Montserrat Albores Gleason

As part of CONDO 2026, Labor presents ¿Y si los objetos tuvieran memoria? by Montserrat Albores Gleason.

Montserrat Albores Gleason, designer and visionary behind the fashion practice PTRA, inhabits the periphery of the worlds of fashion and art. Having studied art and later trained in pattern-making and sewing, Albores Gleason is an art curator turned fashion designer. Her fashion collections reflect the blend of references, sources, and ideas characteristic of curatorial practice. In her work, concepts converge to form layered narratives and meanings.

At times, the garments in this collection present themselves as vessels of memory, holding the traces of lived experience. They function as mechanisms through which mortality is both recognized and confronted. In certain cases, dresses layered over others appear to carry, or bear, other dresses, accumulating into a weight that is both literal and symbolic. This gesture presents the body as a site of memory's burden, of attachment, evoking our bonds with the clothes we wear and keep, and with those once worn by loved ones who are no longer here. They call into question the function of clothing when the physical body has expired.

In these looks, dresses hang from the fronts and backs of the garments, reminding us that clothing is a physical attachment inseparable from the ideas of memory and care. Albores Gleason wants us to remember that garments retain memory—a tension constantly negotiated between the maker and the wearer.

—Labor