The Tamesis
“Textile miracles sometimes happen”… said Francisco Cancino when talking about his new collection, referring to the range of silk fabrics he has been working with this season. Yes, the material delivered this time was “very good,” but with Cancino, things run deeper than a lucky textile break. There is always something that needs to be said, a recurring instinct of Mexican history and memory filtered through contemporary clothing.
While he previously turned to Nietzsche to explore his inner monster, the Chiapas-born designer drew inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges and his books Alephwhich explores the point in time and space where everything coexists at the same time. Borges’s book gave Cancino a reason to revisit his own work, not as a self-homage but for a purpose that was both philosophical and practical: to select works from his existing catalog and “bring them to life, make them come to life, make them come to life.”
The result is a collection that feels particularly vibrant, with a sense of movement enhanced by saturated primary colors, clear proportions and silk fabrics that give the clothes a constant fluidity.
Now, across several collections, Cancino has been grappling with the tension between her desire for an artistic brand and the fact that she ultimately sells ready-to-wear. With this series, he seems more at ease. The tension is no longer tension, but balance.
Perhaps it was because of this ease that he gave himself new creative freedoms, including a new fascination with hustle and bustle. He applied the contemporary obsession with exaggerating certain parts of the body (in his case, influenced by Alexander McQueen) to Mexican denim, resulting in a very romantic look that was relatively new in the Cancino universe, yet completely current. “I was thinking about the permission I give myself when I talk about Mexico, well, Mexico has the city of palaces and bustling traffic along the Avenida Reforma, you know? It’s a way of talking about history, but in a pair of jeans. They look glamorous.”
Yes, they do. like Borges Alepha collection that embraces multiple worlds: romance and practicality, history and modernity, artistic instinct and commercial clarity. In Cancino’s hands, they no longer feel like opposing forces but part of the same language.
