J Balvin knows how to create a summer banger. For years, the Colombian reggaeton singer has penned a string of summer anthems like Mi Gente, I Like It, and 6 AM, which guest-starred artists you may have heard of including Cardi B, Beyoncé, and Bad Bunny.
Now, the 35-year-old songwriter is flexing his creative muscles as a fashion designer thanks to his first menswear and womenswear collection with Guess dubbed Colores, which was named after his most recent album.
As the name implies, J Balvin’s 42-piece line is a Crayola box of easy staples splashed with vibrant colors (think: Tie-Dye hoodies, rainbow-striped T-Shirts, and color-blocked vests) that were primarily inspired by his hometown Medellín, Colombia. Naturally, it was also where Guess shot the campaign.
“We knew we wanted to bring colors. We wanted to share with the world a lot of my country, Colombia, and my city,” J Balvin told GQ. “When I used to see Guess when I was a kid, I saw it as something I was never going to reach. After that, my name being in the collection and my city on the textile was fire.”
The collection was initially supposed to launch alongside his album in March, but it was pushed back twice due to current events. Chalk it up to happenstance, then, since J Balvin’s high-spirited garments make for some summer-appropriate fits. We especially love the Instagram pink shorts, which look as great on social media as they do offline, especially at a socially distanced barbecue, along with zip-ups and fishing hats imprinted with postcard-like images of Medellín.
“Every place that we print in this collection, we’ve been there, so we know the vibes. What’s in those pictures is a lot of what we saw in La Comuna 13, which is one of the hoods that used to be one of the most dangerous hoods in Medellín,” J Balvin told GQ. “Then it became one of the most artsy and safe places in the city. So it’s beautiful to tell the story of the transformation.”
While this is J Balvin’s first project with Guess, it’s also the fashion brand’s first campaign featuring a male Latinx celebrity, adding an inclusive punctuation point to a joyful collection.
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