Born in Thailand and now based in London, Jaoka is more than a designer — she is a storyteller. Her practice as a tattoo artist informs her fashion, where fabric becomes skin and clothing becomes memory. For Spring/Summer 2026, she presented Temple of the Mind, a collection that transforms Buddhist philosophy into garment form.

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The mind, imagined as a temple, is at once sanctuary and battlefield. Jaoka explored this duality with silhouettes rooted in Thai ceremonial dress, reinterpreted through jersey draping and sculptural lines. Handmade natural latex pieces, imprinted with hand-dyed lace, shimmered with intimacy, recalling the permanence of tattoos and the impermanence of skin. Distressed detailing revealed beauty in decay, resilience in fragility. The collection read as armour built from vulnerability — protective yet transparent, quiet yet defiant.

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In a week dominated by spectacle, Jaoka’s vision arrived differently: not as noise but as stillness. Her palette whispered rather than shouted; her garments carried the weight of ritual. It was a cinematic kind of quiet, charged with power. Where others leaned into architecture, futurism, or exuberant collision, Jaoka’s work asked for surrender, not applause.

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The emotional clarity of Temple of the Mind lies in its honesty. Garments cocoon the body like meditation robes, yet their imperfections remain visible. In Buddhist thought, impermanence is truth; Jaoka translated this into surfaces that fray, drape, and dissolve. Clothing becomes more than adornment — it is preservation of the self.

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Placed in dialogue with the other Ones to Watch designers — Ruaa Elmansuri’s sculptural heritage, Designz by Minaaz’s global hybridity, Selenee’s ethereal forms, KimLin and SONAIS’s raw Armenian energy — Jaoka’s collection stood out for its intimacy. She offered not a spectacle of identity but a meditation on resilience.

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Her work belongs to London but carries the pulse of Thailand. Buddhism is not used as an aesthetic motif but as a lived philosophy. Every drape and distress embodied the tension between strength and fragility, permanence and impermanence. This is not clothing designed to impress; it is clothing designed to protect, to remind, to speak.

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For LUMEN, Jaoka Jaokha represents a direction of fashion we believe in: cinematic, experimental, but grounded in truth. Temple of the Mind was more than a collection. It was a manifesto of silence in a week of noise, a call to guard the inner self as sacred.

Designer: @jaokajaokha | Website: jaokajaokha.com

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