Metro Most Stylish 2020 And Retailer Mikka Padua’s Passing Is A Loss For Local Fashion

I have never met Mikka Padua. Even so, I’ve always been a fan of her work, her business, her life, and just all of her. It’s the Mikka Padua effect where you see a woman so content with life, so joyful, that you can’t help but be inspired yourself. This is authentic influence. It is a sad time for fashion today as Metro Most Stylish woman in 2020 and the owner of her own curated fashion and lifestyle shop Seek The Uniq passes today after battling great cancer for two and a half years. Her life, though cut short, was definitely well lived and filled with a joyful wardrobe that we’ll always remember.

In Dec 2018, Mikka heard the diagnosis of her stage 2A breast cancer. “Life as I knew it fell apart in one fell swoop,” Mikka shared in her Metro.Style interview in 2019. “I didn’t cry as I heard the news, I squeezed my husband’s hand and immediately felt sorry for him and my daughter. Never mind me, I’ve lived a good life, but them, they’re all I could think of. They need me.”

For us admirers, we didn’t see a woman showing weakness or succumbing to the battle. The past years has givens a Mikka Padua that brought more joy into her clothing and smiles in our faces. "I’m very grateful that I was able to make something as great as a cancer diagnosis into something more positive. Most especially on treatment days, or infusion days, I would dress up! I’d be in the hospital and everyone would be like 'Wow! Where are you going?,” Mikka said.

This is the very thing I was talking about of not having met MIkka but having her life personally affect mine. “[Fashion] also easily influences the mood of others... [When] everyone’s so gloomy and sad because they’re sick, when they see you, [they’re like] 'Awww how come this girl is sick, but she doesn’t look sick? She looks happy!' I always tell myself that maybe I was prepared for this—because I always like to turn something negative, or a problem or a challenge, into something positive," she continued.

You barely see anything cancer-related in her posts. Admittedly, she never really felt the sickness defined her. Her million ways of wearing a turban, though, to match her still voluminous sleeves, did. “What I lack in hair, I try to make up with an excess of sleeves,” she once said jokingly. 

As she departs this wonderful world, her quiet legacy stays with us. Her curated shop Seek The Uniq has always been in the business of “delivering joy.” Little did she know that that joy is through her—that is joy is her. We, in Metro, are privileged to have been in her presence through our Metro Most Stylish campaign in 2020, besting celebrities and personalities by simple just being her.

The next time we see and put on voluminous sleeves, floor-length day dresses, and festive earrings, we will remember you Mikka.