The 5-minute fashion week debrief: New York SS25 edition

It started not in New York City, but the Hamptons. Rather, on a coach to Ralphampton: a white picket-fenced preppy haven for polo shirt lovers, where Dr Jill Biden rubbed shoulders with Laura Dern who supped negronis with Tom Hiddleston who ate burgers with Usher. While some questioned the necessity of rebuilding the famous Polo Barn out in the sticks, for those who were PJ-ed to the east end of Long Island and back again, it was, to quote Vogue’s Elise Taylor, fun to go “full throttle into Lauren land”.

Tommy Hilfiger, too, coaxed editors out of Manhattan and onto the Staten Island ferry, where Wu-Tang Clan was tasked with closing another typically all-American show full of red, white and blue collegiate staples that Tommy had, he said, tried to sex up for spring/summer 2025. If nothing else, fashion press felt ahem, buoyed after a day that also saw Flavor Flav, Issa Rae, Mary J Blige, Zayn Malik and Camila Cabello hold court as Ib Kamara slam-dunked his way through another Off-White show in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s basketball arena.

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Stuart Vevers continued Coach’s own exploration of classic US archetypes after last season’s trinket-heavy edit adorned with taxi cab, Statue of Liberty and Big Apple keyrings. The opening look that proved tourist merch sells? An I Heart NY tee teamed with a navy blazer, slacks and scuffed-up sneakers. A new version of a 1969 Bonnie Cashin bag showed Vevers is bang on the money by cashing in on the vintage Coach revival spawned by TikTok. Tory Burch, too, made a nostalgia play with the relaunch of her Reva ballet flat – an accessory as synonymous with the brand as Burch is with New York Fashion Week.

Burch, who converted the old Domino Sugar Factory into an aqua-tiled swimming pool to showcase her sports-luxe edit of jersey dresses, bathing suit-cum-tank tops and streamlined tailoring, was just one of a handful of designers who’d been struck by Olympic fever this season. The standout athletic moment came, of course, via Willy Chavarría, who collaborated with Adidas on a trainer-led capsule inspired by NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Despite the major backing of a sportswear behemoth – a lifeline for countless labels – Chavarría made sure the emphasis was on the labourers and workers movements that had inspired his mainline collection created during a difficult time in US history. “It’s this country through the voice of the immigrants, and the people who make this motherf*cker run,” he clarified, while standing underneath a ginormous American flag in the middle of Wall Street.

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Equally energetic? The model who somersaulted down Collina Strada’s makeshift runway in a small private park in the East Village while chucking grass at Paramore’s Hayley Williams. “There’s a lot of chaotic energy with everything that’s happening on the planet and the election,” said founder Hillary Taymour, who transported show-goers into a safe jazz-filled haven for a brief moment. Her ruffled, romantic, asymmetric pastel-coloured clothes were easy to get lost in. Ditto the whispers of muted, cut-out garments modelled by the industry’s great and good at Eckhaus Latta’s dinner-turned-show.

Carefree dalliances were on the mind of Michael Kors, who also doubled down on romance, rather than the theatrics associated with his heavyweight peers. Kors, it turns out, had fallen for The Talented Mr Ripley (the new Netflix reboot), and journeyed to Ischia and Procida in search of inspiration for his “rustic opulent” spring/summer '25 line accessorised with basket bags containing copies of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, as a nod to the fact “print is not dead”. (Thanks Michael!)

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A cohort of craft-focused designers, such as Ulla Johnson, who worked with Lee Krasner’s estate; Wes Gordon, “chasing the wow” with a defiant edit of Carolina Herrera ballgowns; and Catherine Holstein, pushing herself to feel uncomfortable with experimental Khaite silhouettes, additionally demonstrated the importance of detail. But nowhere was this more prevalent than at Alaïa’s takeover of the Guggenheim. Pieter Mulier’s signature sculptural work matched the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building, with some wonderfully tactile dresses emulating that famous curve, and other tops snapped onto the torso like bracelets – true feats of technical engineering.

For all the explorations of what Americana means today and the showbiz hubbub New York is known for (Luar closed out the season with none other than Madonna), it was an outsider who won the week. The industry has only fallen harder for Pieter Mulier’s Alaïa after this history-making show away from home.