Survival Means Becoming Other: Gabe Gordon

If you’ve ever been made to feel too much - too queer, too strange, too loud, too visible - then you already understand the work of New York label Gabe Gordon. It’s fashion built for the othered. It doesn’t exist to soften. It exists to celebrate.

Designed by Gordon and his partner in business (and life), Timothy, each collection unfolds like a horror film you can wear. The clothes are beautiful, but they’re never innocent. They hold tension - desire, anxiety, queerness, the pressure to pass, the pleasure of refusing.

Ahead of our show collaboration this Saturday, we talked to Gordon about the childhood relics that shaped the brand, why sports keep haunting his silhouettes, and what it means to survive by becoming other.

PHOTOGRAPHY CHELSEA PALATUCCI @chelsea.foto
INTERVIEW JESPER GUDBERGSEN @yessirjesper

When you think about your childhood, what’s the earliest memory that feels like a breadcrumb leading to fashion - even if you didn’t know it at the time?
I guess one of the earliest images is of a vintage rug. I don’t know necessarily what period or from where, but this red rug that was in my family’s home. It’s one of the first images I think of.
I also always attribute my biggest inspiration for getting into knitwear specifically to my mom’s sweaters. She was always a huge fan of Missoni, and she had a lot of pattern sweaters - she still does - that kind of got me into this technique of space dyeing, which is a form of dyeing yarn before it’s knit.
My mom’s been super influential in things I’m interested in. But it’s funny, because now she turns to me to be like, “Is this cool?”

Do you think you were someone who wanted to blend in when you were a kid, or did you want to stand out? What was your vibe back then?
I think it was a bit of both. Figuring out ways to feel authentically myself, but then also not feel too othered in certain spaces. And I think even if I would try to fit in, it just inherently wasn’t working…

You build such full psychological worlds with each season. When you are in the beginning stages of a collection - what usually comes first? The setting, a character, a feeling?
I design with my husband, Timothy and we always go back and forth together with ideas. Usually there’s something from the last collection that we kind of figured out or realized in making the clothes, or realized through the first telling of the story, that continues as the starting point for the next collection.

I think, for example, from our first runway show, which was called Horseplay, in making work about queerness as seen through a teenage lens, ideas of fetish kind of arose, and then we wanted to push further in our collection after that. Rubber was a big material and motif in that collection, titled Rubber Boyfriend. Following that, we really wanted to push this theme even further, and our biggest inspiration was Madonna’s Erotica.

I do think storytelling is the genesis of each collection, and I do think it’s kind of based on our feelings in those moments, what we’re thinking about at the moment while we’re designing. When we started designing this collection, it was starting to get cold, and we were like, “Oh, it’d be cool to think about a winter sport.” Soon after I watched the movie Curtains, and that was such a jumping-off point.

Was ice skating ever something you were obsessed with, or just ice skating as inspiration?
I wouldn’t say obsessed, but I did a collection before I started working with Timothy, right after I graduated school, that was also somewhat ice skating-inspired. So I guess it’s come back.

But I think we always look to sports, sporting motifs, and vintage Americana sports, because of the cool silhouettes and design choices. And I think it’s funny because we’re not super big sports people, clearly. We had a call with a major sportswear brand recently and they were like, “What’s your guys’ favorite sport? Clearly sports is such a big thing for you.” And we’re like, “Oh no.” It’s just this strange place of finding inspiration for our designs

Did you consider the Winter Olympics at all, or is that a weird coincidence?
It’s just a weird coincidence, and it’s fun. Our friend is making the soundtrack for the shoe, and she’s been using some clips of talking from the Olympics—from old Olympics. People keep sending me ice skating clips, or figure skating from the Olympics. I’m like, “Oh my God. I can’t believe that’s right now.”

There’s this unsettling quality in your work - beauty, but also tension. What is it about horror that feels like your language, and how does it relate to identity?
I was always obsessed with horror movies. I think it was this unsettling anxiety - I’m such an anxious person. I’ve always found it an excellent outlet to be anxious within this own little bubble that feels separate from my own real anxieties, I guess.
I also think that in horror movies, horrific characters and monsters are almost this symbol for queer people, feeling othered and feeling monstrous. And I think desire is such a big part of horror as well. I think that horror is often used as a form of storytelling the queer experience.

This season is a full horror narrative - the ice skating team going to camp near a mysterious lake, the folklore of monsters amongst the townspeople, the sudden killings happening… Tell me more about the story this season
Timothy and I have been really interested in werewolves, for that same reason I just spoke about - a creature that turns into this scary being. And I think there’s also something sexy and corny about werewolves. I think we started the story thinking about the werewolves being evil and the antagonists killing off the girls. But then it quickly changed to: no, just one of them gets bitten, and then a few of them become werewolves, and then it’s them killing each other, rather than random werewolves killing off these girls.

I often think about who I looked up to in middle school and high school. I was always really enamored by the older hot girl in high school, or the cool babysitter. I didn't necessarily want to be them, but I wanted to dress them… There’s just something cool about that.

And we’ve been thinking a lot about: if we as designers are so inspired by Americana, how are we defining who the modern American girl next door is? We think of her as this strong, empowered person who is possibly queer. That’s who we think about a lot when we cast and I think that’s the girls we were thinking about when we’re designing—the ice skaters in the story. The empowerment of female protagonists in sports storytelling is fascinating to us.

"I think being able to stand up for what you want and what you believe in, even if it may not be the norm, is a form of survival. Being true to what you believe in, what your needs are, however difficult that journey may be - this is at the core of being queer."

There’s a male werewolf tradition, but here it’s through a female lens. Does that shift things for you?
We do love making menswear. It’s funny because we always cast these really cool, maybe jockey-looking boys, but the clothes are always inherently very gay. I think the werewolf adds a layer in this collection because it adds a dirtiness and animalistic vibe to those characters. So we’ll see - I think it’ll be cool to see how it comes together and is elevated with styling and the hair and makeup.

There’s a line in your statement about this collection that stuck with me: “Survival means becoming other.” What does becoming other mean to you - personally, creatively, politically?
I think being able to stand up for what you want and what you believe in, even if it may not be the norm, is a form of survival. Being true to what you believe in, what your needs are, however difficult that journey may be - this is at the core of being queer. And I think about this with monsters as well: if you are hiding that part of you, there’s no way you’ll survive.

The world we live in makes it so hard to survive in being othered, I am happy to celebrate otherness.

The story has this environmental grit - the ice, the water under the ice, rotting or spoiled water. How did that show up in the garments?
I think I’ve always been really interested in decay, and the natural wear of clothing and garments, since the start of making clothes. With this collection, even beyond the ice, we’re imagining the cabins they’re in, their mattresses are stained, and the bedding - wooly, old and starchy and moldy. The techniques of how we’re dyeing some of the fabrics and felting some of the wool we’re using - this highlights those images.
We do a lot of sourcing of vintage materials and recycle yarns and fabrics from past collections, to use them in a new way. For example, last season, we turned T-shirts from previous collections into yarn for the new one. I think that recycling and overwashing and overdyeing embeds this age and history within the work.

With the ice and decay, that image just kept coming to me. I don’t know exactly how it shows up in the clothes yet, but I feel like there are moments of the stories that we think of and don’t initially reference right away, and then it ends up appearing—like, “Oh, whoa.” It was present the whole time.

On that note - your reuse of materials from past collections and incorporating vintage pieces into your shows; What does responsibility look like for you in practice? Especially with the conflict of putting out new collections…
That’s been so on the top of our minds this season, because we showed a 33-look collection last season. We were planning on doing a small lookbook this season. It kind of grew from that, and when we decided to have a show, we started thinking:  “Oh, we need more pieces to fill it out.”

We’re a small company, and making more clothes doesn’t automatically generate more income, the way it works for a larger company. That’s not the point for us.
I think right now, the volume and scale of doing a full show collection for us is about really figuring out our design language. Sometimes we can get carried away, just wanting to create so much new stuff. So, we’re trying to challenge ourselves: if we’re gonna make new pieces, let’s recycle our old fabrics, or let’s find ways of doing that sustainably. Of course it becomes a whole other thing with production - how to solve that issue if we’re making multiples of things.

As young designers or “emerging” designers, it’s really difficult to figure out cost-effective ways to find ethically sourced materials, or ethical labor practices. We’re slowly trying to figure out what works for us, and then also what’s not gonna do damage. But often I can be very pessimistic about the fact that we’re just creating new shit.

I always want to keep in the back of my mind that what made me gravitate toward making clothes was the natural decay, and the history and stories in clothing. I want to make sure that stays the ethos of the brand. And I think that will keep things sustainable.

Long-term-talk - legacy is a strong word, but - what do you hope to leave behind? What do you want people to feel when they’re wearing your clothes?
I think a big part of what Timothy and I like designing, and the clothes we want to make - we want the person to feel, obviously, confident. But I think, as I was saying before, with feeling or wanting to feel othered, wanting to lean into that : we want people to feel seen and to create a special bond with the pieces we make. It’s about making special pieces that people want to hold on to and treasure for a long time. I would rather make one piece that lives with someone for the longest time, than a ton of pieces that don’t mean anything. 

Catch the Submission Beauty collaboration with Gabe Gordon, show live on @submission.beauty Saturday, February 14th @8pm

@GABE.GORDON