DESIGNER PROFILE
Celebrating his ten years in the industry, designer extraordinaire Pablo Cabahug creates a collection that revisits his most memorable pieces and reimagines them with a new sense of love, emotion and artistic fervor
A decade of romance culminates in a stunning collection from Pablo Cabahug
Designers have always been oracles. Every collection they make is their vision of a woman: who she is, what she stands for and her attitude. Her innate power is present in every hem, stitch and cut. This vision creates a sense of community for women who resonate with the same energy. And for Pablo Cabahug, the vision has always been a woman of love and a woman sure of her femininity.
Pablo grew up in the city of Dumaguete. Growing up, he looked up to his grandfathers, Pabling and Dopling, a city fiscal and lieutenant sergeant of the Philippine constabulary, respectively. These two strong men inspired Pablo to enter the military, but destiny had something else in mind. Despite his military dreams, Pablo recalls how it was the women in his life who shaped his love for clothes, like his grandmother’s high-waisted skirts, colored clutches and printed scarves or his mother’s padded blousons and leggings from the ‘80s. “I had a mix of career dreams growing up,” he says. “Surprisingly, what remained constant were my drawings of girls in long gowns.”
His design journey began when he started his internship with Randy Ortiz. There, he learned not just how to create clothes, but how a master would do it. In 2009 he started his own atelier on Kamagong Street in San Antonio Village. There, he created pieces of art for the women who would became his muses: Rissa Mananquil-Trillo, Bianca Gonzales Intal and Pia Wurtzbach. Pablo’s pieces were undeniably sexy, with strategic cut-outs and sheer details highlighting the female form. The dossier of women who are strong, confident and beautiful were the women Pablo most enjoyed dressing up, because these same values guided his creations.