by JOYCE ONUORAH and HANNAH ATIRA

With a wide range of designers, this season’s New York shows set out to shake up our expectations of what fashion could and should be. While this season’s biggest anticipation was a reintroduction to familiar faces, the calendar’s younger brands demonstrated that age is actually just a number. Bringing in new perspectives to NYFW we sat down with a few of these creative teams to take a deeper look at their various collections and how the perspective of styling impacted their designs.

For designer Palomo Spain’s 11th season, collaboration between the design and styling team runs deep in the brand. The familial nature of the relationship between designer Alejandro Gomez and Palomo Spain’s stylist Alicia Padrón is felt as the brand reaches new heights of elevated taste through Flamenco and newly defined femininity.

How did the relationship with you and Alejandro come to be and how has it grown?
Alicia: We actually met for a photoshoot when he started after his first show in Madrid. The shoot was for a magazine called El País S Moda, and at the time he actually didn’t know me, but someone had talked to him about me. We ended up in a photo together as designer and muse, I was dressed in Palomo with his first collection. After that occasion we started a conversation about having this more professional relationship and I started collaborating with him for shows, campaigns and all the styling process. The fact that we were younger, affects (the relationship) a lot because we learned many things together. Doing these shows we learned together how to create the atmosphere of a show, the casting, the styling and how we can improve things in terms of hair and glam. I think that the most beautiful thing we have done is focusing on having this more elevated look for the final output. When you are young, you are very creative, you have a lot of ideas, you express yourself and you have to create a wow effect on everything you do. When you get more experience, you realize you need to be accurate with your decisions and make the right decisions to look very chic and very elevated at the same time.

Can you speak a little to the creative process for the styling of this collection for you and Alejandro?
Alicia: You know, we actually always have a chat after the show,, on some conclusions about how we can change, and how we can project for the next one. After the last one, we had this feeling that the collection was kind of too experimental and we would love to get back to the Palomo pure essence. So for this one, we were looking to have this Palomoesque vibe, decadent and sexual, incorporating the ruffles, the chiffon dresses, lace and the feathers, it was just very Paloma. Obviously there is some kind of adding of modern additions, you know there is more denim, there is leather pieces. We have this with the collaboration with Bimba y Lola that brought all the jewelry pieces, the metal roses, the shoes and the leather pieces, are from the collab capsule collection too.I feel that all the different mixing of textures created this more modern look, but it still has a very pure essence of Palomo.

Every collection is special to your heart, but if you had to pick maybe a specific element of the show, what was your favorite element of the SS24 show?
Alicia: I loved the way we created the styling by terms of mixing textures. I think that was a key thing for the collection, in my vision, every look had to have at least three different textures. So if we had lace or silk, we had to mix it with denim or a feather or leather or metal all at the same time. It’s something that Dior mentioned in his book about how people ask him why he loves his designs, it is because they are attached to something and when we were creating the looks, we had this attachment to how all the textures were going to work together. Also, I have to say, I’m obsessed with the male brassiere. We talked about this kind of underwear piece for so long, and when I arrived at the studio on my last trip I saw the brasserie on the deck and I was like, wow, you did it! I loved it and we mixed them in all the ways possible!

For newcomers Tanner Fletcher, Beauty Pageant marks their first official NYFW show. Working as a completely in-house production, the design and styling team function seamlessly as one. Characterized by authenticity, signature elements of the brand from bows, to flowers, to frills continued to be explored in this collection. In speaking with Fletcher, one half of the design duo, he shared the impact of each cast member’s authentic self on their stylization.

Can you talk to us about your styling process for the show, is it something thought of early on in the collection or later on in the process?
Fletcher: It is definitely both. It comes really early on and then it comes around again later to be refined. So for the whole image of the show, styling is so important. A lot of our pieces are quite commercial, so it’s all about how you pair them, how you style them, what shoes they go with to make it look very runway. I don’t know if the vision is alway stylistically there at the very beginning, but then all the fine tuned details come together towards the end.

Can you share a little bit about hair and makeup and what the collaborative process is like between you, Tanner and the hair and makeup artists?
Fletcher: For casting and styling in terms of hair and makeup, it’s very much about the personality of the model. We consistently cast based on personality; we need somebody who is hungry to be a part of it and also somebody who matches with the brand really well. We’re not bringing in some sort of crazy hairstyle that doesn’t represent the model at all, because they are somebody who fits in with the brand, and so their hair should also fit their style. In fact, a lot of the hairstyles are just how the models normally are, not how they can’t, how we saw them in the first place. For makeup, we’re all about the natural, so I just want the model to look as natural as they can be, that’s just kind of my general rule.

You’ve mentioned authenticity a bit as an inspiration. I’m just curious to know a bit more to where your perspective derives from?
Tanner and I strive to be our most authentic selves, and it comes out in the work. We just gravitate towards real people, real personalities, and acting. I always talk about 13 going on 30. You know, when she does that photo shoot, and it changes the style of the whole magazine, all because it’s just, like, regular people, like, they’re at practically a graduation party or something. That’s what we do, our last show was prom: Spring Fling, this year its Beauty Pageant. So it’s really just an event that regular people go to, it’s part of people’s lives and we just kind of create a new version, diverse, open and just inclusive of everything.

For When Smoke Clears’ and Advisry’s NYFW debut, new collaborations between the design teams and SS 24 stylists, Cyrenae Tademy and Rondald Burton (in consecutive order) came together seamlessly to complete the collections. At When Smoke Clears a mutual love for storytelling and artistic vision brought Cyrenae, and design duo Kscae and Thermal’s vision together hand in hand. While for Advisry a mutual relationship and technicolor dream brought together the designer and creative architect.

In regards to Advisry, (designer) Keith has trusted you this season to help bring his designs and concepts to life, can you tell us a bit about that relationship and how it has been working together this season?
Ronald:It was all 6 degrees of separation, I was introduced to Keith by veteran publicist Lisa Lupinski, who was introduced to Keith by a mutual friend. This was his first full runway collection, and Lisa wanted to make sure he had a like minded collaborator. Being an artist, I think there is a question I’m looking to answer with a clear perspective. In order to expand my perspective, I have to explore others. So getting to work with Keith is awesome, it doesn’t really feel like work; he keeps such a relaxed environment filled with friends and family. For this collection, Keith and I had the opportunity to collaborate for some months, with consultation meetings in Paris over the summer. The inspiration and character building for the collection was in talks for a while but ultimately we wanted to see how casting was and then continue to build on that more concretely.

Can you share a little bit about the collaboration process that you’ve had so far with Ksace and Thermal on the show and how you guys’ relationship came to be?
Cyrenae:When I’m styling, my point of view for the work I’m creating is always storytelling. Someone who knows Kscae and Thermal, who knows me, brought this together and was like, I think that Cyrenae can bring you all’s story to life because she’s a storyteller. So it’s been collaborative in that they gave me a piece of this story and I’m building all the other fantasies around it based in New York culture, but New York culture means so many things. So I picked different parts of what our lives look like as New Yorkers and used that. When they gave me ideas I would try to take it to a new time zone. For example, they wanted to do 90s and I’m like, listen, we can do this, but let’s actually take the 200s because the character and the clothing that we built matches that era, so it’s all been just like a needle that just keeps moving back and forth. Ksace and Thermal really took to it, and gave me great feedback on if my version of the story also exists within the world that they have created.