International fashion designer Michael Cinco’s opulent creations have dressed models and celebrities from the Miss Universe pageant to Paris Fashion Week runways, from the cover of Harper’s Bazaar to the reality TV series America’s Next Top Model and from the Golden Globes and Cannes Festival to the MET Gala. His signature impalpable style is sought after the world over and places Filipino fashion design on the map. Particularly, he works out of the Middle East’s centre of luxury and splendour.

Cinco moved to Dubai in 1997 and launched his fashion line in 2003. In between, the UP Fine Arts graduate immersed himself in the elegance of Paris and London, where he was enrolled at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design. Cinco has been sashaying at the top of the fashion industry since. The late President Benigno Aquino III conferred the Presidential Award for Outstanding Filipinos Overseas to him in 2014. Cinco is also an elite member of the Asian Couture Federation.

He recently packed the first Arab Fashion Week to be held since the pandemic, lining up the front row with the who’s who in the scene. His breath-taking work did not disappoint, and he took the audience by surprise when models in plus-size and prosthetic arms and legs emerged to model his clothes down the ramp.