Italian illustrator aleXsandro Palombo spells his name in that funny way because X and P are the Latin initials for Pax Christi, meaning the peace of Christ. aleXsandro does the bitchiest, funniest, insider-iest illustrations of the fashion industry we've ever seen, by deconstructing all the absurdity and vanity and hilarity. His latest series for Humor Chic, called I Love Anorexia, rips the piss out of Rachel Zoe and Victoria Beckham.Vice: The fashion business was a bit of a rough rollercoaster ride for you, wasn't it?
aleXsandro Palombo: Well, yeah. At 19 I moved to Milan to study fashion design, then worked as a consultant here and there--Milan, Paris, Hong Kong. When I was 24 I showed my first women's collection on the catwalk and for ten years aleXsandro Palombo showed at Milan Fashion Week. Then, when I turned 33, I decided to call it a day. I was the founder of the Italian avant-garde, inventing and creating trends copied by all the big names. The Italian fashion system subjected me to unimaginable boycotts, slanders, and terrible criticism--artfully done just to destroy and obliterate me. My talent and achievements annoyed a lot of people.I know the fashion system well, even down to the smallest details, but I've always wanted to work in complete freedom and without ever bothering with factions, groups, or cliques in the usual way, and this irks a lot of people.What made you decide to start drawing all this stuff?
Tired of such squalor and hypocrisy, I took a sabbatical and just did occasional consultancy work. I found time for a long period of relaxation, cultivating my love for illustrated artwork. I did my first picture book Vanitas, Inshallah, which was basically the world's first illustrated fashion show. My creations were presented as a graphic novel: it was a success. From there on I knew I had to take new directions and I founded Humor Chic. It's my point of view; a grand illustrated show of fashion, style, manners, and society in general, all blended in my mind and captured by my pencil! A way to dream, laugh, think, and even let off steam.It's part of my artistic and existential research. The world needed a more powerful antidote to combat the boredom, menopause, frigidity, hypocrisy, censorship, superficiality, the obvious, and the squalid reality. So here's Palombo!How do you choose your victims?
By the sense of smell, instinct. Are you ready?Do you actually like the people you're drawing or are you depicting them in shady situations because you're anti-fashion?
It's the fashion to be anti-fashion. I think they're more vivid in my artwork than in real life. Palombo has the power to elevate and immortalize the way nothing else can. Photography captures the moment, my artwork opens the doors to the fantastic, the eternal.What's your point and what's your take on the fashion industry?
I have no special purpose. I draw, paint, daub—because I'm an artist—and I recount my life through my visions and images revealed massively by my unconscious. Each illustration is a synthesis of the human figure and its secret recesses.Fashion is an old, tired, failed system. The games of power, lobbies, and advertising have forced it into situations that allow for no choice, chance, or freedom. Innovation is always welcome. Of course, Humor Chic is transforming the vision people have always had of fashion.When a system that calls itself creative uses censorship, or even worse, self-censorship, then the system can't be called creative, it's only a vomit without authenticity. We're no longer in the era of expression and freedom, but the search for the new and beautiful. This is the era of the mediocre and mediocrity, but there's bound to be a fashion bang soon.Have you created any pieces that were just too raunchy or offensive to post? If so, who were the drawings of? And naturally, we'd be very happy to post them on our site if such artwork exists.
In this mortuary of worldliness I always hope to see some authentic vulgarity! Art can never be considered offensive, vulgar, or coarse. Only in the thought and malice of the beholder is it ever vulgar, offensive, or hypocritical to those who censure it.The pictures look like they're extremely time consuming to draw. Which took the longest?
All of them, but I can't tell. There's no set time. Every birth is different and the only consolation is that I haven't yet had to abort a mission. I draw and color everything by hand. I don't use computer graphics and this increases the difficulty but also the final value of the artwork.One of the designs in Palombo's new range of T-shirtsHave you gotten any positive or negative feedback from your subjects? I know Karl Lagerfed really loves the character drawings of himself.
Many, regrettably all positive. Negative feedback? Yes, from those who haven't been drawn yet. I have a pair of fashion editors super pissed off and breathing down my neck. I'll see what I can do in future for them. It's an honor, a great miracle to be captured by Palombo. Karl Lagerfeld actually had the privilege of seeing a preview of his funeral. Everyone dreams of seeing their own funeral before they die, but no one can!Who's next on your hit list? Will you be sticking to fashion icons or expanding into other industries?
Palombo continues to lift the veil on everything in this terrible society of vanity. I hope the time will come to finally pull their pants down. I'd erase the word taboo from the dictionary and fuse its meaning with hypocrisy. Nowadays we live in a society that is false. If you go out in the street in your underwear you know everyone will see, but no one will mention it. They're crazy! Anyway, I never plan anything in my life because I don't want to die with the anxiety of not having done what I set out to do.Will you be doing anything with these?
Recently I got with a Japanese firm I can't name, because I liked their approach--polite, naive, unconventional, transparent. November will see the launch of the limited edition "Humor Chic by aleXsandro Palombo" T-shirt in all their stores in Japan.What else do you have coming up? Any big projects we should know about?
3000 things are in my head but I don't know which one will win first. I've been working on a Humor Chic book for a long time, but unfortunately I have postponed the release because I'm fighting with all the publishers who love it, but who want to publish it after due censorship. Palombo never censors himself, so I'm waiting for an enlightened publisher. Here I am!Who are your favorite designers and who do you just dislike?
My favorite designers are Gianni Versace, when he was still around, and Marc Jacobs because he has succeeded in looking carefully at the fantastic and visionary world of Humor Chic long enough to find inspiration and bring out his latest collection for Louis Vuitton. I love anything that has an artistic value and appeals to my intelligence or imagination. I don't like the young creatives who let themselves be manipulated and enter the usual crazy contests, which are no more than a great way to advertise the people who organize them. Plagiarists too. I also can't stand people who take themselves too seriously and don't really have any substance. I find them boring. I love folly, color, irony, eroticism, and freedom.ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS
Advertisement
aleXsandro Palombo: Well, yeah. At 19 I moved to Milan to study fashion design, then worked as a consultant here and there--Milan, Paris, Hong Kong. When I was 24 I showed my first women's collection on the catwalk and for ten years aleXsandro Palombo showed at Milan Fashion Week. Then, when I turned 33, I decided to call it a day. I was the founder of the Italian avant-garde, inventing and creating trends copied by all the big names. The Italian fashion system subjected me to unimaginable boycotts, slanders, and terrible criticism--artfully done just to destroy and obliterate me. My talent and achievements annoyed a lot of people.I know the fashion system well, even down to the smallest details, but I've always wanted to work in complete freedom and without ever bothering with factions, groups, or cliques in the usual way, and this irks a lot of people.What made you decide to start drawing all this stuff?
Tired of such squalor and hypocrisy, I took a sabbatical and just did occasional consultancy work. I found time for a long period of relaxation, cultivating my love for illustrated artwork. I did my first picture book Vanitas, Inshallah, which was basically the world's first illustrated fashion show. My creations were presented as a graphic novel: it was a success. From there on I knew I had to take new directions and I founded Humor Chic. It's my point of view; a grand illustrated show of fashion, style, manners, and society in general, all blended in my mind and captured by my pencil! A way to dream, laugh, think, and even let off steam.
Advertisement
By the sense of smell, instinct. Are you ready?Do you actually like the people you're drawing or are you depicting them in shady situations because you're anti-fashion?
It's the fashion to be anti-fashion. I think they're more vivid in my artwork than in real life. Palombo has the power to elevate and immortalize the way nothing else can. Photography captures the moment, my artwork opens the doors to the fantastic, the eternal.What's your point and what's your take on the fashion industry?
I have no special purpose. I draw, paint, daub—because I'm an artist—and I recount my life through my visions and images revealed massively by my unconscious. Each illustration is a synthesis of the human figure and its secret recesses.Fashion is an old, tired, failed system. The games of power, lobbies, and advertising have forced it into situations that allow for no choice, chance, or freedom. Innovation is always welcome. Of course, Humor Chic is transforming the vision people have always had of fashion.When a system that calls itself creative uses censorship, or even worse, self-censorship, then the system can't be called creative, it's only a vomit without authenticity. We're no longer in the era of expression and freedom, but the search for the new and beautiful. This is the era of the mediocre and mediocrity, but there's bound to be a fashion bang soon.
Advertisement
In this mortuary of worldliness I always hope to see some authentic vulgarity! Art can never be considered offensive, vulgar, or coarse. Only in the thought and malice of the beholder is it ever vulgar, offensive, or hypocritical to those who censure it.The pictures look like they're extremely time consuming to draw. Which took the longest?
All of them, but I can't tell. There's no set time. Every birth is different and the only consolation is that I haven't yet had to abort a mission. I draw and color everything by hand. I don't use computer graphics and this increases the difficulty but also the final value of the artwork.One of the designs in Palombo's new range of T-shirtsHave you gotten any positive or negative feedback from your subjects? I know Karl Lagerfed really loves the character drawings of himself.
Many, regrettably all positive. Negative feedback? Yes, from those who haven't been drawn yet. I have a pair of fashion editors super pissed off and breathing down my neck. I'll see what I can do in future for them. It's an honor, a great miracle to be captured by Palombo. Karl Lagerfeld actually had the privilege of seeing a preview of his funeral. Everyone dreams of seeing their own funeral before they die, but no one can!
Advertisement
Palombo continues to lift the veil on everything in this terrible society of vanity. I hope the time will come to finally pull their pants down. I'd erase the word taboo from the dictionary and fuse its meaning with hypocrisy. Nowadays we live in a society that is false. If you go out in the street in your underwear you know everyone will see, but no one will mention it. They're crazy! Anyway, I never plan anything in my life because I don't want to die with the anxiety of not having done what I set out to do.Will you be doing anything with these?
Recently I got with a Japanese firm I can't name, because I liked their approach--polite, naive, unconventional, transparent. November will see the launch of the limited edition "Humor Chic by aleXsandro Palombo" T-shirt in all their stores in Japan.What else do you have coming up? Any big projects we should know about?
3000 things are in my head but I don't know which one will win first. I've been working on a Humor Chic book for a long time, but unfortunately I have postponed the release because I'm fighting with all the publishers who love it, but who want to publish it after due censorship. Palombo never censors himself, so I'm waiting for an enlightened publisher. Here I am!Who are your favorite designers and who do you just dislike?
My favorite designers are Gianni Versace, when he was still around, and Marc Jacobs because he has succeeded in looking carefully at the fantastic and visionary world of Humor Chic long enough to find inspiration and bring out his latest collection for Louis Vuitton. I love anything that has an artistic value and appeals to my intelligence or imagination. I don't like the young creatives who let themselves be manipulated and enter the usual crazy contests, which are no more than a great way to advertise the people who organize them. Plagiarists too. I also can't stand people who take themselves too seriously and don't really have any substance. I find them boring. I love folly, color, irony, eroticism, and freedom.ANNETTE LAMOTHE-RAMOS