Notes on New York Fashion Week
NEW YORK, United States — Outside of the commercial enterprise, in our humble opinion, much of the appeal of New York Fashion Week is in understanding the designer’s proposition for how one should dress in the future. Yes, it is our belief that fashion is intrinsically modernist even when replete with references from the past.
This Autumn / Winter 2026 season certainly lost its luster. Pinpointing the exact moment sweeps over what has been a gradual multi-year decline due to a confluence of factors: the rise of fast fashion, the flattening of aesthetic, and the dismantling of multi-brand retail. While not exclusive to New York Fashion Week, its recent showing necessitates a moment of reflection at large.
FAST & FASTER FASHION
The growing dominance of fast fashion forced a timeline crunch, where what was historically delayed gratification seen on the runway became available faster than ever before and in purportedly lesser quality. The dilution to brand identity due to the popularization of dupe culture seems like an unstopping train. That said, after more than two decades, it warrants recognizing the damage to an ecosystem once so small that it relied upon the creative ingenuity of the few to be consumed by an elite class. Fast fashion brought that creative ingenuity to the masses; at times with brand consent and cooperation — recall Karl Lagerfeld for H&M in 2004 — but it also contributed to an environment that meant economically sustaining independent creative businesses became increasingly more difficult.
bring back the niche
The beauty of the designer’s singular proposition meant that a consumer could opt in and opt out as suited their individualized preferences. Consider the niche culture of streetwear. Under Demna, Balenciaga launched the Triple S sneaker in 2017, off the back of founding his own brand Vetements in 2014, an inherently subversive brand that proliferated the concept of everyday clothing at luxury price positioning. A year prior, in 2013, the late Virgil Abloh founded his brand Off-White, experimenting with a paradigm that placed streetwear in the luxury conversation. The capitalistic strength of charging multiples for the mundane (a tee shirt, a track suit, and a pair of sneakers) was too tempting and all of a sudden, brands that had no business traversing in streetwear jumped on a sub-culture that would ultimately be brand dilutive and financially destructive given their respective heritages. The early 2020s and post-CoVID era exacerbated this homogeneity in aesthetic, moving from expensive streetwear to lockdown cozy comfort to “quiet luxury” spurred by a desire for exuberance. The lack of singularity in designer vision meant that the consumer no longer had to commit to anything. Whatever trend was trending could be found at whatever price point from whichever brand had commanded sufficient attention for the moment. The profit-driven uniformity complicated brand loyalty.
MULTI-BRAND MALAISE
The distribution model of multi-brand retail has faced immeasurable challenges, in many ways shaped by the aforementioned factors. Fast fashion offered an alternative that multi-brand wholesalers (with its on average 2X mark-up) could not sustainably compete with. Amongst their chain store set, the reversion to the mean in terms of merchandising assortment (in order to keep up with those trends) meant that severe discounting became the only competitive advantage and not to great success. The subsequent closures of Barneys New York and Lord & Taylor alongside recent bankruptcy proceedings for Saks Global (Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman) represent a troubled pathway for American brands seeking domestic department store support — support that will fundamentally underwrite their ability to survive.
AMERICAN exceptionalism?
These challenges are certainly not New York’s alone, but the lackluster feeling with this season’s offering reminded us of earlier eras when American fashion showed its strength on a global stage. In many ways, the infamous battle of Versailles kicked off that sense of national competence where a group of American designers bested European houses with a stronger sense of style and panache, consumer know-how, and intangible quality that would set them apart in the annals of fashion history.
Perhaps wistful, but in times where dreary social conditions demand joyful autonomy, we long for the optimism that fashion was made for. Even if American designers continue to cede the proverbial fashion battle this season, there are still a few glimmers of hope to reflect on — Diotima’s latest collection inspired by Wilfredo Lam, the re-emergence of Public School, celebrating a decade for Sergio Hudson and despite the odds, emerging talent progressing to leave their singular mark on the industry.
Lead image courtesy of Diotima.