Just minutes after the entire Young Designers show ends, Yana Kalaw is radiant backstage and brimming with emotion. “It’s a collection that’s been a long time coming,” she shares with MEGA. “Everything, all the concepts I’ve had ever since going into fashion school, I think they were all held up, boxed within me, and I’ve been wanting to show them.”
She’s referring to Queer Notes, a collection she admits she’s been waiting years to make. Its beginnings predate the pandemic, when her batch unfortunately lost the chance to have a graduation show. At MNL Fashion Week 2026, she finally gets to show it. Her Catholic girlhood, her queerness, and all the confusing rules she’s inherited about how the two are supposed to coexist are unpacked in a lineup that’s her finest collection yet, with the designer’s love for sensuality and maximalism put to work on a story that deserves both.
Yana Kalaw’s Queer Notes Revels in Femininity
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Grief and anger run through Queer Notes, yet Kalaw refuses to make queer womanhood miserable. She lets femininity be pleasurable, piling on the boning, undone lace, sheer fabrics, and grand silhouettes with the enthusiasm of an angsty Marie Antoinette. It’s romantic and occasionally absurd, which the designer’s maximalist language thrives in.
Being feminine hasn’t always been this easy to enjoy. Growing up, Kalaw felt she had to pretend to be straight to appease the adults around her, then later believed she needed to be more masculine to deserve liking a girl. Queer Notes dispenses with both, as a woman can wear all the lace she wants and still yearn for the girl. Queer and trans women also populate the runway, giving the story greater breadth.
Restrictive labels are right there on the clothes, too. Michelle Dee opens in a sheer nude piece repeatedly marked tibo, her exposed body covered by a word that threatens to define her before she even takes her first stride. Leaving those definitions behind takes time, Kalaw admits: “It’s hard. It’s gonna be such a long process. It’s more of unlearning a lot of things. But at the same time, I think it’s really about being true to yourself and being true to your own values—not the ones that were pushed upon you.”
It’s wonderful, then, for the designer to release it all with an optimistic finale. Lesbyana sits proudly across a bride’s sheer top, while an enormous skirt turns her into the grandest woman on the catwalk. Then she runs, and the whole thing bounces behind her with an exuberance that makes its final emotion—becoming—look like the most fun of the four.
After years living inside Yana Kalaw’s head, Queer Notes is finally out. And so is the bride.
Photographed by KIERAN PUNAY of KLIQ, INC.
Frequently Asked Questions
Queer Notes is Yana Kalaw’s MNL Fashion Week 2026 collection exploring her Catholic girlhood and queerness, unpacking the conflicting rules she inherited about how the two are supposed to coexist, through maximalist, sensual femininity.
Michelle Dee opened Queer Notes in a sheer nude piece repeatedly marked with the word “tibo,” visually confronting how restrictive labels can define a person before they even move.
Kalaw had been developing the concepts behind Queer Notes since fashion school, with its origins predating the pandemic, when her batch lost the chance to hold a graduation show.
The show closed with an optimistic finale featuring Lesbyana in a bride’s sheer top paired with an enormous skirt, running down the runway in a moment Kalaw described as the collection’s most joyful.
Queer Notes carries grief and anger alongside pleasure and romance, refusing to frame queer womanhood as miserable. It explores unlearning inherited expectations around femininity, masculinity, and sexuality through boning, lace, and sheer fabrics.
