PENSHOPPE x ABAKADA: Filipino Streetwear Finds Its Way Home

From Chicago to Manila, PENSHOPPE Designer Lab’s first collaboration turns Filipino identity into a contemporary streetwear conversation.

Filipino identity has never belonged to just one place. It travels with us, changes with its surroundings, and finds new ways to speak. In streetwear, that conversation becomes even more personal.

This October, PENSHOPPE opens a new chapter with PENSHOPPE Designer Lab: ABAKADA, a 23-piece limited-edition collaboration with Chicago-based Filipino streetwear label ABAKADA. The partnership marks the debut of PENSHOPPE Designer Lab, a new creative platform built around collaborations with distinct creative voices and fresh perspectives in fashion. 

Founded in Chicago in 2018 by Arvin Boyon and Calvin Calma, ABAKADA has developed a streetwear language deeply connected to Filipino heritage, language, and cultural references. But rather than treating culture as something fixed in the past, the brand approaches Filipino identity through the reality of the Filipino-American experience: layered, evolving, and constantly moving between worlds. 

That perspective makes the collaboration feel particularly relevant.

A New Language for Filipino Identity

The collection brings together ABAKADA’s Filipino-rooted streetwear aesthetic and PENSHOPPE’s accessible approach to everyday fashion. Across 23 pieces, sporty silhouettes and contemporary streetwear influences are shaped by Filipino cultural references, creating a wardrobe that feels familiar without looking backward. 

There is something distinctly Filipino about that balance.

For a generation growing up between cultures, identity is rarely expressed in a single visual language. It exists in the music we listen to, the words we use, the places we call home, and increasingly, in what we choose to wear.

ABAKADA has built its identity around that idea. Its Chicago roots give the brand a different perspective on Filipino culture, one shaped by distance but still deeply connected to home. Bringing that perspective into a collaboration with PENSHOPPE creates an interesting exchange between two sides of the same cultural conversation.

Chicago meets Manila. Diaspora meets home. Heritage meets streetwear.

And somewhere between the two, a new expression emerges.

Designer Lab, Opening the Door

For PENSHOPPE, the collaboration is more than a collection. It introduces Designer Lab as a platform for experimentation and collaboration, allowing the 40-year-old Filipino fashion brand to work with creative voices that exist beyond its usual framework. 

Starting with ABAKADA feels intentional.

Instead of looking outward for a collaboration built purely around global recognition, PENSHOPPE is looking toward a Filipino-founded label that has developed its own identity abroad. The result is a meeting of two different fashion perspectives connected by the same cultural foundation.

It also reflects a larger movement in Filipino fashion. Filipino creativity no longer needs to be defined solely by what happens within the Philippines. Our designers, artists, musicians, and brands are building communities across cities and cultures, carrying Filipino references with them and transforming them along the way.

ABAKADA represents that movement through streetwear.

From Chicago to Manila

The collection’s journey back to the Philippines is perhaps its most compelling detail.

Select pieces will be available for an exclusive first look and pre-order at Purveyur Fair on September 12–13, ahead of the full launch in October. The complete collection will be available through the PENSHOPPE App and select PENSHOPPE stores nationwide.

For ABAKADA, a brand born in Chicago from Filipino roots, the collaboration creates a direct connection back to the country that informs much of its identity.

For PENSHOPPE, it signals what the next chapter could look like after four decades.

And for Filipino streetwear, it is another reminder that the culture is not standing still.

It is moving.

From Manila to Chicago and back again, Filipino identity continues to evolve through the people who carry it, reinterpret it, and make it their own.

With PENSHOPPE Designer Lab: ABAKADA, that story gets translated into 23 pieces of clothing, but the conversation behind them is much bigger.

Filipino streetwear is no longer just looking for a place in the global conversation. It is already part of it.