What started as playful tributes to fashion icons is now part of Manila&rsquo;s luxury retail scene, thanks to LiFE DESiGN.

If you&rsquo;ve scrolled through Instagram lately and spotted a cheeky tarpaulin congratulating ASAP Rocky on his acquittal or Jonathan Anderson on his debut Dior collection, no, you&rsquo;re not hallucinating. You&rsquo;ve just been touched by the whimsical world of LiFE DESiGN.
Co-conceived by Xylk Lorena and Fleasayo Olowaflea, these now-iconic banners have been popping up across Paris and Manila, bringing a distinctly Filipino flavor to the global fashion map. And in a rare crossover of street-level kitsch and high-end retail, select tarpaulins are now physically displayed in UNIVERS stores, one of Manila&rsquo;s premier fashion destinations. It&rsquo;s a full-circle moment. What began as unsolicited tributes to the likes of Glenn Martens and Jacquemus are now being canonized in the very spaces those names helped shape.&nbsp;
And while the tarps have been photographed, reposted, and analyzed to death online, we at L&rsquo;Officiel wanted to go straight to the source. We spoke with Xylk Lorena, half of the duo behind welife.design, to dig deeper into the origins of the project and how something so hyperlocal managed to resonate with a global audience.

How did UNIVERS approach you for the collaboration, and what was your initial reaction? It&rsquo;s amazing how much sliding into DMs can change people&rsquo;s lives, aha. I thought it was exciting&mdash;who wouldn&rsquo;t want to be part of their UNIVERS? wink
Did you have full creative freedom for the collab? Yes! Zero friction, which I really appreciated because it showed trust in the vision and respect for the craft.
Has this project shifted how you think about your own art or role as an artist? I don&rsquo;t view anything I create as &ldquo;mine.&rdquo; I don&rsquo;t believe in the possessiveness of an idea&mdash;it&rsquo;s like saying C-sharp minor is mine. Ideas are in the air and will come out, whether it&rsquo;s through me or someone else. After all the attention we&rsquo;ve been blessed to receive recently, I&rsquo;ve realized even more how special and necessary it is for LiFE DESiGN to bring Pinoy culture into the highest levels of fashion and pop culture. My role has shifted&mdash;from simply wanting to express my perspective to wanting to empower everyone who looks like me.
What was your reaction to seeing your tarpaulins in the store? I&rsquo;m currently in Toronto, so I was literally in bed when I first saw the team installing them&mdash;I needed a second to realize I wasn&rsquo;t dreaming.
How did you come up with the idea of making these tarpaulins? I was sitting in traffic on an Angkas, as one does in Manila, and noticed how many congratulatory tarps there were for people I didn&rsquo;t know. Then my mind went, &ldquo;Oh, it would be hilarious if someone random congratulated Dries on his show,&rdquo; and voil&agrave;&mdash;here we are.
What were you responding to emotionally, culturally, or visually when you first began making these tarps? My sense of humor. Pinoys are the best when it comes to comedy. You can hear it in our language, see it in our architecture, feel it in our music and food. Our ability to find the funny is elite&mdash;we just haven&rsquo;t connected it with the rest of the world yet. The world really needs a laugh, and I know we can provide that through LiFE DESiGN.

Who was the first artist you featured, and why them? Was it personal, symbolic, or just who made sense in that moment? Martine Rose. She strikes this great balance of being relatively unknown in the Philippines but huge in the global fashion industry. Timing is everything. She had just won British Menswear Designer of the Year, so I think God set that up nicely for us.
When this project started gaining attention online and offline, did it surprise you? Or did you feel like you had tapped into something people were already craving? Uhm, I don&rsquo;t want to come off as arrogant, but I&rsquo;ve always had confidence in what the Philippines has to offer. I was more relieved&mdash;like &ldquo;FINALLY!&rdquo; We&rsquo;re finally part of the conversation. GQ Middle East recently featured us last month, which helped build momentum. After traveling the world for fashion and creative events, I can honestly say we&rsquo;re top 2&mdash;and we&rsquo;re not number 2. Generally speaking, it&rsquo;s bleak out there. It feels like someone sucked the color out of creativity and replaced it with commerce, and you can feel that. No worries, LiFE DESiGN&rsquo;s on the way.
How do people usually react when they first see your tarps? If you&rsquo;re Pinoy, you laugh&mdash;no explanation needed, we get it. Non-Pinoys usually smile in confusion, either pretending to get it or asking what&rsquo;s going on. Either way, we focus on speaking to those who do. Nothing kills an inside joke more than having to explain it.
Why do you think people resonate with your tarps so much? Because they have mistakes. It&rsquo;s the wrong person, the wrong spelling&mdash;it&rsquo;s perfectly imperfect, and that&rsquo;s our design language. In this age of AI, where everything is precise and instant, people are craving mistakes. That&rsquo;s what makes us human&mdash;not just emotion or creativity, but the ability to be &ldquo;wrong.&rdquo;
How do you think this format connects with Filipino culture? I hope it reflects our humor, our unapologetic ingenuity, and our ability to create harmless fun. The cost-efficiency of the tarps carries an iNNERGii you can feel all over the Philippines. We&rsquo;re just reporting what&rsquo;s already happening.
Any funny or unexpected stories while making or transporting them? We try to be efficient by printing them in whatever city we&rsquo;re visiting, but one time, for my birthday, my team brought a tarp to surprise me. I had no idea. Security made them unroll it to check if it was an election tarp&mdash;but it turned out to be my face in the clouds. I looked like I had died. LOL.
Since starting this project, what&rsquo;s been the most surreal moment that made you stop and go, &ldquo;Wait, this is really happening&rdquo;?
There have been a few. Seeing designers we made tarps for repost our work is always a little surreal. Simon Jacquemus reposted his tarp with Macaulay Culkin on it. Tyler, the Creator shared his on his Close Friends story. We got featured on i-D. But one that stands out: we were outside the KidSuper show last month and I got a text from Doug of KidSuper&mdash;with Colm holding the tarp. They found it, grabbed it, and now I think it&rsquo;s in their New York office. That&rsquo;s pretty cool.
Again, I hate to sound full of myself, but I think as Filipinos, we need to move past this &ldquo;surprise&rdquo; mindset. We&rsquo;re good enough. I&rsquo;ve shown the best designers in the world clothes we made in Marikina, and they were genuinely blown away. And that&rsquo;s aside from the tarps.&nbsp; We need to stop acting surprised we&rsquo;re this good. If you&rsquo;re Pinoy, you&rsquo;re elite.
Through humor, heart, and a whole lot of iNNERGii, LiFE DESiGN is reshaping how we see Filipino creativity. What started as a joke in traffic has evolved into a cultural phenomenon, reminding us that there&rsquo;s power in being Pinoy, and beauty in being perfectly imperfect. And if the rest of the world doesn&rsquo;t get the joke? That&rsquo;s fine. It wasn&rsquo;t for them anyway.

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