PIA

Living in Spain, I was inspired by many European architectural elements that have been preserved from many eras. I decided to create a brief patterns series, broken into three parts. It is a combination of Edge versus Elegance, eventually working their way together. One is flat, soft and rounded. One is hard, linear and three dimensional. In a way, it was a way to express how I felt being in a country where no one understood where I came from. People were surprised to hear I wasn't Filipino, even though I grew up there, or were curious as to why I had an American accent but wasn't American. I felt like a walking melting pot, but not in the great way, since most of the time it just made me question where I belonged.

While I was pondering this, I met an amazing friend who was a German au pair in Spain and would come to my pub crawls almost every week. She heard my stories and could channel every type of edginess or tenderness I was looking for. My beautiful model's name is Pia and currently she is in some other part of the planet taking in what the world has to offer.

Cheers to the identity struggle of third-culture children: hard and soft, a citizen of everywhere but nowhere.