Steffi Cua

Steffi Cua is the founder and creative director of Idyllic Summers, a craft-centred womenswear practice she established in Manila in 2021. The label works with handloom textiles, botanical eco-printing, and near-zero-waste folk pattern cutting, building its collections through long-term partnerships. The practice grows by deepening rather than widening: refining concept and execution, keeping provenance clear, and working through Philippine materiality and the people who carry it, from handloom weavers and their communities to the seamstresses and artisans who finish each piece, credited alongside the label itself. Through Earthbound, its ongoing collaboration with visual artists Geraldine Javier and Marionne Contreras, Idyllic Summers moves between fashion and contemporary art, with work shown at MO Space Gallery, HABI: The Philippine Textile Council, and Silverlens Den at Silverlens Galleries. The label has presented twice at Fondazione Sozzani in Milan, where it was amongst the Philippine designers selected for the FashionPhilippines mentorship and exhibition programme in 2025 and 2026.

Steffi’s approach is shaped by a formation on both sides of the industry. She trained in fashion design at LaSalle College International, and in buying and merchandising at the London College of Fashion, graduating with distinction from both, and later studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. She spent several years in London in luxury buying and international wholesale before returning to Manila, and earlier worked as a senior designer for Philippine retailers. That grounding in how fashion is bought, sold and distributed informs her conviction that sustainability is a question of structure as much as material: how value, credit and risk are shared across a supply chain, and how a small practice can scale its relationships without diluting its standards. Alongside Idyllic Summers, she contributes fashion criticism to the Philippine Daily Inquirer and teaches Buying and Merchandising at FAB Creatives, where she works with the next generation of Filipino designers on building practices that are commercially viable and rooted in local craft.