Standout shows of New York Fashion Week SS26, as they happened
It felt like there was an injection of energy to New York Fashion Week (NYFW) this season after some sleepy recent editions that have caused some commentators to advocate for a once-a-year approach, or a reduced schedule centred around a handful of venues. A large part of this momentum is down to the return of Calvin Klein to the schedule last season under new creative director Veronica Leoni – prior to the show, the brand hadn’t held a runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018. If the collection wasn’t a comprehensive home run, Leoni’s debut was a confident opening gambit, one which mined the minimal sensibility of the brand’s 1990s heyday (indeed, Mr Klein himself gave his seal of approval from the front row). She showed her sophomore collection on Friday (12 September), exploring the ‘tension between a deep sense of intimacy and the taste for exposure’ – read our review below. Other big-hitters of the week were Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Coach, Off-White and COS, the latter returning to the city after showing in Brooklyn last September.
Elsewhere, excitement built around the city’s emerging talent: Zankov hostede its first show after the presentations of previous years (founder Henry Zankov is known for his inventive knitwear, gaining traction earlier this year after a collaboration with Troye Sivan’s lifestyle line Tsu Lange Yor), while Rachel Scott of Diotima is holding her own first show (the designer, who honed her craft at Costume National in Milan, has also recently been named the new creative director of Proenza Schouler). Other highlights included Eckhaus Latta, Luar and Area, where new creative director Nicholas Aburn came to the brand a strong pedigree – his last role was at Balenciaga, working on the house’s lauded couture lines under Demna during the Georgian designer’s tenure.
Here, reported from New York, Wallpaper* picks NYFW’s standout shows – as they happened.
Tory Burch
(Image credit: Tory Burch)
Tory Burch said that her S/S 2026 collection was one of joy and optimism, a colour-saturated response to the ‘dark times we are all experiencing’. Continuing the free-wheeling approach to collection-making which has defined recent seasons – after stepping down as CEO in 2019 she has devoted all her time to the creative process – her latest outing began by thinking about the idea of a well-loved item of clothing, figured in purposely creased and crumpled fabrics, knitwear which was frayed at the edges, or references to vintage pieces that mean something to her personally (a piped-edge blazer was inspired by a jacket worn by her father). Elsewhere, she continued to put a twist on American classics: button-up knits were folded at the collar and worn away at the cuff, pointed pumps adorned with barbed-wire metal hardware, while pleated skirts were dropped at the waistline and cinched with belts (a series of flapper-style dresses, appearing at the close of the show, had a similar silhouette).
‘With this dark time we are all experiencing I wanted to feel joy in optimism, but also with a realness to things,’ she said after the show. ‘I think with each season it’s more of a dialogue, we’re learning more about what women are craving and what they want. So hopefully these pieces have longevity, where people take them and make them their own. That’s the best thing about our collections – I love seeing people make it theirs.’
READ: ‘I want to feel optimism’: Tory Burch hopes her latest collection sparks joy
(Image credit: Tory Burch)
Diotima
(Image credit: Diotima)
Backstage after showing her first runway show for Diotima – previously, the New York-based label has shown via a series of intimate presentations – founder and creative director Rachel Scott said that the collection was about channelling her anger at the state of America in new ways. ‘I’m still extremely angry, but I think that the manifestation of this anger is different this time, it’s coming through in a much more rebellious way,’ she elucidated, looking towards the subversive spirit of carnival – from Brazil to Notting Hill and her native Caribbean – for inspiration.
‘I was really thinking [about] how carnival [came from] resistance against oppression, but it’s also very subversive, sensual – it’s undefinable,’ she said, noting that carnival emerged as a response to ‘colonial domination… [it is] an anti-imperialist act, conjuring freedom where none was granted’. In the collection – a standout of the week so far – this spirit was channelled in a liberatory use of colour (‘lime’, ‘magenta’, ‘grenadine’, ‘guava’ were some of the shades she name-checked), while artist Peter Minshall’s ‘ghost-like’ sketches of his carnival costumes informed the season’s silhouettes. Texture was also eclectic: skirts were macramé or shredded, giving the illusion of ruffles, while crystal-adorned mesh knits were cut into body- and swimsuits.
It made for a buzzy runway debut, all the more so as the Jamaica-born, New York-based designer was earlier this month named creative director of Proenza Schouler after the departure of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez for Loewe (her first full collection will be shown in February at New York Fashion Week). After the show, she insisted Diotima would continue despite the new role: ‘It will absolutely continue – it’s something for life,’ she smiled.
(Image credit: Diotima)
Coach
(Image credit: Photography by Giovanni Giannoni via Getty Images)
Despite admitting backstage that he’s ‘not a morning person’, British designer Stuart Vevers – who was recently awarded an OBE – began his S/S 2026 collection for Coach thinking about dawn breaking across New York City. ‘I like the idea of something that was looking forward, like a new day,’ he said of the collection, which had a feeling of lightness in its colour palette – monochrome white looks featured throughout – and textures, which included a series of sheer tulle dresses decorated with balloons, clouds and stars. Indeed, these also suggested a mood of romance, one also captured in prints of vintage postcards of places Vevers had visited across America (among them Seattle, Las Vegas and Phoenix) and the soundtrack, a manipulated version of Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ (‘I wanted to capture this feeling of emotion’, he said). The idea of wear also featured throughout the collection, in torn or scuffed garments, or those constructed from Coach deadstock, something he said he linked with the contrasting ‘grit and polish’ of New York, as well as the way he will often see someone walking around the city carrying a battered Coach bag from decades before. ‘I’m definitely of the opinion that things don’t have to be new and perfect to be desirable,’ he said. ‘I see people walking around with Coach bags that just happen to be 50 or 60 years old, and I think they’re beautiful.’
(Image credit: Photography by Giovanni Giannoni via Getty Images)
COS
(Image credit: COS)
After showing its S/S 2025 collection in an Athens marble quarry earlier this year, London-based label COS returned to New York this season, taking over the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn and transforming its industrial interior into a vast white box (‘a spectacle of modernist elegance,’ said the brand). Watched on by a starry guest list that included Naomi Watts, Jodie Turner-Smith and Lauryn Hill – a testament to the investment that COS has put into these twice-yearly runway shows – clothing channelled a mood of restrained glamour, with creative director Karin Gustafsson saying she looked towards Christian Dior’s New Look for inspiration (in the collection, this was referenced in the narrow sculpted waistline and wide neckline which ran throughout). Other silhouettes suggested a feeling of protection in their enveloping silhouettes – robe-like overcoats and shaggy faux fur jackets were a reminder this was an A/W 2025 collection, as opposed to the S/S 2026 collections being shown elsewhere in New York – while layers of diaphanous tulle provided a feeling of juxtaposition (‘a study in contrast, materiality and craftsmanship,’ the collection notes described). It made for a desirable, wear-off-the-runway collection – something (nearly) possible, with several pieces from the show available from COS’ website directly after the show.
(Image credit: COS)
Khaite
(Image credit: Khaite)
Cate Holstein said that this season she was thinking about the idea of naivety: the teenage impulse to tear and deconstruct, to destroy something to make it new. It lent the collection a feeling of rawness: ladylike dresses were sliced across the chest to reveal layers of tulle trapped beneath, while flourishes of handcraft – from chunky woven dresses and skirts to floral embroidery – embraced the idea of imperfection. ‘I used to cut things up all the time when I was a teenager and wear them a certain way, and I wanted to go back to that,’ she said after the show, saying that the collection was about embracing a feeling of risk. Indeed, an undercurrent of danger ran through the collection (Holstein said David Lynch continued to be an influence, while the dark ‘underbelly’ of American society was another inspiration point), encapsulated by the monolithic show set – a jet-black pool of water dotted with jagged glaciers that hissed and steamed as the show began (the set was a collaboration with Holstein’s husband, the architectural designer Griffin Frazen). Tough leather jackets, wide across the shoulder or with asymmetric slanted fastenings, captured a similarly cinematic mood, while an atmospheric soundtrack spanned Blur, Pulp, Roy Orbison, Alan Vega and Chopin’s Nocturnes.
(Image credit: Khaite)
Eckhaus Latta
(Image credit: Eckhaus Latta)
Recent seasons have seen Eckhaus Latta discover new clarity, stripping back the extraneous towards cleverly edited collections which are made for the realities of city life. Designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta continued this line of thinking for Spring/Summer, albeit with a newfound feeling of elegance – particularly in the all-black opening looks, which presented their take on eveningwear. For men, this comprised languid tailoring and featherweight knits, accessorised with pouches on the waistband and worn with leather slides; for women, sinuous dresses in tulle or dotted with sequins (in typical Eckhaus Latta style, there was still a mood of dishevelment in raw-cut edges and trailing pieces of fabric). Moving on from black, the collection shifted towards eruptions of colour – a layered T-shirt and vest came in vivid-hued tangerine, floating tulle trousers in canary yellow, and a pair of carpenter jeans, cinched with a studded belt, in bright ‘poppy’ red – with elements of play coming in T-shirts with square-shaped cut-outs, revealing the male models’ bare chests beneath.
As ever, the Eckhaus Latta community remains tightly knit – friends of the label, like the artist Martine Syms and the writer Natasha Stagg, walked the show, with the usual coterie of well-wishers out front – but outside of the showspace, this was an astute, desirable collection which has wide appeal.
(Image credit: Eckhaus Latta)
Calvin Klein Collection
(Image credit: Calvin Klein)
Veronica Leoni staged her sophomore outing for Calvin Klein at the Brant Foundation in the East Village, its bare brick walls an apt backdrop for a collection which was – save for some playful flourishes, like pairs of giant bouncing pom poms – an exercise in reduction. Cue look one, a sharp pinafore dress, bare at the back and held up with minuscule spaghetti straps – a garment which appeared straight from Calvin Klein’s 1990s playbook (Leoni has continually talked about returning to the sensually charged minimalism of the namesake designer’s heyday). The Italian designer, formerly of The Row, said that this season she was thinking about the ‘tension between a deep sense of intimacy and the taste for exposure’ – a thematic thread which in the collection was explored through the idea of underwear. After all, what is more famous than than the exposed waistband of a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts? Here, that signature elastic waistband was woven into a prim, ladylike dress, while décolletage-bearing tailoring showed the tiniest a sliver of bra top beneath. As for intimacy, overcoats were cut like robes and wrapped around the body – like that worn by Mariacarla Boscono, which appeared like cotton but was actually constructed from trompe l’oeil leather. Other intriguing plays with fabrication added new layers to her vision – materials were purposely creased and crinkled, or constructed from sharply sliced streamers of leather – though occasionally these more experimental flourishes seemed to stray from the idea of street-level reality that Leoni seeks (in her parlance, a ‘magnified normality’). That said, you could picture the multitude of accessories worn by anyone in attendance – whether the supersoft slouchy loafers, thong flip-flops adorned with gobstopper jewels, or pouch-like handbags, playfully decorated with streamers of leather and sets of keys, a nod to on-the-go New York City life.
(Image credit: Calvin Klein)
Area
(Image credit: Getty Images)
There was a celebratory mood before you even walked through the door of Nicholas Aburn’s debut runway show for Area: the invite was a scratchcard complete with a coin to reveal your potential fortune (in his world, everyone’s a winner). Besides that, the American designer comes to the young New York label after the departure of co-founder Piotrek Panszczyk with plenty of goodwill: a graduate of London’s Central Saint Martins, he’s worked at numerous fashion houses as part of the design team, most recently at Balenciaga’s couture studio under Demna.
Mining the party-girl attitude the 2016-founded label was built on – and indeed named after, with Area a reference to the cult 1980s New York nightspot – Aburn presented a riotous collection that the designer said was about ‘having a good time’, figured through bombastic undulating forms constructed from blown-up twists of metallic streamers, Borrowers-sized sequins and plenty of crystals (a longtime Area signature). Even in their sense of play, these sculptural pieces demonstrated plenty of technical skill, while more ‘everyday’ garments were interspersed – from dresses constructed from pieced-together basketball jerseys (albeit adorned with more sequins) to pedal-pusher cargo shorts inspired by Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw (one of the season’s references after a recent rewatch). In its sense of irreverence and similarly twisted party-girl archetypes, there felt an affinity with August Barron (formerly All-In), a no-holds-barred label that is based in Paris. Its founders, Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbøhas, recently nominated for the LVMH Prize, have built a cult following on that formula – in New York, this energy has been much needed. With this spirited debut, Aburn looks the person to bring it.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Michael Kors
(Image credit: Michael Kors)
Last season, Michael Kors drew inspiration from the polished interiors of his Madison Avenue store; this season, in a new time slot at the start of the week, it was out of the city and towards the ’earthy elegance’ of his beach house (albeit a simulacrum constructed in Terminal Warehouse in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood, complete with wind-weathered wood panelling, cacti and paper lanterns). Kors said the collection was in part inspired by legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland’s assertion that ‘the eye has to travel’ in order to find inspiration, as well as his own recent trips to Norway, Morocco and across the United States.
‘The simple truth is that escapism helps us tremendously,’ Kors asserted post-show, echoing a thematic thread which ran through the menswear collections earlier this year, from Prada to Emporio Armani. ‘So many of us live urban lives, and when you travel, you learn about yourself, you learn about other people, you learn about life. It’s nature that always knocks us out, but balanced with elegance and sophistication – that’s everything I want this collection to convey.’ He did so mostly through the collection’s hues, which spanned deep, earthy browns and warm ecru, to those evocative of sunrises and sunsets. Silhouettes, meanwhile, captured Kors’ brand of easy glamour, from breezy kaftan shirts and slouchy, safari-tinged tailoring to handkerchief dresses constructed from stitched-together silk scarves, as if collected over a summer of travel.
(Image credit: Michael Kors)
Ralph Lauren
(Image credit: Ralph Lauren)
After last September’s takeover of the Hamptons, Ralph Lauren opted for an altogether more intimate – though no less starry – affair for his spring 2026 runway show, staged in the American megabrand’s Madison Avenue headquarters on the eve of fashion week. Watched by his usual coterie of celebrity fans – the guest list included Oprah Winfrey, Laura Dern and Priyanka Chopra – the collection that followed was Ralph Lauren 101, presenting a glossy vision of American style that feels current (the preppy look has appeared everywhere from Dior to Celine in recent seasons; Mr Lauren has long been synonymous with the style). ‘Strength and sensuality,’ said the designer in his collection notes, a thematic focus that led to a crisp, at points even minimal, showing from the designer: graphic tailoring game in optic white and bold red, layered looks came in cohesive monochrome hues, while gowns had a simplicity of silhouette (whether flared and voluminous, with narrow spaghetti straps, or wrapped around the body, Grecian style). Meanwhile, ties, striped shirts and pleated shorts – straddling masculine and feminine – were a nod to Ralph Lauren signatures. With a recent CFDA nomination for womenswear designer of the year being announced – if he wins, it will be his tenth such award – it was an argument for doing what you do best: at the end of the financial year in March 2025, the brand posted a seven per cent rise in revenue, bucking the difficulties faced by American brands elsewhere. As he took his final bow – clad in a battered brown leather bomber and signature aviators alongside his wife, Ricky Lauren – he was every bit worthy of the jubilant applause.
(Image credit: Ralph Lauren)
Proenza Schouler
(Image credit: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler)
Shown via a presentation held the day prior to New York Fashion Week’s start, Proenza Schouler marked the first debut of the month – though it came with an asterisk. The S/S 2026 collection was made ‘in collaboration’ between the New York-based label’s studio team and Rachel Scott, the Brooklyn-based designer who was made creative director of the brand earlier this month after the departure of founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who have headed to Loewe (she will show her ‘full creative debut’ next February). At her own New York-based label Diotima – which will host its debut runway show in Brooklyn later in the week – Scott is known for sinuous, body-clinging silhouettes combined with moments of beading, crochet and embellishment inspired by her home country of Jamaica; here, hints of her tenure came in chunky-knit dresses in intriguing bouclé yarns, bright solar prints, and colourful accessories, from bags adorned with fronds of raffia to shoes sprouting with flowers. Scott described the collection as a ‘soft undoing’ – a mood captured in edges left purposely raw, or knits unravelling – which embraced the satisfying eclectism that has long defined the label. It made for a strong opening act, leaving us intrigued to see her vision unfold.
(Image credit: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler)
Stay tuned for more from New York Fashion Week S/S 2026.
TOPICS
link
