Jor-El Espina: A Decade of Devotion
Jor-El Espina turns his Dekada collection into a testament to craft, to the community, and the refusal to stand still.
Words Alekz Cabantac
Photos courtesy of Jor-El Espina
July 28, 2026
Ten years is not simply a milestone to mark. It is a measure of devotion one sets out to prove again with every collection.
At Jor-El Espina’s atelier, where a team now nearly three times its usual size is working late into the evenings ahead of ArteFino’s tenth edition, Isang Dekada.
Each new body of work is approached as though it were his first, a fresh cycle of trial, discovery and refinement that keeps him from ever quite settling into one way of working.
Artist Jor-El Espina
Espina first showed at ArteFino as a designer still finding his footing in a retail setting, and the fair, built around homegrown and handmade fashion, became the ground on which he tested and sharpened his instincts.
Over repeated seasons there, he built both a recognisable design identity and the beginnings of a loyal clientele, ties he has continued to return to and build upon rather than move past.
Every garment is produced entirely by hand. Espina has built his practice around small, couture-adjacent details that distinguish each piece, which is part of why no two garments turn out exactly alike.
Jor-El Espina’s Dekada Collection
The collection draws on a mix of techniques, alongside a newer signature touch—coloured safety pins—pulled from a personal stash he has been accumulating for years and repurposed here as an unexpected, playful detail. It is the kind of habit that only comes from years of paying close attention to one’s own work.
That same attentiveness extends outward, to the people who have followed his career over the years.
Rather than anchor Dekada to a single design idea, Espina opted to split the collection into three distinct groups presented under one name. Reworked versions of past signature pieces, entirely new designs, and one-of-a-kind garments.
The structure is less a marketing device than an act of loyalty in itself, an attempt to reach longtime patrons and newer audiences alike with something that speaks to each of them directly, rather than assuming one language could serve everyone.
Colour marks the clearest departure in this collection. Long associated with a more muted, earth-toned palette, he has allowed himself to move into brighter, more saturated territory this time, a shift he attributes to the confidence built over ten years of showing his work.
The collection also brings in what Espina refers to as transformer pieces, garments designed to be styled in more than one way. A fitting extension of a designer who has never treated passion as something static.
Jor-El Espina’s Dekada Collection
His interest in separates, layering and mixing pieces to create contrast reflects a body of work still actively reinventing itself, even after ten years.
Espina has described his time with ArteFino as a continuous process of change, one where he has resisted settling into a single era, style or shape.
With Dekada, he hopes to offer something that might resonate with anyone else still committed to their own long, winding creative path.
Jor-El Espina’s Dekada Collection will be available exclusively at ArteFino: Isang Dekada, running from July 30 to August 2, 2026, at the ArteFino Atelier on The Fifth, Powerplant Mall.
