GALL Laboratories – Experimental Italian Menswear
EXPLORING THE TACTILE WORLD OF JUSTIN GALL
GALL is the mainline of designer Justin Gall: an avant-garde menswear label that has evolved for more than a decade around a deeply personal approach to clothing. Based in Rome, the brand works with exaggerated proportion, distressed surfaces, artisanal treatments and experimental outerwear, letting material, construction and silhouette keep visible evidence of the process behind them.
Using coated cottons, technical nylons, washed and treated denims, dense ribbed knits and hand-manipulated textiles, GALL produces outerwear, wide trousers, heavy knitwear and modular pieces that explore texture, form and movement.
ORIGINS & CONCEPT: CLOTHING THAT CARRIES ITS HISTORY
Justin Gall grew up in rural California and later moved to Italy, where he founded his label. His personal narrative of displacement, resilience and transformation runs through the clothing: garments become protective shells for the body, reflecting strength, vulnerability and identity.
Rather than cleaning away every trace of tension, GALL lets construction, compression and wear remain legible. Imperfection is treated less as damage than as authorship, so each garment feels lived rather than perfected, and keeps developing with the wearer after it leaves Gall's hands.
TWO SIDES OF ONE UNIVERSE: MAINLINE & JG1
For the past three years, Justin Gall has been developing his mainline and JG1 side by side. JG1 is not a secondary version of GALL but its inversion: the same creative philosophy translated into a cleaner, more controlled and technical language.
The mainline stays the instinctive, tactile and artisanal side of that world, always grounded in a dark palette. JG1 is where Gall explores colour, precision and performance. The difference reaches beyond silhouette: it shows in colour, finish, construction, styling and even in how a jacket is carried once it comes off the body. Wearers are free to stay in one language or move between the two.
AW26 “FATE”: PROTECTION, EXPOSURE & MEMORY
The AW26 mainline collection, FATE, starts from the idea that experience, environment and circumstance leave permanent marks on people and on the objects around them.
• protective volumes: monumental collars, enlarged hoods, voluminous jackets and expanded trousers that gather and collapse around the leg
• heavy knit structures that act as armour through density rather than hard technicality
• moments of openness against that shelter: deep necklines, displaced layers and softer structures
• Western references from Gall's California roots, such as wide-brimmed hats, absorbed into a darker, heavier and more distorted vocabulary
• the Geo Mongrel boots, styled with laces left untied and wild
A signature detail is the extractable carrying strap system: an invisible zipper at the back of the neck conceals a set of straps inside the jacket. Pulled out, they let the jacket be carried on the body once removed, with its front construction facing outward.
DESIGN LANGUAGE: TEXTURE AS THE GRAPHIC ELEMENT
The dark spectrum is fundamental to GALL. Black, charcoal, oxidised grey and other muted tones form the foundation, so that changes in texture, surface and volume become more visible:
• gloss against abrasion, crushed and reflective technical surfaces beside washed, almost mineral-looking textiles
• heavy knit construction paired with lighter shells
• weathered finishes on highly engineered shapes
• hand-painted textiles, distressed treatments and experimental dyeing, so each piece carries its own tonal shifts and irregularities
Colour restraint is not an absence of expression here: it gives the material room to speak louder. Functionality is rarely separated from character, and a practical mechanism can become part of the silhouette.
WEARABILITY MEETS AVANT-GARDE IDENTITY
Although GALL pushes conceptual boundaries, its garments remain wearable: cargo pockets, adjustable hoods, coated outerwear and flexible trousers work for daily life, while the strong design identity gives the wearer room for individuality and attitude.
For those who see clothing as armour, statement and identity, and value pieces that age with character, GALL is one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary experimental menswear.
Read more about JG1 by Justin Gall, or explore GALL at Orimono.
