A Closer Look at BINI's Sarimanok-Inspired Outfits at Summer Sonic 2026

BINI and their Visual Director Ica Villanueva have been on a mission this year to showcase Filipino culture on every stage they perform on with fashion as their language. From Coachella to their Signals concert at the Mall of Asia Arena last month, BINI has championed various local weaving techniques, cultures, and celebrations, like the Sinulog Festival, through their vibrant and imaginative costumes.

For their recent appearance at the Summer Sonic Festival in Osaka, the Nation’s Girl Group shined a spotlight this time on Maranao folklore with the Sarimanok, a mythical bird famous for its multicolored feathers. To bring this vision to life, Ica partnered up with designer Cheetah Rivera who previously crafted custom garments for the members for their BINIfied concert in 2025.

“[Cheetah] understood our vision so naturally while still bringing her own creative perspective to it,” Ica told Preview. “It was important for us to create something that looked intricate and powerful onstage without compromising the girls’ comfort and movement.”

When designing for BINI, Cheetah has been consistent with creating for them functional yet visually striking outfits they can comfortably dance in. Considering they were expected to deliver high-energy performances under Japan’s sweltering heat, the designer prioritized using lightweight materials like stretch fabric combined with translucent organza.

To mimic the Sarimanaok’s famous features, Cheetah came up with custom fabric feathers made through laser cutting and sublimation printing. These were machine and hand-sewn along with decorative details that could reflect and refract the light on stage, allowing each member to move freely and glow brightly while singing their catchy hits, including Salamin, Salamin and a Japanese version of Born to Win.

As per Cheetah and Ica, the entire costume-making process took up an entire month. “A lot of hard work was involved, from brainstorming, conceptualizing, researching, prototyping, and sampling to get to that whole visual affair that everyone was happy to see,” recalled Cheetah.

In an Instagram story, she revealed that hundreds of individual cutouts were also hand-dyed and airbrushed, then layered and hand-embroidered together to replicate a scaled and feathered effect.

“The girls were amazed!” Ica told Preview. “They were really appreciative of how the concept came to life, especially because we made sure to consider both the weather and their comfort throughout the design process. Despite all the details and layers, the outfits were surprisingly lightweight—literally 'feather-like.' It was important for us that they could move freely, perform comfortably, and still have that strong visual impact onstage.”

According to Ica, they chose to draw inspiration from the Sarimanok as a messenger and symbolic bridge between two worlds. Just like the mythical creature, BINI’s visual director hopes that the girl group is always able to proudly carry and share the various aspects of Filipino culture on an international scale by reinterpreting our rich heritage through a contemporary lens for a much bigger audience.