What Is Your Definition Of Fashion?

At the heart of Prabal Gurung’s Spring 2027 collection, entitled “Ray of Light,” lies a sense of freedom. “Not freedom as a slogan or anything like that, freedom to inhabit your body and to have a sovereignty over it,” Gurung told Fashionista backstage ahead of his runway show on Saturday. This season, the designer is freeing the Prabal Gurung woman from a corset’s constriction in favor of gauzy gowns and loose-fitting cotton sateen dresses. For Spring 2027, the designer began by reflecting on different women a world apart from one other: the Nepali women visiting a dhunge dhara (a public stone tap for bathing and washing clothes) and a female Brooklynite dancing with a feather boa at a Zero Chill rave. Though these women may seem completely different on paper, Gurung recalled noticing the raver, who was “completely abandoned in her own joy,” donning the marigolds and jasmines that Nepali women often wear, and something clicke...

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...