Not all fashion events at The Met happen in the Costume Institute—at least not for designer Stephen Biga, who is debuting his new brand for spring 2026. On a walk through the galleries last year, the designer discovered and was seduced by the figure of Melusine, a water nymph whose myth was put down by Jean d’Arras in 1393. In brief, she married a nobleman who didn’t know her true identity. Included in their vows was the promise that he could not see her bathe on Saturdays, but he spies on her, she discovers his perfidy, turns into a dragon, and leaves him. “I come across this and I’m like, Oh my gosh, is this is the narrative arc for me.”
A Parsons grad, the designer was working at Gabriela Hearst after stints with Rodarte and Proenza Schouler, and the prospect of going solo was percolating in the back of his mind. “When you’re designing for someone else, you’re a method actor in a way, which is its own skill set,” he says. “When I sat alone with this idea, it was like, Well, what do I like when I’m not answering to anybody else except myself?” Biga discovered he was inclined to “narrative fashion—not just a dress in a white room with no kind of context. I wanted my brand to really feel like a world, and separating Melusine into a pseudonym of a first and last name is kind of ambiguous. It was never about me naming the brand after myself because I always wanted it to be about the clothing.”
A self-described “history nerd” and fabric fanatic, Biga developed with an Italian mill a blue striped flax linen, which he cut into a nicely mitered, waist-snatched one-button blazer as well as a long skirt and bolero. Another bolero in buttery lambskin leather has the feel of protective soft armor, and a silver knit maxidress, a stand-in for metal mesh, also leans into the medieval theme.
Apart from the tailored pieces, the collection is floaty, featuring transparencies and lots of poetic sleeves and cuffs, producing a Roman de la Rose feeling. Biga’s mission is twofold: He wants to bring to New York both a sense of romance and a “Eurocentric sensibility,” which he defines as a kind of poetic Frenchness. (Biga’s mother is of French heritage.) “Having this kind of European mythical framework for world-building in New York is what makes it feel kind of cool,” he says. “Joan of Arc in a field in France, it’s like, okay, we get it, but knights on the subway is something else. It’s about taking these slight medieval elements and romantic elements and imbuing them with a sense of modernity.”
