“Which one’s your favorite?” Kryz Uy asks me as we check out the bags from her new February Lifestyle line on the table during the photo shoot. Her excitement is palpable as she talks about each one, and nods excitedly when I say I preferred the ant-riddled Sweet Like Sugar. “That’s the one that the fashion girls really like because it’s so different,” she shares. “Yuppies like the Take Chances sling because it’s a simple but pretty design, and moms like the Let’s Get Lost tote since it’s so big and they can fit everything in it.”

Since its launch earlier this year, February Lifestyle is seeing a solid following—and it’s not just because it has one of the country’s top bloggers at the helm. Kryz started her fashion blog in college, long before the rest of us understood the meaning of online presence, and her Thirsty Thought page sees thousands of readers who are constantly on the lookout for style, beauty and even life advice. It might have been easy to bask in that success, but Kryz isn’t one to rest on her laurels.

Kryz Uy’s latest passion project is a bag line that marries local resources and craftsmanship with the intoxicating appeal of running away from home. (Photography by Ezekiel Sullano/Originally published in Zee Lifestyle, May 2016)

“I wanted to start a brand because I wanted to have something that, even after this whole blogger thing blows over, will encapsulate what I keep preaching about on the blog—how you should always be yourself and just do you,” Kryz explains. “I thought I’d come up with the line that is able to say that, and also promotes what I’m all about—traveling, having fun, working hard but also giving yourself time to breath.”

The sentiment was easy to come up with, but the process was a different story. Kryz had to consider all the different products she could come up with before finally deciding on what to put out. “It had to be a fashion item, because I’m a fashion blogger,” she declared. After flirting with the idea of a shoe or clothing line, she decided to go with bags and accessories, and gave called it February Lifestyle.

“It’s something we take for granted—we never really think about the month February,” she laughs “I named it February because it’s the only month of the year with 28 days, but every fourth year it gives us a surprise leap day. For some, it’s the month of love, but the lonely ones are always saying they hate February, it’s depressing. To us, it’s such a hot month, but all the way around the world, it’s really cold. So I’m saying that with February, you never really know what to expect.”

The thought process that went into the line goes beyond its design, and might be a testament to why Kryz is such a formidable presence in her industry. “I started conceptualizing everything last summer, so it’s been a year,” she shares when I asked how long the line has been in the making. “I would not allow myself to come up with a product that I wasn’t happy with, so there were a million tweaks and changes, and a lot of bag designs that I completely scrapped because it wasn’t working.”

It turned out for the best—February Lifestyle’s first collection is a trio of bags that are perfect conversation pieces for your next brunch with the girls. The roomy Let’s Get Lost tote is made of woven pandan, while the sleeker Take Chances and Sweet Like Sugar slings are from local raffia. Everything is handmade, with the only machinery involved in production being a sewing machine. “Even the metal details are hand-molded,” she adds.

The Take Chances sling, the Let’s Get Lost tote, and the Sweet Like Sugar purse (Photography by Ezekiel Sullano/Originally published in Zee Lifestyle, May 2016)

“These things I’m doing—100% handmade, we’re giving local artisans livelihood, promoting local materials—they aren’t new things. We hear it a lot, but if you’re a fashion person, it can be, ‘that’s good, but I wouldn’t wear it,’” Kryz admits. She flips the limitation on its head, instead seeing it as a challenge to use these materials in a new light. “It’s like banig bags. People in the Philippines might find banig boring, or that they don’t think a banig bag would be something stylish. But when you design it in a certain way that promotes quirkiness or fashion or travel, you give it new life and new meaning. People start to look at it differently.”

Tropical elements dominate the designs, which Kryz says was a conscious way to pay tribute to her other passion. “I love traveling. I feel like there are so many people in the world, especially in Asia, who are so obsessed with work,” she shares. “And for me, when I think of vacations, I think of tropical places and island getaways. I want people to look at it and know it’s a vacation bag, and it makes them feel good. And it’s also using local materials, but putting ants on them. We made it weird. We made it a statement piece.”

With the amount of time that goes into a collection, Kryz sheepishly admits she doesn’t want to give an exact date for her holiday collection. “I’ll probably do two collections in a year,” she shares. As for the first one, she’ll soon be consigning at Cabana in Banilad Town Center and hopefully more locations soon.

If someone can get you to carry an ant-riddled purse around, it’d definitely be Kryz Uy. The fashionable and individualistic blogger is all about staying true to yourself—in fact, the bags are shipped with motivational saying slipped into the package and one of my favorites is one that says, “Love Your Madness.” Kryz Uy is creating pieces that certainly lean on the quirky, but it seems the secret to her success may be finding the method to the madness.

photography Ezekiel Sullano makeup Janice Barillo hair Gino Fonghe locale District on 53rd
Originally published in Zee Lifestyle, May 2016. For back issues, subscribe via Magzter