Barbara Campos is wearing a chic black top and trousers and chunky gold jewellery when we meet — all Joseph, of course — and I can’t help but comment on how deftly she embodies the brand she has helmed since 2018. We’re in the Joseph showroom in southwest London, surrounded by billowing cream curtains and rails of elevated, earthy-toned clothing, accompanied by leather bags, sunglasses, shoes and jewellery. On the table are the lookbook shots for the Spring/Summer 2026 collection, which is being unveiled this week — the first under new creative director Mario Arena.
It all adds up to a compelling vision of the modern Joseph woman, but the glamour of the showroom belies the hard graft that has been going on behind the scenes. Campos — who joined from Marni, where she was global wholesale director, and previously worked at Diane von Furstenberg, Furla and Pringle of Scotland — inherited various challenges: it was loss making, and creative director Louise Trotter had just exited after nine years. Campos took drastic action, restructuring the team, pulling Joseph out of the US market, shutting down its menswear operations, and hiring Anna Lundbäck Dyhr and her husband Frederik as co-creative directors. The changes started to take effect. But then, the pandemic hit.
