Was NYFW boring? Maybe that was the point.
an ex-buyer defends plain and simple clothing as a business model.
The word on the street is that New York Fashion Week is dead. And as a native New Yorker who once was a buyer, I can see where that sentiment is born from. The last few seasons haven’t done much to keep America’s only industry recognized Fashion Week in an esteemed light. The perfect mix of everything that can taint your perceived prestige has been happening to this country post-pandemic and it has had a ripple effect across multiple facets of this nation, including the world’s regard for our taste. As far as fashion goes, here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the changes I’ve noticed in the last few years that have led the industry to take NYFW less seriously, for better or worse….
Celebrity and Influencer Overreach
Not to sound like a purist or someone who refuses to get with the times, but I cannot stress enough how differently the industry moved pre-and post- influencer. Yes, celebrities came first but the celebrity machine is a more battle tested system that has played well with the fashion industry more often than not. Then came the influencers who (for better or worse- often for both) completely upended the status quo and ways of doing business. They ushered in a different type of demographic; previously, buyers and editors would have sat front row at fashion week looking at collections to determine what people would buy in store that season. It was a far more serious gig than anything an influencer has been invited to do, respectfully— and with the loss of that serious business came the loss of respect. And celebrities? They’ve transcended their primary purpose as brand ambassadors and now some of them even take up space at fashion weeks to show their own collections, vanity projects that most turn their backs on after a few seasons. These types typically show at NYFW, which doesn’t help the credibility.
Global Disdain for the U.S.
This is pretty cut and dry. Sentiments about this country, outside of this country, are not great. A lot of people feel that the U.S. is a powder keg and they don’t feel safe traveling here. Then on the flipside, designers who can afford to move their shows across the globe are more than happy to do so. They themselves share a lot of those sentiments and coupled with the fact that they can still conduct business and have an excuse to get out of town is a no brainer.
The Rise of Showing ‘Off Calendar’
A few brave designers chose to show their collections outside of the typical window of NYFW and now it’s catching on. Once upon a time that was generally considered a bad business move, but increasingly it’s just the norm. There are a number of good reasons for it— famously, Marc Jacobs has shown off calendar for years now, citing burnout from trying to keep up with the hamster wheel of the normal fashion calendar. And after taking the leap and being just fine, his brand made other people feel empowered to do the same. This year for F/W ‘26, both Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs showed off calendar slightly ahead of fashion week— and since these are anchor brands in a sense, other smaller brands benefitted from being in their orbit. But if the most lucrative brands of the week show off calendar, do you really need to stay around in the hopes that you might see something from a smaller brand? It makes the case for staying around a lot harder— and the chances for discovery a lot smaller.
All of this has led us to where we are today. As of this article being written, the official NYFW website has not been updated at all to show the calendar for this past season. (The official Instagram page is still being updated however.) This definitely lends itself to the idea that the luxury fashion industry in America, which is for the most part exclusively rooted in NYC, is not worth the effort to keep alive.
So for the folks that are choosing to tough it out and are America based designers, the smartest option on the table is this: make boring clothes. To be clear, “boring” for me in this context is facetious— I think wearable clothes will always have a place in society but I can also acknowledge that very little walked the NYFW runways that would end up in a costume exhibit in 20 years. But I saw a lot of pieces that walked the runway that considered cost per wear, which is very important to consider in this current economic climate. For as much as the enthusiasts love haute couture type clothing, the reality is that haute couture is a money pit; it will never generate a profit. In my time in the industry, I often joked that “perfume pays for couture”. In so many words, the utilitarian items and the aspirational items are what fund those breath taking pieces that eventually end up in a museum exhibition. But the American designers of 2026 can’t think about what will end up in an exhibit 20 years from now; they have to be concerned about what people will buy today. And to that effect, they can’t be concerned about a presentation or show that will get a ton of ‘clicks and impressions’ if it doesn’t return back to them in the form of cold, hard cash.
Then, there’s the elephant in the room about who is even buying the collections now. Here’s the reality: one of the biggest wholesalers of luxury fashion in the U.S. is broke. The uncertain future of Sak’s Fifth, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman means that the financial future of a lot of American designers is uncertain right now, especially if a big part of their business model is wholesale. That means that mass appeal is crucial for American designers right now because if something is too niche, there are (seemingly) infinitely less doors to sell it in— or at least, infinitely less doors that sell at the same scale of Saks Global. So a black pencil skirt might not be very exciting but somehow we all have one in our closet…… and that’s kind of the point.
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