter pages:

• Freeway www.freeway.net.ph facebook.com/FreewayOnline twitter.com/FreewayOnline

• Ensembles www.ensembles.com.ph facebook.com/EnsemblesOnline twitter.com/EnsemblesOnline

• Solo www.solo.com.ph facebook.com/mySoloOnline twitter.com/mySoloOnline