Jillian Joy San Juan, designer and owner behind Jillian Joy Hand Crafted, is at the forefront of a new generation of designers creating contemporary designs of the filipiniana, pushing for the cultural Filipino garment to be brought back into our every day lives. With a focus on the butterfly sleeves of the terno, the brand offers a ready-to-wear line of modern filipinianas that can be dressed up or down to suit any and all occasions, a made-to-order bridal line for the trendy bride, and specializes in custom made bridal filipinianas.

While the brand originally began solely as a custom order service in 2017, Jillian noticed a gap in the market for modern filipinianas after receiving a surplus of positive feedback for her graduating collection, the Iglesia collection, in 2018 which combined traditional, Filipino silhouettes with contemporary, western trends. For the next few years, Jillian focused her custom order intake on clients interested in terno designs. After attending TernoCon in Manila in 2019, Jillian was inspired to push her designs beyond a custom service to include a ready-to-wear line of modern filipinianas in order to propel the terno back into our everyday attire. Since the launch of Jillian Joy Handcrafted’s first mini collection of ready-to-wear ternos in 2020, the brand has gained an international customer base and has been featured in international press including the New York Times, CNN Philippines, and Omni News in Toronto.

Scroll down to take a closer look at our history!

Slow fashion made in Canada

Each Jillian Joy Handcrafted piece is cut, sewn and shipped out of our studio in the East York area of Toronto. By having each stage of production done in house, we are able to control the amount of waste produced, maintain the quality of our products, and ensure each member of the team is compensated fairly in a work environment that is safe and welcoming.

Striving toward size inclusivity

Our brand started as a custom, made-to-measure service in order to close the gap between retail “standard” sizing and real bodies. After years of creating products made to our client’s specific measurements, we launched our ready to wear line due to the growing demand for more affordable and accessible modern filipinianas. As we don’t believe there is a standard size, we design each piece to have a flexible fit to be flattering on as many body types as possible, with our ready to wear sizes ranging from XS - XXL. If a client’s measurements land outside of our size range, we offer creating ready to wear pieces to their specific measurements at no additional charge while still offering our custom design service alongside our ready to wear line.

Preserving the Philippine Terno

Jillian fell in love with the butterfly sleeves of the terno after studying its history and evolution in depth for her graduating thesis collection. This gave her the desire to advocate for the cultural garment to be brought back into our everyday occasions. While we believe modernizing the terno is necessary for it to remain relevant to today’s and the future’s society, we believe in doing so without compromising its distinguishing features. All of our ternos are made with butterfly sleeves that have a narrow and rigid structure, with a perfect semi-circular shape created by multiple pleats that allow the top of the sleeve to sit at least 2” above the shoulder. In other words, our ternos are easily distinguishable from a generic puff sleeve!

2019

Jillian is invited to attend the TernoCon pre-conference at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) in Manila. Something that stuck out to her was the responsibility one of the speakers put onto younger designers to modernize and continue working with the terno. At this point, Jillian has a full-time job in manufacturing while working on Jillian Joy Hand Crafted on the side.