Our Favorite Moments From Barcelona Fashion Week

Barcelona Fashion Week, known to the fashion set simply as 080, returned this October with a kind of fervent confidence that only this city can summon. It takes place well after respective fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris but somehow brings a fresh energy and perspective to the fashion calendar.

Set in the backdrop of La Sagrada Familia, the event transforms the Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau into a cathedral of craft and chaos — one last hurrah before the show bids farewell to its longtime venue as 080 is expected to move next year. There was a bittersweetness in the air, a sense that the runway wasn’t just a showcase of clothes but a memorial to a space that has seen the evolution of Barcelona fashion from niche to international. For four days, the city hummed with the friction of old and new — heritage brushing up against experimentation, sustainability threading through spectacle.

Established names walked alongside labels still finding their voice, all speaking in dialects of innovation. Reparto, Outsiders Division, Custo Barcelona, and Acromatyx each took their turn at the mic, delivering collections that were as distinct as they were emblematic of 080’s broader creative pulse.

Reparto just gets it. And by it, we mean the internet. Like PAPER we imagine the brand's founders, Margil Peña and Ana Viglione, are as internet-obsessed as we are because their collection is a fever dream for those of us who are chronically-online.

The brand has built a reputation for injecting humor and narrative into fashion’s often too-serious landscape. Their 2025 collection continued that streak — a playful, genderless wardrobe stitched together with character studies. Their overly over-sized t-shirts have become a staple of the brand and this season they doubled down with them rendered in found fabrics and unexpected bursts of color that seemed almost cheeky in their intentional mismatch.

Models emerged looking like protagonists from a surreal street opera with a very clear nod to 2000 style. In fact, you could imagine Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan wearing any number of their looks out to a club circa 2006.

Reparto isn’t designing clothes for archetypes; they’re designing for personalities. In an industry still clinging to uniformity, their charm lies in the chaos — a celebration of individuality as performance art.

Outsiders Division is Barcelona’s own enfant terrible. Designer David Méndez Alonso has long treated adulthood as optional, and this season he doubled down on that mantra. His collection was a vision of preppy nostalgia and anarchic energy — varsity knits colliding with cartoonish graphics, pleated skirts styled with punkish accessories, and color palettes that refused to behave. It was less like a typical runway show and more like a staged act of joyful rebellion.

The show felt like rummaging through the most chaotic closet imaginable — the kind where childhood memories and teenage angst coexist in perfect harmony. It’s a label that rejects polish in favor of sincerity, turning fashion week’s usual gloss into a playground for self-expression. Alonso’s world isn’t about growing up; it’s about growing louder.

Custo Barcelona, meanwhile, reminded everyone why it remains a cornerstone of fashion in Barcelona. Custo Dalmau’s namesake label has always been synonymous with maximalism — kaleidoscopic prints, saturated colors, and silhouettes that seem to dance to their own rhythm. This season, the brand leaned into that legacy but with a sharper modern sensibility. Metallics shimmered under the Sant Pau arches, while asymmetrical cuts and mesh layers played with movement and light. It was as if Custo had distilled Barcelona’s chaotic beauty — the mosaics of Gaudí, the sun-baked streets, the unfiltered glamour — into fabric form.

For a city that thrives on visual excess, Custo remains its most eloquent translator. Watching his models storm the runway felt like a victory lap for the very idea of Barcelona's fashion itself: confident, expressive, and utterly unbothered by minimalism.

Acromatyx is like the shadow to Custo’s sun. Founded by Franx de Cristal and Oriol Andrés, Acromatyx is a brand that treats black as both language and philosophy. Their show was an exercise in restraint and tension — tailored pieces that looked almost sculptural, fabrics layered with precision, and details that demanded slow looking. It was dark, yes, but never dreary. The collection felt cinematic, evoking the mood of a late-night art film where every fold of cloth tells a story. In an edition so saturated with color and play, Acromatyx provided the necessary counterpoint — a reminder that austerity can be its own form of decadence. Their finale felt less like a runway show and more like a curtain call, closing the week with an emotional exhale.

What made this edition of 080 feel special wasn’t just the clothes — it was the conviction. The event no longer seems preoccupied with proving that Barcelona belongs in the global conversation. It knows it does. And that is due in large part to the city’s boundary-pushing history in creativity.

As 080 founder Marta Cocca put it: “What makes Barcelona so special is that it embraces diverse aesthetics with a hybridization of styles and, above all, generational coherence. From millennials, through Gen Z, to the new generations. These diverse aesthetics and style hybridizations create an important generational theme, making many audiences feel welcomed and represented.”

Reparto’s irreverence, Outsiders Division’s joy, Custo’s spectacle, and Acromatyx’s discipline — together they form a kind of manifesto for where Barcelona fashion is headed: bold, conscious, and gloriously self-assured. 080 didn’t whisper this year; it declared itself. Loudly, stylishly, and with a wink.

This article is a collaboration between 080 Barcelona Fashion and PAPER.

Photos courtesy of 080 Barcelona Fashion.