NEW YORK: At the global launch of the H&M and Mugler collaboration here, the Philippines was represented by model and actress Liza Soberano. Donning pieces from the collection at the event held at the Park Avenue Armory, she was one of several global influencers and celebrities invited to the exclusive event to celebrate the latest tie-up between the Swedish fashion retail brand and the renowned fashion house founded by the late Thierry Manfred Mugler.

A day after the event, Soberano is strutting the streets of Manhattan in a special photo shoot for the collection. On the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 52nd street, Soberano poses expertly for the photographer, who captures her image against the towering skyscrapers of the city. Besides the H&M rep and her own companion from her management company Careless Music, only Esquire Philippines is there to witness the moment.

“Oh, I love New York,” she tells us during a quick break from the shoot. “I don’t think I could ever live here, but I feel like this is the pinnacle of what a city is—like the hustle and bustle of trying to make or build a career for yourself and just grinding and working day in and day out. I like that, but I need an escape from that at times, too. It’s such a wonderful city to visit from time to time and there’s like so much to do. Everything feels busy all the time. Everybody’s doing something. And it’s just a fun place to be.

As most everyone who has followed her career knows, Soberano was born in the US and spent the first 10 years of her life there. She then moved to the Philippines and was soon exposed to the bright lights of showbusiness just as she hit her teenage years. She’s amassed a considerable following (over 17 million on Instagram alone) thanks to multiple projects with her former home studio of ABS-CBN. In 2022 she made the surprising, not to mention controversial, decision to join fellow entertainer James Reid’s talent management company Careless Music.

Now she’s as busy as ever. She’s part of the cast of Lisa Frankenstein, a film written by the Academy-Award winning screenwriter of Juno Diablo Cody, which will be out later this year. She also booked a lucrative deal with a financial technology company, for which she shot a campaign in Manila. And now she’s here in New York, collaborating with one of the world’s biggest fashion retailers.

“I was really excited about it,” she says. “I really very much wanted to do it. For one, going to New York to do something in fashion is something that I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to go to New York Fashion Week. And I feel like this was kind of a stepping stone into that world.”

Sobrano, who has graced the covers and done countless photo shoots for many different media platforms and brands, says she has yet to fully explore the world of fashion.

“I’ve done a bit of it here and there in Manila, like for magazines and some of the big fashion brands, but I’ve never been associated or connected with any fashion power,” she says. “And so I found (this) to be the perfect opportunity to kind of launch that part of my career. And I’m really happy that it’s with H&M because it’s a brand that a lot of people all around the world, and very much so in the Philippines, love and support.”

She says she jumped at the chance to work with H&M, which she says she has loved for years. “I remember when H&M wasn’t in the Philippines yet, like in the early 2010s; when I used to go to America for a few trips, I would buy as much as I could. Or like when I went to Japan, I would buy something from the H&M store there. And then finally they launched in the Philippines, and I was super excited about that because it was more accessible.”

About an hour later, the small crew moves to Times Square, which is ground zero for tourists in the Big Apple. Soberano is wearing a sexy number from the Mugler x H&M collection and gets appreciative stares from passersby as the poses in front of the camera. The photographer barely needs to give her any direction; she gives supermodel-ready looks and knows how to bend and stretch her arms, waist, and legs to find the most flattering angles. Although, to be clear, she looks flawless in nearly every shot.

“I would say that I’m a little tomboyish,” she says about her personal style. “But I also have a very feminine and elegant side to me too. So, I’m like on two ends of the spectrum. But I would say both lean towards the more sophisticated side of things.

“With my tomboyish sense, I love pants,” she adds. “I love blazers, I love anything that I feel comfortable in and that I can just walk and lounge around in. And on the more elegant side, I love black. I think it just it really makes someone look very elegant, very classy, sophisticated. And mysterious.”

Addressing the controversy

Earlier this year, Soberano hogged the headlines after she released a video sharing her thoughts on her over decade-long career being managed by ABS-CBN.

“I’ve sacrificed myself, I’ve sacrificed my freedom, I’ve sacrificed my happiness to present Liza Soberano to the world, and I think I’ve earned the right to finally be me, to finally be able to do things for myself as Hope Soberano,” she said in the video. “I’ve embarked on a fresh new chapter, and I’m finally taking control of my life, pursuing dreams that I’ve always had to hold off.”

The vlog created an outcry within showbiz circles, not to mention among those who follow her career, and made the actress a target of some very nasty comments from all over. Many of the reactions were of the “privileged” and “ungrateful” variety that basically attacked her for speaking her truth.

I ask how she feels about the whole incident now that some time has passed.

“Honestly, I didn’t imagine that things would turn out the way it did at the time,” she says. “And honestly, that period was a very stressful time for me because I felt very misunderstood. I felt in a way, more or less, like, I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt like I was being ‘outcasted.’ And so, all I did then was I got away from the country. I came back here to the US to spend time with my family, and just kind of reconnect with myself. And align with what my purpose and my mission is with my career and with my life in general.

“I was sad about the way things turned out back then,” she adds. “But like, it’s also a learning lesson, you know, all everything that happened, happened for a reason and there was some bad but there was also some good and I’m just going to take everything that I learned from that and kind of become better.”

The celebrity also addressed another issue: this one about her name. For most people who watched her vlog, the takeaway was that she was dropping her name—Liza—in favor of Hope. But that couldn’t be farther from what she wanted to happen.

“I think I feel like that was one of the biggest things that got misconstrued,” she says. “When I brought that up in my vlog, I was like, the name Liza wasn’t a name that I chose for myself. I wasn’t saying that I didn’t like it. I was just stating a fact. A lot of people don’t know that I didn’t choose that name.”

Things got murkier after the commercial for Maya Bank came out. There was a part in the beginning where she says, “Call me Hope.”

“I feel like that kind of doubled down on that narrative,” she says. “But that’s not what I meant. We were trying to be kind of meta with it—when I’m an actress, when you know I’m a public figure, I’m Liza. And then there’s when I’m just being me or when I’m working on personal stuff or even like when I’m producing, directing, because I’m not the star. So, I was kind of trying to show people that there are two sides of me: there’s Liza and there’s Hope.”

The whole episode confused Soberano, to say the least. The vlog was a way to communicate some personal thoughts and issues, but instead ended up being used against her by people whose knowledge and understanding of her was, at best, shallow and dismissive.

“And it’s actually very surprising to me because now, when I go out, people call me Hope,” she says. “I’ve been to concerts and stuff and people would scream ‘Hope! Hope!’ I love my name and everything, but now I was like, oh my god, I was so misunderstood. Like, this is not what I want. I still want to be known as Liza. And people comment on my Instagram, too. They ask, ‘Why is your name still Liza?’”

After hanging out with Soberano for a couple of days in New York, it’s clear to me that this is an artist who knows what she wants and is now finally equipped with the tools necessary to work towards getting them. She’s smart and self-aware (during one lunch she talked about social issues that she encounters on social media and stressed the need for people to be more open and understanding of each other) but also knows how to kick back and have fun. At 25, she’s finally making strides on prioritizing herself and anyone who has a problem with that just needs to get a life because clearly, she’s having a ball living hers.