Barcelona was all about numbers for me: It was my first time in the city, and thus my first time at 080 Barcelona Fashion, though it was in fact the 37th edition of the week. My number one thought was curiosity, because I arrived in this fantastic town without much knowledge (OK: almost none) as to what I’d see. With 26 designers showing—from the established (Custo Barcelona, Adolfo Dominguez), to local favorites (Dominnico, Bolano), to the newest of the new (Boulard, XV Strange, AAA Studio)—my opening impression was that there’s a raw, unfettered quality to the work here, a pride in not doing things just because they’ve always been done a certain way elsewhere.

Barcelona’s organizers want to find a way to be different from the well-established fashion capitals—to be less institutional, and more challenging, to the system of fashion. As Marta Coca, the director of 080 Barcelona, told me, the idea is to build more freedom into the formula in terms of the cadence of showing, encourage designers to merge creativity and commerciality in ways tjat are meaningful to them, and to question the relentless, juggernaut quality of making and showing more, more, more. In this moment, with small independents stretched to their limits, sales down, and a dire global landscape, that’s likely a wise thing to do. In the meantime, here are four labels whose shows, for me, stood out.

Adolfo Dominguez

Spain may not have the biggest fashion industry in the world, but boy, does it do major fashion dynasties in a big way: Zara, with the Ortega family; Mango, with the Andic family; and, of course, Adolfo Dominguez, the fashion label founded by the Dominguezs in 1950 as a tailoring company before it became a designer brand in 1976, just as General Franco died and his fascist regime came to an end. The three-generation spanning Adolfo Dominguez label flourished as Spain came out of those dark decades, emerging amidst a rapidly transforming country. I remember it from the 1980s: You’d see the label’s soft, easy, artfully crumpled tailoring in British Vogue or in The Face, and you also saw it on Don Johnson’s Crockett in Miami Vice as he battled it out with Uzi-toting drug lords, smooched with Sheena Easton, and tangled with Eartha Kitt as a voodoo high priestess. (The last pure wonderful high camp: No notes.)

Dominguez was doing slow fashion before just about anyone else, something which was much to the fore in its 50th anniversary co-ed show, held at the end of the first day of the 080 Barcelona Fashion schedule, where Dominguez himself was honored by Jaume Collboni, the Mayor of Barcelona, and the Minister for the Presidency, Albert Damau.

The clothes were pretty good, because they looked real and made sense, and were done with a quiet conviction, echoing what I noticed to be an enviably undone attitude among Barcelona’s most stylish residents. The collection is designed by creative director Tiziana Dominguez, daughter of Adolfo, while her sister Adriana Dominguez is the brand’s executive president. (“We keep everything in the family—like Succession,” Adriana quipped just before the show started.) Tiziana leaned into soft, slouchy jackets and shirts, cut to collapse as they draped. These she layered with artisanal knits or asymmetric skirts with thread-like fringing that gently moved as the models walked—walking, incidentally, in some terrific soft loafer-slippers, outsized panels of leather sitting on top of the shoes, matching the artfully louche and easy spirit of the collection. Meanwhile, the casting made me think of the brand’s ’80s mantra, Wrinkles are beautiful. They were talking about the clothes back then, but there were some elegantly haggard guys on the runway who also reflected that statement—something to give me hope.

Txell Miras

Though I had no clue what to expect from Txell Miras, I rather liked her collection with its clean, linear layers of wool, cotton poplin, neoprene, knit, and jersey in beige, greige, and gray. On sleeveless coats with high shoulder-lines, soft narrow skirts, and blousons with attenuated sleeves, the only decoration was the line drawings of copulating couples, working their way through all manner of positions. (Maybe too many positions, I lost count at the 60th look.)

The clothing was worn with the most madly inventive—and also just plain mad—shoes, which brought gracefulness to the silhouette. They were constructed from uppers made of folded fabric sewn onto elastic bands to hold them in place, with no soles to speak of. (“Put a kitten heel on those,” wisecracked one of my seat mates, “and call them Alaia.”) They weren’t the only inventive accessories: Fronds of shrubbery and twigs sprouted from the backs and fronts of some of the looks, and from the rather Gaudi-esque ivory ceramic potted plant purses worn across the body.

I had questions, and those questions needed answers. So, off to the backstage to see Miras. First the plants: the arrangements, as well as the bags, were created for her by friends who are part of Konvent, a free-spirited commune of artists, creatives, horticulturists, and gardeners based in a former nunnery a hundred kilometres outside of Barcelona. That sense of Miras’s broader life and community added real charm and intelligence to what she showed; she told a story, and she told a story with emotion, and right now, I’ll take that over maybe anything else. And, secondly, the drawings: they’re Miras’s, she told me, and they came from an exhibition she did quite recently, the drawings on the floor, a forest of plant life on the gallery ceiling above. She has used her drawings on her clothes before, and this time round, she said, in Catalan via a very kind translator, “They’re sexual, yes, but they’re also about intimacy. I have spent years reading authors like Sylvia Plath and Marguerite Duras, who speak about the pain and desire of intimacy,” she said, “but it was [Catalan writer] Merce Rodoreda’s La mort i la primavera that really informed the collection.” I had to ask: what did the collection represent for her at that exhausted post-show moment—intimacy or pain? “Right now,” she said, laughing, “it’s pain.”

Doblas

“Collapse—and oppression.” That’s what the Madrid-based designer Carlo Doblas told me when I asked him what inspired his new collection of strong suiting, strict belting, and coats cut loose in cascading strips of fabric. “It’s not one particular thing about collapse or oppression: It’s everything that’s going on, with this situation in the world right now,” he explained. Doblas has a bit of a reputation for his incisive tailoring, and here it came in the form of sculpted tailcoats and cinched blazers worn with trailing scarves and paneled skirts. There was a sense of control, and of thought allied to technique in the clothes, which was interesting. Yet for all that, Doblas wasn’t immune to joy. See: a trio of sparkly, vaguely 1920s dresses, cut look with deep décolletés and yet more buckled belts at the hips.

Dominnico

Dominnico, an all genders label designed by Domingo Rodrigo Lazaro, is renowned for its colorful exuberance, gender-fucking approach, and up-for-it vibe. (Up all night, if what I saw is anything to go by). The show, a 10th anniversary retrospective of sorts, was the week’s hot ticket for industry stalwarts and newcomers like filmmaker Ruben Sanchez, alike. I love a good crowd, and this one was very, very good: kids dressed not so much to the nines as the tens, and ready to party. Violet Chacki sat in the front row, looking unchanged from when I sat beside her at the Met Gala for the opening of the Met’s “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibition some years ago, as did Sarah Paulson, who knew the words to every single song Cher performed, when the pop legend took the stage.

Maybe someone one day will chart the threads that draw together the impact of nightclub denizens, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the impeccable back catalogue of the brilliant Gianni Versace on the broader fashion culture. Certainly Dominnico would be part of that: There were plenty of bright hues, buckled leathers, and whirling, twirling fringing galore in this show. Meanwhile, adding to the spectacle, was Dominnico’s casting: a Spanish Real Housewife; cool, interesting women like Sophia Hadjipanteli and Sita Abellan; and, last but not least, Carmen Lomana, a 78-year-old superstar in Spain, who was runner-up in the country’s Dancing with the Stars, and whose appearance resulted in a), the loudest intake of breath I have ever heard at any show I’ve been to, and b), hundreds of phones being raised in the air, something done with so much choreography you’d have thought it was CGI.