“I’m the queen of layering,” Lao concurs. “As human beings, we don’t exist two-dimensionally.”
The fashion stylist from the northern region of Nueva Vizcaya is drawn to faces of old people, like her framed prints of Jake Verzosa’s
Last Tattooed Women of Kalinga in the entryway, and bululs or wooden rice deities. “My heart belongs to the North,” she says. “My eyes were trained there.”
To prevent an all-out eclectic clash from happening, Bucoy resorted to harmonising the colour story. Lao, for her part, reveals her natural tendency to take hues she sees in one medium—whether it’s a coffee table book, YouTube or an outfit—and splashing it onto a surface in her home. “Like this yellow, I’m really liking,” she points out. Nowhere is this more evident than in her tablescapes, which has its own cult following on Instagram. She recalls snapping a photo of a wall at Cubao Expo trade fair, then going home to make dinner for her family, selecting table linens in the same hue that enchanted her on the wall.