Welcome to Careyes
Ondalinda × Careyes 2025 felt less like attending a festival and more like stepping into a myth. Tucked along the Pacific coast, Careyes greeted us with wild beaches, dense jungle and terracotta architecture cascading down the hillsides. The official program invites guests to discover the area, from wild beaches and beach-club restaurants to boat tours, but being there, it felt like the landscape itself was curating the experience.
Playa Rosa Beach Club became the natural heart of it all. It was where guests arrived, checked in with their QR codes and IDs, and slipped seamlessly from registration into vacation mode, ordering food, meeting new people and eventually finding their way into the Fashion Pop-Up, where Espíritu was waiting among more than twenty Mexican designers.
The Fashion Market
The Fashion Pop-Up at Playa Rosa ran from midday into the evening, a living showcase of Mexican design with racks of textures, colors and silhouettes made specifically for Ondalinda’s themed nights. It felt like a curated microcosm of the country’s creative scene, right on the sand.
For Espíritu, the space quickly became more than a stand; it became a transformation studio. Guests arrived barefoot from the beach or fresh from a yoga class, holding a coconut in one hand and a shimmering dress or embellished cape in the other, looking for the final piece that would pull their whole look together. That was our moment. We brought metallic blue Espiritus that seemed designed for sky beings, orange and copper pairs that moved like fire on the dance floor, deep golden tones that matched crowns and ceremonial jewelry, and soft earthy leathers for those channeling a more ancestral, grounded energy.
Choosing a pair was not just a practical decision; it was storytelling. People asked not only what looked good, but what felt like them, how they wanted to show up that night as jaguar dancers, cloud spirits or golden deities. Each huarache became part of a character, part of the myth they were about to walk into.
Dress Code and Style Rituals
Ondalinda does not treat dress codes as a footnote; they are central to the experience. Each night followed a different mythic theme, with guests invited to embody jaguar dancers, cloud people or Zapotec gods through their clothing. You could see those stories moving through the crowd, sometimes fierce, sometimes ethereal, always intentional.
That made our metallic Espiritus feel completely at home. Metallic blue and silver pairs reflected the hues of the sky, perfect for looks built around feathers, sheer fabrics and light-catching jewelry. Orange and copper tones picked up the warmth of fire, torches and sunset, pairing beautifully with jaguar spots, face paint and tribal-inspired details. Golden styles completed outfits that looked like offerings to ancient deities, with flowing capes, sculptural headpieces and intricate body chains.
The dress code became a shared language. You could recognize someone who had just come from the Fashion Market by the way their shoes and clothing spoke to each other, color echoing color, metal reflecting metal, leather grounding the whole vision. It was not about costumes; it was about giving people permission to inhabit an amplified version of themselves for a few days.
Daytime Rituals
While nights were about spectacle, the days at Ondalinda were designed for recalibration. The program offered a full spectrum of wellness experiences: temazcal sessions at Playa Rosa, Wim Hof breathwork and ice work at El Careyes Club & Residences, Vinyasa and Kinam yoga at Corazón Studio, jungle runs in Careyitos, cacao ceremonies and immersive sound journeys.
Between these activities, guests drifted back to Playa Rosa to eat, swim and wander through the Fashion Pop-Up. Many arrived flushed from the heat of the temazcal or with salt still drying on their skin after a swim, moving slowly through the racks and trying on Espiritus while talking about how they felt different, lighter and more present. Those quiet daytime moments, when someone slipped on a metallic huarache and watched it catch the afternoon sun, felt just as meaningful as the peak moments at night.
The Music
When the sun set, the energy shifted. Careyes changed skin. Thousands of candles lit pathways through palm trees and along cliff edges; stages came alive in polo fields and on coastal terraces, washed in indigo, magenta and gold. The line-ups carried the festival into the night, with sets from artists like Riche, Stavroz, Chambord and Omri on one evening, followed by Elektra, Niconic, Nick Morgan and Rony Seikaly guiding dancers from midnight into sunrise on another.
In that soundscape, our metallic Espiritus did exactly what we hoped they would. Under lasers and moonlight, metallic blue pairs glowed almost electric. Orange and copper leathers seemed to absorb the warmth of the fire pits and project it back with every step. Golden huaraches turned feet into moving jewelry, tiny suns crossing the dance floor. The music carried people for hours; our shoes carried them comfortably through sand, stone and grass, letting them forget about everything but the moment.
The Views
Part of what makes Ondalinda unforgettable is how the environment participates in the experience. The coastline is an ever-changing backdrop for everything that happens. Sunsets in Careyes look painted: the sky melts from orange to fuchsia to deep violet over the Pacific, while villas and installations light up one by one along the cliffs.
You might be standing on a terrace, adjusting the straps of a metallic huarache, when suddenly the whole horizon turns the same color as the leather on your feet. At night, the sea becomes a dark mirror; the only visible points are candles, lanterns and the glow of stages in the distance. It is impossible not to feel that what you are wearing and where you are are in conversation with each other.
Community and Why It Matters to Espíritu
More than the scenery, music or dress codes, what stayed with us was the community that formed around the Fashion Market. At our Espíritu stand we met people from Mexico, Latin America, Europe and beyond, all drawn by the same blend of art, ritual and style. Some had childhood memories of huaraches and were surprised to see them reimagined in metallic finishes; others were discovering them for the first time, intrigued by their comfort and story. Conversations moved easily from fit and color to heritage, craft and the responsibility of honoring tradition while pushing it forward.
By the end of the weekend, it felt less like we had just showcased a collection and more like we had woven new threads into a shared fabric. For Espíritu, Ondalinda was a natural extension of what we believe in: fashion as a living bridge between past and present, between earth and sky, between the everyday self and the version of us that appears when we allow beauty, culture and community to guide us. In Careyes, every step in an Espíritu huarache carried a little more meaning, and that is exactly why we were there.
