Don’t let the naysayers fool you. New York Fashion Week is better than ever!
In addition to Henry Zankov’s debut at Diane von Furstenberg and the return of Thom Browne (who has decamped to Paris in recent years), the Big Apple boasts the freshest, most diverse and most exciting young talents showing this season.
Introducing the creatives shaping the culture.
London’s hottest designer actually grew up in Bedford, NY. He went to the UK to study fashion at Central Saint Martins, where, in 2017, model Adwoa Aboah asked him to create an ethereal ivory dress made out of “vintage bits” for the Met Gala. The day after the party, Rihanna called.
He launched his own label in 2021, and his upcycled T-shirt dresses, fringed party frocks and casually opulent fur-trimmed coats are made with vintage, reconstituted materials. His “Protect the Dolls” T-shirt — done to raise funds for the trans community — went viral in 2025, generating more than $1.3 million in sales.
He makes his NYFW debut this September.
Lorena Pipenco comes from a line of seamstresses; her mom and grandma still source fabrics for her from their native Romania.
After growing up in the UK, she attended Parsons and started Pipenco Lorena in 2023. The brand’s vibrant colors, inflated proportions (like its jumbo knit hats worn by Lauryn Hill) and flamboyant joie de vivre provide a defiant defense against “the harshness of our world.” Pipenco continuously draws on the Eastern European fairy tales and films of her childhood.
Her latest muse: folklore’s Muma Pădurii, “the feared mother of the forest” who is actually a “quiet protector of the natural world.”
New Jersey-raised Stephen Biga studied fashion at Parsons and worked at Gabriela Hearst, Proenza Schouler and Rodarte before launching Mel Usine in 2024.
The brand takes its name from the mythological medieval water nymph Mélusine, and its clothes are fittingly romantic, mysterious and sensual. Think voluminous-sleeved poet blouses, dramatic silk taffeta coats, rich jacquard suits and hand-pleated tulle collars.
Gracie Abrams recently sported one of the brand’s shimmery knit “chainmail” dresses on the cover of Vogue.
Whalen’s magical Fashion Week happenings include a birthing circle and a dinner where she papier-mâché’d a new dress onto a model.
A favorite of Rosalía and Julia Fox, Whalen cut her teeth at indie brands Eckhaus Latta and Bless before launching her “practice” in 2022. Her deconstructed apron dresses, stomacher tees and tea-stained antique-lace bloomers spring from her New England upbringing.
Like the resourceful quilters who taught her to sew, Whalen makes garments out of what’s already out there: deadstock fabrics, discarded bustles, old tablecloths and stained linens, which she stitches, waxes, dyes and resculpts in her Brooklyn studio.
As a fashion student at Parsons, Zimbalist experimented with biodegradable bioplastics. She mixed cornstarch with other natural substances like seaweed or pea powder in a crockpot in her Long Island City apartment and molded the resulting material into exquisitely strange jewelry, breastplates and vases (which she calls vessels).
She started showing these creations at New York Fashion Week in 2024, recently adding more commercial clothes to the mix.
For Spring 2027, she embedded her custom biomaterials into traditional textiles like cotton and silk, creating “sequin-like formations” inspired by patterns found in nature, “from butterfly wings to weathered bark.”
This Houstonian mixes Texas pizzazz with the “beauty, craftsmanship, history and the very personal memories” of his family’s homeland of Iran — a place, he says, “I am afraid could disappear.”
Taghi learned about tailoring at his immigrant grandfather’s shop, interned at Oscar de la Renta at 17 and further honed his skills at Monse, Proenza Schouler and Adam Lippes before striking out on his own in 2018. His NYFW debut last September took inspiration from the way Iranian women use scarves as self-expression.
For Spring 2027, he started with a textile based on a kilim rug, one of thousands his grandfather brought from his native country.
Anya Taylor-Joy, Emily Ratajkowski and Jennifer Lopez wear Anna Osmekhina’s mind-bending naked-looking optical illusions. The Kyiv costume designer started TTSWTRS (pronounced “tattoo sweaters”) in 2013, collaborating with tattoo artists on nude bodysuits covered in extraordinary markings.
She’s since expanded to include molded anatomical forms and sci-fi corsetry, making her NYFW debut for Fall 2025.
This season, instead of a typical presentation, Osmekhina — “a big fan of this planet” — will present a four-and-a-half-minute virtual reality film depicting a future where AI has altered our landscape and what we wear.
“It will be an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ experience,” she promises.
