New York Fashion Week began in a heat wave and ended in the first chill of autumn, but across a week of debuts, presentations, and spectacle, some of its most compelling collections turned inward. These designers approached clothing as a physical expression of something less tangible—emotion, memory, identity, music, fantasy, and transformation. Through material experimentation, theatrical presentations, and deeply personal references, Spring/Summer 2027 made the psychological something that could be worn.
PDF: Basketball as a Cultural Language
Photo by BFA. Courtesy of PDF.
Ian Jeffrey. Photo by BFA. Courtesy of PDF.
At PDF, basketball is less a sport than a cultural language connecting fashion, music, and community. Spring/Summer 2027 draws on the athletes, musicians, and cultural figures who have pushed the game beyond the court, translating its looseness and self-expression into a distinctly PDF silhouette.
Proportions are generous and sporty, with denim, cotton, basketball shorts, and graphic prints creating a colorful wardrobe built around movement. At its center, a PDF x Champion collaboration brings the Italian label’s perspective into conversation with an established American sportswear vocabulary. Rather than treating basketball purely as visual reference, PDF considers the culture surrounding it—the style, attitude, and sense of belonging that travel between court and street.
T’ABBE: Escapism as Inheritance
Courtesy of T’ABBE.
Courtesy of T’ABBE.
Across 19 looks, Talia Abbe turns intergenerational trauma into nostalgia, fantasy, and indulgence. Studying her family history and the movement of aesthetics across generations, Abbe begins with unrealized designs and transforms them through T’ABBE’s theatrical vocabulary.
Exaggerated volumes and inflatable latex elements recur in primrose pink, deep wine, lemon meringue, and powder blue, lending the collection an almost confectionery quality. Silhouettes move between ease and exaggeration, vulnerability and fantasy, allowing escapism to emerge from heavier subject matter. An ongoing collaboration with Bring Change to Mind extends the conversation to destigmatizing mental health among young people. By indulging in nostalgia rather than retreating from it, Abbe brings a welcome theatrical edge to the seriousness of the week.
KidSuper Studios: The 2026 People’s Runway
Courtesy of KidSuper Studio.
Courtesy of KidSuper Studio.
Returning for its second year, The People’s Runway brought five emerging designers to Brooklyn Borough Hall for an official NYFW presentation: Kuai Li, Lamin Rey Jaiteh, Laurel Tiange Fang, Moses Aina, and Roderick Reyes. Selected from more than 200 applicants, their collections moved from Li’s sculptural exploration of protection and vulnerability to Fang’s kinetic, water-inspired forms and Reyes’s use of security tags and anti-theft materials.
Converse returned for its second year, placing fat-laced Chuck Taylor Throwbacks throughout the collections. Presented by KidSuper’s Colm Dillane and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the initiative pairs runway exposure with mentorship and funding for emerging talent. Wyclef Jean closed the night before welcoming Ms. Lauryn Hill for a surprise performance.
Kate Barton: Confidence in Color
Courtesy of Kate Barton.
Courtesy of Kate Barton.
Taking advantage of the CFDA calendar’s first 9 p.m. slot, Kate Barton brought Spring/Summer 2027 to The Roof at PUBLIC Hotel. Papaya, turquoise, pink, lavender, lemon yellow, powder blue, pistachio, and ivory create an unusually vivid palette.
Color is playful, but construction remains controlled. Sculptural draping appears to fall naturally from the body, each fold engineered to hold its place. Trompe-l’œil shadows and highlights add dimension and subtly alter proportions, while stripes dominate knitwear and silk and sequins offer solid flashes of color. Styling remains spontaneous—a T-shirt with a skirt, scarves, bags, and jewelry loosely added. The result is grounded in the ease of feeling confident in one’s own skin.
Advisry: America, Still
Courtesy of Advisry.
Courtesy of Advisry.
For its sixth runway show, Advisry takes on a weighty idea, viewing the present through the lens of 50 years ago and the recurring belief that “every generation believes it is living through the end of the world,” according to the show notes. Across three acts, separated by dimmed lights and spoken passages, Keith Herron considers how people respond to that pressure—succumbing to it, coping with it, or ultimately transcending it.
The clothes follow that progression. Leather has a strong presence, from cropped croc-effect boleros to full matching sets, while workwear-coded flannel is recast in a more formal context. Suiting becomes more fluid across menswear and womenswear, with cropped, slightly flared jackets, brooches, and belts repurposed as shirt accessories. A partnership with HOKA® introduces the street-ready Clifton UTL in multiple colorways, including a runway-exclusive iteration made with deadstock fabric, bridging utility and sartorialism. Bags are abundant, while unexpected details—like pockets shaped as protruding hands—add a surreal edge.
By the final act, tension gives way to optimism. Sequins, rhinestones, and glitter appear on shorts and sweaters. Cropped tweed coats with billowing shoulders and colorful furry gloves further soften the collection. From leather to sparkle, the wardrobe becomes a reflection of the human experience: enduring pressure, adapting, and emerging transformed.
Caroline Zimbalist: Nature or Painting?
Courtesy of Caroline Zimbalist.
Courtesy of Caroline Zimbalist.
Continuing her experimentation with biomaterial embellishments and natural-fiber textiles, Caroline Zimbalist looks again to forms already perfected by nature. This season, the optical effects of Seurat’s pointillism find an organic parallel in the markings of butterfly wings, orchid petals, seeds, nuts, and tree rings.
Embedded into traditional textiles, biomaterials harden into irregular formations that can appear almost painted onto the clothes. Glossy, lacquer-like surfaces catch the light, while speckled patterns, lace, and trims heighten the painterly effect. Elsewhere, the materials seem to grow directly from the garments, disrupting construction and fluid draping with organic protrusions.
The idea of shedding becomes central to Spring/Summer 2027. Just as insects leave behind exoskeletons, surfaces appear to develop, crack, and reform. Some looks are only lightly marked; others are almost consumed by biomaterial. The collection becomes a process of metamorphosis itself, somewhere between textile, painting, and living form.
TTSWTRS: Wonderland
Courtesy of TTSWTRS.
Courtesy of TTSWTRS.
On the rooftop of Nine Orchard, with the city as its backdrop, TTSWTRS explored the intersection of fashion, film, technology, and imagination. A collaboration with Katsukokoiso.ai centered on a film that moves through surreal landscapes of soft light and animals, an almost heavenly calm that gradually dissolves through excess and disconnection from the natural world. Yet the story shifts again, imagining a future where people and the planet learn to coexist, and “Wonderland” becomes a beacon of hope.
The models become figures within this world, which guests could enter through headsets. Raffia, vivid pink organza layered like feathers, florals, and cascading fringe give the clothes a similarly surreal quality. Rather than lying flat against the body, materials become sculptural and three-dimensional, tracing its curves and extending beyond them.
Across dresses, fitted bodysuits, and more casual daywear, the effect is of a main character stepping out of the screen. Nothing seeks to disappear or conceal itself. Instead, the clothes embrace visibility, carrying “Wonderland”’s optimism from the virtual into the physical world.
HILÁ: Fire as Rebirth
Photo by Ben Abarbanel. Courtesy of HILÁ.
Photo by Ben Abarbanel. Courtesy of HILÁ.
Designer Hila Arshadnia builds on her love of “harsh materialism that feels a little bit masculine,” transforming it into something “sensual and feminine.” Leather anchors the Spring/Summer 2027 collection, extending previous experiments with laser-cutting through crochet, with the doily as a starting point. The process turns something “stiff, harsh and industrial” into eveningwear that feels increasingly intricate and feminine.
Lilith provides the collection’s other narrative thread, moving through self-actualization before entering a phase of fire and purification. That transformation appears throughout the garments as fire becomes a symbol rather than destruction itself. “This was fire as rebirth,” Arshadnia explains. “She becomes into this phoenix figure, and becomes anew.” Rigidity gives way to delicacy, and destruction to renewal.
