The September issues have all dropped, Labor Day has come and gone, and school is back in session. All of which only means one thing: It’s time for New York Fashion Week! Here’s everything you need to know about the season’s new names, comeback stories, grand openings, and more.
Previews are underway for House of McQueen, an off-Broadway production opening on September 9 at The Mansion on Hudson Yards, that will document the life of designer Lee Alexander McQueen. Luke Newtown, of Bridgerton fame, will take on the role of McQueen opposite Catherine LaFrere as Isabella Blow (who is the subject of her own upcoming biopic, by the way) and Emily Skinner as Lee’s mother, Joyce McQueen. Written by Darrah Cloud and directed by Sam Helfrich, the play is untethered to the McQueen label and its parent company Kering—it’s proximity to the designer is instead familial, as his nephew, Gary James McQueen, has spearheaded its production and is acting as creative director. On view alongside the play will be 30 archival McQueen pieces from 1995 to 2010. Could they get this one right? Here’s to hoping. The fashion glitterati is scheduled to attend previews on September 4, so stay tuned.—José Criales-Unzueta
There’s—count ’em—15 designer debuts this season, 16 if you count Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez as two at Loewe. Most will happen in Milan and Paris, but New York has two entries of its own. First up on September 10 is Rachel Scott’s Proenza Schouler reveal, the designer told us, “the Proenza woman is very polished, but with ease and approachability, which is quite different than over at Diotima where she’s very undone and much more rebellious. It feels like different sides of me, different days, in a way.” Area’s Nicholas Aburn takes to the runway on September 12. He’s not as well known as Scott, but he’s not short on experience. Most recently he was Senior Designer at Balenciaga Couture, and he’s also put in time at Tom Ford and Alexander Wang.—Nicole Phelps
After doing presentations the past few seasons, a few of the most exciting talents in the city will be staging runway shows this go-round. They include last year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners Dynasty and Soull Ogun of L’Enchanteur, who have previously staged immersive events in Bed-Stuy; Diotima’s Rachel Scott and Zankov’s Henry Zankov, both of whom have previously included mini-runway shows in their presentations; and newcomer Zane Li, whose Lii label is barely two years old, and is returning to New York City with a runway show in partnership with Nike, after spending the last few seasons showing during market week in Paris. We’ll be seated!—Laia Garcia-Furtado
Brandon Maxwell’s is marking a decade in business with a show at Sotheby’s and a celebratory dinner at Mr. Chow. “The past 10 years have been a journey of discovery, searching, learning, and finding my footing in an industry I love so deeply, he says. “Today, I feel grounded in who I am and crystal clear about the kind of clothes I want to create. For the next decade, my hope is simple: to experience more joy, greater alignment, and the freedom to design without the weight of outside opinions.” Alexander Wang, who’s back on the New York Fashion Week schedule for the first time in years, has a major milestone of his own, the big 2-0, and a promise: “This collection is going to look very different for people than what they’ve seen from me in the last few years.”—NP
This year’s CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists are a diverse group, and seven of the 10 will be making their presence known throughout fashion week. (Aubero’s Julian Louie showed his latest collection in Paris this summer, and Jamie Okuma and Peter Do do not yet have official plans.) The rest are all found on the official schedule: Ashlyn’s Ashlynn Park, Meruert Tolegen, Gabe Gordon’s Gabe Gordon and Timothy Gibbons, and Bach Mai will all be holding runway shows (Tolegen in her impressive new Soho store!), while Heirlome’s Stephanie Suberville, Bernard James, and Don’t Let Disco’s Ashley Moubayed will host presentations to see their wares up-close and personal. So get in touch, check them out, and support these exciting new talents.—LGF
If you looked at the calendar’s Monday lineup and noticed Carolina Herrera’s absence, not to worry: You will not be left without your seasonal dose of bold and colorful high-femininity. In 2023, Wes Gordon began taking his pre-collections on the road—first to Rio and then to Mexico City. This year he decided to switch things up, scheduling his spring 2026 show in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor on Thursday, September 18. Vámonos!—LGF
All designers have a post-show ritual. In the ’90s, this was Anna Sui’s: “The monitor very rarely worked,” she explains, “so my father would take pictures of everything that came out. Because my show was usually in the evening, the next morning we’d take the film to get developed, and then we’d go get the newspaper and breakfast, and then we’d go pick up the photos. Not only did I see what the runway looked like, but also who was in the audience.” With the publication of The Nineties X Anna Sui (Rizzoli) during New York Fashion Week, you, dear reader, can partake in a similar act of discovery. Organized in themes like the baby doll and the slip dress, the book relates fashion to culture, and offers a picture of an industry—and a city—that operated at a different pace. “I think it was much more intimate,” says Sui. “Nothing was so polished back then. I have to tell you, I never analyzed back then, I would just do. I just wanted to create the idea that I had in the back of my mind.”—Laird Borrelli-Persson
As recently as the era of the supers, runway models did their own hair and makeup. For spring 2026, Rachel Comey is resurrecting the practice. “Since we are always inspired by the real lived experiences of our models, we feel confident that they’ll know exactly how to do their own makeup and hair for their looks… They’re all interesting adult women with points of view, after all,” says Comey, who is returning to the New York Fashion Week calendar after a year of showroom appointments. “As much as I love a large backstage production, an intimate gathering with women putting their own lipstick on and chatting feels like a room I want to be in. Intimate, personal, open to spontaneity. A place where women are getting dressed for other women, words and mirrors shared.”—NP
Jason Wu is becoming quite the art connoisseur. Having collaborated with the Chinese artist Tong Yang-Tze, from whom the Met commissioned work for the Great Hall last year, this season the designer is working in tandem with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation as it marks the 100th anniversary of the proto-Pop artist’s birth. Rauschenberg “had a lifelong interest in working with fabric,” said a representative of the Foundation, and because he was “interdisciplinary in his approach to everything, we felt like this project was something that he would’ve been excited by.” For his part, Wu says: “because I don’t come from a traditional fashion background, I just appreciate design.” Wu hasn’t worked with his source material in a literal way; rather, Rauschenberg’s collages have informed his approach to the collection, which is built around classic American style. At a time when our national identity is being called into question, Wu said “it feels relevant for me to celebrate what [Americans] have done…. “It’s good to be reminded we’re not just a commercial business-only, transactional country. There’s a lot of beauty and thought that actually originated here.”—LBP
Johnson Hartig’s Libertine, a cross-country enterprise founded in 2001, is putting down roots in the city where it debuted on the runway, and opening an appointment-only salon on the Upper East Side. A light-filled former artist’s studio, the space will have the largest selection of Libertine available in one place. “It’s just going to be so exciting to have a space where we can do anything we want in New York City,” said Hartig, who has personally created the collages that decorate the walls. “It’s going to be a movable feast, so [the decor] will change periodically…. It’s really going to be an immersive, incredible experience for the client.”—LBP
Spring marks the first time SC103’s Claire McKinney and Sophie Andes-Gascon are on the official NYFW schedule, but it’s not their first time at the rodeo. We’re “six years in business and 12 collections in,” noted the latter, and “it’s our fifth show.” Fulfilling a dream of hosting an outdoors event, the designers will show at 9:00 PM on Friday, September 12, in a yet-to-be-disclosed Brooklyn location. It’s a time, McKinney said, that accommodates “friends who don’t work in the fashion industry and who don’t get off work until [late].” The Pratt graduates’ hands-on, community-focused approach follows in the tradition of their mentor, Susan Cianciolo, who serendipitously will open an exhibition in Spain on the same day as the SC103 show.—LBP
Having accumulated lots of air miles this year during a tour of Asia, the Our Legacy team members will be upping their step count in the Big Apple. The Swedish brand, which received investment from LVMH last year, is in town for a men’s pop-up with Nordstrom and a brand dinner. “New York is an endless source of inspiration, I’m always taken by the energy in the city,” says co-founder Jockum Hallin. “We started going to New York with our collections back in 2008, showing at a small trade show. Coming from Stockholm it felt like a whole new world opening up.”—LBP
“Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis” is the new exhibition at the Museum at FIT curated by Dr. Valerie Steele, who Suzy Menkes once dubbed “the Freud of Fashion.” Steele’s mission with this show is to “use different psychoanalytic ideas about the body and about the unconscious and sexuality to try and interpret different fashions and styles.” One of the exhibit’s hero pieces is a Surrealist mirrored Elsa Schiaparelli jacket from 1939. “Schiaparelli’s mother constantly told her she was ugly, and Schiap definitely had issues with mirrors,” the curator said, “And because she made it in 1939…you could say in retrospect, she’s looking at the fragmented situation in Europe at the time, things are falling apart. I think she used fashion as a way to try and hold herself and her clients together.”
Last year marked 100 years of Surrealism, a subject that will be explored at Hesse Flatow gallery in a group show titled “As beautiful as the chance encounter with a sewing machine.” On view will be Drake Carr’s portrait of Vogue’s own Tonne Goodman. At the same time that show-goers will be recording catwalk antics on their iPhones, the Met will open an exhibition dedicated to an artist often linked to the Surrealists. The exhibition will focus on Man Ray’s analog rayographs—“his version of the 19th-century technique of making photos without a camera.” At Amant in Brooklyn, meanwhile, Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan of Women’s History Museum will consider the role of women in fashion through the figure of the grisette, or a female fashion laborer, an archetype which has been both fetishized and shunned since the 17th century and, as the designers say, “a contemporary avatar of survival and exhaustion.” The display will include a set inspired by 1945’s Théâtre de la Mode (used to promote French fashion post-war) and custom-made garments that speak to the current state of the industry.—LBP
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On paper, fashion week is all about clothes, but real show goers know it’s also about food. Where you eat matters, and so does snagging a reservation at the buzziest spots. New on the list is Burrow Supper Club, run by Eleven Madison alum, Sammy Koolik, where twice-a-week guests can purchase tickets for $200 for a nine-course seasonal tasting menu. It’s worth every penny especially when your ticket in includes, welcome cocktails, and wine pairing—plus the chance that your dining partner might be the one and only Gabbriette, who follows the club on Instagram. Knowing that the schedule will definitely be taking us to Brooklyn, here at Vogue Runway we’re eager to try the new I Cavallini in Williamsburg from the team behind The Four Horsemen. No time for a sit down dinner? Mimi’s is the hottest new frozen yogurt shop in town (yes you heard that right, fro-yo is back), and we’re just hoping that the hype dies down so we can quickly get a sweet-treat fix in between the shows.—Irene Kim
Don’t have enough to do shuttling back and forth across the city for the shows? Pandora is kicking off a week jam-packed with parties and events with an “immersive evening” on the 8th paired with a special performance. The 9th is the day—you know, that date each season overloaded with happenings—the headliners being Simon Porte Jacquemus’s takeover of the Central Park Boathouse with Veuve Clicquot and a Moda Operandi x Fendi cocktail. On the 10th, Valentino will reopen Studio 54 for one night only to celebrate the launch of a new beauty collection, following the debut of Miu Miu Select with Coco Gauff that afternoon and London-based label’s Damson Madder’s chess tournament extravaganza at The Chess Forum. The shows officially start on the 11th, and Public School, yes, the formerly defunct label by Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne, is hosting a supper club extravaganza. Keep an eye out for those after-party invites, that’s really where it goes down.—JCU
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Every other day during Fashion Week I receive a text from a friend asking about the show schedule. I get it. Not everyone adds the entire show lineup to their Google Calendar, and the screenshot of the CFDA schedule is quickly lost in a sea of other content. So here’s some good news: Coming to your Vogue app on September 9 is a new calendar feature that lets you keep track of all the shows. Say goodbye to texting the group chat or Googling “New York Fashion Week calendar CFDA 2025”—or some combination thereof. We got you!—JCU
With all the comings and goings and debuting designers, fashion is giddy with anticipation. What will we wear come spring? What will fashion look like in2026? Well, while we wait for that, it looks like our September wardrobes will revert to a trusty and familiar combo: A blazer and jeans. Don’t take it from me, listen instead to Michael Rider—and Oscar Isaac in his new Celine—or Dario Vitale, who ’s outfitted Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried in a teaser of his version of Versace. That’s a back-to-school look if I’ve ever seen one.—JCU