Using his Mexican heritage as a back drop for his work, menswear designer Patricio Campillo showed great craftmanship in his fall collection.
Patricio Campillo has cemented himself as a rising designer to watch with the debut of his Fall/Winter 2025 Collection at New York Fashion Week. Against the ethereal backdrop of the New York City skyline at sunset, attendees entered a fantastical world of Campillo’s making; One firmly rooted in the designer’s own reality and heritage and yet entangled with the wondrous elements of Mexican magic realism.
For his Fall/Winter 2025 Collection, Campillo looked to Mexican surrealist painter Remedios Varo, implementing the artist’s unique blend of fantasy and reality into his wardrobe of the season. On the runway, Campillo’s inspirations came to life in the form of bold silhouettes rich with volume, texture and meticulous details that call to the designer’s own childhood.
“I wanted to do something that was playful, that was unexpected, that, you know, was still in sync with the vision of the brand.”
“I wanted to do something that was playful, that was unexpected, that, you know, was still in sync with the vision of the brand,” Campillo said. “It led me to magic realism as a reference and, and this concept of having magic be an element of everyday life.”
For the making of this collection, Campillo tapped into psychoanalytic techniques, employing free association to truly understand and expand on his brand’s modern and boundary-pushing essence. This technique allowed Campillo to build off of the brand’s foundational elements of Mexican culture and his own childhood experiences, pillars that have taken shape through the designer’s self-taught creative pursuits.
“Since I did not go to fashion school, for me, developing myself technically as a designer is really important because it allows me to just have a wider range of possibilities in the universe,” Campillo said. “I can tailor, but I can also drape, but I can also develop textile manipulation techniques and [that’s] a range that I want to have and acquire as a growing designer.”
“Since I did not go to fashion school, for me, developing myself technically as a designer is really important because it allows me to just have a wider range of possibilities in the universe.”
Campillo’s range of design abilities are evident throughout the collection with some ensembles centering around daring structures such as bulky layered turtlenecks while others find their personality through careful detailing like coffee flower buttons. In this way, each look bears its own individual flair and yet comfortably sits alongside its counterparts to make up a unified wardrobe.
In addition to his surrealist garments, ensembles were elevated through elegant hair styling that evoked both the collection’s key themes and the brand’s central motifs. “We just wanted something that was sleek and that was very refined and elegant,” Campillo said. “Those ponytails, for example, reminded me of a horse a little bit, which is very much in the brand’s universe.”
Through his fluid and eye-catching collection, it becomes abundantly clear that Campillo has a strong vision for his brand; one that will only continue to grow as he hones his design skills and explores the distinctive and exhilarating themes that have secured him as one of fashion’s most exciting new designers.
Images courtesy of Zeeshaan Shabbir.
