If there’s a region in the Philippines where a successful jacket designer might emerge, it would be Baguio. The mountain city is a few hours north of Manila, and its endless hills and cooler climate are constant reminders of its elevation. Almost anywhere else in the tropical nation, the heat makes wearing jackets a sacrifice in the name of style. But in Baguio, jackets are practical items much of the year. This is where custom clothing brand Lise Laboratory has its roots.
想在菲律宾找到穿夹克的人，你可能要去碧瑶看看。这座山城距离首都马尼拉以北数小时车程，那里绵延不断的山丘与高地，造就了凉爽气候。菲律宾是热带国家，由于天气酷热，夹克衫很多时候都只出现在时尚宣传中。但在碧瑶，夹克衫是必备的单品，升级改造服装品牌 Lise Laboratory 就诞生于此。
Helmed by 27-year-old designer Daniel Liceralde, the brand is known for custom North Face and Carhartt jackets reimagined with paisley patterns, Japanese silk, and embroidered Pokemon characters. Aside from these jackets, he also creates winter hoodies and unofficial Yankees bucket hats in a similar style.
品牌主理人是 27 岁的设计师 Daniel Liceralde，他擅长以佩斯利花纹、日式丝绸、甚至宝可梦刺绣等元素，重新装点 The North Face 和 Carhartt 等品牌夹克衫。除了夹克衫外，他的作品还包括冬季连帽卫衣和非官方定制的 Yankees 渔夫帽等等。
（注：佩斯利纹样俗称腰花果图案之一，最早诞生于古巴比伦，兴盛于波斯和印度。它的图案据说是来自于印度教里的“生命之树”——菩提树叶或海枣树叶。也有人从芒果、切开的无花果、松球、草履虫结构上找到它的影子。）
Although the majority of his customers are overseas, it was Baguio culture that led him to his current style with its crisp weather and plentiful thrift shops. “I’ve been thrifting since I was a kid,” he explains. “I was a skater and loved the skate brands but couldn’t afford them, so I’d hit the thrift shops looking for cheaper clothes in a similar style. The first North Face I produced was a bubble jacket I found in an ukay (Tagalog for thrift store) here for $20; I ended up selling it for $2000.”
除了本土凉爽的气候，当地数量众多的二手服饰店也是品牌成立的主要因素。Daniel 说：“我很小的时候就喜欢去二手市场淘旧衣服。那时候玩滑板，很喜欢一些滑板品牌，但买不起。所以会去二手店里找一些类似的平价款。我改造的第一件作品，是淘来的 The North Face 绗缝外套，当初价格是 20 美金，最后以 2000 美元的价格卖出。”
Lise Laboratories almost never came to be. In fact, Liceralde almost died in a sudden act of violence. But it was this harrowing incident that spurred him to pursue his fashion dreams. He was planning on becoming an architect, had studied for five years, and was already apprenticing. But during a fight, he got stabbed, he says, showing a wide scar behind his ear and where his earlobe was sewn back on. He tells a story about a friend of his who had gotten into a brawl outside a bar they were at, and he went to help protect him. “I didn’t know he was smoking meth, he thought I was his enemy and grabbed a knife out of his bag and stabbed me on the left side of my head,” he recalls. “I’d been in a lot of fights, but I’d never been stabbed or anything. I realized anything can happen at any time—it was life-changing. What if I had died that day? What if I never achieved anything or never did what I love?”
Daniel 曾险些丧命于一次暴力恐怖事件。而正是因为那次惨痛的经历，教会他珍惜当下，大胆追求自己想要做的事。他大学原本专业是建筑设计，毕业后投身建筑事业。某次在酒吧和朋友劝架，被人用刀刺伤了头部。他一边说着，一边露出耳朵后面的一处大块疤痕，这是耳垂被重新缝合时留下的刀疤，“我都不知道那人吸食了冰毒，他好像疯了似的把我当成敌人，从包里掏出尖刀，刺向我头部的左侧，”他回忆道，“我以前打过很多架，但从来没有被刀刺伤过。事情过后，我真正意识到，世事无常，任何事情都可能发生。这件事彻底改变了我的生活。我想如果哪天我死了怎么办？难道我就一辈子碌碌无为，还没做过自己喜欢的事就要早早离开这个世界？”
Liceralde was drawn to architecture because he liked the idea of studying designs, shapes, and forms. But as he began learning the ins-and-outs of the field, he realized there weren’t many opportunities to be creative and he felt strangled by the amount of rules he was bound to. Forced to reconsider his path in life, he remembered his love of streetwear and fashion in general. With this realization, he decided to embark on a new creative path. Enter the Laboratory.
Daniel 之所以对建筑学感兴趣，是因为他对事物的形状和设计十分痴迷。但随着学习的深入，他发现建筑行业的施展空间较为有限，条条框框经常让他束手束脚。他开始重新思考人生，早年滑板少年时期对街头服饰的热爱再次涌现，Lise Laboratories 品牌由此诞生。
“The first step when starting my brand was to keep thrifting so I could understand how the public defined ‘quality.’ Like why is one brand not recognized even with its quality?” Liceralde says. “I’d dissect pieces to see the parts inside. There’s creativity in destruction. I destroyed a lot of jackets before creating my own.”
In 2016, he bought a cheap portable sewing machine online and started rebuilding the items he thrifted items. His first experiment was combining two jackets together as one to see how it went. He watched a lot of Youtube videos to learn sewing and leaned on some old classes from architecture school for guidance. He would post the experiments on his personal page and his friends would show love, but most people in Baguio didn’t really seem to care.
Liceralde’s fans and inspiration are largely international. “Most of my audience is from New York, which can get hella cold,” he says. “Here in Baguio, windbreakers are most popular because you can wear them in the daytime and on a cold night depending on your layers, but they weren’t paying attention to my work here.” Although he now gets some notable support from a crop of respected rappers in Manila, his work is still largely geared towards overseas fans.
His first sale was an upcycled black paisley puffer jacket sold to a customer in the US. “I was planning on asking for $100 but ended up getting $450 instead! That’s when I realized I was onto something.” Since then his gear has caught the attention of celebrities and media outlets abroad: platinum rapper Blueface, NBA player Tristan Thompson, and influencer Amanda Trivizas have all rocked his designs, and his gear has been featured on Complex TV and No Jumper.
Daniel 说：“品牌刚成立的时候，我购买了大量二手衣服，学者去了解服装的 ‘质量’。我拆开了很多衣服，查看不同衣服的内胆和面料。也就是在那个时候，我萌生了对服装进行改造、重构的念头。不得不承认，我此前曾毁掉过很多件夹克。”
2016 年，Daniel 在网上购置了一台便宜的便携式缝纫机，开始改造旧衣，试试感觉。为了学习缝纫，他看了很多教学视频，还参考了以前建筑学校的设计课程。他把实验的作品发布在个人页面上，朋友们都来点赞捧场，但大多数碧瑶当地人对此并不感冒。“品牌的主要受众来自海外，” 他解释道：“我的大多数粉丝来自纽约，那里的天气较冷。在碧瑶，轻薄的风壳或是冲锋衣最受欢迎。”
Daniel 第一件卖出去的衣服是一件升级回收的黑色佩斯利羽绒夹克，顾客是位美国人。“我本来打算要价 100 美元，最后却拿到 450 美元！非常激动，这给了我很多可以继续做下去的勇气。”从那时起，他的作品便引起了国外名人和媒体的关注，包括白金说唱歌手 Blueface、NBA 球员特里斯坦·汤普森（Tristan Thompson）和网络红人 Amanda Trivizas，与此同时，他的作品还出现在 Complex TV 和 No Jumper 等流量平台上。
Liceralde’s love of paisley stems from the bandanas he sees everywhere in the Philippines; it’s not uncommon to find stacks of them being hawked by street vendors, much of it not even being sold. So he started scooping them up and experimenting. He was worried it might be an issue since the pattern can be associated with gangs, especially in the US. “The first paisley pieces I made, I tried to use gang-neutral colors. But I stopped caring after a while—nobody owns paisley,” he shrugs. “I did ask my followers if I should stop, but they all said ‘no’. A minority of my customers definitely seek out certain gang colors.” He says a common thing people comment on his posts is that he’s going to get some kid killed when they wear the wrong color. “That’s definitely worried me, but so far I haven’t heard of anything bad happening.”
Daniel 对佩斯利图案的热爱源于菲律宾随处可见的头巾装饰，兜售这种头巾的街摊随处可见。他曾对这种图案有所顾虑，因为人们总将它与帮派联系起来，尤其在美国。“在创作第一批佩斯利图案时，我会尽量采用帮派中偏中立的颜色，但后来我就不管了，毕竟这种图案最初并不代表任何团体，”他耸了耸肩说道，“我也问过我的粉丝，但他们都坚持我继续使用佩斯利。还有一小部分的顾客，指定要求使用某些帮派的代表色。” Daniel 表示，他的帖子下面经常能见到这样的评论 —— 如果某个小孩穿错了颜色，可能会因此丧命。“我当然也很担心，但到目前为止，我还没听说有任何不好的事情发生。”
Making unofficial customizations to large brands has its challenges. He’s received stop-and-desist notices before, even though he repeatedly shows his appreciation to the brands; reaching out to them through email and tagging them in posts. Even when they do support his work, Liceralde acknowledges that they’re still faceless corporations with their own interests at heart. His North Face jackets might be his most popular pieces, but he wasn’t afraid to call them out when they wronged New York artist Futura,who was famous for graffiti in the 80s and has continued to be a cult hero in the subsequent decades. In their dispute, Futura privately reached out to the brand about a new line of theirs he felt unfairly used his ideas, and they escalated the situation by threatening to countersue him and belittling his career. In response, Liceralde dropped a “Fuck The North Face” design, taking a clear side on the issue. “He’s an artist like myself, and every time a corporation attacks an artist, it gets harder for them to build a brand,” he says. “Corporations have been taking ideas from creatives for as long as I can remember. It’s about protecting other artists—that takes priority over getting support from a corporation.”
对大牌进行非官方的改造，也为 Daniel 带来了一些麻烦。即便他通过各种方式表达对这些品牌的赞许之情，譬如通过邮件与品牌取得联系、或在帖子中标记品牌等等，但仍会收到品牌方的警告，要求他停止对原本的成衣进行改造。
Daniel 认为，品牌就是品牌，归根到底还是以自身利益为核心，有时候讲不成道理。2021 年初，The North Face 与涂鸦艺术家 Futura 发生纠纷，Futura 私下联系 The North Face，指出改品牌的 FUTURE Light 系列有窃取他创意的嫌疑，然而品牌却因此反诉 Futura，局势一度陷入不堪之境。Futura 是 80 年代一名著名涂鸦艺术家，数十年来一直备受追捧。Daniel 在得知此事后，毫不犹豫地对品牌方表示抗议。作为回应，他在服装上推出了带有文字“Fuck The North Face”的设计，以示在该问题上的明确立场。他说：“我和他一样是艺术家，对于艺术家来说，每一次遭受大公司的攻击，日后的推广就会变得更加困难。大品牌的创意往往来源于小众。保护艺术家，这一点比获得大公司的支持更重要。”
Liceralde wants Lise Laboratory to stand for something, and to stand out as a result. His efforts at upcycling are a big part of that: He says that there is a lot of clothing waste in the Philippines coming from other countries and that most of the local companies are fast fashion, so he thinks it’s time to rethink how clothing gets made. His awareness of the environment came early when his brother got asthma as a kid from the jeepney pollution and almost died. Since then, he’s realized the effects of our actions on the immediate world. “Small things matter. Simply recycling can save another person’s life.”
Daniel 希望 Lise Laboratory 有自己立场和信仰，并以此作为自己鲜明的特色。他表示，菲律宾会回收很多来自其他国家抛弃不要的衣服，其中大多为快时尚。他认为，人们应该重新思考服装制造的问题，正因如此，他尤其重视升级回收。Daniel 很早以前就有较强的环保意识，他兄弟小时候就曾因为吉普尼车的尾气污染而患上了哮喘，甚至差点丧命。“哪怕贡献点滴也举足轻重。简单的回收利用就是挽救他人的生命。”
Like our stories? Follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Website: lise-lab.com
Instagram: @liselaboratory
Contributor: Mike Steyels
Photographer: Jilson Tiu
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li
