Randolf Finds Calm in the Chaos at MNL Fashion Week 2026

Ahead of last night’s show, designer RJ Santos had promised something much “calmer” for this collection. But for anyone familiar with his work, calmness is hardly the first thing that comes to mind. Bold bursts of color, maximalist prints, and a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humor have long defined the Randolf vocabulary.

So when RJ says to expect a calmer collection, one question naturally comes to mind: What exactly could “calmness” look like for Randolf?

At his sophomore appearance at MNL Fashion Week, RJ gave his answer. By the time the final model left the runway, the presentation had left behind something more enduring than visual spectacle: a feeling that lingered long after the show had ended.

Life, indeed, begins and ends through a hospital door.

With this collection, Preview BFFD 2023 honoree RJ Santos reflects on the loss of his grandfather and the birth of his niece, Sari, just four days later. He imagines a hospital waiting room as a liminal space—a utopia of sorts, where everyone and everything he loves can gather and co-exist in one place.

The Randolf show was still the visual feast audiences have come to expect, but the collection was most compelling when that familiar maximalism was framed within RJ’s own experience of grief.

Here, the embroidery, saturated palette, and riotous prints were not merely frivolous or ornamental. They became part of RJ’s attempt to reconcile opposing emotional states: grief and joy, endings and beginnings.

The show opened with neon pink lights flickering aggressively against a turquoise-hued hospital door. A model pushed the heavy door wide open and strode onto the runway in a skin-tight printed bodysuit layered beneath a gauzy black dress.

It was an effective opening image, immediately establishing the collision that would define the collection: the clinical setting of a hospital, imagined through Randolf’s distinctly theatrical lens.

Even when narrating grief, RJ does not retreat into muted palettes or austere silhouettes. Instead, he works through loss in the language he knows best: playful color-blocking, competing prints, exaggerated proportions, and the occasional pop culture reference. The tension between the collection’s subject matter and its high-spirited execution is one of its most interesting propositions.

Perhaps this is where “calmness” ultimately emerged in The Waiting Room.

It came not through an abandonment of the Randolf codes, but through a greater sense of emotional clarity. The collection remained busy, colorful, and at times deliberately excessive. Yet beneath the burst of textures and colors was a more focused consideration of what happens when grief and new life occupy the same space.

Backstage photos and videos by Kurt Villagracia. Runway photos by Chapters PH, courtesy of the MNL Fashion Week team.