Abra presents a plea for individuality in Paris

Madrid – Looking beyond the official show schedule of the latest Paris Fashion Week, and from within the presentations category, Spanish designer Abraham Ortuño’s brand Abra presented its new collection for the spring/summer 2027 season on Monday, October 5. This “wonderful” collection, in its inspiration, feeling and form, was unveiled in a runway show format. The presentation comes ahead of the Spanish designer's upcoming debut as the new global creative director of Camper, where he will present his first collections for the brand in early 2027.

As FashionUnited exclusively reported in mid-March, Abraham Ortuño will combine his new responsibilities as global creative director of Camper and Camperlab with the creative direction of Abra. This arrangement is contrary to Camper's previous working relationships with creatives who have passed through its design department over the years. The Paris-based, Alicante-born designer began building and launching the Abra brand back in 2019. He has now presented its latest collection for the upcoming SS27 season during the most recent Paris Fashion Week.

The collection reveals itself as the freest and most genuine manifestation of his creative vision. It is a universe built on an expertise that the designer has honed over the years, serving fashion houses such as Jacquemus; Givenchy; Kenzo; Ami Paris; Rabanne; Coperni; Sandro; Loewe; Bally and JW Anderson. The collection serves as a grand gateway into his intimate and personal world. This world will define the next stage of development for Camper's main commercial brands. This latest proposal has once again proven to be as magical as it is fun, cheerful, bold, and above all, wonderful. The word 'wonderful' is doubly fitting for this collection, as the designer's main source of inspiration was Lewis Carroll's “Alice in Wonderland”. This work shared the spotlight in Ortuño's imagination with the universe of “Arrietty”, the animated film by the legendary Japanese Studio Ghibli, winner of the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. Drawing on these two references and their complexities, the designer has crafted a collection that truly speaks to the value of individuality, at a time when we are pushed into silence by the supposed appeal of uniformity.

“At the heart of the collection lies a desire for individuality,” states Abra. “At a time when fashion can feel increasingly neutral, minimalist and repetitive, this collection pays homage to those who seek to stand out.” It is only from this individuality that “clothing becomes an exercise in imagination, a way to create your own proportions, your own character and your own world.” In defence and vindication of this exercise in identity construction, “instead of blending into the crowd, the wearer of these garments acquires an identity of their own.”

Abraham Ortuño’s “upside-down world”

Combining the two main inspirational motifs mentioned earlier, along with a playful and subversive exercise typical of a mischievous child, results in all the ingredients that shape this Abra collection for SS27 in substance and form. It is a proposal in which its founder and creative director invites us to fall down the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland, only to awaken in an upside-down world where nothing is as it seems, yet everything is.

Deciphering this oxymoron, the collection is built on a colour palette where the characteristic blue of Alice in Wonderland's dress is the main colour note. This is set within a rustic symphony that includes grass greens, earthy browns, lavenders, sandy tones, moss greens and earthy greys. These tones are accentuated by black and white as colour counterpoints. The collection also features floral prints worthy of the finest room for afternoon tea, and even some that recreate the garden where the protagonists of Arrietty live.

Building on this series of colour accents and prints, the collection reaches its climax and fulfils its aspirations of defending and reclaiming individuality through the patterns and silhouettes of its garments. Following Ortuño's intentions, the pieces are presented as if from an upside-down, miniature world of impossible shapes and dimensions. Dresses are worn inside out in a subversive gesture that turns their straps into a kind of suspender; shoes are worn as hats; buttoned skirts become tops; aprons take on the identity of dresses, and vice versa; and skirts merge with trousers and jumpsuits or become sculptural pleated tops. These designs also appear to be made from materials of a different scale, accentuating the dreamlike quality and heightening the illusion of being in a shrunken reality. This adjective ultimately serves to decry how diminished individuality feels today under the weight of homogeneity, a critique that extends beyond the world of clothing.

In the context of this collection, and in keeping with its discursive message, “the rabbit hole becomes a metaphor for escaping the conventional,” explains Abra. “Once inside this distorted world, the usual proportions are no longer valid.” This seems to suggest that conventions are also rendered invalid by garments that “can be layered in unexpected ways, constructed in reverse, multiplied, enlarged or transformed into something completely different.” These exercises result in a collection that “oscillates between the tiny and the gigantic, the delicate and the exaggerated, the innocent and the unusual.”