Omar Apollo Opens Up about Realizing he was Gay and Finding Fame

Pop star Omar Apollo recalled the very moment it hit him that he was gay: It was while he was taking a shower. The singer related that moment and more in a recent joint interview with designer Willy Chavarria.

The interview, which took place after a photo shoot, appeared in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and featured the two Mexican American celebrities in conversation.

Apollo related how, just before becoming famous, he'd been living in a mold-infested attic where his "rent was $150, and I could barely pay it with what I made working at Guitar Center."

"I had almost no money for food, but I'd uploaded my music onto SoundCloud, which is free," Apollo recalled to Chavarria. "A friend told me to also add it to Spotify – he even gave me the money to do it. I uploaded a song that day, 'Ugotme,' and it blew up."

That was the start of Apollo's meteoric rise in the music world. It was, the recording artist said, also "literally the only way I could have possibly escaped that small, conservative town. I was making all these unrequited gay love songs."

As for when he knew he was gay, Apollo recalled the exact moment for Chavarria, telling him, "I was 17 when it really hit me, and I remember I was in the shower like, 'Damn, that's crazy.'"

Apollo's story was a contrast – though perhaps not as much of a contrast as one might have expected – to how the 55-year-old fashion designer, who is three decades older than the 25-year-old singer, dealt with his own sexuality during his teen years.

Asked if his calling to be a fashion designer dated back to childhood and if he'd had a "scene" in his high school years, Chavarria related, "I didn't have a scene. I just wanted to get away from everything. And then – this is crazy – right before I went to high school, I was like, 'I'm going to be the most sought-after kid in school.' I went in and dated Susie, I dated Veronica, I was the homecoming king, boom, boom, boom. I did it all in high school and then, as soon as it was over, I left."

The designer added: "I didn't even know I wanted to do fashion at that point. I just needed to be around other creative people because, where I was, there were very few. I knew I needed to be free and, to be honest, my sexuality wasn't fully realized until, well, way after Susie."

The magazine noted that the designer – now "a senior vice president at Calvin Klein and the founder of his own namesake line" – made his way to his vocation in a roundabout manner.

"I was heavily involved in the nightclub scene in San Francisco," he told Apollo, describing how rave and house music brought "this amazing lifestyle of music, drugs and sexual revolution."

"That's when I realized that I felt free and could really appreciate who I am as a complete human being," Chavarria recalled. "That's also when I discovered fashion."

Apollo was once notoriously reluctant to define himself in terms of sexual labels, though the subject came up regularly as he did press for his debut album, "Ivory," last year. He told UK newspaper The Guardian in a 2022 interview, "I'd rather just make music and talk about what I want to talk about," though he was happy to talk about how fans accepted "the gay love songs" he'd written.

When he did address the subject it was on an oblique manner. "This generation of queer kids don't want to label themselves," the singer told Variety, before adding: "Queer is, I feel, a good label, if we're gonna label it."

Finally, though, in an interview with NPR, Apollo spoke more directly. "I feel like in the beginning, I was trying to be mysterious and stuff, but now I'm just like - I'm very gay, so I'm just like, whatever."

Even more direct was his tweet in response to speculations that he was "queerbaiting" through his lyrics and fashion choices. To that, Apollo tweeted: "no i b sucking dick fr"

Along his journey to openness, Apollo has curated a collection of thirst traps on his Instagram account. Check out some of the pics below.