Feature: Mindanao Fashion Summit 2025 — Capturing the Moment Before the Spotlight

Aug 22

Backstage is where chaos becomes creation. For Mindanao Fashion Summit 2025, that chaos was our canvas.

This year, The Factory Studio partnered with the OFDG (Oro Fashion Designers Guild) to photograph and archive every look that came down the runway — an initiative spearheaded by this year’s brilliant chair, designer Kiko Domo.

The idea was simple but powerful: to document Mindanao fashion in real time, preserving every design not just as a fleeting moment onstage, but as part of the region’s creative legacy.

Backstage Chaos, Factory Precision

The backstage area at Limketkai Center was small, noisy, and crowded — stylists rushing, zippers closing, heels clicking.
We set up a single red backdrop, barely fitting between racks and cables. The light bounced off fabric and mirrors.

It wasn’t ideal. It was alive.

Working as a tag team — Gab, Dawn, and I — we found a rhythm.

The stage manager shouted, “They’re walking in thirty seconds!” and we’d squeeze in one last frame.

Click
Next model.
Click
Another.

It was intense, improvised, and absolutely worth it.

In those few seconds between preparation and performance, something special happens — a mix of focus and vulnerability, confidence and adrenaline. That’s what we wanted to immortalize.

Each photo became a visual timestamp — the last breath before the runway, the quiet before the applause.

Fashion as Heritage

This collaboration wasn’t about perfection — it was about preservation.

The Mindanao Fashion Summit has always been more than a show; it’s a collective effort to define who we are as creatives in the south. By photographing each look, The Factory Studio helped ensure that these designs — these ideas — won’t fade after the runway lights turn off.

We see it as our role: to serve the artists, the designers, and the models who make Mindanao fashion what it is.

Every stitch, every silhouette, every detail deserves to be remembered.