A Fusion of Flesh, Metal, and Myth: America Universo SS25

The America Universo SS25 runway show was a visceral, avant-garde spectacle, closing out New York Fashion Week’s Monday with an exploration of the human body at its most extreme. Designed by sisters Frida and Irma Hernandez, the collection delved deep into the uncanny and alienesque, fusing the natural with the mechanical in ways that both challenged and intrigued.

Inspired by the complex relationships between the psychological and spiritual body, the collection blurred the lines between human and unhuman. Hardware corsets were reimagined as orthopedic braces, meant to support and contain, while skin, hair, and metal intertwined into eerie, artificial forms. These unsettling prosthetics resembled organs and arteries, creating a cybernetic vision of the body that felt both futuristic and disturbingly intimate.

The show’s exploration of fetish wear and restraint was particularly striking, with latex, leather, and technology reconfiguring the body’s boundaries. Fetishistic elements like bondage and medical devices were repurposed as fashion, pushing the limits of allure and abjection. Medicinal blues, garbage greens, and bright yellow rubber dominated the palette, evoking both sickness and seduction.

A key motif in the collection was the idea of discipline and deviance. The bandage became bondage, restraint transformed into an expression of power and vulnerability. The models, draped in veils and cutouts, embodied a strange mix of grotesque ecstasy and sterile control, evoking an eerie, futuristic priestess aesthetic.

In a world where the grotesque and the sublime collide, America Universo SS25 offered a raw, unapologetic celebration of the “beastly feminine.” The collection venerated the body as both a site of trauma and transcendence, presenting a powerful vision of beauty that is fierce, filthy, and undeniably captivating. This was not just a fashion show, but a psychological and sensory experience that left the audience in awe.