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Book lovers rejoice! While literature is an ever-present source of fashion inspiration, it felt like an especially esoteric season at New York Fashion Week.
Books encompassed every aspect of the spring 2026 season, from inspiration to the runway. Joseph Altuzarra continued his tradition of leaving books on guests’ seats—this season, the 1994 dystopian novel The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa—stuffed with the collection’s references. Meanwhile, Rachel Scott soft-launched her vision at Proenza Schouler with a reading list chock-full of feminist theory.
Others used books as props, illustrating their client’s full life and tastes. At Aubero, designer Julian Louie used books as mise-en-scène, including various field guides to butterflies, flowers, and ferns, as well as his late father, David Wong Louie’s short story collection, Pangs of Love.
Here, we catalogue New York Fashion Week’s spring 2026 syllabus.
Proenza Schouler
The Third Body by Hélène Cixous
The Book of Promethea by Hélène Cixous
Speculum of the Other Woman by Luce Irigaray, translated by Gillian C. Gill
Although Rachel Scott won’t make her official debut as Proenza Schouler’s creative director until February, she left her mark on this collection, thanks in part to her reading recommendations. At the end of her show notes, Scott shared her reading list, entirely comprised of French feminist writings. One of the few women (and few women of color, at that) to helm a major brand, perhaps Scott is offering a preview of what’s to come via her book choices.
Altuzarra
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
Keeping with his tradition of leaving books on his guests’ seats, Joseph Altuzarra gifted each of his spring 2026 attendees a copy of The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa. (Last season, it was Wuthering Heights.) As always, he peppered the pages with the collection’s references, this time including American Beauty’s iconic rose petal scene and an Antoine Bourdelle watercolor.
Michael Kors
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
Eagle-eyed attendees noted that Michael Kors placed a copy of The Sheltering Sky in the woven leather bags he sent down his breezy spring 2026 runway. While Kors recently visited Morocco with his husband, the 1949 novel set in the North African desert isn’t exactly an easygoing beach read.
Colleen Allen
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Allen was struck by a scene in The Bell Jar in which Esther Greenwood, after surviving an attempted sexual assault, throws the new clothes she got while working at Ladies’ Day Magazine off the roof of the Amazon Hotel. The New York designer imagines what happened to those clothes. Her spring 2026 offering included sherbet-hued silk slips, lace-trimmed skirts, and gauzy chiffon pieces. One can imagine how they’d catch the breeze if thrown off a rooftop—although they’re far too fabulous to do such a thing.
Collina Strada
Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self by Carl Jung
While designer Hillary Taymour didn’t cite a specific text, her show nodded to Carl Jung’s idea of shadow selves, which he wrote about in Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. Taymour took the idea to heart, sending each model down the runway with a shadow twin trailing closely behind.
