Designers Rooted in Heritage & Craft: Christian Siriano, FFORME, and More

As New York Fashion Week winds down, a throughline of memory, place, and heritage emerges from some of the season’s most striking collections. Rooted in memory and sustainability, a debut collection from Becca Flood leans into heritage knitwear and Eastern European embroidery, telling personal stories through knit details. Old Hollywood glamour returns with the Christian Siriano show at Macy’s Herald Square, where sculptural gowns and tailored suiting pay tribute to Marlene Dietrich’s iconic style. Evoking the sultry energy of vintage Havana and Miami, Todd Snyder’s “La Buena Vida” delivers relaxed tailoring in sun-soaked fabrics made for the well-traveled modern man. At JASPER, nautical motifs like map prints and maritime stripes are elevated into future heirlooms, reflecting Kooshan Dunn’s dual heritage and editorial eye.

A sense of place defines FFORME’s latest outing, where windswept textures and liquid silhouettes mirror the untamed beauty of Cornwall and coastal New Zealand. Within a stark white cube at Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, COS distills their signature minimalism into sharp silhouettes and tonal layers designed to last beyond the season. This season, fashion’s past isn’t simply referenced—it’s reimagined with clarity, intention, and edge.

Becca Flood Weaves Heritage Into Her Debut

In her New York Fashion Week debut, Becca Flood presents a collection that feels less like a launch and more like a homecoming. Drawing from family heirlooms, thrifted treasures, and Eastern European embroidery patterns passed down through generations, Flood reimagines knitwear as both garment and artifact. There’s a quiet reverence in each piece—intentionally slow-made, emotionally rich, and deeply rooted in personal memory.

The collection plays in contrasts: rural heritage meets urban cool; domestic familiarity is recast in sharp silhouettes. A standout two-piece navy knit set, with white outlines of a home stitched across the fabric, blends nostalgia with wearability. Another look—featuring playful dog motifs—is inspired by the designer’s childhood pets and vintage pattern books, offering whimsy without losing depth. Flood’s approach is not just aesthetic, it is a philosophy. Produced through sustainable, small-scale methods, each look resists the pressure of trend cycles and mass consumption. Her clothes don’t chase attention; they earn it quietly, stitch by stitch.

Todd Snyder Finds the Good Life in Sueded Nostalgia

With views over Madison Square Park and a palette of sun-faded color, Todd Snyder’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection invites us into “La Buena Vida,” a breezy, cinematic vision of tropical leisure reimagined through modern tailoring. Drawing inspiration from mid-century Havana and 1980s Miami, Snyder conjures a world where the pace slows, the silhouettes lengthen, and style is effortless. Linen suits with dropped buttons, high-waisted trousers, and sueded jackets exude laid back confidence, while oversized lounge shirts with flamenco darts and awning stripes nod to vintage beach umbrellas and old resort glamor. 

The tailoring maintains its sharpness, but everything feels touched by sea air and softened by sunlight. Accessories complete the story: fisherman sandals, oversized sunglasses, and soft loafers channel an understated swagger, while jewelry by John Hardy adds a touch of worldly polish. It’s a collection for those who romanticize the golden hour, where every look feels like a passport to somewhere warmer, slower, and infinitely cooler.

JASPER Redraws Nautical Codes with Modern Heirlooms

Maritime tradition gets a refined, sculptural twist in JASPER’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, where designer Kooshan Dunn explores the sea not as destination, but as mythology. Stripes, map motifs, and architectural knits appear throughout, but nothing feels costume. Instead, each piece reads like a wearable artifact—crafted for movement, built for memory.

Dunn, who is of Iranian-German descent, filters classical nautical aesthetics through a personal lens, balancing heritage with reinvention. His years as an editorial stylist inform a sharp visual sensibility and a thoughtful approach to proportion, surface, and form.The result is a collection that feels at once timeless and deeply contemporary. JASPER, named for both the semi-precious stone and the Persian word for “treasurer,” embodies a philosophy of clothing as future heirlooms, wellmade pieces intended to be worn, re-worn, and eventually passed down. This is fashion not for the moment, but for the legacy.

FFORME Escapes to a Coastal Dreamscape

For Spring/Summer 2026, FFORME offers a collection that feels like a deep breath taken by the sea. Designer Frances Howie channels the natural beauty of Cornwall and New Zealand’s wild coastlines into a body of work that is less about destination and more about sensation like sun-warmed skin, salt air, wind-lifted fabric.

The palette is elemental: grass green, acid teal, bronze, ink, slate, pewter, sand, and calico. Fabrics are treated to mimic the natural world—washed, crushed, chintzed, and polished to reflect the shifting light of water and sky. Moulded rubberized garments and fluid slip dresses skim the body like surfwear, while a micro-pleated, high-shine camisole clings to skin like sea foam. Tailoring is crisp and elemental, yet softened by texture and movement. Jewelry by Alba Navarro, made from reclaimed bow strings and shaped into fringed collars, adds a quiet layer of craft. As a whole, the collection evokes a tactile, windswept escape—where earth meets water, and structure dissolves into motion.

Christian Siriano Channels Old Hollywood Glamour

This season, Christian Siriano turns the runway into a film still, presenting a Spring/Summer 2026 collection inspired by the cinematic elegance of Marlene Dietrich and the golden age of 1940s Hollywood. Held inside the historic Macy’s Herald Square Flagship, the show felt like a revival of the couture salon—quiet, focused, and rich with detail. Tailored suiting with sharp shoulders meets sweeping gowns with sculptural volume, tracing a visual evolution from black-and-white classics to full Technicolor drama. The silhouettes by Christian Siriano are bold yet romantic, reflecting Dietrich’s legacy as a style chameleon, equally at ease in masculine tailoring and feminine glamour.

Christian Siriano also used the moment to spotlight partnerships with purpose. A custom three-piece animal-print look created with Humane World for Animals features cruelty-free materials and a redesigned logo, emphasizing sustainability through statement-making design. Another unexpected collaboration with Capri Sun reimagines the Y2K pouch as a high-shine purse, adding a playful, pop-cultural twist. The result is a masterclass in drama and intention, where craftsmanship meets cinematic flair by Christian Siriano.

COS Finds Strength in Stillness and Structure

Inside the raw industrial bones of Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse, COS presented its Autumn/Winter 2025 collection in a stark white cube—a space stripped of distraction, allowing the clothes to speak through form, texture, and motion. A short, immersive light show opened the presentation, setting the tone for a lineup rooted in clarity and contrast. The brand’s signature restraint was sharpened this season with refined silhouettes in a muted palette of steel grey, deep navy, beige, black, and bone.

Materiality took center stage: matte leather met glossy shearling, crisp wools played against fluid knits, and each fabric was chosen for its ability to catch light and trace the body in motion. Women’s looks explored cocooning shapes, architectural draping, and sculptural high necklines, while menswear emphasized sharp shoulders, layered proportions, and quiet utility. Nothing felt forced, just essential. COS continues to distill luxury down to its most elemental parts, proving that stillness, when done with intention, can be its own kind of power.