It was the night before Valentine’s Day, and Christian Cowan had hearts in his eyes. Like, fully. “I just really, really, really love this collection,” he said, and you could tell he meant it in that slightly stunned way—like he surprised himself. He talked about approaching it differently than anything he’s done before, which, coming from him, feels both dramatic and… kind of brave. The biggest shift? Time. Actual time. The luxury of not sprinting headfirst into the abyss. Standing in a stairwell in a West Chelsea studio before the show, Cowan admitted it’s never been harder to be a young, independent brand right now, with the cost of everything—production, rent, air, existence—going up, up, up.