“I never thought I’d listen to Bronco on the soundtrack of a fashion show in New York,” said my seatmate this morning at Patricio Campillo’s New York Fashion Week debut. But what a way to start day two of this marathon. The song was “Que No Quede Huella,” a hit by the Mexican “grupero” band Bronco, which played in the background of Campillo’s show. And just last night, that same seatmate and yours truly sang along to Juan Gabriel at the Willy Chavarria show.
It was Chavarria, in fact, who inspired the Mexico-based Campillo, a 2024 LVMH Prize semi-finalist, to make the jump over to New York. Said Campillo: “There is a Latin community claiming its place in the industry here for what feels like the very first time. You have Luar [by Raul Lopez] and Willy, who have been breaking ground and making way for us for many years. That is what was in my mind when I decided to come here.”
Campillo is a welcome addition to the NYFW fold. A self-taught menswear designer who started his career in fashion media and styling, his outlook is contemporary and forward-looking while embracing his cultural heritage, particularly that of “charro” culture, which broadly and historically refers to the ranchero, the trade horseman in the Mexican countryside. This has made the Campillo label a worthwhile representative of Mexican fashion, and its designer a notable voice as it pertains to next-gen Mexican artistry.
This spring lineup was Campillo at his purest and most polished. The designer explained backstage that his seductive yet melancholic color palette of desert neutrals and dusky charcoals and oranges was an interpretation of his fascination with the volcanoes that run through Mexico, including Paricutín and Popocatépetl. “I thought of the serenity a dormant volcano can inspire versus the ferocity it displays once active,” said Campillo, explaining that it was in the push and pull between violence and peace, and how apropos this narrative feels globally and in Mexico, where he felt his collection found gravitas.
What should be the takeaway from this morning’s show is that Campillo, who is close to 10 years in with his label, is not only ready for the wave of attention this inarguably larger platform will provide him, but that he is a remarkable tailor and a talented designer. (He makes all of his clothes in his atelier in Mexico, which he’s had for close to a decade.)
