A few minutes after the ball dropped in Times Square, signaling the beginning of 2026, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as the new mayor of New York City in an abandoned subway station near City Hall. For the intimate ceremony, which included a smattering of reporters and his close family members, the mayor chose a black velvet suit with a long, slim-fitting jacket, paired with a classic white shirt. The special detail came in his herringbone necktie—delicately embroidered in gold with four, four-petal flowers—from Kartik Research, the four-year old label founded by New Delhi-based designer Kartik Kumra, who was a semi-finalist for the LMVH Prize in 2023.
His wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, also made a statement in her matching asymmetrical, funnel-neck wool coat (vintage Balenciaga, borrowed from Albright Fashion Library); groovy, wide-leg shorts from The Frankie Shop; and pointy-toed boots with a lace-up detail at the back from Miista, proving the first lady’s Gen Z fashion bona fides.
Duwaji has already shown a love for bold gold jewelry, and the midnight ceremony proved the perfect occasion for it. She accessorized her black separates with vintage sculptural earrings from New York Vintage and a wristful of gold bracelets.
The pair worked with fashion editor and stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson for the mayor’s public inauguration ceremony, as well, which took place outside City Hall on Thursday. There, Mayor Mamdani kept his tailored outerwear, but switched his ornately patterned tie for one in burgundy silk. Duwaji, meanwhile, traded in her elegant black look of the previous night for a palette of toasted brown. She was once again in a funnel-neck coat, but this time from Renaissance Renaissance—the label by Palestinian-Lebanese designer Cynthia Merhej—and in a more retro, maxi silhouette. (For Duwaji, Merhej reworked a coat from her fall 2023 collection in a coffee brown wool with faux-fur embellishments at the cuffs and the hem.) The first lady pulled out another pair of statement boots, this time high-heeled lace-up boots in a matching shade of brown, and wore burnished silver hoop earrings.
The couple’s appearance was followed by remarks from Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and performances by Mandy Patinkin (of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”) and Lucy Dacus (of “Bread and Roses,” an anthem of the labor rights movement). A “block party” celebration surrounding City Hall helped to kick off New York’s Mamdani era.
