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It's rare for a young designer, full of ambition and with friends sitting front row instead of industry people, to debut a fashion show and leave such a lasting impression. Yet, this is exactly what happened with Christopher John Rogers in 2018, and Bianca Saunders, in the same year, during London Fashion Week, quickly marking them as designers to watch. The same rapid acclaim followed Gabe Gordon's premiere show in 2024, titled Horseplay. Staged in a public school cafeteria, the collection explored classic American teenage tropes and played with gender roles, featuring jocks in skirts, polos, rugby sweaters, and strikingly tight shorts -- completely homoerotic.
Soon after his debut, Gordon's name quickly rose, landing a perfume collaboration and launching the very collection he had first introduced. Now, riding the wave of virality and the pressure that followed his inaugural show, he presents a highly anticipated follow-up Autoerotic. This show was eagerly awaited by friends and fashion lovers who celebrate the industry's unexplored edges, the very edges he leaves raw and uncut at the ends of his pieces, intentionally. Yet, the audience remains intimate and familiar: a room packed corner to corner with friends and close ones. I first discovered Gordon through his former classmate, and hearing from those who have interned, worked, or even called him a friend, it's clear that both he and his work command deep respect. His capacity to forge a brand identity that is so precise, pointed, and instantly recognizable, especially at such an early stage, imbues attending his shows with the same anticipation and intensity as settling in to watch an unmissable film.
Inspired by Madonna's Erotica (1992) and David Cronenberg's Crash, Gordon's latest show channels the erotic tension between the body and horror, what the show notes describe as "whimsy and trauma." Set in Downtown Manhattan at the Firehouse, DCTV's Cinema for Documentary and Film, the show erupts from the start. Smoke billows and the thunderous roar of a disheveled, abstracted car crash opens the scene, setting the tone for a theme rooted in the destruction of traditional masculinity.
While his debut leaned into the whimsical nature of American queerness with soft, muted tones, knits, and classic cuts, this SS26 collection dives into darker themes and richer hues. Leather and asymmetrical pieces that grazed the body replaced the softness, with high-gloss fetish wear that fell in line with obvious fetish and perverted themes. Though the collection did not overtly emphasize the human form or silhouette in a traditionally erotic way, texture and material took center stage. Some pieces echoed classic fetish aesthetics: see-through latex pants, leather trench coats with oversized black buttons, sharp collars, corsets, stockings, and ringed tights. Others evoked sensuality through touch: soft knits, crocheted sheer dresses, deconstructed and reconstructed tops and dresses that draped loosely over the body.
Gordon maintained continuity with his American jock theme from his debut, revisiting iconic football shoulder pads but infusing them with femininity through laced-up corseted fronts and bondage-inspired bandages wrapped tightly around the body.
While this collection was conceived to embody the collision of sex, love, queerness, death, and disembodiment, it ultimately captured the aftermath of a collision or car crash: disarray, the search for salvage, and the fragile hope of rescue.