Jelly for Marshall Columbia x Melissa

Hi, Gabe! The show was so amazing.

Thanks for being there!

Of course. Let’s go in reverse chronological order. What’ve you been up to since your show?

After the show I went to Fire Island. With Timothy Gibbons, who helped design the collection, to take a breather. Now I’m back and feeling stressed again. It’s market week. But I’m still feeling good.

How was your party? A lot of NYFW parties are kind of boring — they can feel like air coming out of a balloon slowly. But your party was cute — a real family affair!

It felt really good. My uncle has a soda brand called Gus, so he sponsored the party and I got to design drinks with his soda. It felt close to home. 

As a designer, do you do other things during New York Fashion Week — go to other shows, parties — or are you really locked in on your show?

Just locked in. I really wanted to go to Gauntlett Cheng’s show — I used to work with them. They came to mine, which was really nice.

If you squint, you can sort of see some fashion family trees in lineages in the New York fashion world — you worked for Esther and Jenny at Gauntlett Cheng, they worked for Mike and Zoe at Eckhaus Latta. And I think Mike and Zoe worked at ThreeASFOUR. There’s an arc there. A DNA centered on knitwear, a fidelity to geometry.

That lineage is real. And Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus went to RISD. And Jenny Cheng went to RISD. I worked for Gauntlett Cheng while I was in school. I also went to RISD. And every summer I have interns from RISD who work on my collection. It’s like a real community.

RISD mafia!

Yeah. And Ben Doctor, too. He went to RISD.

This being your first show, were there any veterans or industry insiders who helped guide you through the process?

The photographer who shot my first looks helped. Michael Hauptman. He’s been in fashion for a while and shot first looks at many shows. He knows how the whole thing goes. It was nice having his eye and input throughout. It was a first for a lot of people though. It was Iman Said’s first show styling.

Yeah, Iman is so cool.

Yeah. It was her first time styling a show by herself. And Shay Gallagher — it was her first time producing a show. Gus Grossman who did the art direction, it was his first time art directing a show and doing the graphic design around the show. It was a new, fun experience for everyone.

I feel really inspired looking at your clothes. The first time I photographed them was with my friend Lauren. There’s a lot of sub-surface sexual appeal to your clothing. Can you explain how you view the relationship between clothing and sexual appeal?

I have a weird relationship with menswear as a male designer. It’s hard for me. I get in my head. "What would I wear?" So I gravitate towards making womenswear from the start. My work started as this form of catharsis. I started making knitwear after my dad passed away. I was interested in how cloth holds traces of history. From the start, I’ve gotten feedback about how the work is sexy. That wasn’t always the goal. It’s not what I’m thinking about when I’m making the clothes. The sexiness comes from anxiety from dressing. One of the big references is horror movies. The final girl in a horror movie being chased by the antagonist. Her clothes tearing off. It comes off as sexy. But it’s more rooted in feelings of anxiety. 

That sort of horror is so carnal.

Yes! But I love the way it has evolved. I don’t know how my audience or the customers see the clothes. But the clothing evolves [on figure]. Each customer has their own experience with my clothing, which I really like.

The personality of the wearer really shines through your clothing. Does producing a show psychically change your attitude or process towards making clothing?

Yeah. I’ve had a lot of roadblocks. Having a business. Not knowing how things work. Last year I felt really disconnected and pessimistic from the whole experience of having my own label. But what has excited me is this idea of world-building through the clothes. That’s why I want to design. I want to think about characters and the world in which they exist. The runway is the ultimate way of displaying that, showing it to my audience. With lookbooks I can do that. But being in person with an audience — it can be a whole experience, with music and perfume. It's made me really excited to keep going.

What are some fashion references that are eternal for you?

This season I was inspired by a lot of Alexander McQueen’s collections between 2000-2004. There was one collection and the story was about a shipwreck. I loved the really direct form of storytelling through that collection. It’s what he was amazing at doing.

Tell me about ‘Horseplay’.

Yes. I took the fall/winter 2024 season off. I sell at a few stores in Australia. I needed a break from making new stuff. I was feeling disconnected. I went to Australia for some pop-ups for two months. I got this book about Australian ferns. I was obsessed with the illustrations of the ferns. 

I was researching these jocks called Sharpies that were big in the 1970s. With my work I’m always interested in this nostalgic Americana, which is very present where I’m from. I was really excited by these jocks and the clothes they wore. They were tight, striped knits. Something about it was so homoerotic. Part of Australia reminded me of the equestrian farmland I grew up near. I thought it would be so cool if I created a story where the protagonist is in this world of horse girls and jocks. 

In my head, I created this story about this boy who had a nightmare that he’s in a competition amongst these really sexy, cool girls. Like the girls at my high school I looked up too. Then the boy falls off his horse into a fern bush. It is nighttime. He’s pulled out of the ferns by these jocks who haze him and have him kill off the horse girls to win a prize. That story came to me in five minutes. That’s how I work. Really impulsively.

Your process seems instinct-driven.

Yes. That’s the horseplay idea. It’s interesting you bring up the sexiness of the clothes. I did lean into sexiness in this collection. The horse girl being a sex icon. I keep referencing or thinking about this one hot babysitter I had. Having her be an icon as a gay kid. These horse girls are the hot babysitter or my sister's hot older friends [laughs]. It was also fun designing the menswear. Different vintage sportswear. The first shorts I worked on with Timothy were inspired by vintage football shorts. Super high waisted. There’s something very gay about them. We decided to make them out of fur. When clothes are made out of knits, it turns them homoerotic.

In your clothing, there is an allusion to it being taken off.

Totally. That’s always been present. The first knits I made were about layering and thinking about taking layers off as well as feeling comfortable in what you're wearing.