‘I saw a fashion pundit on Instagram talking about how women designers are relegated to making practical clothing. And that was an insult to me,” says Mangosing.Ness DeVos/The Globe and Mail
Since launching her first fashion business, Vinta Gallery, in 2013, Caroline Mangosing has always told a personal story through her work. The Manila-born, Toronto-based entrepreneur is the founder and former executive director of the Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture, an endeavour that spoke to her schooling in fine art photography. After opening the community hub in Toronto’s Kensington Market, Mangosing says she would receive calls about where to find well-made Filipino clothing such as barongs, which are elegant, embroidered long-sleeved shirts.
“Do you have clothing? Do you have baptismal outfits?”, she remembers people inquiring. Drawing from her formative years spent in the Manila atelier of her mother’s children’s clothing company, where she learned to sew, the queries sparked an idea: What if these items could be produced at the highest quality and made-to-measure?
Mangosing enlisted Estelita Lagman – the Manila-based designer who had crafted Mangosing’s wedding dress – to be Vinta Gallery’s founding master couturier. In 2016, Mangosing incorporated Vinta Gallery as a for-profit business and launched an e-commerce platform with more ready-to-wear styles for the brand’s expanding customer base.
On her style: “I am conceptual – I just also want comfort. I want pockets,” says Mangosing.Ness DeVos/The Globe and Mail
Now, almost 10 years later, Mangosing is forging another path with a direct-to-consumer, streetwear-centric line called Regalo Studios. Its latest capsule collection builds on a trove of punchy yet easy-to-wear pieces like track jackets, cropped blazers and elasticized-waist pants in a barrel leg silhouette. Standouts include natty, pleated, mid-rise trousers and a sumptuous hand-loomed overcoat made in Regalo Studio’s atelier in the Philippines. Mangosing says their design and fabrication defy expectations of female fashion entrepreneurs.
“I saw a fashion pundit on Instagram talking about how women designers are relegated to making practical clothing,” she says. “And that was an insult to me. It makes us seem lesser than men because we’re not conceptual or artistic. But I am conceptual – I just also want comfort. I want pockets. And I’m menopausal, so I want a waistband to be elasticized. I can make it look hot.”
Regalo Studio’s ethos flicks at the punky essence of the 1990s. “I’m into the rebellion of that era,” Mangosing say.Ness DeVos/The Globe and Mail
Infused in the collection’s mix are eye-catching nods to Mangosing’s ancestry. Binakol, a mesmerizing and versatile traditional woven pattern, for example, is a repeated motif. “It’s an Indigenous weave made by the Itneg tribe, which lives in the Northern Philippines,” she says. The poppy pattern has historically been used in blankets to ward off evil spirits thanks to its hypnotic visual effect. Regalo Studios’s pert Puso bags are triangular and convertible woven pouches that take the shape of a Filipino rice cake of the same name.
Themes of comfort and protection resonate throughout Regalo Studio’s ethos, which also flicks to the punky, DIY essence of the 1990s. The brand even promotes itself via a zine. “I’m into the rebellion of that era,” Mangosing says of the decade that birthed alternative music and turned a lens on feisty female figures. “I say that Vinta Gallery is aimed at the ‘rebel Filipiniana’, because we turn a lot of colonial stuff on its head. And it’s the same with Regalo and the idea of the modern matriarch. That’s a bold thing to say, especially in this time.”
