Filipino Designer Alexis Monsanto Set to Open Los Angeles Fashion Week With 'Ode to Odyssey'

Los Angeles Fashion Week is opening its latest edition with a Filipino name at the top of the program. Designer Alexis Monsanto has been tapped to kick off the week with a new collection called Ode to Odyssey, a slot that puts his work in front of the first wave of buyers, editors, and photographers to walk through the doors.

Monsanto has built his reputation on runway shows that read more like staged narratives than straightforward clothing presentations, leaning on elaborate silhouettes, hand-applied embellishment, and a willingness to let a single look take minutes rather than seconds to construct backstage. Ode to Odyssey continues that approach, built around the idea of a journey, part literal voyage, part interior one, told across a run of gowns that move from pale, veiled restraint into saturated color and back again.

A collection built in contrasts

The looks previewed ahead of the show make that arc visible. One gown wraps its wearer in a sheer, feather-trimmed veil over a structured underlayer, all in the same soft neutral tone, evoking something between bridal wear and armor. Another breaks hard from that restraint, a rainbow of floral appliqué climbing a fitted corseted bodice with chiffon streamers trailing from each shoulder. A third returns to a single soft palette, a blush halter gown finished with dimensional flowers and tulle, trading the bold color of the piece before it for a quieter kind of drama.

That range, moving between control and release, is the throughline Monsanto has pointed to when describing the collection: an odyssey is rarely a straight line, and neither is the set of looks built to represent one. Each piece is meant to stand on its own while still reading as part of the same story once the full lineup moves down the runway in sequence.

A milestone slot for Filipino fashion

Opening a fashion week carries its own weight beyond the clothes themselves. It is the slot organizers hand to a designer they want to set the tone for everything that follows, and it puts a spotlight on Filipino design on a stage where it has historically had to fight harder for space. Monsanto's placement at the top of the Los Angeles schedule gives the collection, and the craftsmanship behind it, a wider audience than a mid-week or closing slot typically draws.

For Monsanto, the show marks another step in a career built on treating the runway as a place for spectacle rather than restraint. Ode to Odyssey arrives as his biggest audience yet for that approach, and the opening slot means the rest of Los Angeles Fashion Week will be measured, at least in part, against how he chose to start it.