Jul 9

Jul 9 Barragán SS27

Barragán presented its Spring/Summer collection, titled SS30, inside the Mexican Embassy in Berlin, a brutalist building designed by architect Teodoro González de León. The setting carried its own argument. An embassy stands on borrowed ground, a nation kept alive abroad through recognition and signature, a home built entirely on agreement rather than soil. Victor Barragán used this condition as the framework for a collection about Mexican identity, a subject that has never settled into one image despite constant attempts to reduce it to one.

The scenography drew on Luis Barragán's treatment of half-light and color, with opposing shafts crossing through separate corridors until they met and merged into a single field of shade. Garments followed a similar logic: embassy and hotel uniforms suggested a kind of official hospitality, silhouettes carried the memory of transit, and details nodded to nationality as something worn rather than felt. The invitation, a counterfeit passport, and the suitcases carried down the runway made the theme literal: belonging recognized only once it is stamped, filed, and approved.

The title SS30 points to the political calendar tied to the end of Donald Trump's presidency in the United States, a reminder that citizenship and its terms get decided elsewhere. Collaborations with Trashy Clothing, Self Indulgence, and Mats Rombaut extended the collection past a single voice, echoing decades of exchange between Mexican and European artists and proposing new versions of that dialogue for the present.