Alejandro Gómez Palomo’s latest runway show is inspired by bondage photography. Not the ropes themselves, but the way they pull at the model’s clothing, particularly in snapshots from Nobuyoshi Araki. “It was like a pleat here, and you can see a boob [spilling] through, and all those casual, random moments,” explains the Palomo Spain designer, while on a break from a final casting for the show. “It got me thinking [about] why everything that we enjoy so much—going out, sex, ecstasy, whatever—why is it always associated with hell and sin? Why isn’t heaven the place where you have all the pleasures?”
That great divide was something Palomo had time to ponder growing up in a small village outside Córdoba in Spain. The church was, as he recalls, “the richest place in my village. It was the only place where I could see embroidered velvet and gold.” The adornment and the divinity, it’s all present in the designer’s latest works. “All Of Heaven’s Parties,” showing at New York Fashion Week today, is a rotation of garments thrumming with a queer desire that has become characteristic of Palomo’s runway outings. It’s joined by his second see-now-buy-now collaboration with Spanish womenswear brand Bimba y Lola.
The Spring/Summer 2025 collection follows his standout presentation last September at the Plaza Hotel, teasingly titled “Cruising in the Rose Garden.” As heritage houses increasingly shift their shows abroad—where Palomo notes his presentations are slotted between runways with “millions behind them”—New York has become a fertile ground for young brands to shine. Palomo Spain’s offering for Spring/Summer 2024 saw men walking in flouncing mini-dresses, lace and low slung denim, bralettes and corset tops, vines wrapping up their arms and metallic roses tucked behind an ear.
His clothing was quickly chalked up as a type of “womenswear for men,” an idea that Palomo outright dismisses. “We had built the clothes on men and that made it menswear,” he argues. Though, when faced with settling on the menswear label, that doesn’t quite fit either. “We do have women customers and we have men customers—mainly men,” he ponders. “Calling it menswear would be a mistake, but it does come from a menswear patternmaking and silhouette. I would say it's a very free menswear—something like that.”
Palomo knew he wanted to be a designer from the age of three. As a child, his first model and muse was a Barbie doll. The designer’s grandmother was a frequent sewer, and taught him to work from her stockpile of fabrics. He grew up looking to John Galliano, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, and the like, convinced that a career in womenswear and couture was the traditional, if not only, path forward.
An education in London changed that notion. There was formal training at the London College of Fashion and work on the side with a fashion collector selling vintage wares at Liberty's. “I understood that menswear was a whole universe and there was a whole world of opportunities,” he says. Fresh out of school, Palomo headed home to Spain and got to work on his own project. “I started with this idea of really mixing those memories that I had from my childhood, all these couture moments, with a more menswear street style that I was learning in London. Those have been the keys for the brand—an idea of a new, really glamorous man.”
Palomo Spain was founded in 2015 out of Posadas, Spain. The first collection, “Orlando,” in 2016, took its name from Virginia Woolf’s novel about an aristocrat who undergoes a sex change and gains a type of immortality. The designs, already carrying much of the sartorial signatures Palomo has made his name on, ended up in Opening Ceremony’s New York and Los Angeles stores. The following year, Beyoncé called.
Her order, 12 looks in total, was the first big purchase from the burgeoning brand, one quickly forgotten when the clothes never showed up anywhere. “We heard that she was pregnant, so she never wore the clothes. We're like, ‘Well, she paid, whatever.’ Then, all of a sudden, one day she posts this picture on Instagram.” The image of the singer in a cascading purple Palomo Spain gown—the most liked of 2017—served as the birth announcement for the singer’s twins, Sir Carter and Rumi. The industry response, Palomo remembers, was one of instant credibility—more even than what came from shows in Paris or New York.
“It was very exciting in the beginning, but then we had a lot of mistakes as well,” says the designer. “We had no idea of how to produce, how to become a real thing. [We were working] in my village with a seamstress that was 65 years old. She was brilliant, but she was only doing made-to-measure. There was no way to get them to be real clothes that could go on a production chain after that.” Scaling the business up into something with longevity was a process of trial-and-error, boosted by additional appearances of garments on Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, and Rosalía, among other clients.
“I thought I was Chanel,” Palomo laughs. “I was doing these massive shows in Madrid and we had 80 models coming from New York, Los Angeles, and spending money that I don't know where it came from. My dad had a company at the time and he was doing okay. Whatever he was making, he was investing in me.” In 2018, Palomo Spain saw a 300 percent boost in sales and what followed was a race to match the acceleration. These days, however, the designer is at work on solidifying his foundations. He’s enjoying the period in a business’ lifespan where scrappy turns to scrupulous and fervid to forward-thinking.
There are collaborations with Puma and this season’s second iteration of “Bimba y Palomo.” The backing of big companies has allowed Palomo to stretch his imagination further into the commercial market across items like track suits and high-heeled boots. At New York Fashion Week, the designer is back in traditional form, despite the tinges of the underworld and darker pleasures—“I’m still a romantic!” The angels Palomo is in the process of casting when we speak are set to stumble upon a heavenly party on the runway, one wrapped up in hedonism and lace.
“It has been a tough summer and a tough season,” he admits, “because of the changes inside the company and new teams and people that I had to get used to.” Growing pains aside, he smiles, “Now I'm feeling really, really confident.”
