J U D A S A T E , T O O
My Milan Fashion Week collection, Judas Ate, Too, debuted at the historic Palazzo Serbelloni on September 26, 2025 and reframes the biblical story of the kiss and betrayal as the queer tragedy of Jesus and Judas.
Judas Ate, Too is both a confession and a story about a raw, authentic, devastating love that could never survive—queer love that aches, that resists, that escalates, and that ultimately collapses under the pressure of the world until it ruptures in a universe that could never accept nor contain this beautiful, tender, heartbreakingly honest and heartbreakingly human love.
P S A L M I :
A P O C A L Y P S I S
The first look in Judas Ate, Too, named Apocalypsis—a figure entirely clocked in red—depicts not a cosmic destruction but an emotional collapse. It is this look that depicts both betrayal and heartbreak perfectly intertwined in a way that demonstrates both love and betrayal are two sides of the same coin. Similarly, as the first psalm of the collection walks down the runway as if in procession at a funeral, Apocalypsis unveils itself to illustrate both the intimacy of Judas Ate, Too and the end of believing that sacredness and queerness cannot coexist.
The crown of thorns rests upon the veiled head like a memory of touch and beneath the veil the drapes like the final curtain of creation, the body becomes an omen—the end of the world not as punishment but as heartbreak. While the crown represents an echo of intimacy, the veil itself represents the moment the universe inhales before it shatters—the breath a person takes before the heart shatters—the moment Judas knows he will ruin the one he loves and Jesus embraces what that their love has always been and will always be.
While Apocalypsis introduces the audience to the intimate chronicles of the kiss and betrayal—now reimagined as a queer love story—it also represents the physical veiling of oneself that queer people experience far too often. Thus, Apocalypsis is the first psalm in a tragedy where this sacred, queer love can be seen as both one’s salvation and undoing, reimagining how queerness walks its own path of exile and grace in a world where this queer love is too raw and too sacred to survive.
In Apocalypsis, the world ends so their story can begin and their love can be remembered.
P S A L M I I :
L A M E N T A T I O N S
In this queer reinterpretation of the kiss and betrayal, Lamentations depicts the moment Judas realizes that loving a divine being means loving someone already claimed by the world. The brocade jacket—with its ceremonial and clerical silhouette and sleeves swollen into ecclesiastical wings that seemingly act as shields to heartache—glimmers like an ornate wall in a cathedral. With its repeated chapel-like insistence—crosses upon crosses, devotion upon devotion, expectation upon expectation—Lamentations instead subverts the familiar into something much more vulnerable.
The face chain drops red pearls suspended in midair across the face; this jeweled stigmata refuses to let suffering remain hypothetical. In Lamentations, the wounds are chosen, displayed, and felt as tears—tears for the impossibility of loving someone too divine to hold—that represent the softest, quietest cry.
Thus, Lamentations acts as a reminder that in the story of Jesus and Judas, pain was never abstract; it was real. It was intimate. It was human.
P S A L M I I I :
L U K E
The third Psalm in the collection is told through Mary’s gaze—not as icon or vessel but as witness. The silhouette recalls the Pietà, but the posture is inverted; rather than directly interpreting a mother holding her son, it depicts one in eternal agony of being close enough to love yet powerless enough to lose. This is not the aftermath of death; this is the foreknowledge of it. Mary holds what has not yet been taken but in doing so carries the unbearable weight of what she already knows.
Gold rests against bare flesh like something too precious to protect. Red pearls drape across the back as a rosary marking a part of the body where scripture once refused to look. The luminescent crystals of the halo indicate a lingering vulnerability while juxtaposed with the violence of the nails that will soon be used against her own flesh and blood. Thus, the halo becomes marked by contrasted dichotomy—it simultaneously sanctifies and wounds and represents both harmonic sacrifice and violent betrayal.
The antique incense burner becomes a stand-in for prayer and tradition. At the chest lies a single crystal marking the nipple—a quiet rupture in balance which evokes milk withheld, nourishment politicized, and body turned into doctrine. Thus, this crystal becomes much more than a relic of care—it becomes an artifact of Mary’s humanity. The crystal catches the light as if it is a tear refusing to fall. It is a point of sensation transformed into witness—pleasure denied, intimacy spiritualized yet eternalized, love made so abstract that it could survive condemnation. This is where queerness lives in the garment: not in excess but in the refusal to erase the body’s truth.
Perhaps even in the naming of this Psalm does Luke quietly and almost subversively reclaim queerness not as something gender-specific but as a complex part of the human experience.
P S A L M I V :
M A T T H E W
The fourth look in Judas Ate, Too represents the Last Supper. By transforming the Eucharist into architecture, Psalm IV, titled Matthew, exaggerates what is meant to nourish into something oppressive, architectural, and imperial. It no longer feeds; it demands, towers, and eclipses. Ultimately, it erases the body which disappears—and is almost consumed—behind it.
Thirty silver coins hang from the body, recast as Eucharist itself. Bread becomes payment. Payment becomes betrayal. Betrayal becomes doctrine. They hang like relics and rounds—not currency, but consequence. With swaying red pearls, the jewelry becomes the price of blood. Therefore, in Matthew, Judas is paid, Jesus is broken, and communion is born.
The Milan skyline is embroidered directly onto the look. By positioning the city not as a backdrop but as a witness to the overarching collection, Matthew further invites the audience to recognize their own participation in this queer tragedy.
The Eucharist is enlarged until it eclipses the body. The city is stitched into the host. And queerness—once again—is asked to make itself unseen in a system that has already named its price.
P S A L M V :
I S A I A H
Psalm V in Judas Ate, Too depicts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Named after Isaiah, the book that speaks the most relentlessly of suffering, this look displays a body prominently—perhaps solely to be misunderstood by the world.
Suspended on a recreated silhouette from Cristobal Balenciaga, the master of couture who was known for his queer struggles juxtaposed with his Catholic upbringing, sits the Gaddi Torso—a fragment of something that was once whole. Symbolizing Jesus’ body on a four pointed silhouette, Isaiah recalls the crucifixion, yet abstracts the architecture into something to bear witness. By abstracting the familiar story, the look inadvertently becomes even more humanized by reflecting the idea that suffering does not require permission to be real.
With the Gaddi Torso being on prominent display and by covering the model’s face, Isaiah reflects how queerness is often de-humanized and concealed. Rather than one’s identity being recognized, only the fragments of one’s body remain. Through another lens and by inverting visibility, this also represents how queerness can only survive by concealment and that this queer tragedy can be shared by everyone. At first glance, the Gaddi Torso represents Jesus’ body; however, this body could be owned by anyone. Thus, Isaiah becomes a walking paradox—from its structural silhouette seemingly floating down the runway to its depiction of how concealment has both saved and harmed queer identities—and demonstrates what cannot be named or seen can still be felt.
P S A L M V I :
C O R I N T H I A N S
Titled Corinthians, the sixth Psalm in Judas Ate, Too draws inspiration not from Golgotha but from Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Inverted, the touch that once promised creation instead forms the crucifixion of Jesus Christ; the beginning and the end become the same gesture in a twisted act of fate. The sculptural arms extend from the garment itself and while the golden brocade acts as the arms of the cross upon which the Son of God was crucified, the model completes it. Thus, this piece exists in the liminal space between God and humanity.
The ecclesiastical brocade creates an architectural structure that seems to hover over the body, evoking a sense of false sanctuary while the body itself becomes vulnerable. Around the model’s neck is a crystalline necklace with red pearls dripping down representing both the price of blood as well as where the final nail would exist in this interpretation of the kiss and betrayal—in the heart. Finally, the Milan skyline is once again embroidered on the hem of the skirt depicting how this queer tragedy now exists above and over us all.
P S A L M V I I :
R U T H
The seventh Psalm, Ruth, quietly evokes the Pietà. Behind the model rests a luminous halo that recalls familiar Catholic iconography while a sculptural opening inspired by French illuminator Bourgot Le Noir’s artistic depiction of the side wound of Jesus in the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg rests upon the center of the dress. This sculptural opening is reminiscent of a womb and extending from it is a flowing length of fabric reminiscent of the cloth wrapped around Jesus’ body after his crucifixion. Thus, birth and death occupy the same space.
Psalm VII in Judas Ate, Too depicts the body that once carried life now as the body that carries grief; the fabric trails behind the model refusing to be forgotten while delineating the nuances between life and death as Mary—no longer just a witness—ascends into the familiar icon.
Juxtaposed with Psalm III, Luke, Psalm VII depicts a less corporeal interpretation of Mary as she seemingly ascends into Sainthood while, perhaps ironically, holding onto the aspects that made her most human. Contrasting the crystal nipple on the metal bustier in the third Psalm, the seventh Psalm depicts a womb. And while both looks are completed with halos, the halo in Ruth is seemingly more whole; thus, this look deliberately delineates gender as part of sacred humanness.
P S A L M V I I I :
G E N E S I S
Before the betrayal, before the kiss, before the sacrifice, there was creation. There was innocence. There was love.
Psalm VIII, Genesis, returns the audience to where Judas Ate, Too—and every story—begins. This look returns to the first act of creation not to retell the Story of Creation literally but to remember the moment before fear and shame and heartache. The sculptural silhouette seemingly represents the tomb opening and envelopes the model in sanctuary—both obscuring and expanding the boundaries of the body. Almost womb-like, Genesis returns us to the first act of creation while suggesting that there is possibility of a return to a sacred space before judgment is cast and before shame is felt.
Within the context of Judas Ate, Too, Genesis becomes a meditation on queer existence. Every queer child is born into the world with the same capacity to love as any other. In this reading, every person has the capacity to love and has the same capacity to betray—perhaps because of love. Within this reinterpretation of the kiss and betrayal, the audience bears witness to tragedy while also being asked the uncomfortable notion what if betrayal can only wound so deeply because love already exists?
Appearing towards the end of the collection, Genesis refuses to remain confined to the opening pages of Scripture and instead acts as the climax of Judas Ate, Too and becoming a nexus between betrayal and blessing. Between reckoning and redemption. Between reconciliation and redemption. By repositioning Genesis in the latter half of the collection, Judas Ate, Too becomes theological argument and, perhaps, heresy by suggesting that creation is not merely at the beginning of our story and is continually part of it. Further, one can recognize that perhaps Judas betrayed not in spite of, but because of his love for Jesus. Further, one can ask that if betrayal only wounds because of love, was there a mutual kind of love—queer love—between these two characters?
Thus, in this interpretation, Judas’ betrayal becomes not the antithesis of love but a tragic distortion.
P S A L M I X :
S O N G O F S O N G S
In this look, the corset resembles that of marble—implying the construct of this Psalm and the entirety of Judas Ate, Too have become eternalized. Song of Songs marks the quiet passage between mourning and resurrection and is a visual turning point in the collection—the silhouette is reminiscent of both bride and burial shroud. The white garments hide crimson sophistication and reveal resurrection as not the absence of suffering but its own transformation.
Further, this look seemingly sheds its skin; no longer is there foreboding architecture or cathedral-like motifs. Rather, Song of Songs appears to be the most vulnerable of the Psalms thus far. And just like its namesake, this look evokes an otherworldly, almost out-of-place, sense of longing.
P S A L M X :
R E V E L A T I O N
The final look in Judas Ate, Too abandoned narrative in favor of transcendence. The monumental white silhouette abandons the body and turns into architecture. The tenth Psalm, Revelation, abandons burden and abstracts it into stillness.
This look becomes cathedral-like itself. The sculptural hood does not hide the face in shame; in fact, it reveals it. The color white—while appearing throughout the collection—has never appeared in its entirety. This white is no longer indicative of innocence; it is the bleakness and the hope that remains after mourning—the quiet light that follows suffering. The overwhelmingly complicated yet overwhelming love that never seems to fade even after a betrayal.
In Revelation, Judas is no longer remembered only as the betrayer and Jessus is no longer remembered only as the betrayed. Their identities are no longer confined to the roles the world assigned them. Instead, they become two souls whose queer love exposes the seemingly impossible. This is the revelation the collection has been quietly unveiling—that betrayal does not erase love nor does love erase betrayal. In fact, betrayal reveals how profoundly love existed to begin with.
And maybe this is why Judas’ kiss continues to haunt us. Not because it ended a story but because it reminds us that the deepest betrayals are almost always born from the deepest attachments. In the reimagining of Judas Ate, Too, the tragedy of Jesus and Judas was never simply about betrayal; it was about the impossibility of a love that was never allowed to exist—an allegory for queer love. In the last moments of the collection, the kiss is not seen as treachery; it is transformed into the final act of love that history refused to remember as anything other than deception.
Judas Ate, Too ends not with judgment, but with welcome. Not with exile, but with acceptance.
