If You Like Willy Chavarria, Check This Out
View Campillo's FW25 collection here
It seems that my love for Campillo’s latest collection goes a bit deeper than I thought. Their Fall/Winter 25 collection was a delicate display of shapes and drapes, showcasing the best of Peter Do and Willy Chavarria: playful blazers, exaggerated lapels, and an accentuated mix of masculinity and femininity, all presented with harmony and ease. But of course, let’s not get lost in the referencing and comparison, as Patricio Campillo is doing his own thing.
Each fashion season, I try my best to go through as many collections as possible (still, I have to admit, it's never over 20) and try to understand what’s worth talking about, and occasionally, I will come across collections like this from Campillo that stand out from the rest. It isn’t purely about the shapes, but the overall weight of the collection. The choice of color was serious, but each outfit was donned with subtle flair. Even the exaggerated lapels are muted by the choice of color as if they are trying not to offend anyone or, better yet, disturb anyone. There is a certain sense of politeness, gentry, and perhaps nobility involved in the garments. While Willy Chavarria’s FW25 collection reminds me of Pachuco and Pachucas, their rebellion and resistance through fashion, and a sense of pride, Campillo’s clothes were a bit tamer, calmer, and more whimsical.
Captivated. I wanted to learn more about Campillo as this is the first time I’ve come across his work. The first post on his Instagram profile is a pinned post (which he had removed by the time I am editing this newsletter) of his submission to the 2024 edition of the LVMH prize. From the caption, you tell a few things: he was self-taught, he grew up in Mexico City and started riding horses at the young age of 6 years old, and most importantly, his design philosophy and way of fashion were led by a suit that his grandfather purchased when he was 18. Quoting him, this suit eventually became the “base pattern for all the pants and jackets in the collections to this day.” While we never got to see the suit he referenced, we can deduce that he is probably referring to the Charro suit he also mentioned in the post. While we do not know that Campillo's rule of basing their pants and jackets on the pattern remains true well into 2025, we can see the similarity between his clothes and the traditional Charro suits.
In the past year, there were quite a few collections that touched on style signifiers that are related to vaqueros, rancheros, or traditional horsemen, like the Louis Vuitton FW24, elements in Willy Chavarria’s collections and Portuguese label Béhen, which loosely touched on Gauchos (South-American cowboys), they are very new to me, not the idea of cowboys but the history and cultural significance that they each tapped into learned me something new, almost every time. With Campillo and Patricio Campillo’s personal history with the Charro suit and horseriding, his take on cowboy motifs again showed me something new. Campillo’s Cowboys in FW25 are unlike his previous versions. When Campillo first started, which went by their old name “The Pack”, perhaps to represent the unity of a herd of horses, Patricio’s vision was still a really rural, less processed and filtered version of Charros. The clothes, campaign photos, the set, and the brand's vibe, individually and collectively, point towards the countryside that heavily influenced Patricio. Fall Winter 25 Campillo was different, it’s as if the pack of boisterous and resilient Charros mixed with Congolese Sapeurs, the clothes showed hints of countryside but were not entirely covered with sandy earth tones nor the overly-telling silhouettes of traditional cowboys, perhaps they have migrated into the city, going after something else and bringing their culture and background with them.
Patricio’s magic shone through in Campillo’s FW25, and Campillo’s evolution from a rural The Pack to the most recent sartorial Charros. Patricio is giving us a side of gritty Mexicana that is starting to feel increasingly fantastical, and I am eager to see what comes next.