{"id":2330,"date":"2019-01-09T11:41:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T11:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/?p=2330"},"modified":"2023-12-30T23:31:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T22:31:51","slug":"the-joy-of-art-palomo-spain-is-whats-missing-from-fashion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/blog\/the-joy-of-art-palomo-spain-is-whats-missing-from-fashion","title":{"rendered":"The joy of art: Palomo Spain is what\u2019s missing from fashion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even if you haven\u2019t yet heard of Alejandro G\u00f3mez Palomo, you\u2019ll recognise his work from what was arguably the biggest Instagram moment of 2017. In Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s introduction of her twins, Rumi and Sir, to the world, she wears a purple floral robe and a long blue veil, styled against a backdrop of flowers as a beautifully lush Madonna and child image. <\/span><\/p>\n

The piece was an original commission, designed for the occasion, and made in Palomo\u2019s Spanish atelier. The whole Instagram-record-breaking image is preoccupied by art history: photographer Awol Erizku\u2019s work deals with a lack of representation of people of colour in the artistic canon, and often depicts direct allusions to famous artworks, Beyonc\u00e9 evokes religious iconography of the Virgin Mary (literally, iconic), just as the designer, Palomo Spain, plays with history, costume, art and gender throughout his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hari Nef hit the nail on the head in her Twitter comments on the birth announcement: \u201cBeyonc\u00e9 wearing Palomo Spain in the reveal photo of her twins is making me scream. Bey\u2019s technically wearing menswear for the reveal of her twins \u2013 whose pregnancy she framed with so much feminine spirituality. So cool.\u201d In the same way that portraiture from Holbein to Cindy Sherman has used garments, props and accessories as hidden statements, Beyonc\u00e9 winks at undermining gender assumptions, questioning origins of masculine\/feminine aesthetics. <\/span><\/p>\n

But you have to read between the lines.<\/span>But the image is, above anything else, joyful. It\u2019s radiant and celebratory, and in this, as well as in its hyperawareness of art history, Palomo Spain was the perfect collaborator. <\/span><\/p>\n

At his AW18 offering, which opened the Paris mens\u2019 shows last month, Felip Motwary, fashion features editor at Dapper Dan<\/span><\/a>, reportedly said to the designer, \u201cYou made everyone so happy! Without this, everything in fashion would just be a lot of sportswear.\u201d We\u2019re all familiar with it; conceptual fashion has a kind of weight to it, Commes des Gar\u00e7ons, Hood By Air, and even Maison Margiela all have a seriousness about them that quickly saturates a fashion week. It\u2019s true that artistic merit and depth can be, at the same time, exhausting. <\/span><\/p>\n

Palomo Spain has conceptual elements, draws strongly on fetish and homoeroticism, but manages to do so with absolute joy and lightness. And it\u2019s refreshing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Palomo Spain\u2019s original point of view and joyous side effects made him the first Spanish designer to be shortlisted for the 2017 LVMH prize, and a number 33 ranking in the 2017 Dazed 100, and his upward trajectory is sure to continue with the strength of his latest collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

`The Hunting\u2019 mixed heritage checks, highland plaids, and military style details like pheasant plumed hunting hats with Elizabethan velvet doublets, brocade knickerbockers, crossed with fetish items like thigh-high snakeskin boots and chokers. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Felip Motwary pointed out, the result is dramatically different from so much of the fashion cycle\u2019s output: it\u2019s outlandish, but brings a smile, not a challenge; bold, but also has a quaintness and a softness, in contrast to designers with similarly theatrical aesthetics like Charles Jeffrey and Dilara Findikoglu, whose toughness is part of the point. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of work that requires an artist\u2019s sensibility and singularity of vision, the spark to go their own way. This is why we will always champion artists and designers who see the world a little differently at Arena Martinez, who find beauty in different places, and who look to the past and around them in the present in a way that no one else can. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Even if you haven\u2019t yet heard of Alejandro G\u00f3mez Palomo, you\u2019ll recognise his work from what was arguably the biggest Instagram moment of 2017. In Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s introduction of her twins, Rumi and Sir, to the world, she wears a purple floral robe and a long blue veil, styled against a backdrop of flowers as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arenamartinez.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}