What better way for New York Fashion Week to begin than with some of the greatest hits of one of its best exports? Kicking off the autumn/winter 2026 season was Marc Jacobs, whose self-referential collection – this is, after all, the man who once created a diffusion line called Jacobs by Marc Jacobs for Marc by Marc Jacobs, in collaboration with Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs – plucked from his spring/summer 1993 Perry Ellis and eponymous autumn/winter 1995 offerings, as well as Prada’s spring/summer 1996 and Helmut Lang’s autumn/winter 1995 proposals. What felt new – though, as Jacobs would remind us, nothing ever is, and isn’t that bittersweet? – was the deliberate shapelessness of the silhouette: loose enough to slip your fists into the waistbands on CBK midi-skirts.
What with all the ’90s throwbacks – not least an audience that included Sofia Coppola, Monica and Anna Sui – it felt almost (almost) like a return to the time when New York was at its most influential. Whether that can be sustained over the coming days remains to be seen, but it shouldn’t be impossible: an Anne Hathaway-attended Ralph Lauren also presented off-schedule, before Rachel Scott’s debut at Proenza Schouler even sounded the starting whistle on the CFDA-approved calendar.
From there, more of the season’s biggest brands – including Coach, Tory Burch and Carolina Herrera, with its attendant circus of A-listers – continued the momentum, while the likes of Collina Strada and Colleen Allen shifted the focus away from household names and towards the next generation of talent intent on reinvigorating the New York scene all over again.
Keep an eye out here for all the stars spotted on the front rows of New York Fashion Week, here.