“Golfo de México,” read Patricio Campillo’s T-shirt at his fall 2025 show. That was a loud, clear, and gutsy statement from the Mexico-born, raised, and based designer that elicited a well-deserved round of applause. But it wasn’t his only one, even if the clothes in his collection spoke a little more subtly.
“You know when a kid is drawing a castle and they just add a pink unicorn, when they don’t think about what’s real and isn’t?” offered a bright-eyed Campillo at a pre-show meeting at the Vogue HQ. “This collection is my unicorn.”
Back in New York for a sophomore season, Campillo was doubling down on his aspirations of expanding his collection and outlining his skillset for this new audience. “I’m thinking about my future, about what I want to do with my own brand and my career,” he said, adding coyly, “but I won’t say more, just that I know that I need to show range.”
Part of what’s lighting his fire stems from the unavoidable reflection that comes with being a Mexican designer showing in the United States today. “What I’m trying to do here is not verbally political, but when I make the clothes or do the casting, there is a point of view,” he said. Many of the Latin American fashion exports in the U.S. that precede Campillo have often and understandably looked at Europe for inspiration—and assimilation. But together with designers like Willy Chavarria and Raul Lopez, Campillo has become part of a contingent that is reframing what Latino fashion means and looks like.
Campillo said he looked at one of Latin America’s most treasured and idiosyncratic cultural traditions this season, magical realism. From authors Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) and Isabel Allende (Chile) to painters like the Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo, this is a singular vernacular that embraces the region’s knack for superstition and the supernatural and realizes it as a concrete visual presence in everyday life. Animals are vocal omens, the spirits of our loved ones walk among us, and that pink unicorn? It lives in Campillo’s back yard.
Yet while Latin Americans share deeply intertwined cultural narratives, Latinos across the Americas—not “America” as in the United States—are not a monolithic presence. Campillo here spoke to that collective frustration by examining Mexican stereotypes, he said, and subverting them—see his charro tailoring with its masculinity enhanced with sharp, overtly sensual cuts or proportioned with gender bending perversity. “I wanted to make some of these elements of masculinity more feminine,” he said of turning cummerbunds into corset-like fajas or transforming trousers into skirts. “But I also wanted to simply objectify the charro, because they are hot,” he continued with a smirk—see that sexy denim or leather tailoring and those leather and shearling chaps.
Campillo said that the way Varo rendered clothing was particularly inspiring to him. One could see her in his twisted paneled trousers and spellbinding, swirling draping. He explained that he sees this collection as “demi-couture.” That’s a lofty statement, but Campillo measured up with how he hand-stitched creases into suits and with the way he duplicated, then draped and folded jackets into magical interpretations of classic masculine suiting. Then there was the closing look: over 2,500 rooster feathers appliquéd onto a jacket so fantastic it convinced a Vogue colleague at Campillo’s office visit to attend the show.
This is a designer with no formal design background, something he says has been a source of insecurity. You couldn’t tell with this collection, which was polished, concise, and exceptionally well-made. Campillo here proved that as long as he continues to ground his magical aspirations in his reality as a queer Mexican designer, he has not just the ambition to conjure his label into New York Fashion Week’s next pink unicorn, but the talent and determination to do so.
