At New York Fashion Week, the shows and designers held presentations in wild gardens, where butterflies landed on silk, feathers trembled with movement, and forests became both beautiful and threatening.
After seasons of uniforms, tailoring, and corporate dress, a softer proposition is emerging for Spring/Summer 2027. Lace, organza, silk, ruffles, feathers, and flowers build romantic worlds rooted in memory, fantasy, and nature.
Becca Flood: A Tribute to TigerLily
Courtesy of Becca Flood.
Courtesy of Becca Flood.
For her runway debut, designer Becca Flood found inspiration in TigerLily, the sweet collie who grew alongside her. The dog’s passing in May 2025 shifted Flood’s direction as she struggled to accept the loss. Designing the Spring/Summer 2027 collection “helped me get through the process. I wasn’t processing it; I wasn’t thinking about it.” What began during an “emotionally rough” period became a cathartic release—and ultimately, a collection centered on joy and curiosity.
Across 15 concentrated looks, the designer ignores external pressures and online trends in favor of instinct and emotion. Knitwear, central to Flood’s earlier collections and informed by a rural childhood surrounded by dogs, orchards, and nature, continues to evolve. Knit striped dresses and ruffled shirts appear alongside a plunging chartreuse backless dress finished with fringe. A waterlily houndstooth brings a denim edge to the classic motif, appearing across dresses and separates. Butterfly motifs connect the collection back to TigerLily, while necklace details nod to Flood’s earlier work.
The tribute extends beyond the clothes. Windows framed with white curtains, ornate rugs like those TigerLily once walked across, and primrose-and-ivy diffusers transform the runway into something intimate and domestic, a tender setting for a confident first runway outing.
Christian Cowan: Return to Old Hollywood
Photo by Launchmetrics. Courtesy of Christian Cowan.
Photo by Launchmetrics. Courtesy of Christian Cowan.
With the Manhattan skyline in the background, Christian Cowan presented Spring/Summer 2027 at The Glasshouse, looking to the Golden Age of Hollywood, when glamour was a language of both seduction and concealment. Using archival textiles from the 1920s and 1950s, Cowan merges them with the body through lace, crystals, and corsetry, with femininity emerging as the throughline.
Voluptuous silhouettes synonymous with the era appear throughout: a taffeta ball skirt suspended mid-fall, fluidly draped silk dresses, sharply tailored suits, and sheer dresses with garters peeking underneath. Off-the-shoulder details, plunging V-necklines, sparse fringe, and necklaces wrapped around the neck further play with states of dress and undress.
Daywear feels intentionally less polished, with distressed, frizzy, partially crimped hair and looks seemingly caught halfway through getting dressed. Eveningwear becomes fiercer and more certain: hair is slicked back and accessories fewer and more pointed. The transformation culminates in a red crystal-embroidered finale with exaggerated hip padding, illuminating the voluptuous silhouette of the era. Like Hollywood itself, glamour here becomes a transformation—from disheveled youth to a woman fully realized and certain of herself.
Libertine: Out of the Chaos and Into the Garden
Photo by Paolo Lanzi/GORUNWAY. Courtesy of Libertine.
Photo by Paolo Lanzi/GORUNWAY. Courtesy of Libertine.
Celebrating Libertine’s 25th anniversary at the National Arts Club, Johnson Hartig remains driven by curiosity and the pursuit of beauty wherever he finds it. Warholian butterflies land on ivory silk, Bloomsbury-esque patchwork covers linen, and a new drop-cloth print takes inspiration from paint-splattered clothes. Giant butterflies, silkscreened garden tools, and an embroidered topiary coat bring a playful dimension to the Sprint/Summer 2027 collection.
Across womenswear and menswear, Hartig moves freely between sequins, formalwear, florals, mesh, stripes, and butterfly adornments. Some looks are pared back; others exuberantly built up. Rather than abandoning old ideas, he allows familiar Libertine signatures to mingle with new discoveries. Titled “Out of the Chaos and Into the Garden,” the collection becomes just that, a garden where disparate ideas grow together, varied but connected by the same curiosity that has sustained Libertine for a quarter century.
Melke: The Garden
Courtesy of Melke.
Courtesy of Melke.
With closed eyes, Emma Gage thinks of her grandmothers and the time spent in their gardens—one overflowing with flowers, the other packed with vegetation and animals. Titled “The Garden,” Melke’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection brings the two together in earthy brown, sage, cream, and indigo, with flowing, unconstrictive silhouettes full of personality.
Artichokes, carrots, and asparagus mingle with florals, capturing the duality of the gardens and the possibilities within them. The season is about slowing down without forgetting the past, as Gage builds upon previous Melke signatures, like fish lures and fork fastenings.
Most striking is a sheer dress covered in individually applied feathers, “naturally collected from rescue emus,” after Gage met someone caring for two of the birds. Each feather is accented with a rhinestone, catching the light as it moves. “The movement, it’s beautiful and soft and romantic,” says Gage. That romance balances the collection’s earthier details and palette. Whimsical without becoming overwhelming, “The Garden” feels distinctly Melke, familiar silhouettes evolving naturally, much like a garden itself.
Pipenco: The Mother of the Forest
Photo by Colin Savercool. Courtesy of Pipenco.
Photo by Colin Savercool. Courtesy of Pipenco.
Lorena Pipenco looked to the Romanian folklore of Muma Pădurii, a shapeshifting woman of the forest whose monstrous appearance was used to frighten children away. Yet beneath that fearsome exterior is a protector of trees, animals, and the fragile ecosystem. Pipenco explores this tension between perception and reality, fear and softness.
Models walk through a runway of leaves, grass, and moss as the forest takes physical form around the body. Sculptural silhouettes protrude irregularly, some resembling the skeletons of trees, others forming colorful, tangled webs. Billowing skirts and rigid dresses contrast with sheer fabrics that shift and reveal themselves through movement.
The materials feel similarly raw and tactile. Burlap, fringe, crochet-like webbing, and twisted hems reminiscent of calla lilies appear alongside handworked textiles, including FABSCRAP donations given new life. Wood becomes both accessory and fastening for head coverings, while a UGG collaboration introduces cowhide and slouchy suede boots. Neither pristine nor overtly romantic, the Spring/Summer 2027 collection finds beauty in the strange and irregular, asking what exists beyond first appearances.
Allina Liu: The Clearing
Courtesy of Allina Liu.
Courtesy of Allina Liu.
For her namesake label, Allina Liu concentrated Spring/Summer 2027 into nine tightly edited looks, each with its own silhouette and sense of identity. Titled “The Clearing,” the collection considers what remains when outside noise—media, trends, expectation—is stripped away, leaving Liu to explore tension and connection through material.
Lace, organza, Chinese knots, and piping trace and interrupt the body, with contours occasionally taking on floral forms. From daywear to eveningwear, layers of ruffles and lace break the tension of a single plane of fabric, while unconventional cuts shift familiar silhouettes. Piping becomes almost like a drawn line, playfully defining the body without constraining it.
That delicacy carries into the presentation. Each model stands on a circular patch of green, connecting the collection back to the land, while an illuminated forest fills the surrounding walls. Fragile but deliberate, the clothes find their strength in the connections holding them together.
