Pedro Gómez is 96 years old and has a more lucid mind than that of many adolescents who have dressed his feathers. He remembers every episode of his busy life as a mountaineer and tailor.. Sitting in a wheelchair —his legs are the only thing failing him—, wearing a long blue T-shirt and a Sherpa and El Igloo vest, Gómez begins to recount what Madrid was like in the fifties, when he gave life to a brand that has become clothing history. “I started in an attic in Princesa, in the old neighborhood of Las Pozas,” he describes that trade that began as a shirt cutter.. Together with her sister, little by little, she will make a name for herself by combining her two passions, the mountains and clothing.. “From there I went to a flat in Bravo Murillo and when I started to make money I bought three stores”.
The empire of Pedro Gómez began. Its name is common in some of the main Spanish expeditions to the most important summits of the planet. Sleeping bags will be the first thing I design, in 1954. It was a time when carried blankets would freeze at high altitude. Gómez manages to alternate the nylon, which he had known from the French expeditions, with duvet, a material that manages to give warmth and that many also call down. Then would come the competition pants, the gloves, the polar linings and, finally, the down jackets, its emblem.. Up to Cuatro Caminos the most relevant celebrities of the Madrid jet traveled.
The Igloo, in Cuatro Caminos
“There were two businesses, the manufacture of anoraks, which was in a separate workshop, and then there was El Igloo, which was the best mountain store in Spain, by far,” he recalls of his establishment, located at number 7 of the Marqués de Lerma street. “It had three floors, the skis were fixed downstairs and what we called hard material was sold on the street floor,” he adds.. On the top floor was where they made the mountain anoraks. “There were five changing rooms and we had a wide assortment,” he comments, “the best of the best went there: the kings and queens visited me regularly, the Koplowitzes, the Preyslers, and the presidents of the banks”.
The philosopher and anthropologist Iñaki Domínguez, one of the most seasoned analysts of what is the whole phenomenon of modernism and street culture, has documented in his latest book the history of Madrid's posh bad guys. “The feathers were always Pedro Gómez or Roc Neige,” says one of his interviewees in The True Story of the Panda del Moco. “At the end of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties, the Pedro Gómez. Then, what the bakalas did was to steal them from us posh people,” he says. “You asked your father for a gift, you went to the El Igloo store, they made it to measure, with the colors, with the feather and with the amount of feather you wanted… They had several colors, sometimes it was just the shoulder, sometimes it was just the sleeve,” he explains. “There were those that you could remove the sleeves and it was a little shawl,” so that “it went from being a symbol of posh to a symbol of I want and I can’t.”
A status symbol
What Teresa remembers most is how scared she was to wear her pink Pedro Gomez. “That was like a curse,” she tells us. “Madrid was full of zombies, of heroin addicts. And then there were also the posh bad guys who stole from other posh guys.” Teresa had dreamed of that feather in the Christmas of ’86, but when she had it, she couldn’t take it out on the street. “Imagine, all in pink. It was like saying ‘catch me,'” she jokes.. “I ordered it with double stuffing, it was very heavy. Its smell also comes to mind, very characteristic”. That feather ended up in his cousins’ closet, he says.
A couple of years later, Zape got his own. “My memories are linked to a friend, who was the first one I saw it on,” he reminisces. “After a while I managed to scrape together the forty thousand pesetas it cost and I bought my own: it became a status symbol”. He points out that the whole process was “very important”, from going to look at it, choosing the colors, taking the measurements…. “It was something unique,” he says.
From posh to bakalas
To go as the posh people of the Salamanca neighborhood and the north of Madrid used to dress will become fashionable. Everyone wanted to be seen with Caribbean T-shirts, New Balance sneakers and impossible feathers, for price and tailoring.. Our leading anthropologist, Domínguez, explains it very well in his latest essay: “As the photographer Miguel Trillo told me at the time, in the mid- and late-eighties, being posh was fashionable (in the years when La Movida had passed to a better life and there was a reaction against it and its modernization)”.
Nightclubs like OverDrive, New World, Die Mauer or Specka begin to receive thousands of bakalas in waves who decide to appropriate that fashion. “I came to have four Pedro Gómez,” confesses Alberto, who was from Ciudad Lineal, from the Calero park. “One of them was all white. If I wanted to wear it, I had to go in a group, with colleagues from my neighborhood. If not, it was easy for them to try to steal it”. To be able to go with one of these pens it was also common to carry a gasser, a brass knuckle or a knife..
It all ended in 1998, when Pedro Gómez retired. “He already sold it to me with the store closed. I met a friend of his and got him to make me one with the remains that were there”, recalls Anael. “There was a lot of dealing and a lot of robbery before it closed. Also at the exit of the store, with groups waiting for buyers. That's why it was normal to go with half a neighborhood to take it with you. I think that's why it closed.”.
If Pedro is asked, his impression is different at the end of the store, although not at this last stage: “That was a boom, we sold too much. The macarras began to take it. But if you ask me the reason for the closure, I'll tell you it was because I traveled and had more time.”. He wanted to go to Nepal and climb, but realized he wouldn't leave the tent. “So since my children did not want to keep it, I closed the business,” he confirms.
Resale and updating of Pedro Gómez
The two thousand are going to see how the brand becomes a cult object, it becomes sought after by collectors, who are made with models that even had stab wounds.. “I must have had about thirty-something,” says Reta, the man who brought the Pedro Gómez market back to life through resale: “At the time I had none and I, who am very cold, started looking for them.”. He immediately realized that he could buy and sell, and that “there were posh people who kept them in the closet without touching”.
One of them is going to be Zape, with whom we spoke at the beginning. He gets in touch with Pedro Gómez to revitalize the brand, he tells him about his interest in making it topical again. His skills are great, he is one of the streetwear figures in Spain, leading symbols such as Vans, among others.. Gómez accepts that Zape once again take over the brand, puts him in touch with the suppliers that originally supplied him and remains as an observer, giving advice and making recommendations.
“We started in 2019 with 500 feathers and a personalized waiting list. Now we already sell more than a thousand. It is a very exclusive product. Our goal is to sell it internationally, as is the case with Moncler down jackets,” says Zape. They are also rescuing older models, updating them slightly. “There are slim pens, which Pedro was already making in the seventies. They are very modern.”
The last thing they have done are collaborations with artists and big names of the most urban clothing. The collabo with Miguel Caravaca, which they presented this week at the City Hall headquarters, plays with elements of Madrid culture. Part of the imaginary of Caravaca, an artist who has introduced local namings such as Goya or Princesa, consists of just that. And Pedro Gómez, what does he think? “To me, I really like that my brand continues to reach new generations.”