November 3, 2025 | 10:21am
MANILA, Philippines — As it reopens and launches its holiday collection, The Rajo Store marks not just an evolution of the brand, but a celebration of creativity, of fashion shaping lives, and most fundamentally, of the enduring love of family.
Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of its flagship at the PowerPlant Mall, The Rajo Store is offering “sartorial solutions for real people with real-life concerns.”
This time, renowned designer Rajo Laurel collaborated with his equally enterprising sisters — Venisse Laurel-Hermano, who has been working with her brother behind the scenes as chief operating officer, and famed makeup artist Gela Laurel-Stehmeier — to create a collection that is “grounded and thoughtful.”
“Fashion, by its very nature, should be a constant update and a constant refresh. That is what makes a brand relevant and always exciting. So, I think since it’s our 10th year anniversary, it would be more important to use this as a time to actually refresh, update and keep it exciting. After 10 years, I think it’s about time,” Rajo explained.
It took some time for the siblings to have a conversation to collaborate.
“I guess because we were really working in a way that we essentially respected our own boundaries, each one of us, you can say, had our own responsibilities. For instance, Venisse has always been in charge of operations. I was always in charge of creative while Gela was always in charge of visuals and merchandising,” Rajo shared.
The collection started with Gela and Venisse wanting to do a small capsule collection for their clothes for traveling.
“Then it dawned on me, you know, because the ideas were actually quite beautiful and the ideas were actually quite relevant, I said, you know what, let’s not do a capsule collection. Let’s do the entire collection using your ideas. And from there it began,” he shared.
As their working relationship progressed, their “roles” emerged: Rajo is the fantasy, Gela is the reality, Venisse is the execution. Although they work independently, they would always sort of ask questions and show what they do for approval but always respected these boundaries.
“Well, in the beginning the demarcation lines were actually quite defined, essentially, with how we work as a family. But now we have begun to listen to each other because sometimes the people like Venisse who would always execute, would also have fantasies and also have dreams and Gela who would always resonate with reality but sometimes often have fantasies,” the designer explained.
“So, it’s this sort of like new voices from our own perspectives that created this incredible harmony towards all of us. And I think that creates a wonderful, special, I guess reaction to all of the things that we normally do,” he added.
Another wonderful feature of the collection is its being genderless.
“I have always believed that clothes don’t have any gender. I mean, that is more exciting. And with the advent of the first RajoMan collection show last year, I have realized that more and more people were actually buying from the RajoMan regardless if they are a woman, or a man, or a transgender. It did not matter,” the designer said.
“Clothes don’t have a gender. Therefore, what we did for this particular season and for the seasons that will actually go forward, we will not have gender for the clothes. We will just say it’s Rajo. And from there, I think people will shop and buy what resonates towards what they like. And I think so far, it has been an exciting response,” he added.
For the holiday collection for the Rajo Store, the siblings concentrated on fabrics that can easily be taken care of or fabrics that do not need to be ironed or are wrinkle-free.
“We wanted to sort of really create a collection and create clothes for people to live in not just necessarily for these special occasions. These are clothes that will resonate with their lifestyle; whether it be at work, or at play, for traveling or even for occasions,” said Rajo. “We wanted clothes that would really have that resonance to our clients. I think for this particular collection we just decided to create this wonderful confluence of activity and creativity in order to do this.”
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