On the night of 25 July 2026, Vélez and J Balvin opened the 37th edition of Colombiamoda at the Edificio Inteligente de Empresas Públicas de Medellín. The show was called Artisan Gang in The City. It was built around the figure of the arriero antioqueño, the Antioquian muleteer who walked from the mountains of Antioquia to the city with a poncho across his shoulders, a carriel bag across his chest, and a sombrero on his head. The muleteer’s journey from mountain to city is one of the founding myths of Paisa identity. Vélez and J Balvin made it the conceptual architecture of their collection, and the Aged Leather Bomber Jackets, the Croco Suede Bombers, the croco-embossed leather crossbody bags, and the earthy colour palette of tobacco, terracotta, honey, and red wine that fill the collection are all products of that decision.
The African fashion market is worth 31 billion dollars. The Latin American fashion market is its direct structural parallel: a region with deep craft traditions, a growing consumer class, and fashion industries that have historically been undervalued relative to their creative output. Colombiamoda, now in its 37th edition, is one of the most commercially significant fashion weeks in Latin America, and its choice to open with J Balvin x Vélez was a deliberate statement about where Colombian fashion is pointing: not toward European luxury as aspiration, but toward Colombian craft as the argument.
J Balvin and Vélez opened Colombiamoda 2026 with leather bomber jackets and the Antioquian arriero. Here is what the Artisan Gang collection argues about Colombian luxury.
J Balvin x Vélez Colombiamoda 2026: What the Collection Is
Vélez was founded in 1986. At Colombiamoda 2026, the brand celebrated its 40th anniversary. Four decades of leather goods production in Colombia. Juan Raúl Vélez, the company president, framed it directly: the history of Vélez has been a story of constant transformation. As Modaes Global’s coverage of the Artisan Gang in The City launch confirms, the collection translates the Paisa heritage into the language of the city to reinterpret it from a contemporary and global perspective, transforming Latin style into a cultural statement that brings Latin American craftsmanship, identity, and creativity into the conversations that are currently redefining international luxury. That sentence is the brand’s entire argument in one construction: Latin craft is not heritage. It is a position in the international luxury conversation.
This is Balvin’s fourth capsule collection with Vélez in 2026. Previous editions addressed the fútbol latinoamericano theme and his son Rio. The Colombiamoda opening is the largest and most formally presented of the series. It is also the most culturally specific: the arriero, the poncho, the carriel, the sombrero, the journey from mountain to city as metaphor for transformation. These are not general Colombian references. They are specifically Antioquian, specifically Paisa, and they place the collaboration in the creative geography of Medellín rather than in the generalised Colombian identity that international fashion coverage tends to produce.
J Balvin described it directly: going back to our past and travelling to the future to find ourselves in a secure present. Made in Colombia, made in Medellín. That is not a tagline. It is a positioning statement. The arriero walked from the mountains to the city and built Antioquia. Vélez and J Balvin walked the same route and called it Latin Craft.
The Products: Leather as Primary Argument
The J Balvin x Vélez collection is centred on leather. Aged Leather Bomber Jackets at USD 900 in green, blue, red, brown, and multicolour. Croco Suede Bomber Jackets at USD 750 in brown, olive green, and yellow. Men’s Leather Pants at USD 700 in black and yellow. These are not leather items decorating a streetwear collection. They are the primary argument, made in Colombia, priced as luxury, designed to carry the entire weight of the Latin Craft positioning.
The accessory range extends the leather argument across multiple price points. Men’s Croco Leather Crossbody Bags at USD 400. Dino Croco Leather Crossbody Bags at USD 380. Misak Leather Crossbody Bags with Woven Overlay at USD 290. Mini Croc-Embossed Leather Crossbody Bags at USD 260. Men’s Croco Leather Loafers and Women’s Croco Leather Loafers at USD 250. The Savia Leather Biker Jacket for Women at USD 790. The Garniel Leather Clutch at USD 290. The Nare Oversized Suede Bermuda Shorts for Women at USD 600. Each of these pieces carries Vélez’s four decades of leather craft knowledge into a streetwear-adjacent silhouette that J Balvin’s audience can wear. The collection is available across the full product range at jbalvin.com, where the croco-embossed and aged leather pieces define the premium tier alongside polo shirts, relaxed-fit T-shirts, flare jeans, baseball caps, tartan socks, and resin flag and crest pins.
The colour palette is the arriero’s palette translated into leather: tobacco, red wine, terracotta, honey, sand, and natural, alongside olive green and dark blue. These are not the neon hues of J Balvin’s earlier Colores era. They are the colours of the Antioquian landscape, the leather workshop, and the muleteer’s journey. The collaboration asks his audience to accept a different visual register from the one they know him for, and the commercial bet is that the cultural specificity of the Vélez craft tradition provides sufficient authority for that register to hold.
The Latin Craft Argument
The concept that frames the collaboration is Latin Craft: the proposition that Latin American artisanal knowledge is a form of luxury, not a heritage category or an emerging market proposition, but an active position in the international conversation about what luxury is. As El Tiempo’s coverage of the Colombiamoda opening confirms, the runway at the Edificio Inteligente de EPM made clear that Colombian artisanry still has much to say. In place of nostalgia, the collection took the past into the present with a proposal that mixed fashion, music, artistic direction, and performance. The inspiration was born from the arriero antioqueño’s journey from the mountain to the city.
The Latin Craft positioning is the most commercially significant aspect of this collaboration. J Balvin’s global audience does not primarily know him as a Colombian artisan culture advocate. He is the most-followed Latin artist on Spotify, the architect of the reggaeton-to-global mainstream trajectory that reshaped popular music in the 2010s. His collaboration with Vélez is an exercise in using that platform to reframe the value of Colombian leather craft for an audience that has been consuming Latin culture through music without engaging with its material heritage.
This is a structurally familiar argument in diaspora and regional fashion. Colombia produces one of the most diverse and technically sophisticated textile and craft traditions in the Americas: the Mola of the Guna communities, the Pollera in its multiple regional forms, the Wayuu mochila of La Guajira, and the leather craft of Antioquia. The Vélez x J Balvin collaboration is specifically elevated in the same conversation that the Mola and the Pollera occupy in Colombian craft discourse. The arriero’s carriel, made from leather, is as culturally specific as the Wayuu mochila. The collection makes that specificity legible to a global audience.
Colombiamoda as Platform
Colombiamoda is not a boutique regional fashion week. It is the largest fashion trade and runway event in Latin America by commercial volume, attracting buyers from across the region and from international markets. Its 37th edition in 2026 drew the fashion press precisely because the opening slot went to a collaboration that bridged the most globally visible Colombian artist and the country’s most established leather brand. As Hola! magazine’s coverage of the collaboration confirms, this is Balvin’s fourth Vélez capsule in 2026, confirming that the relationship has moved from a single promotional alignment to a sustained design partnership. The maroquinería, as the Spanish-language press has consistently emphasised, is not incidental to the collection. It is the point.
The show itself was designed as an immersive experience rather than a conventional runway. Fashion, music, art, and performance converged in the EPM building. The narrative moved from mountain to city, and the garments moved with it, from the heavier leathers associated with the arriero’s working journey to the more refined croco-embossed pieces that translate that heritage into urban luxury. That progression from raw craft to refined product is the collection’s structural argument made visible in sequence.
The Omiren Argument
J Balvin and Vélez made one argument at Colombiamoda 2026: that Colombian leather craft is luxury, and that the arriero who walked from the Antioquian mountains to Medellín with a carriel and a poncho is the ancestor of a design tradition as authoritative as any in the international luxury market. The African fashion market is worth 31 billion dollars. The Latin American fashion market sits alongside it in scale and below it in global editorial coverage. The Artisan Gang in The City collection addresses that coverage gap directly by placing the most globally visible Colombian artist in Colombian leather at the most commercially significant Latin American fashion week. The Aged Leather Bomber Jackets at USD 900, the croco-embossed crossbody bags, the Savia Leather Biker Jacket at USD 790, the Nare Suede Bermudas at USD 600: these are not promotional items. They are the products of four decades of Colombian leather craft, priced as luxury, framed as Latin Craft, and positioned for an international audience that has consumed Latin culture through music without engaging with its material heritage. Vélez’s 40th anniversary is the occasion. The argument is the same one that any serious regional craft tradition must make at the moment when it decides to stop waiting for external validation and start declaring its own authority. Made in Colombia, made in Medellín.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the J Balvin x Vélez Colombiamoda 2026 collection?
The J Balvin x Vélez Colombiamoda 2026 collection is called Artisan Gang in The City and was presented as the opening runway show of the 37th edition of Colombiamoda, held on July 25, 2026, at the Edificio Inteligente de EPM in Medellín. It is J Balvin’s fourth capsule collection with Vélez. The journey of the arriero antioqueño inspires the collection: the Antioquian muleteer, from the mountains of Antioquia to the city. The collection features aged leather and croco-embossed leather bomber jackets, leather pants, leather crossbody bags and loafers, suede pieces, polo shirts, T-shirts, flare jeans, and accessories.
What is Vélez Colombia?
Vélez is a Colombian leather goods and fashion brand founded in 1986, celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026. Led by president Juan Raúl Vélez, the brand specialises in leather maroquinería, meaning leather goods including bags, shoes, belts, and leather garments, produced in Colombia. At Colombiamoda 2026, Vélez framed its identity around the concept of Latin Craft: the proposition that Colombian and Latin American artisanal leather craft constitutes a form of luxury that belongs in the international conversation about what luxury means.
What is the arriero antioqueño and why does the collection reference it?
The arriero antioqueño is the Antioquian muleteer: a figure from the history and mythology of Antioquia, Colombia, who transported goods by mule from the mountains to the cities of the region. The arriero is associated with the founding energy of Paisa culture, the leather carriel bag, the poncho, and the sombrero that defined his visual identity, and the journey from the highland landscape to urban life that shaped Antioquian identity. J Balvin and Vélez used the arriero as the conceptual anchor for the Artisan Gang in The City collection, treating his mountain-to-city journey as a metaphor for the transformation of traditional craft into contemporary luxury.
What is Latin Craft?
Latin Craft is the concept that Vélez and J Balvin used to frame the Artisan Gang in The City collection. It is the proposition that Latin American artisanal knowledge, specifically Colombian leather craft, is a form of luxury: not a heritage category, not an emerging market proposition, but an active position in the international conversation about what luxury is and who produces it. The term frames Colombian craft traditions as primary cultural arguments rather than as regional alternatives to European luxury.
Where can I buy the J Balvin x Vélez collection?
The J Balvin x Vélez collection is available online through J Balvin’s official shop at jbalvin.com, which carries the full range including aged leather bomber jackets, croco suede bombers, leather pants, croco-embossed leather crossbody bags, leather loafers, suede bermuda shorts, polo shirts, T-shirts, flare jeans, caps, socks, pins, and belts. Prices range from USD 20 for resin pins to USD 900 for aged leather bomber jackets. The collection ships worldwide.
Explore More
Read the full Fashion > Industry section for Omiren Styles’ documentation of Latin American fashion weeks, designer collaborations, and the craft traditions that are redefining what luxury means from Medellín to Lagos.
