Last season, Kim Shui staged her New York Fashion Week show on a boat ride along the Hudson River. This time around, she brought showgoers to a Manhattan alleyway. Clearly, those are two very different settings (one of which has more rats), but both are iconic representations of New York City. For her Spring 2027 collection, Shui drew inspiration from various layers of performance. As she told Fashionista backstage after the show, “Being in New York, using the street as the runway, is performance itself.” The collection’s starting point was Peking Opera, a traditional Chinese performance art known for its expressive, dramatic performances and bright, elaborate costumes. This translates into the looks through the use of feathers — a signature trim seen in traditional Peking Opera performer costumes. The feathers then led Shui to draw inspiration from birds of paradise (the animals, not the plants) and peacocks. Sculpted headwear, Qipaos in saturated hu...
In a full-circle moment, Rachel Scott showed her Spring 2027 collection for Proenza Schouler Thursday at what used to be the Barneys women’s store — famously the very first retailer to carry the brand, then helmed by two recent Parsons graduates: co-founders Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez (now at Loewe). For her second runway since taking over as creative director last year, Scott was inspired by New York women and the liberties they take when getting dressed. “I see women in the middle of the day with a gown on and it’s totally normal and admissible. And I find that really inspiring,” she shared backstage. Models aptly represented those women as they traversed the venue’s spiral staircase — just as the brand’s early customers likely did circa 2002. During the show, several looks struck me as being unmistakably Proenza — this was likely heightened by the brand-new PS1 Walker, Scott’s reimagining of the b...