Catriona Gray on the Mayon Lounge Chair beside a Beh and She side table with brass bangle rings, Payak for Genteelhome. Photograph courtesy Genteelhome / Deni Bernardo.
The weave stays in the room.
Catriona Gray, Miss Universe 2018 and a long-serving arts ambassador for the Philippines’ National Commission for Culture and the Arts, spent roughly a year designing Payak with Genteelhome, the Kapampangan furniture atelier of founder and principal designer Katrina Blanca De Leon. The capsule launched at a 21 March 2025 press conference in the brand’s showroom on Level 3 of The Podium in Ortigas, Mandaluyong. Payak means simple in Filipino. For Gray, the word also names a tempo: intentional furniture for the hours when a diaspora schedule finally slows.
“The whole collection is payak, but for me, it represents slow living: slowing down, having intentional time, with intentional pieces.”
Catriona Gray, at the Payak launch, as reported by BusinessWorld
Five Pieces, Named Crafts
Payak is Genteelhome’s first outdoor line, built so the same teak, lampakanay (cattail) rope, and outdoor fabric can sit on a terrace or indoors without apology. Five limited pieces carry the brief.
The Mayon Lounge Chair (often shown with its ottoman) borrows its lava-pink and orange palette and curved flow from Mayon Volcano in Albay, where Gray’s mother is from; the silhouette also echoes the gown theme she wore toward her 2018 crown. The Pinay Accent Chair lifts the sleeve volume of a baro’t saya into wide teak arms; its solihiya panels take colour cues from Yakan textile geometry. Balik Tanaw is a side table with a built-in frame for a textile, photograph, or child’s drawing. Gray has said the idea grew from wanting to display an inabel swatch gifted by National Living Treasure Magdalena Gamayo, the Ilocano master weaver recognised in 2012. Leave the frame empty and the handmade solihiya backing still holds the wall of the piece.
Beh and She are paired teak side tables whose brass rings nod to T’boli bangles; say the names together and you hear beshie, Tagalog slang for best friend. Kapit-Bisig is open shelving threaded with coloured abaca, a quiet salute to Filipina weavers rather than a museum label stuck on a console.
De Leon’s workshop sits along Fil-Am Friendship Highway in Calibutbut, Bacolor, Pampanga, with the brand’s story beginning in Angeles in 2013. Gray has been blunt about the division of labour: she brings the sketch and the cultural brief; Kapampangan hands finish the object. That is the Society point for Banquet readers. Celebrity soft power only matters here if it keeps named Philippine crafts employed and visible in rooms from Manila to Melbourne.
This is the Manila chapter of The Ambassadors, after Hong Kong’s The Patrons Who Earned the Job and Seoul’s The Names Behind the Canon Shift: public ambassadorship that ends in something you can order, ship, and sit in.
How to Live With It
Start at Genteelhome on Level 3 of The Podium, 12 ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong (genteelhome.ph; confirm current appointment and lead times before you fly). Sit the Mayon chair where late light hits a terrace the way a Bicol afternoon hits a garden. Use Pinay as the reading chair that refuses a bland hotel accent. Park Balik Tanaw where a travel textile or family Polaroid would otherwise live in a drawer. Keep Beh and She together; the joke in the name is also the brief.
If you already collect design through industrial houses, read this beside Hang the Kite Above the Table, where Neri&Hu’s Cassina lamps translate Chinese kite craft into modular light, and Why Design Miami Basel Matters when the question is which fair floors still teach you what to buy for the house. Gray’s lane sits closer to The Names Behind the Canon Shift and The Patrons Who Earned the Job: public ambassadorship that ends in something you can order, ship, and sit in.
Confirm finishes and outdoor care with the atelier; rates and edition status move with order books. De Leon’s later Bigkis programme for Maison&Objet Paris 2025 shows where the workshop is aiming next: Southeast Asian designers, Filipino making, a European trade floor. Payak remains the more intimate entry: a Cairns-born Filipina-Australian’s slow-living brief, finished in Pampanga, sized for the balcony or living room where the weave does not need explaining.
Continue with Hang the Kite Above the Table when the next brief is lighting you can hang tonight, or return to The Ambassadors when furniture is one line in a larger soft-power map.
