As bed bugs and celebrities took over Paris during Fashion Week, a different kind of sartorial presentation took place half a world away at the military-controlled Felipe Ángeles International Airport airport in Mexico City. Artist Victor Barragán’s eponymous label’s SS24 collection is a narco-capitalist fever dream and a nod to the semiotics of 21st-century free-trade realism. As the American far right decries an invented crisis at the US border, stirring up a terrifying imagination of unchecked terrorism and fentanyl gangs, and as Mexico devolves into violence as a result of mismanaged NAFTA trade agreements, Barragán’s SS24 collection is awash with camo, political sloganeering, and machine gun echoes of nationalist violence. Bullet slugs and scabbed-over Xs are carved into models' foreheads. Blood streaks, hypodermic needles, biohazard coolers, and rosaries accessorize traje de luces, or matador costumes, and military fatigues. Even the designer can be seen disguised as a cross between Charles Manson and a Marxist revolutionary being perp-walked on a jungle tarmac. This is not quiet luxury, this is a mass grave. Above, Barragán shares exclusive behind-the-scenes images.
