In the last decade, NYFW has fallen from grace a bit with each passing season. Herein lies the typical problem: an American designer gains buzz, presents a few strong collections, likely wins the CFDA Award and uses the funds to take their production abroad to Paris, widely seen as the most prestigious of the fashion weeks. Recent examples that come to mind are Bode and Willy Chavarria.
And yet, there’s a silver lining…
As power structures shift and small brands continue to question the formality of it all, many designers have moved on from the fashion calendar and traditional ways of presenting their collections to buyers and press. There are still shows here during NYFW, but there are far more showrooms and presentations spread out over the course of a day, or even a few days, allowing for a more relaxed environment and the ability to spend more time with the collection — to touch it and feel it in a brand’s given context, rather than just see it.
New York’s Best Street Style, Outside the Shows
Our style editor hit the pavement during this year’s New York Fashion Week and photographed his favorite street style looksAll of that said, this past NYFW felt more alive than it had any time this decade. Public School triumphantly returned last season, and they hosted another banger of a show this time around to really solidify their place as NYC’s fashion torchbearers. The city was abuzz with U.S. Open mania, filled with parties and events each night. There was even some controversy, with PETA crashing the COS runway show, which prompted former CFDA CEO and President Steven Kolb to take matters into his own hands… literally.
As for me, I approached the week with enthusiasm and an open mind. In no particular order, here are some of the best things I saw last week.
All photos by Christopher Fenimore.
HerringBoneTwill is an Instagram moodboard of sorts, run by Colin Shields, a designer at Jake Mueser, and Grayson Thornberry, a designer at Todd Snyder. The two have a penchant for fine vintage menswear, ephemera and tchotchkes, and have both amassed a solid archive of exceptional, and sometimes kitschy, pieces. Plain English Design is a British, heritage, handmade cabinetry design studio. From September 9 through the 30, HerringBoneTwill has styled out part of Plain English’s showroom, located at the border of Greenwich and East Village. “This shared fascination with detail and a unique sense of style is where the two worlds meet – both applying our findings to our work as designers in fashion and interiors. Personal, playful and nostalgic, Herringbonetwill’s curation speaks to materiality, collection and functionality, and the influence design has in how we live,” reads Plain English’s Instagram post announcing the collaboration. I had the pleasure of photographing the opening party. I can tell you their collection is worth a visit. You still have a week to see it for yourself.
Like I said at the top, Public School is still carrying the torch for what it means to be a New York City fashion brand. At the height of its fame, right around the start of the pandemic, Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osbourne, the brand’s co-founders and co-creative directors, decided to take a hiatus that turned into an almost-six-year absence. Last February, the brand returned to much fanfare, showing a collection that held many of the core tenets of what Public School is: dark colors, tonal dressing, a blend of technical but luxe fabrics, a new Air Jordan collab — all of it a shining example of what a modern tailored wardrobe can look like.
This season’s September SS27 show was no different. I had the opportunity to check the collection out at its showroom ahead of its fashion show. The clothing on the runway is one thing, but to touch and feel it on the racks out of the context of a fashion show is something entirely different. Frankly, it’s my preferred method for discovering clothes. Anyone can throw a dope runway show with a crazy guestlist and a booming soundtrack, but are the clothes wearable? Do they feel durable? Are there hidden details that aren’t just ornamental, but rather functional? For Public School SS27, yes, yes and yes. I particularly enjoyed the shirting program, made in New York with Japanese silk-cotton blends, finished with voluminous bodies and French cuffs that closed with mother-of-pearl buttons in lieu of cufflinks.
I will admit I popped in and out of this one, as I had a packed schedule and the sun was also absolutely roasting us at Radio Park, a scenic garden terrace located a few floors up in Rockefeller Center where this presentation was held. Michael Bastian, the creative director of Brooks Brothers since 2020, understands American prep on a deep level. He’s also worked for Ralph Lauren, had his own line in collaboration with GANT (yes, its Swedish, but it has a storied history with American prep), and designed his own eponymous label for many years to great fanfare. Scattered about Radio Park were different groups of models telling slightly varied but cohesive stories. One such group was located at the center of the venue, pictured above, featuring many silhouettes and colors to be expected from a Brooks Brothers summer collection. It’s not to my taste, but Bastian is the man for this job. I have to assume that for Brooks Brothers acolytes, this collection was a home run.
Thom Sweeney wasn’t adhering to the fashion week calendar, but it did seek to take advantage of the week’s out-of-towner press. The shop moved from their downtown location uptown to 65th and Madison, which feels like it found an all-around better home to display its elegant ready-to-wear attire. The majority of Thom Sweeney’s business is its bespoke and made-to-measure tailoring — that is, custom tailoring, made entirely from scratch with personalized details, or tailoring made using existing patterns, modified to fit a person’s specific measurements, posture and proclivities. Its AW26 collection features a host of opulent menswear staples, made with its distinctive point-of-view: British silhouettes, finished with Italian softness and a slimmer profile than is typically associated with English heritage.
I’m a sucker for a double-breasted coat or blazer, so pieces of note were a have-to-feel-it-to-believe-it soft-green cashmere double-breasted coat and a 6-by-1-inch chocolate-brown cashmere double-breasted blazer. (It’s a double-breasted jacket with six buttons in which only the bottom button is functional for fastening the jacket in order to create a lower stance and alternatively vintage silhouette) chocolate brown cashmere double-breasted blazer. I could live in this store. It looks like someone might. They have three Alexander Calder pieces on loan from a top client. I was also given a tour of the pattern-cutting room, where Max Whitaker and co-founder Thom Whiddett were actually working on clients’ garments in real time.
I also popped into the Bugatchi showroom to check out its newest wares. I ran into Nordstrom men’s fashion director Jian DeLeon, who was also in the building doing the same. Of particular note was Head Of Design Omar Bertona’s special Made in Italy line inspired by Lake Como and the chill vibes of an Italian summer. Bertona held design posts at Isaia and Caruso prior, so I was curious to see what he cooked up this season. A personal favorite piece was this harrington-esque bomber finished with “a special Japanese fabric” as Bertona told me.
For those unaware, Standard and Strange is an independent American retailer with shops in NYC’s SoHo, Berkeley, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a global e-commerce business and a reputation for a fierce dedication to its brands, its craft and actually wearing and living in your clothes. So, whenever I receive an email from them to come check out one of its brands, I take them up on the offer. Case in point: Beijing design studio MotivMfg, in town for NYFW and dropping knowledge about its FW26 collection, along with some archival and upcoming SS27 pieces. I met up with co-founders Samuel Hsin and Daniel Gu and they walked me through their garments. Each piece had so many interesting details, thanks to Hsin’s familial history as tailors in Beijing. He grew up in the business, and in many ways, has taken his knowledge base much further than most designers. I recorded a lot of what we discussed, so look out for a more in-depth feature on the brand later this year.
Something I really dug was Motiv’s take on a traditional peacoat, which featured a strong tailored shoulder with a sloped seam, a unique hidden placket buttoning method and ornate stitching within the jacket’s lining that harkens back to the centuries-old traditional practice of personalizing one’s coat in this way. What shocked me most of all was the pricing. For the level of detail and craftsmanship, this stuff is downright affordable. Everything is made by hand by artisans in Samuel and Daniel’s factory. The two are very big on reframing the narrative that everything made in China is made by underpaid workers in squalid conditions.
Designer Sebastien Ami held a banger of a pop-up/party at one of my favorite stores in NYC, & son, where you might have noticed I took a fair amount of street style photos in last week’s round-up. Ami didn’t present a ton of stuff, which made a clean, concise selection of workwear-adjacent pieces. I’d been a fan of Ami’s work from afar, so I was pleased to put a face to the name. Plus, he brought out a wild mix of folks, including NBA player Saddiq Bey, rapper NLE Choppa, designer Connor McKnight and many of NYC’s menswear mainstays.
Blink and you’ll miss all of these pop-ups, as I unfortunately tend to. Most happen on the weekends when I am usually out East with my kids on dad duty while my wife works. But luckily, I found myself in town last Sunday and had time to check out the iconic Tokyo retailer Maidens Shop at the au courant LES staple Colbo. Some of the brands Maiden brought to NYC are easily found here at other retailers (Arpenteur, Comoli, James Coward and William Ellery) but I was keen to see my friend Oliver Church’s shirting in a new context. I interviewed him while visiting his showroom this past summer, where he had some completed pieces, but none for sale and none like the ones brought by Maidens. Church makes everything by hand in his Parisian studio, which takes him a good deal of time and effort. He’s become quite popular for those in the know, but he doesn’t overextend production to meet demand. So, the retailers that do carry Church’s clothes tend to sell out of them rather quickly.
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