CAMPILLO SS27 transforms Celium™ from cultivated cellulose into three runway looks at New York Fashion Week.
- Published on
- September 15, 2026
Grown in Mexico. Designed in Mexico.
What does Mexican craftsmanship look like when biology becomes one of its tools?
For Spring/Summer 2027, Mexican designer Patricio Campillo incorporated Celium™ Manto and Celium™ Espumante into three looks presented at New York Fashion Week.
The garments represent the final stage of a transformation that starts far from the runway.
It starts with fruit waste.
From fruit waste to Premium Cultivated Cellulose
Celium's production begins with nutrients recovered from agroindustrial fruit residues. Under carefully controlled conditions, bacteria consume those nutrients and begin producing cellulose.
As they grow, bacterial cells self-organize into a three-dimensional network, bioassembling the structure that will eventually become Celium™.
When cultivation is complete, the cellulose is harvested.
But at this point, it is not yet the material seen on the runway.
From cellulose to functional materials
Growing cellulose is only one part of the process.
The harvested structure must then be stabilized, refined and finished until its properties are suitable for creative and industrial applications. Polybion™ manages this progression from cultivation through harvesting, stabilization and finishing before the material reaches product-making partners.
Through different cultivation and finishing approaches, Celium™ can take on very different expressions.
It can be translucent or opaque, softer or firmer, restrained or highly expressive. Biological differences in density, tone and texture remain visible in the finished material, giving individual sheets their own character.
For CAMPILLO SS27, the collection explores two of those expressions: Celium™ Manto and Celium™ Espumante.
Once those materials entered Campillo’s studio, a new transformation began.
From material to culture
Patricio Campillo’s work explores Mexican identity through contemporary fashion, drawing in particular from craftsmanship and Charro Culture, and reinterpreting their techniques, silhouettes and visual codes for a contemporary context.
Polybion™ approaches material from another direction.
Our tools are bacteria, fermentation, biofabrication, material science and manufacturing.
The processes may appear unrelated, but both depend on something fundamental: intimate knowledge of material.
Traditional craft develops through repetition. Through generations of learning what a material can do, how it behaves and how human intervention can transform it.
Working with biology requires a similar process of observation and accumulated knowledge.
Living systems introduce their own variations. They need to be understood, guided and refined rather than simply forced into complete uniformity.
That is where the idea of biocraft emerges.
Not as a replacement for traditional craftsmanship, but as another way of combining material intelligence with human creativity.
And in the context of CAMPILLO SS27, that connection becomes particularly relevant: a design practice informed by Charro Culture meeting a material created through contemporary Mexican biofabrication.
The material has more than one author
Celium™ also challenges the idea that a material has a single maker.
Its first author is biology.
Bacteria construct its microscopic cellulose network.
Then come the biotechnologists, engineers and production teams who create the conditions for growth.
Material specialists harvest, stabilize and refine it.
And finally, designers interpret it.
For CAMPILLO SS27, that final transformation belonged to Patricio Campillo.
Celium™ became silhouette.
It became construction.
It became movement.
And eventually, it became three garments walking a runway in New York.
The journey can be read almost as a chain of authorship:
Fruit waste becomes nutrients.
Nutrients become bacterial cellulose.
Bacterial cellulose becomes material.
Material becomes garment.
Garment becomes culture.
A material grown through Mexican biotechnology, transformed through a design language rooted in Mexican identity and Charro Culture, and presented internationally.
Biology grows it.
Science refines it.
Craft gives it form.
Mexico Materialized.
Mexican biology. Mexican craft. A new material culture.
Photo Credits:
@khanglys
@andryeze
@satinsews
@totem_magazine
@latinamericamode