Preview Hall of Fame 2026: Meet the Filipino Creatives Who Helped Shape the Industry

Jing Monis’ story with Preview starts at the very beginning. He was already on his way up as a makeup artist and hairstylist when his friend, Preview’s founding fashion editor Myrza Sison, enlisted him to work on the magazine’s maiden cover.

“That was a game changer,” remembers Jing. It was the late ’90s, a time when dark eyeshadow and bombastic hairdos were the trend, but the Preview team, then a modest group of four including Jing, had no plans to ride the wave. When the inaugural issue came out, actress and model Tweetie De Leon was front and center, her hair worn loose with an airy blowout and barely any makeup.

“It was a success. Up to now, I mean, when you look at the cover, it's timeless,” says Jing.

After the cover was launched, he went off to Hong Kong to study hairdressing. His time there would open doors for him in the international scene, booking jobs with the likes of Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Hong Kong. It’s clear the prodigious artist, who started out sweeping the floors of a hair salon, had a knack for his passion.

Jing quickly rose to prominence, tracing a career trajectory right beside the stars. His shears would touch the crowning glories of Filipino entertainment royalty, including Regine Velasquez, Sarah Geronimo, and Anne Curtis. Today, he also owns a chain of upscale salons in the country.

“[Jing] has gone on to become a pioneer in his field, setting benchmarks in beauty and grooming that continue to influence new generations of artists,” explains Marj when asked about the veteran beauty artist.

With over three decades of experience, Jing has helped propel the careers of many hopefuls striving to make it in the beauty industry. Whether or not they share a career path with him, young creatives could learn a thing or two from Jing, who is always more than happy to share what he can.

They say perfection is overrated, but on the contrary, he advises every upstart to “be a perfectionist.” He adds, “Don't be content with what you know at this moment. Always think outside the box. And don't work for the money, work for your passion. Money will come after when you're happy with what you're doing.”

Few names in the local styling industry resonate as clearly as Liz Uy’s. Before her time, styling was not yet recognized as a defined profession. Unless they doubled as an auspicious designer, there was little recognition to be had by dressing up celebrities.

“Liz helped change that,” says Marj. “She demonstrated that styling could actually be pursued as a serious and sustainable career. In many ways, her trajectory helped pave the way for the wave of fashion stylists we see in the industry today.”

Liz built her reputation with pure grit and love for the sartorial world. The glam of the glossies was far from her reality when she was starting out as an editorial assistant. As a one-woman team, she worked, quite literally, from the ground up: taping shoes, steaming clothes, ordering food, pulling out entire looks, and returning them all on her own.

“Preview is the reason why I am me today,” shares Liz. Today, she has a team of her own in Stylized Studios, the creative company she founded with a regular client list that reads like a who’s who of the country’s top stars.

At Stylized, the rule is that everything’s possible, because the trials of Liz’s training ground taught her to be allergic to one word: “wala.” She explains, “During my time, we weren’t allowed to answer that because you have to be resourceful. You can't just sit there and do nothing, especially now with social media. It's so easy. It's easier to see things, to get in touch with people, to create a relationship with people.”

It’s this solution-based attitude that propelled Liz from editorial assistant to fashion editor to cover girl. She still remembers her first one with Preview in 2011 like it was yesterday.

“It was such a moment because I've worked so hard to reach my dream, which is to become a fashion editor. And I got lucky because I transitioned to a lot of other things,” remembers Liz. “It was [during a time when] nagbe-bridge na yung fashion and celebrity culture also.”

After a career-defining run with Preview, Liz has, in many ways, procured herself celebrity status. She’s come far and away from the young girl who played dress up with her equally talented brother, Vince Uy, in their childhood home. Securing deals and collaborations from local to luxury brands, whether it’s with Plains & Prints, Lazada, or Gucci, this once editorial assistant is no longer the seeker but the one sought after.

For Preview’s 30th anniversary, the Marriott Grand Ballroom was transformed into a modern kulambo: panels of mesh fabric draped the ceiling, while mounds of greenery were scattered throughout the hallways and installations. Inspired by the lush landscape paintings of Fernando Amorsolo, designer Cyndi Fernandez-Beltran translated art into modern life.

As the founder of Moss Design House, this wasn’t Cyndi’s first rodeo. In fact, it was simply one of many. Her relationship with the brand dates back nearly 20 years, when she was enlisted to work on the set of the very first Preview Ball.

“We were making stools out of corrugated boards,” Cyndi remembers. “That was very creative work. I was so driven to impress people. It was one of the turning points where you're given a creative brief, and you have to be able to translate that into a three-dimensional environment that serves a purpose.”

Cyndi attributes her success to her gung-ho spirit. She will do, and has done, everything. As a young creative bursting with eagerness to prove herself, she took on any task thrown her way. As long as it concerned art and design, she would figure it out eventually.

“I was very brave in the sense that I would wing it. Big or small, I took the job because I knew that at one point, no matter what the scale is, it's gonna replicate and then grow and become big.”

Before she put up Moss with her now-husband, Mado Beltran, she’d already done the rounds as an interior designer, event designer, production designer, and set designer. She would sometimes find herself grinding ceaselessly for 48 hours with no sleep and building what she calls her “stamina for stress”—which can only be imagined, at this point, as pure steel.

Her interdisciplinary pursuits gave Moss Design House its edge. Launched in 2008, they easily outpaced their contemporaries due to the sheer number of services they offered and the depth of their delivery. “We're the first multi-disciplinary firm in the country that does event design, interior design, pop-up installations, set design, production design, and virtual merchandising. It's all housed in one agency,” says Cyndi.

Today, Moss has luxury brands knocking on their doors day in and day out, asking for their next events to be styled with tasteful intention. It’s all the evidence one needs to know that the agency does it all, and they do it well.

“For me, design was never meant to be linear. It’s about understanding how different disciplines intersect and using that to create more meaningful, layered work,” Cyndi tells Preview. “If that perspective encouraged others to expand their own practice and see design as something fluid rather than fixed, then that’s something I would be proud to have contributed to this industry.”

BJ Pascual is a Preview boy, born and bred. His first photoshoot with Preview was a denim editorial that propped up the rest of his professional career as a photographer.

An avid fan of fashion magazines, BJ was a devoted reader of Preview long before he was called in to assist with a photoshoot in the Caramoan Islands. “Yung time na 'yan, I was already a professional photographer, but I still took the job,” he recounted. By then, he had already collaborated with nearly every publication of note at the time.

At the airport on the way home, he would be handpicked by then Preview Creative Director Vince Uy to capture an editorial meant to replace a contributed piece that had ended up on the cutting room floor. Almost like fate guided him to the opportunity, the spread was titled “Billy Jean” or BJ for short.

Since then, BJ has become one of the title’s most frequent and trusted collaborators. Every Preview milestone is his as well. In the eye of his polished lens, he helped usher the brand into a new era when he shot Anne Curtis for Preview’s first-ever digital issue. In 2025, the title returned to its roots by releasing the first volume of the Preview Book to mark its 30th anniversary. On the pivotal cover, glossy and tangible, BJ caught Anne Curtis breaking through a bamboo tree, honoring the title’s beginnings and signaling its continued devotion to readers, then and now.

Outside Preview, BJ is a brand of his own. He’s a content creator with over a million combined followers on social media; a magazine cover boy himself; a sought-after lensman employed by international brands, and the author of PUSH: Muses, Mischief, & How to Make It in Manila, a 2015 guide that continues to inspire the young photographers of today.

“Now, nakaka-work ko na yung mga nagbasa ng book,” BJ tells Preview, adding that he still gets asked to sign it 11 years after it was published—proof that he’s established a respectable longevity any creative can only dream of.

With more years ahead of him, BJ admits that he’s still not satisfied. When asked about his legacy, the 38-year-old looks the other way, describing his work as ephemeral. Always, he lives and photographs for the now, and perhaps that is how he’ll never fade.