Each banana pseudostem gets only one chance to bear fruit.
After producing a single bunch of bananas, the towering pseudostem that nurtured it has fulfilled its fruit-bearing role. Workers cut the heavy bunches of Cavendish bananas bound for export markets in Japan, China, South Korea, and the Middle East, leaving behind the stalk that carried the fruit. That pseudostem will never bear fruit again.
Its work is supposed to be over.
Across the Philippines' largest banana-producing region, millions of these pseudostems are cut down every year. Some return to the soil as organic matter or mulch. Others are left to rot or discarded as agricultural waste.
To most people, they are what remains after harvest.
To Joy Soo, they looked like unfinished cloth.
The certified public accountant-turned-designer built a growing network of fiber extractors, weavers, and artisans around an unlikely idea: The banana harvest did not have to end with the fruit.
Instead of waste, they saw fiber.
Instead of decay, they saw livelihood.
And instead of a discarded stalk, they saw the beginnings of a textile that would travel from prison workshops in Mindanao to the runways of New York, Paris, and Milan.
Davao Region remains the country's banana capital, producing 3.19 million metric tons in 2024, or 94.8 percent of the region's total fruit output. Bananas, particularly Cavendish varieties, continue to rank among the Philippines' top agricultural exports, with export volume projected to rebound to 2.93 million metric tons in 2025.
But behind the industry's economic success lies an enormous volume of plant material left after every harvest.
According to figures cited by Dole Sunshine Company, more than 4.4 million banana stems are discarded each year. Some decompose in the fields and return organic matter to the soil, but the sheer volume of postharvest material also presents an opportunity to turn an underused agricultural resource into fiber, fabric, and livelihood.
That opportunity eventually brought Dole and Soo's Musa Advocacy together.
Through the partnership, Dole supplied banana stems to the Kasilak Foundation, which extracted the fibers. Musa Fabric then bought the fibers, which persons deprived of liberty at the Davao Prison and Penal Farm, or Dapecol, and the Correctional Institution for Women, or CIW, wove into textiles.
The fabric eventually reached the hands of designers, artisans, and seamstresses who transformed it into dresses, barongs, bags, shoes, and accessories.
"Dole provides the banana stems to the Kasilak Foundation, which helps extract banana fibers," the company said in a video presentation announcing the partnership. "The extracted fibers are sold to Musa Fabric, which works with inmates in the Davao Penal Colony and local women's groups to repurpose the fibers into fashion pieces."
Dole also backed several House of Musa fashion shows in Manila and Davao del Norte, Soo said. Although the partnership has since ended, she said the fibers gathered during the collaboration left the advocacy with enough raw material to keep PDLs weaving Musa fabric to this day.
But Soo's efforts to give banana stems a second life began even before the Dole partnership.
She had already been buying harvested pseudostems from local farmers in Davao del Norte, creating an additional market for material left behind after the fruit was cut. Some beneficiaries at CIW and Dapecol also earned additional income by extracting fibers from the stems before other PDLs wove them into fabric.
The result was a value chain built around what remained after harvest: Farmers supplied the stems. Beneficiaries extracted the fibers. PDLs wove the cloth. Seamstresses and artisans turned it into finished products. And eventually, model advocates carried those products onto runways around the world.
Where the journey began
Joy Soo never planned to build a fashion movement.
A certified public accountant by training, Soo said she retired from accounting in 2020 and returned to a long-standing passion for design. She initially searched for a locally produced textile to use in a graduation collection for a hotel event in Manila.
Instead, she found a forgotten weaving project.
“I remembered that Dole, the province, and the Department of Trade and Industry had trained people to weave banana fiber years earlier,” Soo said in an interview. “When I went to the jail, the weaving looms were still there.”
The fabric she first saw looked rough and unfinished. Rather than wait for a government program to restart, she bought materials herself and asked the inmates to weave her own designs.
Then the pandemic shut the country down.
"I felt sorry for them. I knew I had to keep it going because their wives were waiting outside, depending on what they earned from weaving. Since I was buying the fabric they produced, I kept them weaving even during the pandemic. I couldn't stop," Soo said.
What began with three prisoners has grown into a network of more than 100 weavers, seamstresses, artisans, and community partners across Davao del Norte.
“Many livelihood projects stop after the training,” Soo said. “The challenge is finding a market. We kept organizing fashion shows because the fabric needed buyers.”
A fabric born from the banana tree
The advocacy takes its name from the scientific genus of the banana plant: Musa.
Workers strip fiber from harvested banana trunks, dry it, spin it, and weave it into a coarse but durable textile. The resulting cloth becomes dresses, barongs, bags, hats, shoes, and accessories produced by the Davao del Norte Association of Musa Designers, Artisans, and Seamstresses, known as Damdas. Musa de Aretes by Belle Verano is among the proud pillars of the House of Musa.
Soo describes the texture as intentionally distinct.
“Musa is very unique,” she said. “Not everybody knows about Musa fabric, and that is what makes it remarkable.”
The advocacy eventually expanded beyond prisons. Kagan women in Tagum City create earrings known as Musa de Aretes. Mandaya beadworkers contribute embellishments. Artisans sew bags and accessories. Indigenous communities in Talaingod became partners in educational outreach.
“I wanted to build a House of Musa,” Soo said. “Not just Musa Fabric by Joy Soo. I wanted all the designers, artisans, and communities under one house.”
The runway that kept the looms running
During the pandemic, Soo began posting videos online that showed face masks made from banana fiber and told the stories of the prison weavers behind them. The clips spread through social media and mainstream news coverage.
One video reached organizers connected to New York Fashion Week.
“I emailed New York Fashion Week myself,” Soo said. “I didn’t even know how it worked. I was still an accountant.”
She traveled to New York during the pandemic and staged the brand’s first runway presentation with 27 volunteer models, many of them friends, classmates, and relatives who purchased the garments they wore.
That model remains central to the advocacy today.
"The models are advocates," Soo said. "They buy the outfits. They help sustain the livelihood."
House of Musa USA director Cindy Mac, who joined the movement after discovering Musa products online from her home in San Diego, said the fashion shows exist primarily to sustain the weaving communities in Davao del Norte.
“Everything we wear comes from Tagum — the outfits, shoes, earrings, hats, purses,” Mac said. “I don’t collaborate with designers here because I want to sustain livelihoods there.”
The overseas presentations now reach cities including New York, Paris, Milan, London, Singapore, Bangkok, and several Canadian and New Zealand communities. Yet Mac insists the spotlight belongs to the people behind the fabric.
“The models are my show,” she said. “Without their participation, we would never have any show.”
More than fashion
For Soo, the advocacy’s success is measured less by international invitations than by the continued sound of weaving inside correctional facilities.
Each month, the group visits the CIW and the Dapecol to provide toiletries, food, Bible studies, and outreach activities, while maintaining orders for woven products.
“What matters is that the weaving continues,” Soo said. “If there are no shows, I still want the looms running because the prisoners are the center of this advocacy.”
That conviction has kept the project alive through lockdowns, shipping costs, health setbacks, and the uncertainties of the fashion industry.
“God guided this project so it could be sustained,” she said.
A different kind of harvest
On a recent afternoon in Tagum City, bundles of pale banana fiber hung drying in the heat while seamstresses stitched garments destined for another international runway.
The material began as a trunk that would normally have been abandoned after harvest.
Now it carries the fingerprints of farmers, fiber extractors, prisoners, indigenous artisans, seamstresses, volunteer models, and overseas supporters.
“House of Musa is not about the designer,” Soo said. “It’s about everyone in the house.”
For Davao del Norte, the banana tree is no longer valued only for the fruit it exports.
Its second harvest may be the stories it continues to weave. MLSA