Karayan
Handwoven Indigenous Philippine textiles turned into fashion, by a Filipinx woman who believes Indigenous is the future
Shop KarayanKarayan is not a brand that uses culture as aesthetic. It is a brand built from the inside of that culture outward, by a founder who dances it, studies it, advocates for it, and now wears it down fashion week runways. That coherence is rare.
The Founders
Lydia Querian
Founder & Creative Director
Fast Facts
Indigenous Is the Future
Lydia Querian was born and raised in Metro Manila and migrated to California in 2010. What that migration gave her, alongside the dislocation every diaspora Filipino knows, was clarity: she could see her own culture from the outside, and what she saw was something extraordinary being quietly lost. The handwoven textiles of Mindanao and the Cordilleras — made by Indigenous communities whose weaving traditions stretch back centuries — were disappearing from view, eroded by colonisation and the pull of Western aesthetics. Karayan, formerly known as Daily Malong, was her answer.
The invaluable practices of Indigenous communities are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the future.
The brand sources its textiles directly from weaving communities across Mindanao and the Cordilleras; every garment a living record of the hands that made it. Karayan works in limited runs by design, a production model that reduces waste and gives its artisan partners the dignity of sustainable pace over relentless output. The result is a fashion house where clothing, bags, malongs, and home goods carry actual weight: the weight of ancestral knowledge, of a weaver's hours, of a tradition that survived.
Lydia is a Telly Award-winning artist whose work spans fashion, dance, music, and arts production. Her designs have appeared on New York and Paris Fashion Week runways and been published in Vogue and Preview. She co-founded Gongster's Paradise, the only Kulintang Festival in North America, and Uni at Ugat, the only Filipino Indigenous-focused music camp on the continent. At Karayan, all of that informs a single conviction: Indigenous is the future.
Why We Featured Them
What Makes Karayan Different
01
Textiles That Carry History
Every piece uses handwoven cloth sourced directly from Indigenous communities in Mindanao and the Cordilleras. These aren't textiles chosen for aesthetic appeal — they are living records of weaving traditions that have survived colonisation, and Karayan's supply chain is built to keep them surviving.
02
Fashion as Cultural Reclamation
The brand emerged from a direct reckoning with what centuries of colonization have erased from Filipino Indigenous culture. Wearing Karayan is a deliberate act — one the brand, its weavers, and its diaspora customers are making together.
03
A Founder Who Lives the Work
Lydia Querian is a dancer, musician, arts organizer, and Telly Award winner who co-founded North America's only Kulintang Festival. Her fashion work is inseparable from her life's practice. Karayan has the depth it has because its founder does.
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a piece?
Each collection is limited — when it's gone, it's gone.