The alternate universe

MANILA, Philippines - Stepping into Unisex Rewind is like falling down a rabbit hole. It’s the Manila that you see so rarely, you weren’t quite sure it existed.

It hides behind the guise of a car accessories shop on West Avenue in Quezon City. It’s an unlikely location, surrounded by banks, coffee shops and a quiet residential area. But push aside the curtain, and you’re inducted into a secret society of Comme des Garçons capelets and Boy London leather jackets. Asymmetrical, embellished, deconstructed, reconstructed — experimental pieces from Thai designers spill out of the racks, mixed with the occasional Helmut Lang dress or iconic designer x high street collaboration piece.

Despite the endless, shape-shifting possibilities, Unisex is hardly your local ukay shop with neon green hangers and a distinct smell of something nesting. Instead, it’s more like stumbling into the closet of someone who has been through the cycles of fashion and has settled comfortably into the grind.

A closet owned, that is, by JP Singson. Singson is known internationally not only for his blog, JP On Fashion Speed (JPonfashionspeed.com), which chronicles his own androgynous, avant-garde style, but also for Lola Androgynous (Lolaandrogynous.blogspot.com), which features everyday looks from his mother, Tessie. The younger Singson spun their individualistic, gender bender style into a physical store, and thus Unisex Rewind was born.

It’s a niche market that is growing, but growing slowly. “I think in every business or in any endeavor it has to start somewhere,” he shrugs. It helps that he knows his audience well — as Singson explains of his unusual stock, “I usually ask myself, ‘Would I wear this? Would my mom wear this?’”

Classic isn’t the word for the pieces at Unisex Rewind, although one would argue that they’re definitely closet mainstays in their own right. They’re pieces that require, more than anything, an attitude. The stock is largely vintage, which lends a surprisingly and strangely imposing quality to them, as if each one is daring you to try them on, to slip out of your fashion magazine-approved duds and into something that makes a statement on who you are, who you’d like to be, who you could be. It’s a challenge, almost: to live in the clothes as you wear them, instead of wearing the clothes as you live.

Hence Unisex’s more matured clientele: men and women who already have an established aesthetic, who appreciate a piece of clothing beyond the tag or what section of a store it hangs in. Clients who, in a nutshell, know what they want. Singson’s role for them isn’t so much to play stylist, but — for lack of a better term — an enabler. He tracks down pieces for clients and often sees specific clients in the clothes he sources.

He excitedly whips out what looks like a giant leather doughnut that you can slip onto your wrist as a bangle. The proportion itself is interesting enough, but it’s when Singson unzips the doughnut and pulls out — of all things — a linen version of the ubiquitous Longchamp foldable bag. “It’s from their Bless collaboration,” he says proudly, referring a conceptual German fashion label that counts Martin Margiela among its supporters.

Unisex is not a subculture in the Cubao X sense, nor is it counterculture, per se — it’s simply more inclined to an individualistic style of dressing. Singson offers something invaluable to a city brimming with fast fashion giants: an alternative.

Although Unisex is successful enough to hire an extra set of hands or two, Singson makes an effort “to personalize relationships with the client, so I try to do it on my own as much as possible.” Although he’s there in the afternoons, he accepts clients mostly by appointment, saying, “I try to accommodate that client by putting up a rack for them, so I can easily pick up pieces that would suit the client.”

The store has certainly reaped benefits from these personal relationships. Many of Singson’s clients visit regularly, even weekly, to check out the new arrivals. Unisex gets new pieces every week, and it’s easy to see why anyone would want first dibs: he unveils pieces that arrived just the other day, which include a raw denim jacket from the Marc Jacobs-Wrangler collaboration, a Givenchy shirt featuring the now-infamous Rottweiler, and various multi-functional pieces from cult favorite Likelihood.

Singson describes one experience, wherein a stranger came in one day, started talking to him, “and it turns out he found me online. And a week after, he dropped off, like, two bags of vintage clothes and at first I was, ‘Do you want me to sort this out and price it for you?’ and he’s like, ‘No, it’s for your store.’ And when I opened it, I was shocked because it was full of like Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons.”

While the support is overwhelming, Unisex is still a far cry from pervading Manila style. Was Manila ready for a concept like Unisex? Is it ready now?

He deadpans, “Obviously, I’m not gonna be a millionaire doing this.”

But truthfully, the answer doesn’t quite matter, because shaking things up is exactly what he set out to do. While Singson supports local designers such as OS Accessories and Mich Dulce, he’s taking a leap forward: a collaboration with Renan Pacson is in the works, to be stocked exclusively, of course, at Unisex. He’s hopeful that their clothes will open eyes to new concepts: “We need diversity, we need versatility, and we need to change the idea that fashion is just related to celebrities.”

Manila has no shortage of talent. The tricky part is creating avenues for this talent to grow and prosper.

As with anything, however, it has to start somewhere.