What a privilege it is to be alive and experience the gift of change. We love personal growth and fresh beginnings that open us to new possibilities! The hard part, of course, is that we have to leave a comfortable version of our lives behind to venture into the unknown. Worse, it’s inevitable. Eventually, everything and everyone must go somewhere else.
Likewise, Renée de Guzman, Bryan Peralta, and Edwin Ao aren’t staying in the same place. Their collections for Day 1 of BENCH Fashion Week Holiday 2026 are wildly different in execution, with each designer facing forward or backward as their clothes reveal more about where they’re going.
R.STUDIOS
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There’s a younger soul hidden inside R.STUDIOS’ Paloma. During a trip to Spain, Renée de Guzman encountered Pablo Picasso’s 1957 Pigeon series and was struck by how youthful the paintings looked for an artist so established. Picasso admittedly knew the irony himself: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
De Guzman finds her own way back there, too, and the pigeons follow her home. The designer keeps her silhouettes relatively relaxed through softly structured separates, while the birds appear more literally in the accessories.
Bryan Peralta
Bryan Peralta goes to space! Figuratively speaking. His most recent outing, titled The Golden Record, draws from the 1977 NASA Voyager probes and the discs containing records of Earth for extraterrestrial life to discover.
It’s essentially a sartorial time capsule with touches of the bizarre anatomy and vivid coloring of nudibranchs (better known as sea slugs). How fun is that?
Edwin Ao
Meanwhile, solar printing leads Edwin Ao’s Chlorophyll Hexagons: The Body in Impermanence. Sunlight and chlorophyll leave their traces directly on his clothes—much like how memory and experience alter us as we move through life.
In Ao’s hands, forms come apart and return differently on the body, with little concern for restoring what was there before. Why would he? Look what else they can become.
The most exciting part of Day 1 of BENCH Fashion Week Holiday 2026 is knowing that none of this needs to represent a final destination for Renée de Guzman, Bryan Peralta, or Edwin Ao. Fashion affords them that freedom every season. Life takes longer, yes, but the principle still holds: we’re unfinished ourselves, and that’s a good thing.
Photographed by KIERAN PUNAY of KLIQ, INC.
Frequently Asked Questions
Renée de Guzman’s Paloma collection for R.STUDIOS was inspired by Pablo Picasso’s 1957 Pigeon series, which she encountered on a trip to Spain, translated into relaxed, softly structured separates with pigeon motifs in the accessories.
The Golden Record draws from the 1977 NASA Voyager probes and their discs of Earth records for extraterrestrial life, blended with the bizarre anatomy and vivid coloring of nudibranchs, or sea slugs.
Edwin Ao used solar printing for his collection Chlorophyll Hexagons: The Body in Impermanence, letting sunlight and chlorophyll leave direct traces on the clothes to mirror how memory and experience change a person over time.
Three designers presented on Day 1: Renée de Guzman of R.STUDIOS, Bryan Peralta, and Edwin Ao, each with a distinct collection theme.
Day 1’s collections are connected by the theme of change and impermanence, with each designer’s work reflecting forward- or backward-looking ideas about growth, memory, and transformation.
