The Capitol Hill storefront of Mediums Collective, a Seattle-based and Mexican-owned streetwear fashion brand, is a sleek vessel of style, but with little of the impersonal markers of some other high-end fashion stores.
Roger and Cesar Maldonado, the brothers who founded and co-operate the business, can be found in the store sewing, helping customers or editing content. Cesar’s chihuahua, Milo, is often wandering around, as advertised by a sign in the front window. Painted across the wall above a line of clothing is the phrase “La Familia: Una Presentacion De Estilo Y Cultura.”
“As Mexican communities, we’re raised with the concept of family,” Cesar said. “So that’s a very natural thing for us, whether it’s a business or just outside of the home, we’re very family oriented.”
The Maldonados established Mediums in 2015, after Roger graduated from the University of Washington. For much of the brand’s lifespan, they’ve worked out of pop-ups and festivals, seizing any opportunity to promote their growing business and solidify their place in Seattle. In an effort to revive community events in 2021, Mediums partnered with Marshall Law Band to start Fremont Fridays at LTD Bar & Grill in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, a weekly summer event that gathers arts and culture vendors, live musicians, designers, and locals every year.
After moving into their E Pike Street storefront in 2022, Mediums has grown from a passion project to a full-time career. They’ve travelled across states to sell their clothing, and collaborate continuously with musical artists like Reverie and Doble D. Cesar recalled the pride of seeing people wearing Mediums on the street on his walk to work, or getting texts from friends seeing his work out in the world.
Behind their social media campaigns and slick photoshoots is Xanna Ortiz, marketing assistant and the newest member of Mediums’ creative team. She’s known the Maldonados for a year but just recently joined the crew, and says they now feel like brothers to her. For Ortiz, who moved to Washington from the San Francisco Bay area in 2021, finding Mediums at Fremont Fridays opened up a big part of Seattle that she’d been aching for: young Latino peers.
“Coming to Washington, I felt like there was no place for me,” Ortiz said. “But through Mediums Collective and them pushing a cultural narrative, I was able to one, feel closer to my culture, but also connect to them and what they do, which is not just fashion, but a lot of cultural development, too.”
That’s the heart of Mediums. As Mexican immigrants who came to the Seattle area as children, Roger and Cesar aim to integrate both their Mexican heritage and Seattle pride into their work. It’s clear once you look around the shop and spot knit jerseys featuring the area code “206” alongside Mexican serape re-worked into bell-bottom pants. Ortiz, who previously worked as a photojournalist in the U.S. military, intentionally tries to employ storytelling into all her marketing work, particularly centering Latino art.
Recently, Roger has been crafting a collection using wool Pendleton blankets. After looking at blankets he had thrifted, the fabric caught his eye as a way to signal both Indigenous heritage and their place in the Northwest. Pendleton, an Oregon-based company, has a long history of association with the Native American community, though not Native-owned itself.
Mediums’ manufacturing process is a blend of in-house production and outsourcing to companies in various countries including the U.S., Pakistan and China.
After crowd-testing their samples on the runway, Mediums sends certain designs to their factory partners based on audience feedback, letting the customers influence the future catalog. They’re working towards being able to manufacture in Mexico, to bring their business back to where they came from and to integrate more Mexican textiles and designs into the clothing.
Roger has also been teaching himself to sew over the last few years, a commitment which Ortiz commended. The finer details like that, she said, are sometimes overlooked but infuse the personal into Mediums’ designs that make them stand out. One set featured in their “Somos Inmigrantes/We Are All Immigrants” runway show was sewn from the Maldonados’ mother’s tablecloths.
Activism is a large part of the Maldonados’ intention behind their designs. One piece, released as part of the “Somos Inmigrantes” collection, is a simple-but-bold tactical vest that was gifted to them amid ICE raids ramping up across the country this year. They printed the words “Protege La Raza” on the back.
“From a design standpoint, obviously this is some wear that ICE uses, to an extent, right?” Roger said. “So our work was, well how can we reframe that? Our people need to be protected as well.”
Perhaps the most emblematic displays of their commitment to the culture are their runway shows, which explicitly center Latino artists and promote community celebration.
In June, they hosted “Back 2 The Streets/De Vuelta A La Calle,” a show dedicated to elevated streetwear and Pacific Northwest lowrider culture, partnering with the street market On The Block Seattle. Mediums held “Somos Inmigrantes” in August as part of their annual Mexicano night at Fremont Fridays, a combination runway show and cultural storytelling event highlighting resiliency and brilliance in the face of violent attacks on immigrant communities.
“I think we need more brown spaces in general, not just in fashion, but in Seattle, just in general, especially when our communities are getting attacked,” Roger said. “Hopefully what we’re doing here sparks some interest for people to speak up and have that type of dialogue and have that motivation to be like, you know, let me share some of my powerful art that speaks about my community. Whether you’re Mexican or not.”
That’s why, as Roger puts it, Mediums is the brand, Collective is the community.
The brothers don’t separate themselves from their consumers, even now that they’ve gotten significant traction in the fashion industry. Ortiz says they frequently get contacted by musical artists asking to wear their designs for shows.
Local hip-hop artist PNW Piggy recently performed at arts mentorship program The Residency’s 10 year anniversary event with Residency founder Macklemore, repping the Mediums Soñadores/Dreamer overalls, which feature the Mexican and American flags on either leg. Even outside of fashion, Enchant Seattle worked with the Maldonados in 2024 to host Fiesta Navideña, a Latin cultural night at the holiday event series in T-Mobile Park.
“Sometimes we’re just so in it that we don’t really get to see it, but when we step back, we see the impact that it has, even just us doing what we’re doing, has in our Mexican community,” Roger said. “So it’s beautiful to see, and it’s beautiful that people come to us and say, ‘Hey, like, your event, or your collection, or your pieces, your brand inspires us. And when we think of Mexican representation, we think of Mediums.’”
Growth, for the Mediums crew, is measured not just by their market success and collaborations, but also by that community recognition. Up next, Roger wants to start holding more educational fashion workshops open to the public, and Cesar is starting to think about the possibility of organizing a Seattle Fashion Week. He wants to challenge the creative scene to ramp up the frequency of events and collaborations, and campaign for outside funding in a city not widely recognized for high fashion.
Primarily, though, all those aspirations are based in their love and dedication to the Latino community in Seattle. Maybe the future of fashion is streetwear and Mexican cultural design, and maybe integrating activism and celebration into runway shows is what the culture needs.
Cover photo: Roger and Cesar Maldonado stand among their designs in the E Pike Storefront of their high end streetwear fashion brand, Mediums Collective. The brothers started the business in 2015, centering Mexican and Pacific Northwest culture in their designs, and making efforts to elevate the creative community in Seattle. (Photo Credit: Evelyn Archibald).
Evelyn Archibald is a fourth-year student pursuing a degree in Journalism and Public Interest Communication and a minor in Political Science at the University of Washington Seattle. She is also an editor, writer, and photographer at The Daily, UW’s student publication, where she reports on topics ranging from labor organizing, local community features, arts & culture, and critique.
