Palomo Spain (Q3545)
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Palomo Spain is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Palomo Spain |
Palomo Spain is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Blame it on Brooklyn…. On a visit to New York last year, Alejandro Gómez Palomo, who works from his village, Posadas, in the South of Spain, was invited to a party there. “It was, he explained, “this massive, crazy, dark, underground thing and I was thinking, ‘If hell had a place on earth, it’d be exactly like this,’ but then I enjoyed myself too much and I saw so much beauty and I was so happy and so liberated that I thought, ‘Why hell? This is what we know is heaven. Everyone was happy and everyone loved each other and there were no prejudices or anything like that.’ So that was really what started me thinking on this collection and got me to [the theme of] All of Heaven’s Parties.” Building on the theme, he presented his collection at The Church of the Divine Paternity on the Upper West Side.When you think about it, it’s ironic that Palomo showed his triumphant, and rather religious spring 2024 collection, in the OTT Plaza Hotel (a place of business), and this more celebratory one in a place of worship. The designer carried over his interest in the Jazz Age and the ’30s here. Having decided to change to a one-show-a-year model, he went all-out in terms of craft. “I had my entire team, my family, my mom, my aunts… just embroidering crystals, embroidering feathers, and doing all this delicate [work] that I really enjoy making. I’ve been really, really hands-on in this collection.” That was evident in the piano-shawl-like fringe and tassels on satin tops, the siren-like finale dresses, swinging bands of beads on pants, and the incredible feather headdresses. Palomo’s charming collaboration with Bimba y Lola for spring 2024 (remember the rose bags), seemed to go into overdrive this time around. It’s not just that the designs were bolder, but they were too heavily promoted. But perhaps that’s in some way on theme.“There’s always the aspect of romance and historical reference in my work, but then there’s always a [focus on the] now, understanding…what my community is experimenting with and is doing. I love to understand how people interpret love or sexuality these days.” Having done so at that massive rave, the designer came to the conclusion that “it’s the end of romance; it’s all about sex and choosing out of a catalog.” In other words, transactional. Understanding something is different than accepting it, and so Palomo, who usually loves a narrative, countered with a collection that was, for the most part, about transcendent beauty—and glamour.
8 September 2024
Is the American Dream in tatters? Not for Alejandro Gómez Palomo, who returned to New York, where everything is not only “harder, better, faster, stronger” (to borrow a phrase from Daft Punk)—but bigger. “We always end up doing a show in New York in like a white cube or something that doesn’t feel very Palomo,” the designer noted at a preview. Looking for grandeur, he found it at The Plaza, home of the fictional Eloise, and once upon a time the favorite haunt of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, one of whom, legend has it, danced in the fountain outside of the hotel.There, in the carpeted and rose-filled Terrace Room, Palomo presented a tour de force collection of incredible beauty, the effect of which was only heightened by the simulacrum of the Old World interiors.“This is going to be the [Palomo] show that [people have] been wishing for forever,” the designer said jokingly, but, in truth, it was. Here was a dream realized with consummate skill. This upping of the ante is just what New York Fashion Week needs; just as Palomo’s vision of men and menswear could benefit the world.The boudoir was a main space of inspiration for spring; camisoles, tap pants, bed robes, and even ribbon-trimmed briefs had a remarkable lightness. Some of the laces could have been pinched from the vestry, while bows on sleeves looked like something borrowed from Velasquez. Palomo loves a historical flourish, and this season he honed in on the Jazz Age via flapper dresses and feathered headpieces. It was as if Gatsby and Daisy had been conflated, resulting in a hybrid beauty.“Except for the medieval codpiece and the bra, garments have never had a gender,” Jean Paul Gaultier once said. But in Palomo’s world they have a queer orientation. The designer winkingly provokes with Ass Air looks, corsets, micro shorts with latter day codpieces. This season there were also man-bras. “It is just another fashion item that can be beautiful; they are just flattering for us,” Palomo observed. “We haven’t played with collar bones; now it’s a thing for men and I think it’s really sexy.”Gender is understood to be fluid in the Palomo universe, but the designer recognizes that human nature—and his own—is a push and pull between opposites. “There’s the two sides of myself, the one that falls in love every five minutes and is very idyllic, and there’s the black leather, Tom of Finland, the cruisy scene, the darker place,” he said. Just as roses have thorns, demons have horns—and angels have wings.
And there’s a shoulder for each to sit on.
10 September 2023
What a homecoming. Alejandro Gómez Palomo made a triumphant return to New York (it was the brand’s third time showing here) with a collection called The Closet. Because of his continuing explorations of gender and queerness, one wondered if this was a reference to coming out, but it turns out the designer had something else in mind. “I started thinking of [my experiences and those of] pretty much everyone in my community or around me,” he said at a preview. “I think we all had this relationship with clothes when we were kids before really knowing that gender existed or that there were certain rules and norms.” The moodboard, he said, was filled with the team’s childhood photos, and, Palomo noted, “it wasn’t really about fashion, it was more about a feeling; something that’s just intuitive.”This collection hit home, in part because it was so personal. There were pictures of Palomo “as a kid, dressed as a little woman or something—I’m like three,” he said. “But my mom really allowed me to do that, all my childhood I was playing with her clothes and wrapping a towel on my head, thinking, ‘Oh, if only I had long hair.’ I’ve been really lucky to have been educated in a way where I was able to be whomever I wanted to be, and then being able to translate that into my work.”And so Palomo transported us back to a contained world where everything was possible, everything was soft and everything was dreamy. A world where pirates could rub shoulders with choir boys, Cinderellas hung out with the jocks, and there was room for Tudor swagger and sporty slouch. Those glammed up track suits, the designer explained, referenced “that classic look we have when we go back home from school after gym class, the journey sitting in the back of you mom’s car: it feels homey.”Surveying the offering, it seemed that Palomo’s dream closet was hung with vintage Balenciaga (see the pressed florals, the cocoon shape) and lots of early ’60s pieces, miniskirts and babydolls, which were worn with cuissard boots right out of a picture book. Bedtime stories were also part of Palomo’s narrative. He ventured beyond the closet in this collection, making a stop in the bedroom, too. The models wore pillow hats, and the (striped and white) shirting, which was worn backwards, was a reference to bedclothes. Terry fabrics referenced towels. “The whole thing is about being nice and huggable and comfortable,” the designer said.
For all the tender sweetness and light, there were undercurrents of transgression. When asked if the fear of being caught was part of the story, Palomo said he was “after that feeling of being safe but still doing something that is somehow prohibited.”
13 February 2023
It’s been five years since the Spaniard Alejandro Gomez Palomo stepped into the fashion fray to offer his take on what people, queer men especially, can be. Gender fluidity wasn’t quite the talking point it is today, and it was with historical flourishes, Spanish references, and “feminine” touches that Palomo undermined stereotypes about masculinity. So successfully has Palomo explored the “soft” side of man that his decision to focus on tailoring and to consider different kinds of corporate dress in his latest collection caught some people off guard. “They were surprised by me doing something that’s much sharper and aggressive,” he reported.Palomo wants to explore the whole spectrum of masculinity, not just the part that has long been underserved. His latest collection was partly influenced by stories of 1980s excess likeThe Wolf of Wall StreetandAmerican Psycho. The latter’s main character, Patrick Bateman, said Palomo, is “this guy that goes to office, but he’s got such an unknown reality behind him. Of course [what I was imagining wasn’t a murder, it was much more sexual.”It was also supremely sartorial. Few garments are as loaded with symbolism as a man’s suit. In fact, many innovative designs are reactions to the suit, which remains a shadow presence and motivator in menswear. “I already reacted [against the suit] in the beginning of my career,” Palomo stated. “Now that we’ve gone all the way to the more feminine side of the man, I like to take the suit and take the tailoring and really revisit it and see it with my eyes. And also with age, I see myself dressing a lot in suits and enjoying them a lot.”Not unsurprisingly, Palomo has imbued his suiting with a touch of romance. The opening look is a blue jacket with extended shoulders that support draped sleeves that have some of the softness of wings. Later on, a similar T-shaped structure is applied to pants that jut out at the waist, the erogenous zone of this collection. Cropped tops call attention to it, as does a beautifully mitred pinstriped corset, and pannier-like overpieces that seem to nod to Diego Velázquez’s paintingLas Meninas.There are also mini-shorts and, most topically, miniskirts. “It’s a trendy thing, miniskirts, since the Miu Miu thing. It’s like men should have miniskirts for sure, even though we’ve been doing little skirts for men for a while now, but it was very much on time,” the designer noted.
The collection progressed from day to night, office to club, with a deliberate crescendo of psychedelia which was inspired by Palomo reading that Silicon Valley executives microdose to promote visionary thinking. “I really adore this idea of the executive man, of some really posh businessman, on a trip,” Palomo said. There are options for corporate cowboys and marabou “fur” coats with a lot of swagger. For those, the reference was “the empowerment of the woman in the ’80s [to] the power that men have always had, and now we try to call it the queer empowerment.”When we spoke, Palomo had just come from giving a talk in a museum. Backstage he had met an enthusiastic fan, age nine, who was inspired to pursue to design himself. “He probably has a window to look through thanks to what we do,” he said straightforwardly. Palomo Spain might be described as a generously disruptive brand, one that’s opening windows—and minds—to freedom and possibility.
7 April 2022
Live from Paseo del Prado park in the heart of Madrid, Alejandro Gómez Palomo put the irrepressible desire for a new, colorful, exuberantly sexy glamour on the map with a flourish of Spanish pride. “We need heat, human heat, after all this time being locked up,” he said. “I wanted to do this here, under the trees, now that the energy of Madrid is coming back to life. It’s my dream show come true.”This was the fifth anniversary of Palomo Spain, the all-embracing nonbinary brand through which Palomo has reveled in projecting high Spanish culture to the world—queering the aesthetics of sweeping 17th-century capes and dresses, matador and flamenco themes, corsetry, antique textiles, and embroidery. At one time, it may have seemed that Palomo Spain’s appeal might be limited to dressing for underground club nights. Not now.Madrid had thrown the designer a full public celebration in a spectacular location, supported by the capital’s tourist board. Passersby spectated from the sidewalks as the Municipal Symphonic Band of Madrid performed a specially composed jazzy showtime arrangement of Palomo Spain’s favorite tunes, led by pianist Dolores Gaitán. Then along the avenue of trees walked a collection that showed how far Palomo has come.It hit the sensational avant-garde high points of erotic body-reveal in one-shoulder tops, wrapped bandage bodices, corsets, boned-waist cinchers, and chest-revealing plunging necklines, flipping the trend that’s swept womenswear wholly in the Palomo Spain direction. Worn with his “undone” matador pants, the high waists unbuttoned and folded over, that effect was, well, incendiary.But Palomo Spain’s tailoring also argued for daywear in elegant and drapey three-piece suits with wide-leg, pleated trousers. One was in a sophisticated gray. Others in vibrant yellow-green or blue-green tile prints swept past. A different cut—this one in the label’s ’70s-flared signature—turned up in white, completely owned by the lusciously dark-haired flamenco star Israel Fernández.There was also a lot of zigzag and checkerboard knitwear, with or without matching skinny scarves. The reasoning behind them—and for all the prints and patterns, in fact—was Palomo’s love letter to the history of his hometown, Cordoba. “You see there a mix of Arabic, Jewish, and Christian cultures, even in the architecture,” he said.
Echoes of the spectacular striped geometry of the soaring part-Moorish, part-Catholic Renaissance Mezquita-Cathedral played out, very chicly in the combo of an oversized cream herringbone coat, with a blue and white frill-front shirt.There were plenty of moments for what Palomo called his “drama” to sweep along: a scarlet taffeta cardinal’s coat, a full-length garment that might have been an antique priest’s vestment, but then again wasn’t. He identified these pieces as caftans, not dresses, another nod to the high point of learning and culture that thrived in the Islamic period of Cordoba’s past.Then again, who’s counting? One measure of the success and widespread influence of Palomo and the likes of his young, queer menswear peers such as Charles Jeffrey, Matty Bovan, Jonathan Anderson, and Ludovic de Saint Sernin is that clothes are clothes—and we’ve gone quite beyond fussing over assigning gender to them. In a collection as characterful and various as the one that Palomo sent out in the park in Madrid, everyone could see how gloriously beautiful this new world can look.
8 October 2021
With its high-Spanish flourishes, flowery streetwear, and genderqueer freedom, set against the background of a solar energy plant, this Palomo Spain show in Andalusia sent a brilliant signal to the world about the optimistic surge of youth, community, and localism that started growing when the plug was suddenly pulled on the old fashion system in 2020. “This solar energy place is like a light that’s shining in our hearts on the horizon,” declared Alejandro Gomez Palomo. “Everyone can see it from our village in Posadas. You know, this is the place where they do renewable energy, and we felt that about the collection too. It’s refreshed and renewed!”The inclusive culture Palomo’s built on tailoring his richly colorful, corseted, matador and flamenco–inflected wardrobe, with all its slinky-sexy embroidered suits and voluminous smocks is a neighborhood business, just outside Cordoba. Not only has it changed the fortunes of Posadas for the better, but a wider global community of people raring to buy has grown out of it. “We bring people from all around Europe who want to work here. I mean it’s fun, there’s like a parallel universe that happens here in our small fashion center in the middle of nowhere,” he laughed, gesturing around his studio on Zoom. “Everyone makes their life here in the village. Now I see boys wearing dresses in the supermarket, but the people there aren’t even shocked anymore. Because we have much more freedom in the village than you’d normally have had years ago.”In procession around the local eco-electricity plant were a signature pink flared pantsuit with intricately-edged black embroidery, an absinthe Cristobal Balenciaga–ish cloak, square panel-shouldered jackets smothered with Chantilly lace, and a corset-top doublet blouse with a handkerchief-point peplum in a sprigged cotton; a padded codpiece here, a marabou matador-ish hat there. All of this floats in the romantic in-betweens of time and gender that make up the Palomo Spain world, but this time, it’s been added to, with duster coats in floral prints, crochet knit shorts, baker-boy and bucket hats, and pieces that were worn by women models.“So now we have the pieces for the collector that wants the special suit, sequins, or the hand embroidery, and all the drama,” he smiled. “And then we have many other pieces for all the younger community as well that have given us so much this year.
It’s just this explosion of optimism, the mood where I felt like, you know, flowers and polka dots and checkerboards and stripes—and everything that could really go together. It’s a bit of that attitude these days of going into your wardrobe, seeing whatever you have, putting it all together and going out.”
11 March 2021
Speaking from his home village of Posadas in Córdoba, Spain, Alejandro Gómez Palomo said that his label’s film—and this collection—is entitledThe Rehearsal.Firstly that’s because the video shows the backstage preparation for a fashion show that doesn’t happen, and secondly, he added, “it’s rehearsing a situation in which we don’t know what’s going to happen and what’s going to work. We don’t even know if it’s spring ’21 because we don’t know what spring ’21 is going to be like. So we did it for the pleasure of making a beautiful collection and for the spring that we did not have this year.”The rites of spring were apparent in pants cut to make the wearer’s glutes glimpsable and edged with fabric florals. A tangy green overcoat was worn above pants with a faux-open fly, from which more flowers crept. “Flowers are sexual organs and I like talking about sex and sexuality, and now is a good time to connect to nature,” said Palomo. “I found it really beautiful to see flowers grow in unexpected places this spring when there was not so much human impact around.”Some of Palomo’s staff had to leave him when the lockdown began, but with the small cadre that remained he fashioned some great pieces. The check suit with a lace-enhanced rear was made of individually stitched squares of silk, which, judging by his tone of voice when discussing it, was a very long process. A bias-cut sequin dress, edged with Swarovski crystals (the designer shouted out Swarovski as a significant supporter through recent lean months) was dramatic in its apparent simplicity. The huge harem pants were based on Algerian originals via Poiret’s reinterpretation, and were especially wonderful when incorporated into a baby blue jumpsuit with bubbling drape at one shoulder, edged with flowers and grass of fabric and feather that resembled a riotously neglected patch of garden.
13 July 2020
“We talked about being in ecstasy this season, with two perspectives, which are both very close to me,” said Alejandro Gómez Palomo. “One is the Catholic influence of representations of ecstasy as they were done by El Greco, where there are those figures that almost touch the sky. And the other is today, taking an ecstasy pill and going to a rave.”The atmosphere of community excitement at his show—Palomo’s trans friends from the scene in Madrid, young Spanish journalists, and men strolling around with slicked-back pompadours, open-necked shirts, and medallions—was pulsing even before people sat down. They were in for a treat, as soon as three guys in black, radiating the upright carriage of a trio of toreadors or flamenco dancers strode on, fans unfurled in leather-gloved hands. The designer had hit on an excellent projection of what might happen on a Spanish street on a Sunday morning, with churchgoers dressed to go to mass while passing ravers coming home from a club. It was socially observed license for his imagination to run joyously wild.There were grand ecclesiastical robes; high-necked, frilled blouses with renaissance sleeves; black mantilla lace inserts on tailoring; white surplice dresses; rich, floral brocade coats; and lashings of sparkling embroidery. Spanish references have been a commonplace in fashion since the days of Cristóbal Balenciaga, but the Palomo Spain revival is the new-energy authentic deal. Springing from LGBTQIA+ creativity and wrapped up in an exuberant love of tradition, it’s an uplifting example of the new movement of localism in fashion, straight out of Córdoba, where the designer lives and works. “It’s the most mundane, normal village with no fashion people around,” said the designer afterward. “We have an isolated studio, so we live in our own world. But after three years, I have lots of international people who want to come and work here!”No wonder—it sounds and looks like a little piece of Spanish fashion heaven on Earth to be part of.
21 January 2020
“Gorgeous corset,” “clinging crochet dress,” and “sheer organza skirt” are rarely noted at a menswear show—all three made my jottings document here. That’s because Alejandro Gómez Palomo is a designer who gleefully drives into the oncoming traffic of conventional gender norms in dress. Allied with the high levels of craft at his disposal at his base in Posadas, Spain, plus the richly imaginative vision through which he utilizes said craft, the result is something special indeed.The shtick behind this morning’s show was that Palomo’s characters were “a new civilization of guys rising from the ashes of Pompeii. They are facing the future, and the future is ugly. It’s plastic, it’s polluted, it’s sabotaged—and it’s rave, it’s sex, and all that.” The fabrication and level of dressmaking here was of a very high standard, with especially beautiful crochet work on fringed crop tops and dresses. Sumptuous laces and organza were cut into flowing garments that sometimes, if you squinted a bit and projected a bit more, could be seen as descendants of the stola, palla, and toga once worn by the doomed citizens of Palomo’s devastated source-material city. Palomo said he wanted to create a sense of wrapping that mirrored the architectural looting of the southern Italian site, and that the check that ran through the collection and that clingy crochet dress were references to mosaics.Mostly, though, Pompeii was used here as a metaphorical device that allowed Palomo to inject a sense of frayed roughness and violence into the palette of his imaginative costume drama. The use of PVC and latex was, apparently, another first for the designer, who said he’s trying to integrate into his offer garments that look forward as well as back. A truly beautiful collection for those liberated enough to see it.
18 June 2019
Palomo Spain has returned to New York City, with designer Alejandro Gómez Palomo revealing his Fall collection on Manhattan’s West Side early this afternoon. There was a reason, besides his love of Gotham (he showed here circa Fall 2017), for the decision: “This season is called ‘1916,’ ” he said. “It’s about the moment that the Ballet Russes went from Russia to Spain, and Sergei Diaghilev and the Spanish avant-garde got together and created these mixed, unconventional pieces. Ballet has a lot to do with traveling around, going around in a caravan. We carry on with this attitude.”There’s no arguing that Palomo Spain emits nomadic feedback: Palomo’s group, his tribe, is both dedicatedly fierce and fiercely dedicated. They go where he goes, whether that’s Andalucía or the Big Apple. This inherent tight-knitted-ness, plus his narratives—always strong when it comes to research and personality—are what make this brand so unique. And while the rearview abstraction of Diaghilev in the Iberian Peninsula initially felt a little dated, Palomo was able to entwine in it a modern heat.That came with an expanded accessories roster (including sharp new slip-on shoes and doctor bags) and new textiles, like nylon. “My take on sportswear, taken into my universe,” said the designer. See: a wide-collared, short-sleeved optic white anorak, cinched at the waist, and styled over a netted dress. Another parka was done in velvet and finished with a massive bow. And yet another was made again in nylon, this time salmon-hued, curving from the shoulders to the hem in what had to have been a wink to Spain’s most famous designer, Cristóbal Balenciaga.Palomo’s variety here was wide but calibrated; a polka-dot motif, which deteriorated into melted bubbles, shone through with a Pop Art aestheticism, while elsewhere structured and tailored trenches nodded to the original designs of the clothing type conceived by Thomas Burberry. On top of that, there were sequined bodysuits, sheer slip dresses worn over underwear made in collaboration with the Spanish lingerie brand Andres Sarda, and a raven-feathered closing dress duo. The show’s soundtrack switched from orchestral strings to a gritty techno for the finale lap; it was a smart idea, as it placed these clothes, at least spatially, in a more contemporary zone.
If Palomo Spain sometimes feels repetitive, or if it still seems, at times, like too much visual reverie and not enough of an exercise in commercial practicality, it’s a forgivable charge. Palomo should be praised for the message he sings; his casts are always diverse, and they always include openly gay male models (being an out model can still hamper one’s chances at certain jobs). And with the weather vane turning in terms of male dressing—no matter how one identifies or what one’s sexuality is—the distinction of what is the norm will eventually be redefined. But in Palomo’s world, this freedom, this openness, this love—it’s all already deeply entrenched and steeped in irresistible appeal.
4 February 2019
The woods—the wild—have always been a place of suggestiveness, particularly in regard to sex. It’s certainly true of gay experience and exploration. The most recent popular example of such comes from the highbrow propulsion and rib-wrenching heartbreak of Timothée Chalamet’s Elio and Armie Hammer’s Oliver in the filmCall Me By Your Name. The two fall hard for one another in the idyllic glades of Northern Italy. Less elegantly, but just as part of the culture now, there’s Casey Cott’s Kevin, a high schooler in the American hit TV showRiverdale, who cruises for hookups amongst the pines of a fictionalized neo-noir New England.Palomo Spain’s Alejandro Gómez Palomo absolutely soared tonight in Paris with this concept—this provocative 'what if?'—by placing his Fall collection in the highlands and the bogs, but with an aristo-camp lift; his subjects prowled the forest in an outright orchestra of regalia, consciously poking a manicured nail of fun at the pomp of both dressing all the way up, and of the garb traditionally worn by gaming parties. The show’s title, “Hunting,” served that layering to fabulous and fixating effect.“There’s always an element of eroticism, but delicately. And I wanted to make it a bit ironic—you know my father goes hunting every Sunday. It is something that is regarded as masculine, so I wanted to play with that,” said Palomo, teary as he often is after his presentations.What we saw: a nylon greatcoat in glinting navy, a mesh-like cargo jacket with lumpen pockets, a black felt bolero with the perfect smattering of ruby rhinestones at its flares, a Little Red Riding Hood velvet cape-dress, an iridescent brocade trench, satin briefs, and accessories like an exaggerated plumed commander’s hat (made by the milliner Tolentino) and antler and suede bags. Oh, and snakeskin knee-high boots (by Arpent Studio). Formal, enjoyable, stimulating, and ironic indeed. The fact that the quality of the construction here looked upgraded over seasons past was the pheasant’s feather atop the cap.It should also be mentioned that Palomo appeared to be moving into areas more salable. Often his pieces are one of a kind, and not designed to be produced, but those bags and shoes and an excellent duffle coat will hold a somewhat wider commercial appeal. All together, it was a grand opening to Paris men’s week, and a valid, important talking point at that. Last season we called Palomo a storyteller. You can now add spellbinder to his skill set.
16 January 2018
How to describe a Palomo Spain show? It is, altogether, highly intimate—akin to the largely lost practice of salon presentations—utterly mad, fearlessly proud, and, foremost, emotional. A young man who walked—wearing a periwinkle bouclé jacket with bunched Bermuda shorts and knee-high, heeled boots—evinced as much, as tears dappled his makeup during the finale.Alejandro Gómez Palomo’s label caught the American market’s eye when the designer brought it to New York last February. Back then, he was an outlier that few had heard of locally. But soon, he started garnering attention: Who was this sensitive Spaniard who operates somewhere in the flowery ether between costume and camp, debutante and drag, and couture and cross-dressing? And, to that point about his material, questions arose: Does it even matter what the distinction is? Should a distinction be made? Putting it on the line—men in women’s clothing—sounds and reads outdated, but, such is what much of Palomo Spain does. The designer’s purpose and point, though—and this was further proven by his Spring 2018 show tonight in Madrid—is that gender binarism (or any form of self-identification therein) really doesn’t and shouldn’t matter when someone is enjoying themselves at the party. If a person who sees himself as a man wants to dress up in a Montana- or Mugler-esque suit with fuck-me boots and a red lip, let him and love it. Likewise, if a woman wants to wear this “menswear” brand—as Beyoncé did in her Instagram revelation of her new twins, now with over 10.2 million likes—she will do so fantastically.Beyoncé’s publicity helped, but even without it, Palomo Spain was growing on its own—and Spring demonstrated that Palomo can move, not always perfectly but certainly with narrative clout, within the niche that he’s opened. The theme this season was "Hotel Palomo," which took over Madrid’s actual Hotel Wellington. Postcards accompanying the show notes featured lobby-art drawings by Jordi Labanda—the kind of fabulous cue that what was to follow was going to be decadent and delirious in the way that only a hotel can make you feel (the transience, the secrets, the potentially suggestive eye-contacts, and the resultant one-night stands). And definitely tawdry.What resulted was a borderline Wes Andersonian, sometimes Prada-ish romp through a once-grand old inn, its ghosts still looking for sex and trouble, its devastatingly beautiful twin bellmen swinging their keys provocatively.
There was a towel series; Jacob Bixenman wore a one-shouldered toga while another model yawned in a headpiece mimicking the terry swans that honeymooners sometimes find on their beds. Robes transitioned to twinsets, which then moved to long dresses—some with metallic patinas—to blazers, flamenco ruffles, and loads of illusion gowns. (Worth noting: Much of Palomo’s fabrics are vintage and the designer and his team know how to work them—everything looked very well made.) Rossy de Palma danced in a sultry wrap dress lined in thick, dusty feathers—a glorious vision of a more glorious time. Perhaps it was fitting that Lindsay Lohan sat front row. Though not of the same era, she was the queen of her zeitgeist, and that Palomo was able to communicate a kind of perverse nostalgia (or possibly even upbeat sadness) through all of this variety and vividness—and then surround it with yet more of it—was impressive.The final outcome was something that also sparked thoughts ofThe Shining; Poconos’ love motels with martini-glass hot tubs; and the girls (or boys) who didn’t quite get to debut at the Crillon and had to settle for their own, less elite (but no less glam, in the end) rungs on the social ladder. With his storytelling capabilities—and his openness and bravery, really—Palomo stands pretty much in his own corner of fashion right now. Even if you write his work off as costume or kitsch, there are at least guts and struggle and heart stacked deep behind that surface. Watch him closely.
14 September 2017