With Love and Pride: These Queer-owned Brands Light Up MoCAF 2025
Leave the bad and enter only with pride alongside A-Z, Milkwear, and Space Encounters Gallery.
Words Julianna Gertrude D. Remulla
Photo courtesy of Li Almazora
July 13, 2025
This year’s lineup has only gotten bigger, bolder, and a whole lot more exciting. With MoCAF’s growing circle of collaborators comes a wave of artisans and creative cohorts who share the same space, love, and passion for celebrating art in all its forms.
Founders of homegrown brands like AtoZ, Milkwear, and Space Encounters Gallery are stepping up to share how queer identity weaves seamlessly into the fabric of their craft.
So make the rounds, fuel your curiosity, and soak in every corner–because exploration knows no bounds at MoCAF 2025. Ready to get swept away? We’re about to dive headfirst into a vibrant journey.
Into every stitch
Sewing beyond the seams, AtoZ has been crafting practical, gender-fluid designs that have made their mark since 2020. At its core, founder and designer Angelica Alvarez, along with sales associate and partner Kirsten Ariana, stand behind the meaning stitched into their name: AtoZ.
“The whole reason behind AtoZ’s name is always about inclusivity–not even wanting to be tied to a single letter of the LGBTQIA+,” Kirsten shares.
Boxed-in archetypes can easily limit growth, but for AtoZ, every piece intentionally goes beyond the ordinary. Each design carries a telling—a living, breathing narrative shaped by the owners’ personal experiences and the belief that loving freely should never come with boundaries.
Sincerely, Milkwear
Got any room for dessert? Milkwear is a lifestyle fashion brand launched in 2020 to cater to every kind of mixed taste. All sugar and spice, founder Carlo Chu has shaped Milkwear into an avenue that speaks directly to the LGBTQIA+ community. With their recent ‘Rainbow Collection,’ the brand profoundly stands for expanding a culture that persistently inspires and nurtures.
Chu highlights the importance of support systems–family, friends, and community. “Use your platform to talk to the community. If you have the chance, give a message, create works that talk, and connect to the community. It’s important that we tell stories,” he shares.
After all, to live vividly is to hop through life tied together by every string of love.
Come as you are: Space Encounters Gallery
Space Encounters Gallery, a timeless modern gallery and design studio, makes magic with mindful creativity. The gallery has always maintained an inclusive space for everyone, enthusiast or not, starting a spark dedicated to continuously producing for the love of ideation and art.
For co-founder Thor Balanon and head designer Wilmer Lopez, subtle expressions speak the loudest. “Do your own thing, because that certain ordinariness is also queer. We need that type of representation since we’re all just a person like everybody else,” Balanon shares.
Amid nuances, Space Encounters remains crisp and clear. In the end, embracing love for all is a genuine testament to our shared humanity.
Make no amends, in a world eager to define and divide, these brands remind us that art and the love behind it belong to everyone. At MoCAF 2025, creativity is not just celebrated, rather, it is shared, honored, and made brighter by every story stitched, painted, or imagined into being.
May every stroke, stitch, and story remind us: Pride lives in the spaces we make for each other and in the art we dare to share.
