Custo Barcelona Fall 2015

Custo Barcelona’s men’s looks every season seem to have more retail value than its women’s looks. That is partially due to their less mixing and matching of disparate patterns and fabric combination with the men’s looks, rendering them more accessible.

For fall 2015, Custo Barcelona’s men’s looks again surpassed its women’s looks, but barely. Since last season the brand has done an about face in an attempt to make the clothes have more consumer appeal. This direction has carried over to the brand’s fall 2015 collection.

Even with this new direction, creative director Dalmau Custo will always maintain his signature aesthetic of disparate color combinations, fabrications, and silhouettes that are melded together to create a blazing miasma of color, shape and design, sometimes rendering masterpieces of fashion genius. And season after season, Custo has pulled out all the stops in this direction. Unfortunately, the brand has been up ended by Desigual who does the same thing at a much lower price point with less of a kaleidoscope of ideas and concepts.

Though Dalmau Custo was inspired by stripes used to wash cars at car washes—you could see this reference in miniskirts that were shredded stripes resembling car wash stripes, an interesting take on the fringe trend—classic silhouettes seemed to rule Custo’s runway looks for fall 2015.

Not only did classic silhouettes dominate the collection this season, the collection appeared most accessible when Dalmau Custo stayed with heavy coats in Mohair plaid and navy wool, non-distinguishing tweeds, and black-and-white plaids. Though there were pops of metallic-threaded colors and tribal prints though out this outing, the more somber pieces had more of an impact.

Most seasons the Custo team has do a lot of tweaking to make the runway magic appealing consumers. However, this season many of the garments from the collection are already retail ready. It seems as though Dalmau Custo is learning how to save money and time. Kudos Custo Barcelona!!

—William S. Gooch