Thom Browne closed out New York Fashion Week (NYFW) last night with a 64-look collection imbued with bird motifs, showcased once again at Manhattan’s The Shed, a vast, industrial space, capping off a season described by those in attendance as decidedly chill, maybe even a shade despondent.
This season, Browne swapped Edgar Allan Poe’s crows of AW24 for paper cranes. The room was dark, but the collection – a colourful one for Browne, with pastel shades of pink, yellow and blue mixed in with his usual greys and primary colours – felt lighter than the last.
Browne’s presence is always a warm welcome in the cold February fashion season in New York — this one complete with a midweek snowstorm — thanks to the heft it adds to the schedule. This season was slimmer, with about 10 fewer shows than September and a headliner in Calvin Klein’s comeback, which brought a designer debut and star power to the week. Beyond the big names, this season once again proved that the city is primarily a pipeline for emerging fashion talent, and a place that designers like to return to even after taking a couple seasons off.
But the energy overall was somewhat resigned, both on and around the runways. It seems reflective of the times: several designers spoke about the relentless news cycle we’re living through in the US, and how top of mind what’s happening in the world is even as they designed through it. It was a common thread: New Yorkers, and Americans, are tired.
The path of least resistance
It feels like a lifetime ago that Prabal Gurung sent a sparkly, coconut tree dress down the runway ahead of the November election. After a show of patriotism last season, designers rescinded from political statements on the runway, a sign of the uncomfortable conservative shift the broader US is going through. They danced around the topic, maybe alluding to the state of things in their show notes or mentioning resilience in backstage interviews, but in few explicit terms.
“It’s a fucked up world. Everything’s upside down. The news doesn’t get better,” said Jonathan Simkhai after his Friday night show at Hudson Yards. “I can’t as a fashion designer save the world. What I can do is make people clothes that make them feel good. We can’t give up.”
Gurung said he didn’t want to be reactive. “In the past, I’ve been very vocal about [politics]. We are living in a political and cultural climate where they want you to react. It’s important for us to plan our next step. What the other side wants us to do is be distracted. I wanted this collection to say: ‘I know how we are all feeling. I want this to comfort you. To feel like a hug.’ We are all craving that.”
Clothes as comfort was a recurring theme, be it in the form of oversized knits, big (mostly faux) furs and shearling coats, all the way down to Coach’s bunny slippers and Michael Kors’s furry flats. It felt like a response to the discomfort happening around us — an overall diffused response. Rather than creating battle armour, this week designers spoke about just wanting to make sure we all have enough motivation to get out of bed.
Others framed beauty as an act of defiance. Carolina Herrera’s Wes Gordon said that 2025 was shaping up to be an “adventure” with everything going on in the world, “some good, some bad”. How does that affect his work? “I have a singular approach to my work and my designs: to make something beautiful and pretty,” he said backstage.
Others work with less tunnel vision. At Luar, Raul Lopez made his statement clear at perhaps the most high-octane, energised show of the week. Backstage, Lopez said: “Right now, I feel like we’re at a point in our lives where we want to show people that [I’m not going in the closet ever again]. We want to tell people we’re here and we’re not going anywhere. At the end of the day, we fucking built this shit.” For Diotima’s Rachel Scott, November’s election changed the course of the collection entirely. “I’m really angry,” she says. “Where I had started in October, just as I usually do, in materiality and playing with textures and techniques and just craft as usual… that just became lower priority. The messaging became the most important thing after the election.”
For Colleen Allen, this season was an opportunity to reflect on and dissect the impact of the election-related cultural shifts. “I come from this generation where women have only been seeing more freedoms within America. To see this active dismantling of these systems has been really scary,” Allen says. “It’s left everyone with this feeling of shock; not sure how to move forward… It was about shaking myself — and the people around me — out of this shock and [offering] a way to move forward.”
What responsibility does fashion have to be a force of resistance? There’s clearly angst around how good for business it is to be politically progressive as the broader US landscape undergoes a shift to the right. But if the fashion with the widest reach — which, especially in a city like New York, is closely entwined with LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants and other diverse and now vulnerable groups — doesn’t have the voice to stand for something, who could?
Again, it goes back to business. Michael Kors is aware that women across the political aisle spend money with his brand. When asked about dressing Melania Trump at a press preview the day before his show, Kors said that this administration overall has a lot of women in it. “They all have to get dressed, regardless of what’s happening in Washington, DC. People say, ‘Do people care about fashion there?’ We do really well there. I don’t think there will be a huge change,” he explained.
Scott, meanwhile, wonders what her choice not to shy away from politics will mean for the commerciality of this collection. “TBC after the [market] appointments,” she muses. Judging by the crowds at Monday evening’s presentation, the clothes will sell just fine.
But it’s hard not to feel like there is some unsettling, society-altering shift bubbling up. This week, Kanye West — who once showed on the New York Fashion Week calendar in the not so distant past — ran an ad Sunday for the Yeezy website, which listed one singular item: a T-shirt bearing a swastika. Shopify, who operates the site, finally took it down on Tuesday. Can other designers keep their noses to their work and stay quiet for much longer?
Slim sponsorships
It was an anaemic season, at least as far as show guest gifting goes. Where there used to be goodies on seats from sponsors, there’s usually nothing, spare for a Fiji water bottle and maybe printed show notes. (Some brands did offer a gift for attendance: TWP gave a Flamingo Estate candle, Anna Sui left her own perfume for attendees.)
It speaks to a broader sponsorship problem that’s making showing on schedule all the more difficult for brands without deep pockets. Where there were big sponsorships, it often made one wince. Guests attending the Monse show on Sunday received a card in the mail ahead of time, showing designer Laura Kim modelling next to a Kohler smart toilet. The brand sponsored the show. Independent designer Melke, who’s now a few years into showing, had her presentation put on in partnership with Hidden Valley Ranch (yes, the salad dressing). It was reminiscent of up-and-comer Kate Barton’s Goldfish-sponsored show last season; this time, Barton moved to a by-appointment format after a competent debut. Where are the beauty brands?
It seems like this could start to change with the new Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and KFN partnership that was teased this season and will officially launch in September. It’s still vague as to what role KFN — which is a new entity formed from the combination of KF Fashion and N4XT Experiences — will play, but CFDA CEO Steven Kolb said that supporting New York’s designers will be a priority. Here’s hoping.
Are we in a minimalism epidemic?
Basics, good tailoring and neutrals all sell well, but they make for very samey runways and a lack of differentiation from other labels at every price point, from Cos to Toteme to The Row. This NYFW, these identifiers dominated the runways. “Minimalism is clearly the reigning theme at NYFW this season,” says Mytheresa chief buying officer Tiffany Hsu. Net-a-Porter fashion director Kay Barron described the mood as “pragmatic, with everyone wearing practical yet elegant pieces”.
When it feels like a designer is doing something other than offering tasteful pieces that you could see yourself wearing to the office, it nearly feels like an act of defiance. See: Anna Sui, Eckhaus Latta. Are other designers who don’t subscribe to the minimalist mandate feeling the pressure? “Herrera is clean, chic and sophisticated, but it’s never boring. It’s never minimalist. There’s drama,” said Gordon.
Michael Kors, at a press preview at the Capri offices on Monday, said he was calling his collection “warm modernism”. “I don’t like the word minimal — it’s too cold and clinical.”
Barron is most excited about what she calls “the new guard of NYC wardrobing brands”: Kallmeyer, TWP and Maria McManus.
The epicentre of the great minimalist debate was around Calvin Klein. The iconic American label’s return to the runway was the most anticipated moment of this season, with much attention paid to new designer Veronica Leoni’s take. The generous takeaway was that it was a fine start. Some commentators lamented the lack of sex appeal, with many comparing it to other contemporary labels. Where Calvin Klein fits in today’s consumer landscape is yet to be figured out — but Leoni should be afforded the time to do just that.
All that paring down can drain excitement.
“While the collections have been clean, commercial and polished, there’s a lingering sense that New York could use a dash of daring and fun,” Mytheresa’s Hsu says, adding that outerwear was the hero of the season. Almost every designer put forward their version of a cocoon to wrap up in. “The city thrives on creativity, and I look forward to seeing designers inject more energy in the future.”
The new, new guard
But there is energy, and it’s palpable, if you know where to look.
If the splashy names (Calvin Klein, Khaite, Michael Kors) are playing it somewhat pared back and safe, New York’s buzzy talent — Christopher John Rogers, Diotima’s Scott, Henry Zankov, Eckhaus Latta, Lopez’s Luar — are doing anything but. “I feel like there’s a new guard in the air. There’s a new energy. It’s a community,” Zankov said during his presentation on Monday.
This community is taking bold swings. “I had strikes against me for being Latino, for being flamboyant, being gay, for dressing the way I dress,” Lopez said backstage at Luar’s Monday evening show. “I’m not going in the closet for nobody ever again.” A Luar show, he said, is “a platform to bring people together, immerse people in a really beautiful experience, and enjoy a time of prosperity, love, abundance [and] joy”.
Even Allen — one of the most talked about emerging designers of the week — who worked at The Row prior to launching her own label, doesn’t fall into the traps of oversimplicity in the name of ‘chic’ and ‘sellable’. Coats in bright, cerulean blue were propped out at the hip with detachable crinoline petticoats — and paired with frilly tulle knickers that poked out underneath. (For those less daring, matching blue pants were also on offer.)
It’s worth remembering that NYFW is, by and large, about newness and independence over any major conglomerate-backed brand presence. The new guard is not just committed to what will sell; but to design that moves the needle — and has something to say.
“It’s a responsibility to engage in cultural moments and not shy away from what has happened,” Scott says. “It’s part of our jobs not just to reflect or comment on, but to try and find a way forward through what we do. Who are we, as people working in culture, if we’re not engaging in the conversation? This is not a moment to abandon that discourse that I ve been addressing since I began.”
Correction: Kate Barton was not absent from the calendar as previously reported. She showed by-appointment instead of via runway format.
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