Last night, Virgil Abloh, Dev Hynes, Luka Sabbat, Eniko Mihalik, and more climbed atop a mound of salt and sifted through racks of reconfigured vintage tees at the edge of the West Side Highway. The occasion—one that certainly stood out among the seemingly countless cocktail parties and champagne-catered fetes of New York Fashion Week—was the launch of Heron Preston for DSNY, the first designer collaboration with the NYC Department of Sanitation.
As Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne were quick to note, the concept was “dope.”
“Man, I’ve always wanted to redesign uniforms, but I wasn’t really sure with whom,” recalled Preston as Chelsea Leyland and Lucien Smith made their way through the DSNY’s makeshift event space. “I just thought that a design-made uniform for a real agency service would be awesome, because I had never seen that before. Service workers are so visible. I had this kind of dream of seeing these designer-made uniforms all around the city.”
An experience with a plastic bag in the ocean in Ibiza led Preston to consider linking up with an organization that kept our waters and cities clean, and the collaborative process that followed was “simple math,” said the designer.
The buzz in the air last night—artists, models, and fashion types sipped rosé and scooped up merch as the sun set on the salt mounds—implied that this may be just the beginning of Heron Preston x DSNY.