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Wear a Construction Layers piece and you’re joining a dialogue already in progress—stitched with questions, pauses, and a few well-placed provocations. It’s one that began centuries ago in the rough-hewn seams of 18th-century workwear, finding its voice in raw hems, warped silhouettes, and uneven dye jobs.
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The duo behind the label, Kendrick Cay and CP Garcia, aren’t your typical fashion designers. Trained in industrial design and retail, they approach clothing as objects of utility—built to move, endure, and adapt. Their Manila-based label has quietly carved its space in contemporary Filipino fashion with garments that blur uniform and expression, function and poetry.
Now, with Collection III.V opening a three-month residency at Comme Ci in partnership with PHx Fashion Group, Construction Layers is reissuing its most resonant designs—this time with a fresh provocation: embrace the female form.
On Curves and Construction
“We were hesitant,” Cay admits, when PHx first challenged them to explore womenswear. “Our practice leaned into uniformity—shapes that blur rather than emphasize.” But that hesitation became a hinge. Instead of designing for femininity, they started designing through it: “It wasn’t about adding ‘femininity’ for the sake of it, but about respecting how different bodies move and want to feel.”
In the Construction Layers universe, structure doesn’t negate sensitivity. Curve and control can coexist. Their best-selling waistcoats now embrace subtle drapes; trousers sharpen their tailoring with room to breathe. The pieces don’t perform femininity, rather they allow it to unfold.
Modularity, or Dressing for the Person You Might Be Tomorrow
Modularity has long been the label’s manifesto. It’s not just about a jacket that unzips into a vest or sleeves that detach. “It’s about choice,” Kendrick explains. “Letting the wearer build their own logic into the clothes.”
In a world obsessed with streamlined identities but at a time where personal identities are at trend, Construction Layers proposes garments with wiggle room—clothes that can accommodate a mood swing, a shift in perspective, or simply a messy morning. The pieces leave room for interpretation—offering hints, not instructions, and letting you reshape the story yourself.
Fashion, here, becomes less about looking put-together, and more about being allowed to come undone, rebuild, and repeat.
The Unfinished as Final Form
Construction Layers isn’t interested in polished perfection. Their work celebrates the beauty of coming apart. “Frays, uneven tones, natural wear—these aren’t flaws,” Cay says. “They’re marks of presence.”
It’s an approach that echoes Japanese boro and the humility of wabi-sabi, but rooted in the lived-in energy of workwear. Clothes are absorbed through every scuff, every sweat stain, every careless lean against a rusty fence. The decay is the point.
“A piece is complete when it feels unresolved in the right way,” he adds. “When it invites questions instead of giving all the answers.” In other words: the design ends when life begins.
Filipino Fashion as Process, Not Aesthetic
Ask Construction Layers what Filipino fashion means today and you won’t get a moodboard of embroidery and barong collars. “It’s no longer about ornate tradition or modern minimalism—it’s about finding a language in between.”
That language is process-based: steeped in resourcefulness, repetition, and resistance. Their work is stitched with global references—French denim, archival tailoring—but filtered through what he calls “a distinctly Filipino sensitivity”. He explains, “Filipino fashion is shifting. It’s no longer just about ornate tradition or modern minimalism—it’s about finding language in between. Through Construction Layers, we try to speak in that in-between space.”
We reference history, not just ours, but global—then filter it through a distinctly Filipino sensitivity: resourcefulness, craft, resilience. We want to expand how people view Filipino design—not just through aesthetics, but through process and philosophy.
– Kendrick Cay
What do you walk away with from Collection III.V? A tailored top that you can throw over anything. A waistcoat that softens with every wear. Maybe a pair of trousers that dare you to grow into them, emotionally and otherwise.
But really, what Construction Layers offers is permission. Permission to dress with uncertainty. To let your clothes misbehave. To leave some edges raw.
After all, as Kendrick Cay puts it: “The garment isn’t finished when it leaves the studio. It’s finished when it’s worn, preserved, and altered by everyday life.” Or when it’s frayed in the right place, and you decide to keep wearing it anyway.
Construction Layers’ Collection III.V is available at Comme Ci, R2 Level, Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center, Makati, until July 8, 2025
Photos courtesy of CONSTRUCTION LAYERS
