“We have bonded and
developed a love for each other.”
Interview with Alejandro Gómez Palomo, Founder and Creative Director of Palomo Spain
May 14, 2024Interview with Alejandro Gómez Palomo, Founder and Creative Director of Palomo Spain
May 14, 2024PUMA introduces an all-new genderless collection in collaboration with Palomo Spain, a celebration of queer identities, ’80s athletic culture, and the glitz of ’70s roller disco, marrying Palomo’s elegant essence with PUMA’s heritage of sportswear.
To celebrate the new collection, we took the chance and talked to Alejandro Gómez Palomo, Founder and Creative Director of Palomo Spain, about the new collab.
CATch Up: What drew you towards roller skating and tennis while designing the collection?
Alejandro: I think we started looking at the collection through the experience of designing two previous collections together with PUMA. It was clearer for us what the direction was this time. We started with the idea of a ‘70s superstar, like a very sporty protagonist.
We went back to the ‘70s disco groovy feeling from the first collection, but now with a lot more knowledge and seeing how far we could get with developing fabrics and techniques that we cannot normally do at Palomo Spain. And also we wanted to bring that delicate, elegant essence that we are known for at Palomo. We integrated details and fabrics and tried to bring them into our universe. With tennis, we came to the idea of dressing in white to go to a tennis court on Saturday morning. And then we felt we could also push the boundaries a little bit more and do a collection that was a bit more sexy and a bit more gender neutral, a bit more naked these times since we’ve done short shorts and crop tops and things like that.
CATch Up: What do you feel the knitted garments bring to the collection?
Alejandro: That was the starting point of the collection. We started thinking about, what techniques we could use to elevate this collection. Which fabric? What is going to be the center point of it all? And I like the idea of the melancholia, but we wanted to do something much more modern, so we developed this amazing jacquard with PUMA. The whole point was this knitted fabric, it looks typically handmade, but it’s far from traditional or vintage. We wanted to create something that makes you stop, look, touch, and feel.
CATch Up: How did you choose to include items like the Baby Tee and Visor?
Alejandro: We felt that those were key pieces in the collection. And seeing that people are daring to dress more freely these days, even boys that were a bit more traditional, now they’re a bit more open to having the Baby Tee and the Shorts and things like that.
CATch Up: Is one key look or garment that best represents the collection?
Alejandro: I’m excited about the knitwear. I love a white look. We include a lot of white in our Palomo collections. I think you can look like the smartest and most elegant version of yourself when you’re fully dressed in white on a beautiful sunny day. The long pants and long-sleeved knitted tracksuit are delicious.
CATch Up: You also created some original logos and graphics for the collaboration.
Alejandro: The logo is something that we do every time we develop a collection and it’s something that we like to play with as well. Then we develop it into patterns for linings and things like that. So we did one that was very similar to the first collection with the cut like that. And then we just made it a bit more summer-inspired and floral this time and tried to create this kind of weird, futuristic, flower-like graphic with the PUMA logo and our logo.
CATch Up: The collection also includes a Palomo Palermo.
Alejandro: Yeah, I love the Palermo. I think those are going to be loved when they come out. And I love the colors. I love that they are asymmetrical, each shoe is different, and I can’t wait to see the reaction. We’ve created a cute pair of shoes.
CATch Up: Lastly, how do you feel the collaboration with PUMA has evolved since the first drop and now moving into the third?
Alejandro: We’ve reached that point where we can understand each other well. When we got the chance to do a third collaboration, it was a beautiful process, and it was clear for us to know where we could take it, and how much development we could put into fabrics.
Now we feel a bit more confident about how people will receive the partnership, and that’s why we could take it to another level. This has been such a lovely story. We have bonded and we’ve developed a love for each other. This allows us to be creative and to do things that we feel proud of.
