Victor Barragán, the designer behind BARRAGÁN, studied industrial design, not fashion. Before the brand took shape, he was making graphic T-shirts that spread through Tumblr and early social media, building an audience without waiting for permission from the industry. That instinct remains intact. Over the years, BARRAGÁN has grown from those DIY beginnings into a project that moves between cities, disciplines, and ideas about identity that refuse to sit still.
This season, Barragán presented SS30 inside the Mexican Embassy in Berlin during Berlin Fashion Week. The collection concerns Mexican identity, which has never been singular. It is plural, shaped by media, politics, colonial history, and diplomacy, yet repeatedly reduced to a single image defined from the outside. The embassy became a nation sustained by agreement, sovereignty existing through documentation on German soil, a temporary home where identity is formalised through paperwork. The title references the political timeframe surrounding the projected end of Donald Trump’s current administration in the United States, with garments translating into embassy uniforms, silhouettes that acknowledge transit, and pieces that reflect nationality as image.
The set designed by TOR STUDIO bathed the building, originally designed by Mexican architect Teodoro González de León, in hues of pink, orange, and yellow inspired by Luis Barragán’s palette. For one evening, the embassy became a symbolic collaboration between the two architects: structure by one, colour by the other. Collaborations with Trashy Clothing, Self Indulgence, and Mats Rombaut extended the idea of exchange as creative practice, drawing from the history of artistic dialogue between Mexico and Europe.
We sat down with Barragán to talk about the collection, the difference between fashion weeks, and why the DIY approach still matters as the brand continues to grow. What follows is a conversation about building worlds beyond clothing, moving between cities, and why youth might be the only answer that makes sense. Our photographer Noa Lesche went backstage to capture our favourite looks from the collection. Check it out below:
You studied industrial design rather than fashion. Before BARRAGÁN, you were creating graphic T-shirts that spread through Tumblr and early social media. Looking back, do you see those DIY beginnings as the foundation of the brand’s visual identity today?
Definitely. I never had a traditional fashion education, so I learned by making things, posting them online, and seeing how people responded. Tumblr was important because it allowed an image or an idea to circulate without needing permission from the fashion industry.
The first T-shirts were very instinctive. They came from internet culture, Mexican visual references, humor, sexuality, nightlife, and things I was personally experiencing. I was not thinking about building a fashion brand in a conventional way. I was making objects and images that I wanted to exist.
That approach is still central to BARRAGÁN. Even as the collections have become more complex, I still begin with an image, a feeling, a joke, an uncomfortable reference, or something from everyday life. The DIY attitude remains because it allows the work to stay personal and unpredictable.
Your work has always explored the intersection of queer identity and Mexican culture. Has that perspective changed as the label has grown internationally?
The perspective has become more complex, but the foundation has not changed. I do not see queerness and Mexican identity as separate themes. They are both part of how I experience the world.
As the brand has grown internationally, I have become more aware of how Mexican identity is interpreted outside Mexico. There is often an expectation that Mexican culture must look a particular way or rely on very recognizable symbols. I am interested in challenging that expectation.
Mexico is not one image, one skin tone, one class, one body, or one political position. It is very contradictory. My work is about that plurality and about the tension between how you identify yourself and how other people identify you.
Queerness also gives me a way of questioning fixed categories. It allows me to look at masculinity, femininity, beauty, taste, nationality and belonging as things that can be reconstructed.
Where are you based today?
I move between different cities, but BARRAGÁN has been strongly connected to New York, Mexico City and Los Angeles. More recently, I have also been spending significant time in Europe; I’m staying I love it.
I think moving between places has shaped the work. Each city gives me a different understanding of community, industry, nightlife, identity and survival. I do not feel that the brand belongs entirely to one city anymore. It exists through this movement between places.
How large is the BARRAGÁN team today, and has the way you build collections changed as the brand has grown?
The permanent team is still relatively small, but every collection expands through a larger network of collaborators, friends, artists, stylists, producers, photographers, and independent brands.
I like that structure because it keeps the brand flexible. I do not want every collection to be created through the same formula. The people involved affect the final result, and that exchange is important.
As the brand has grown, the process has obviously become more organized because there are more responsibilities, deadlines, and production needs. But creatively, I still try to preserve the immediacy of the early years. I do not want the process to become so professionalized that it loses its emotional or accidental qualities.
You’ve shown in New York before and are now presenting in Berlin. How do the two fashion weeks differ from your perspective, both creatively and professionally?
New York taught me a lot. It is very fast, competitive, and commercially focused. There is a lot of pressure to define yourself immediately and to make your work understandable within the structure of the industry.
Berlin feels different. There is more room for experimentation and for projects that sit between fashion, performance, installation, music and art. Audiences seem more comfortable with ambiguity and with presentations that do not follow a traditional runway format.
Professionally, New York can push a brand toward visibility and commerce very quickly. Berlin offers a different kind of cultural conversation. Neither one is necessarily better. They create different pressures and different possibilities.
Berlin has a reputation for embracing experimental fashion. Did that give you more freedom in developing this collection?
Yes. Berlin gave us permission to think beyond the clothes and to consider the entire environment of the presentation.
The collection was developed together with the space, the architecture, the digital elements, the sound and the movement of the models. It was not only about presenting a sequence of looks. It was about building a temporary world.
Berlin also has a history of alternative communities, nightlife, subcultures and people creating outside traditional systems. That energy feels connected to BARRAGÁN. It gave us the confidence to make something that could be strange, unfinished, emotional and still very intentional.
Showing at the Embassy of Mexico during Berlin Fashion Week is a particularly symbolic venue. What made Berlin feel like the right city for BARRAGÁN at this point in the brand’s evolution?
The embassy was important because it is both a physical and symbolic territory. It is a representation of Mexico located on German soil. It exists through international agreements, borders, bureaucracy and diplomacy; finding the loopholes in life is the spirit of BARRAGÁN.
Those ideas connect directly to the collection: how identity is formalized, how nationality is documented, and how people are represented when they move across borders.
Berlin also felt right because BARRAGÁN is at a point where the brand is thinking beyond one fashion capital. The project brought together collaborators from Mexico, the United States, and Europe. Berlin became a meeting point for those different communities.
Presenting at the embassy allowed us to talk about Mexico without reproducing a nostalgic or folkloric image. Instead, we could think about Mexican identity as something contemporary, unstable, international and constantly being renegotiated.
What was the starting point for the Spring/Summer 2027 collection, and how would you describe the attitude?
The starting point was the plurality of the Mexican phenotype and the way national identity is constructed, represented and recognized across media.
I was thinking about the question of what a Mexican person is expected to look like. Mexico contains so many racial, regional, social and cultural identities, but internationally it is often reduced to a very limited image.
The collection examines uniforms, migration, diplomacy, documentation and belonging. It also looks at the way clothes can allow someone to enter a group, perform an identity or escape from one.
The attitude is proud but not patriotic in a traditional sense. It is confrontational, humorous, sexual and slightly uncomfortable. There is a tension between official representation and personal identity.
What do you hope guests take away from the presentation beyond the clothes themselves?
I hope they leave questioning the idea that identity can be easily defined.
I want the presentation to create an emotional experience rather than simply communicate a single message. Ideally, people recognize something familiar but also feel that their expectations have been disrupted.
The clothes are one part of a larger conversation about bodies, movement, nationality, technology, and representation. I hope the audience understands that BARRAGÁN is not only proposing garments. We are proposing images, situations, and different ways of seeing people; we are an art conceptual project.
What excites you most about fashion right now, and what do you think the industry could do better?
What excites me is that fashion is becoming harder to separate from other forms of culture. A collection can exist through a runway, a video, a digital object, a performance, a collaboration, or a community project.
I am interested in designers who create their own systems rather than waiting to be accepted into an existing one. Technology has also made it possible for smaller brands to communicate directly and build international audiences.
At the same time, the industry needs to provide more meaningful support for independent designers. There is a lot of public discussion about diversity and new voices, but the financial structures often remain inaccessible.
The industry also consumes ideas and people very quickly. It celebrates experimentation but often does not provide the time or resources necessary for experimental practices to survive. There needs to be more transparency, patience, and long-term investment.
Looking ahead, where do you see BARRAGÁN evolving over the next five years? Are there new mediums, collaborations or creative territories you’re eager to explore beyond the runway?
I want BARRAGÁN to continue expanding beyond the traditional definition of a fashion brand.
I am interested in film, architecture, furniture, publishing, digital environments, music and objects. My background is in industrial design, so I have always thought about the brand as a wider creative system rather than only clothing.
I also want to build more collaborations with people outside fashion. The most interesting projects often happen when two different languages or communities meet, and neither side completely controls the result.
Commercially, I want the brand to become stronger and more sustainable without losing its independence. The goal is not simply to become bigger. It is to create the infrastructure that allows us to continue taking risks and bring good products to our audience.
If you could create a BARRAGÁN show with no budget limitations and no practical constraints, what would the audience experience?
It would be a show that changes according to each person attending it. There would not be one fixed perspective or one correct way of experiencing it all has to be coded in your own visual sense language.
Finally, what is fucking young to you?
Youth is the answer.
