EXTRACURRICULARS WITH GABE GORDON & TIMOTHY GIBBONS
Installation One of NYFW 2025 Serial: SUSTY IS A MUSTY by Amy Mazius
GABE GORDON IS ONE WEEK OUT FROM FASHION WEEK. Talking to Gordon in the stairwell of his New York studio, it feels like peering into surgery halfway through when you’re still holding your breath and hoping your hands don’t shake to snag an artery - or in this case, an intentionally raw hem. It’s earnest, exciting, and liminal. History is still being written. Maybe this is always how it seems with Gordon: there’s always a story, woven as intricately (and equally moth eaten) as his layered garments.
This season, in their second season collaborating, design partner and boyfriend Timothy Gibbons continues to expand his cut-and-sew, costume-to-couture signature to Gordon’s namesake label. There’s an air of excitement emanating from the duo. Something is happening, and we’re all invited. This inclusivity is not something always felt in the fashion industry, or in the halls of high school, where much inspiration is drawn. Gordon says, “Every season I think about teen angst, teen sports wear, that feeling of not belonging on the team. I’m intrigued by the anxiety and exhilaration around that feeling. This season is about a girls dance team who kidnaps the boys,” Gordon shares.
Watching the duo bridge their commonalities of themes, from quintessential adolescent un-fitting, varsity blues revisited and reclaimed, and deconstruction meeting a new standard of finish, feels like a next step for the label. Together, each designer brings their personal history with knits and nostalgia (Gordon) and the high-craft structure and precision of costuming (Gibbons) into one distinctive voice.
Days later in a separate interview (though in the same stairwell), Timothy picks up nearly exactly where Gordon’s left off, "as queer people specifically, high school isn’t a good time for anybody, but tapping back into a lot of these themes as adults is empowering – we’re rewriting narratives about feeling disempowered, and highlighting the forbidden eroticism when you’re young. There’s no one to talk to at that age, it’s so taboo. It feels very cathartic referencing these real-life, lived high school experiences and characters within this little story that we now get to do whatever we want with.”
Gibbons and Gordon meet in their shared invented fantasy, which may be closer to real life than we all care to admit. “I love doing male drag when I get ready in the morning. When I’m playing a more masculine character, it’s a conscious decision, like with my mustache. Other days, it’s about wearing a skirt or kilt. It’s the urge to feel like the most authentic self.”
Costume is more embedded in everybody's daily lives than most of us realize. “From when I was very young, I was obsessed with Halloween. I’d make my costumes every year, like a stitch by stitch version of a Tim Burton character. Coming from a queer perspective, Halloween is this time of year when you’re young, and not realizing this on a conscious level, but you’re expressing this truth within you through performance, masquerade, taking on a character. When you get older, it’s sort more taboo to wear a costume to work, so you do it in a smaller way with shirts and ties and skirts,” Gibbons says.
““I think I’m intrigued by, like, the anxiety and maybe exhilaration around that feeling that I don’t belong on that sports team or in this community,” Gordon says. “Every season I love creating a little narrative, almost like a horror plot behind the collection.” ”
This reference-rich world Gordon and Gibbons create mirrors their real life; their first date included a screening of the horror film House of 1000 Corpses at a friend’s studio while Gibbons was in town between film and theatre projects.
A scene from House of 1000 Corpses
Gordon is a knitwear designer best known for the button-pulling twisted cardigan worn by Kim Kardashian and a gaggle of It-Girls after seeing Kim in the sweater. Seemingly, this sweater took Gordon from indie designer to watch to fashion’s main stage. “After the Kim Kardashian thing happened every piece sold out instantaneously,” Lucy Weisner, cofounder of Café Forgot — Gordon’s first stockist and ongoing supporter. Cafe Forgot is also the site of the couple’s meet cute. Timothy Gibbons similarly popped onto the scene with an It item: a corset hoodie Worn by Charli XCX, Travis Scott, covered by Vogue, coveted globally.
Costume has a rich history in the fashion world – most prominently Galliano fashion films and Alexander McQueen presentations. “I’m so determined to show that it’s not a bad thing that it’s a costumey thing. It’s my personal mission to show that costume and fashion can be merged in a way that’s beautiful and tells a story in a really specific way. They are two different industries but they have a lot more in common than people like to say,” says Gibbons.
1990s McQueen
00’s Galliano for Dior
The language of costume bleeds into the realm of high school sports; shoulder pads and lace up shoes are worn with purpose in both worlds. In Gordon’s and Gibbon’s version, though, where kink and glamour, ease and sportswear, and gender identity tension meet, I’m ready to go back to high school, words I did not expect to say.
“Designing with the person I'm also in love with is symbiotic. Diving into these themes and topics that I was pretty ashamed of for many years growing up, it's now so expressive and harmonious,”Gibbons says. Jocks and rugby boys alike, Gabe Gordon is ready for you in the ring.
Quotes from 1/20/2025 and 2/2/2025