It started a little over nine years ago. He lived in Fort Lauderdale; she was in Miami. At the time, Gabriel’s old Porsche 911 Carrera was in the shop for repairs, forcing them to postpone their first meeting. It was late Wednesday evening when he got off work and headed to the shop to finally pick up his car. He texted her with the news. Tired of waiting, she replied with an ultimatum: Come see me tonight, or you’ll never hear from me again. Not wanting to miss the chance, he hopped in his car and drove to Miami. It was late. Everything was closed — save for a humble, no-frills taco shop. “It was just like a random date,” he tells me. “I didn’t think anything of it.” But then she showed up, dressed in a white jacket, and something clicked. “The white jacket always stood out,” he says.

That white jacket — or at least Gabriel’s memory of it — became a starting point for his spring-summer 2026 collection, which was inspired by this on-again, off-again situationship. He walks me to the opening look: a stunner of a double-breasted coat in chalk-white pony hair. The tailoring is precise and oozes insouciant femininity. The shoulders are generously broad. And I love how the model wears it with one side of the lapel propped up and folded over. She is standing still and statuesque — a kind of living artwork in the cavernous space of Galerie Paradis, a former ceramics factory turned design gallery in the heart of Paris. (Though she breaks character briefly to express her awe at Gabriel’s story.) 

Some background: The Dominican-American fashion designer was born and raised in New York City but relocated to South Florida with his parents after middle school. Early on, Gabriel developed a keen eye for personal style; he was the one his friends turned to for fashion advice. Those creative impulses set the stage for his fashion career — though it didn’t happen right away. Gabriel worked as a celebrity barber for close to a decade before turning his scissors to fashion. In 2016, the self-taught designer launched his namesake label, which quickly grew beyond its T-shirt beginnings into a fully fledged brand known for its clever, contemporary proportions backed up by craftsmanship and high-quality materials. 

This year, the brand is celebrating another milestone. For the second time, Gabriel Salcedo is showing in Paris, off calendar on one of the last days of fashion week. The presentation, titled “Perdido en tu(s) Notas” or “Lost in Your Notes,” unfolds throughout the gallery’s soft, curtained sections, with models positioned like living sculptures among the furniture. In an adjacent room, another piece of outerwear makes a dramatic, strong-shouldered statement. It’s the same memory, cast in supple black lambskin. “It’s meant to be beat up,” Gabriel says, running his fingers across the subtle wrinkles and imperfections on the sleeves. “It’s meant to show the good years and the bad years.” 

Leather is a headline and a throughline. “The first time that we went to Paris together was last year for my presentation,” he tells me as we approach a different room and a different memory. “On the plane, she had a leather trench coat.” Gabriel pitches his with oversized yet sleek proportions — supremely elegant and practical, and exuding just the right amount of attitude. Next door, there’s another tried-and-tested wardrobe staple: the leather bomber. The drop-shouldered silhouette lends it a soft, effortless slouch. Here, it’s teamed up with a matching pair of leather shorts, but the styling potential of all of Gabriel’s leather pieces are truly endless. 

Capturing the early bliss of the situationship is an outsized blazer that extends to one side in a single lapel — the other one entirely missing. The brand’s signature pants are cut into long shorts, and there’s a tuxedo stripe that runs down the sides, which you’ll only see if you lean in for a close look. That the ensemble doesn’t fully commit to any one concept is on purpose. It represents a time he might have been toying with the idea of marriage while being wary of the fantasy; the duo were, after all, still stuck in the emotional gray area of a situationship. 

Elsewhere, more fragments of memories are stitched into functional outerwear. A clear double-breasted raincoat — a nod to the psychological horror film, American Psycho, one of Gabriel’s favorite films — captures the clash and intensity of a particularly heated moment in their relationship. From there, the collection takes a somber turn. “This is not a story that ends neatly,” the show notes explain. “It doesn’t fit into tidy resolutions or picture-perfect conclusions.” 

All successful relationships involve some chemistry, but it takes more than that to turn maybe to forever. There’s also timing — and maybe even a dash of luck. In the show notes (which is written as a poetic love letter), Gabriel acknowledges time as both their ally and adversary. It pushed and pulled them together into an on-again, off-again cycle of breakup and reconciliation. Eventually, however, it became impossible to ignore the elephant. “So, end of December’s coming,” he gets to what feels like an epilogue to the story. “It’s not working out. I’m tired.” 

The last vignette of the presentation marks that realization. Two models sit quietly on opposite ends of a plush leather couch. He is wearing a wedding suit, his bow tie undone and his stare vacant. She’s clad in a sumptuous coat, much like the one that kicks off the collection — this time, it’s rendered in funereal black. Earlier this year, Gabriel’s nine-year situationship came to an end. “I was like, ‘What do I do with this experience?’” Gabriel says. 

In the show notes, he writes: “Perdido en tu(s) Notas is about the unshakable truth that some loves don’t end, because they were never meant to. It’s about being lost in her essence, in her notes, in the rhythm that only she creates. It’s about knowing that no one else could ever take her place, because no one else could ever inhabit the world we’ve built together.” Some turn the tumult of love and heartbreak into poetry; others into music. Gabriel translates it into his own art, where it takes on a new form — something lasting and entirely his.