Emerging young talent Ellis Co and his brand ARCHIVES is bound to cause a stir in the Filipino fashion community. For his first collection entitled Memoirs of the Future, Ellis finds and embraces the familiar in the unfamiliar through designs that speak of deja vu.
The designer and music producer is a budding visionary at 21. His gender-neutral designs feature promising subverted garment shapes and function. Inspired by brutalist architecture and Japanese fashion, Ellis likes to reimagine silhouettes and redefine clothing functions. He looks up to industry legends Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe whose avant-garde works have gone in history for its reframed ideas of beauty and design.
In his upcoming runway show, Ellis will be showcasing 44 different pieces. “I had to edit out the collection from 300 to 50,” Ellis says. “I work and rework my pieces and store them on my archives so I can revisit them later on, hence the name of the brand,” he adds. He perceives his work as remnants of him as a designer for years to come, and years after he’s gone.
In the span of 6 months, he created a concept, made sketches, made revisions from those sketches, look through samples, and edit out those samples in order to come up with a collection he can proudly put his stamp on. To help him bring his designs to life, Ellis tapped visual artist and music video director Reika Mayani to take on the position as creative director of ARCHIVES. The two have since been working on pieces for the upcoming runway show.
Most of the pieces from the collection will be available for purchase on the ARCHIVES website. Items like shirts, bottoms, and jackets can range from P5,000 to P30,000. Clients from the Philippines can personally look forward to a unique retail experience with custom measurements and fitting services in his atelier.
Ellis aims to make it global soon and is already in talks with multi-brand retailers Dover Street Market and Club 21. Pieces that will be available on these retailers will be ready-to-wear but clients from all over the world can also look forward to having custom pieces as soon as the brand puts up an atelier abroad.
Memoirs of the Future will be unveiled on July 27, 2022 in Whitespace Manila and will also be live streamed online.
To stayed updated about ARCHIVES, follow @archives.galerie on Instagram.
Link: Meet Ellis Co, The Young Filipino Designer Aiming For The Global Scene