Palomo Spring/Summer 2027
At eight in the evening, La Rosaleda del Parque del Oeste was in full bloom. Roses crowded the paths while the Madrid sky melted from strokes of gold into violet and blue. Autumn was close enough to be felt, but summer had not quite left. For a collection called Et in Arcadia Ego, it was like a ring to a finger.
The phrase carries more death than the scenery initially suggested. In Poussin’s The Arcadian Shepherds, Et in Arcadia ego places mortality inside paradise. Palomo displaced that disturbance toward desire: beauty spoiled just enough to become interesting. Which makes sense. Perfection has never been particularly useful to Alejandro unless someone beautiful is about to ruin it. The location supplied another layer. Parque del Oeste carries part of Madrid’s queer history, sex work, and memory of figures like La Veneno. I would not call the venue explicitly an homage without the brand stating so, but history does not ask for permission whilst entering a conversation.
For a tenth anniversary—and MBFW treating it as the belle of the ball of the season—the collection resisted the easiest temptation: nostalgia. The codes were unmistakably Palomo—flowers, feathers, millinery, eroticism, brocade, leather—but they had been dragged somewhere darker. Powdered pastels collided with black. Organza with metallic studs. Romanticism repeatedly contaminated by punk. That contamination saved the collection from becoming delicate or sensible.
The models did not look confident. Confident is too polite a word. They looked insolent. Faces were severe, walks slightly rude, bodies stomping with the attitude of people who owned the garden and were mildly annoyed that we had been in it. The live music thickened that feeling until the procession became almost physical. One woman in beige, with white feathered heels and a cloud of brown hair trapped beneath a pale choker, seemed half-awake, half-delirious. She looked hungover and somewhat drowsy. I liked it.
The sequencing made excellent use of contradiction. A nearly naked male body appeared in a pale coral vest and briefs, his arms covered by long black leather gloves. The exposure was quite explicit; the leather made it quite erotic. Soon after came one of the strongest leather propositions: a jacket cinched tightly at the waist, shoulders asserted, high neck, and a knee-length skirt opened by a front zip that allows the wearer to go as high or as low as they desire. Then came a pale, juvenile-looking model in white carrying a strand of beads that read, from the audience, almost like a rosary. Sex, leather, control… innocence. Perhaps Palomo did not intend a theological narrative. Though runway sequencing manufactures meaning on its own. After two propositions charged with carnality, a boy in white carrying something prayer-like was difficult not to read as communion after sin.
Elsewhere, Palomo proved again that his particular intelligence often lives in the unnecessary detail. A completely red look—tailoring, trousers, gloves—was bold enough to survive the monochrome. A model in a short black dress trimmed with feathers and red tights carried an electric guitar. The guitar was unnecessary. And that was precisely why it’s good.
We already understood the punk register from the clothes, walk, and music. The instrument’s role in this case was only to punctuate it. The same was true of the model with buzzed pink hair carrying flowers in almost the exact same family of pink. Remove the bouquet and the look remains good. Leave it, and the image becomes harder to forget. Palomo understands the difference between what a look needs and what makes it memorable.
That line between grandeur and costume may be his most valuable instinct. He can place a body in feathers, studs, briefs, and a maximalist headpiece without allowing the person underneath to disappear. The Vivas Carrión millinery made that particularly clear. One model in black shorts, tall boots, and a dark jacket walked beneath an eruption of white feathers. Behind him came a powdered-blue variation. The combination of bare leg, boot, narrow torso and upward feathering stretched the bodies until they looked—in simple words—like prancing swans.
By the end, nature seemed to have joined the production team. The flowers were bloomed, the air was beginning to turn, and the sky behind the models faded gradually into shades of cool. No scenographer can manufacture September arriving one degree at a time.
What impressed me most, however, was less romantic than the sunset: almost everything looked sellable. The fantasy survived dismantling. The red jacket does not need the matching trousers. The leather skirt survives without its jacket. A sheer shirt, a studded piece, a satin dress, a pair of trousers—each carries enough Palomo to function independently without requiring the client to purchase the runway head to toe.
That matters much more now that the brand is entering a more professional phase: Rosella Lopez joined as CEO, Jan Andreu entered as an investor and board member, the company shifted its centre of gravity from Posadas to Madrid, and womenswear became a formal pillar of a business seeking greater international reach and a more consistent commercial structure. The danger is very easy to see. A designer becomes valuable because people fall in love with the strange thing he does; then growth arrives and the strange thing gets sanded down into something easier to sell.
This collection suggests a better approach:
Do not remove the opulence.
Make the opulence easier to buy.
That may be the most convincing sign of maturity in the collection. Ten years ago, Palomo helped widen the possibilities of menswear. Now the harder task is making that point of view survive production, customers, expansion, and profitability without losing the reason people care in the first place. Palomo is loved because he gives flamboyance dignity. Makes eccentricity sophisticated without disinfecting it. Et in Arcadia Ego remembers Orlando without counterfeiting it, allowed punk into romance, sex into innocence and leather into the garden. Beneath all the spectacle were clothes with enough personality to stand alone and enough coherence to become a successful materialized vision.
At ten years old, Palomo no longer needs to prove that he can create reverie.
He now needs to prove that the reverie can survive becoming a business.
WRITTEN BY FREDDY ESPINAL
