We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness's domain. These immortal words are from the opening paragraph of Jose Esteban Munoz’s seminal work Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Alejandro Gómez Palomo’s body of work is a testimony to Munoz’s assertion, and it’s particularly poignant in this collection.
Palomo Spain’s Spring-Summer 2024 collection Cruising in The Rose Garden was sublime, in every sense of the word. Cruising, an activity predominantly associated with gay men, is the act of searching for sexual partners in public spaces. By situating this event in the Rose Garden, Palomo frames cruising as a deeply romantic and erotic activity. Alejandro Gómez Palomo is a designer who dares to dream, to build worlds, to mythologize. In this collection, he offers us a vision of Divine Queerness.
The show began with white looks; lacey negligees, dresses, corsets, shirts, and trousers, as well as more traditionally tailored pants and short suits. These looks feel almost bridal, virginal, and pure, but as the collection progresses we’re introduced to colors; first lavender, then blush pink, then powder blue– soft, romantic pastels. It’s almost as if Marie Antoinette realized she was queer and filled the Petit Trianon with an army of androgynous supermodels. With the introduction of the blue, we also see denim. Here not only do we see the color darken, but the fabrics move from a softer to a more rigid texture. Then we see black, first in a silk blazer, later in leather. Lots of leather. The final color introduced in this palette is a bold, silky red, like a rose in full bloom.
Palomo described the collection as a representation of two sides of him; the romantic side and the more animalistic side. But these two sides co-exist. These harsher, darker tones are almost always presented with their more dainty counterparts. The delicate flower of the rose always comes with a thorny stem. For instance, a black suit is accentuated with red bows on the sleeves. A black leather corset and trouser set is disrupted with a white floral skirt. A pair of denim jeans with an attached skirt and a train with unfinished hems is paired with a rose-embroidered gauzy camisole. A black leather trench coat is presented over a white lingerie set. The looks are often paired with metallic rose-themed jewelry; rosy necklaces, earrings, cuffs, and even rose-lined knuckle rings– that doubles as a self-defense mechanism. This collection was made in collaboration with cult Spanish brand Bimba Y Lola; with Palomo reimagining their iconic pocket totes in this season’s signature colors (red, white, and black), as well as offering a more novel, theatrical rose-shaped bag in the same colorways. Perhaps the best part of all was that this collection wasn’t just a spectacle– although it was spectacular– these clothes, and the accessories too, were incredibly wearable and desirable.
When the models walk down for the finale; the whites, reds, blues, and blacks– silks, lace, denim, and leather, work collectively to convey Palomo’s vision. Here Palomo illustrates the broadest scopes of love, beauty, and passion. Sexuality is not a foil to romanticism, they’re embroiled with each other, enveloped in one another’s embrace. Masculinity does not obstruct femininity here, the lines aren’t just blurred, they’re completely wiped out. It’s a merging of worlds. Not a loss of innocence, but a shedding of inhibition– a blossoming.
Palomo’s last show was titled The Closet. I can’t help but notice the last show’s connotation was fashioning the private self, while this show’s themes connote the public. The purpose of fashion is to fashion a public self, and for many queer folks, fashioning their public selves is a holy act, a grand affirmation of their true selves.