Vaquera AW25: French clichés, American drama

A series of images unfolds like a surreal wardrobe diary, veiled in a dreamy, blurred haze reminiscent of retro VHS tapes. Pearls swing at shin level, pillbox hats sit askew, and silhouettes stretch beyond recognition. In Vaquera’s Autumn/Winter 2025 campaign, nostalgia clashes with theatre.

Now officially relocating to Paris after years of showing there, Vaquera reflects on what it means to inhabit a new cultural identity. Designers Bryn Taubensee and Patric DiCaprio toy with symbols of bourgeois elegance: fur coats, pink rosettes, ropes of pearls and prim tailoring, all pushed to the edge of absurdity. The collection toys with French clichés—ladylike accessories, prim silhouettes, a touch of bourgeois polish—only to subvert them through distortion and exaggeration. Filtered through the brand’s signature irreverence, these tropes unravel into a distinctly American kind of drama: raw, expressive, and a little unhinged.

Oversized bras become gowns. Ladylike hats glitch sideways. T-shirts come padded like football uniforms in a nod to American archetypes. There’s denim printed with Marilyn Monroe, made in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, and coats painted white in a quiet echo of early Margiela.

Vaquera takes couture apart with pieces that feel like costume and manifesto all at once. The campaign captures that strange electric moment when everything is about to shift. Moving cities. Growing as a label. Making big decisions while trying to keep hold of what made you weird in the first place. There is no neat message. No perfect pose. Just a sense of motion, play and risk.