For NOT&nbsp;HERE, Antonina Amoncio steps outside ANTONINA’s familiar muted palette, bringing colour, softness, and a new sense of possibility.

For years, ANTONINA has spoken in black. Its sharp tailoring and sculptural silhouettes have largely lived within a palette of dark, muted tones.&nbsp;
For NOT HERE, Antonina Amoncio decided to look elsewhere.
The Spring/Summer 2027 collection, which closed the third day of MNL Fashion Week 2026, began with a need to stop. After years of constantly creating, producing, and moving from one thing to the next, Amoncio felt that she needed to step away from the noise.
“NOT HERE is my letter to myself that I needed to take a break,” she says.
Last year, ANTONINA took a break from fashion shows altogether, giving the designer time to focus and reconsider where she wanted the brand to go. Coming back to the runway, she found herself with a different understanding of what ANTONINA could be.

Photos by Xian Tan and Alvin Chua courtesy of MNL Fashion Week
The most immediate difference is colour.
Pinks, sage greens, blues, whites, and softer greys appear throughout the collection, alongside flowers, lace, and delicate textures. For a designer known for working largely in black and muted tones, the palette brings a lighter quality to ANTONINA without completely leaving its darker side behind.
The last time Amoncio explored colour in this way was in 2019, when she presented a collection in Tokyo, before the pandemic. Since then, black, grey, and other muted shades have remained closely tied to the label’s identity.
“I feel like how I develop a design right now, it’s very limitless for me,” she muses. “I can do things that aren’t connected with the collection, but at the same time, I can prove that it’s there,” the designer tells L’Officiel Philippines.
That freedom comes through in the clothes as much as it does in the colour.
A pale pink suit is finished with a floral brooch, giving traditional tailoring a softer touch. Elsewhere, a constructed suit is made more relaxed, with pronounced shoulders balanced by a looser waist.&nbsp;
The collection moves between these different moods without needing to settle on just one. Techniques from Amoncio’s earlier work are reworked into new silhouettes, while her collaboration with Filipino floral brand, Nara Floral brings intricate beaded flowers into the collection.
The runway also featured Kylie Verzosa and Michelle Dee, each wearing a different side of NOT HERE. Verzosa wore a sculptural black corset gown with a full, embellished skirt, while Dee stepped out in a structured peach mini dress covered in a geometric pattern.

Photos by Xian Tan courtesy of MNL Fashion Week
Then there are the pieces that lean fully into texture: lace cut into new forms, hand-sewn details, collages of beads and lace, and flowers worked across the clothes. A pastel, heavily embellished look brings together pink, lilac, mint, and white, while darker pieces return to the sculptural shapes and tactile surfaces that have long been part of ANTONINA.

Photos by Akira Watanabe and Alvin Chua courtesy of MNL Fashion Week
Amoncio describes the feeling behind the collection as optimistic, happy, and, most importantly, relieved. After taking time away, she returned with the freedom to experiment without having to leave everything she had built behind.
“This time it’s more of, like, hopeful,” she says. “I feel, I mean, while doing the collection, I feel very happy, optimistic, and also, there’s a sense of relief that I was able to do it.”
That feeling comes through in the clothes. The florals and lighter colours bring a sense of ease, while the tailoring and darker looks keep the collection grounded in the world Amoncio has spent years building.
Even with its more romantic details, there are still traces of ANTONINA’s familiar restraint. Black remains. Tailoring remains. The clothes still carry the precision of a designer who thinks carefully about how each piece will be seen and worn.
But Amoncio is no longer as concerned with keeping every idea within the same boundaries. For her, the break created space to understand that a brand can grow without having to erase what came before.

Photo by Akira Watanabe

At MNL Fashion Week 2026, ANTONINA returns not with a reinvention, but with room to breathe.
The collection is softer, brighter, and more open than what came before it—but it is still recognizably ANTONINA. For a designer who spent years defining herself through black, NOT HERE makes a case for everything that can exist beyond it.
And sometimes, taking a break is what makes you realise just how limitless you can be.

ANTONINA Lets Colour In at MNL Fashion Week 2026

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