Like it or not (and plenty of people do not), artificial intelligence is not going anywhere. The discourse is loud, the anxiety is real, the creative-industry handwringing is nonstop—but Stacey Bendet? Fully on board. Last season she called the current wave of tech innovation an “inspiration revolution.” This time, she went further and built an entire collection on it, very confidently naming it The Gilded Age.
Like it or not (and plenty of people do not), artificial intelligence is not going anywhere. The discourse is loud, the anxiety is real, the creative-industry handwringing is nonstop—but Stacey Bendet? Fully on board. Last season she called the current wave of tech innovation an “inspiration revolution.” This time, she went further and built an entire collection on it, very confidently naming it The Gilded Age.
Being one of the few genuinely young, emerging designers on the CFDA calendar already puts Kate Barton ahead of the curve. But this season she leaned into that advantage—hard—especially on the tech front. For her fall 2026 appointments, she skipped the traditional showroom shuffle entirely and turned the whole thing into an experiment in augmented reality and AI. Upstairs, guests scrolled through images of the collection on a model set against an AR backdrop, courtesy of Amazon.
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.
During the pandemic, a Y2K revival came and went; however, 7 for All Mankind’s newly appointed creative director, Nicola Brognano, is not ready to give the renaissance up just yet. Though 7 for All Mankind is generally known as an accessible mall brand, Brognano wanted to use styling to widen the label’s possibilities.
“It’s almost 25 years now that I’ve been in business,” Ulla Johnson said, and you could hear the weight of that number land. Not triumphantly. More like… wow. With every new horrifying global crisis (and there have been many, thank you very much), she talked about having to recommit—again and again—to the things she actually believes in. Strength and softness. Beauty and power not canceling each other out. Colour. Craft. Fabric that makes you stop and feel something. The good stuff. The things worth defending when everything else feels a little on fire.
Pandemic time straight-up stole Michael Kors’s 40th anniversary party back in February 2021. Gone. Vaporized. No champagne, no speeches, no victory lap. So now—half a decade later—it’s 45, and honestly? That feels like something worth lingering on. Only Ralph Lauren and Norma Kamali on the New York Fashion Week calendar have been doing this longer, which is… not nothing. Talking about longevity in the days leading up to the show, Kors shrugged it off in the most Kors way possible: consistency, paired with inconsistency. Which sounds like a contradiction until you realize it’s basically been his whole deal.
Rachel Scott was technically named creative director of Proenza Schouler just days before last September’s New York Fashion Week show, but today? Today felt like the real beginning. This was the first collection she actually touched from start to finish—no handover energy, no transitional fog—stepping fully into the role left behind by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who’ve since packed up for Paris and the Loewe dream. The room showed up for her, too. Maria Cornejo. Veronica Leoni from Calvin Klein. Raul Lopez of Luar. A proper designer roll call. Which feels even more impressive when you remember Scott has her own Diotima show in four days. Casual.
Hillary Taymour called the show The World Is a Vampire and, honestly… where’s the lie. Nobody in the room was about to argue—least of all the Collina Strada girlies she gathered up tonight, half of whom were wearing her signature bug-eye sunglasses indoors, at night, like absolute pros. Commitment to the bit. Respect. Taymour has always been very good at this part—the world-building part. From the bug sunglasses to the bug rings (collectible! obsessive! slightly unhinged!) to shoe collabs with Puma, Vans, and Ugg, she’s built a whole ecosystem.
Pinned to Stuart Vevers’s fall moodboard were all the usual suspects and then some: a baby-faced Jodie Foster, a sun-bleached California skateboarder, ’70s flares, and—because of course—a still from The Wizard of Oz, a movie he’s watched every year since he was a kid (which feels important, actually). Meanwhile, Coach’s Q2 numbers are doing their own little victory lap, skipping merrily down a very real gold brick road. Call it design wizardry. Call it timing. Either way, the brand is very much not lost in the woods.
