If clothing and fashion signal the larger message a person or a designer wants to send, then Fashion Week should be blinking bright red, screaming to a global audience. After all, it’s the industry's biggest stage, and there is so much clothing can say that our words sometimes can’t.
During New York Fashion Week’s Spring / Summer 2025 season, a handful of designers who showcased their collections certainly tried to make that happen, but, for the most part, we missed the moment. Throughout the week, a few artists, by way of their brands, called attention to issues like climate change, democracy, misogyny, homophobia, reproductive rights, and more. Much of it was beautiful, and some of it was even moving. But the question is: does it matter when the larger takeaway is to sell clothes within a deeply flawed system that prioritizes overproduction and capital over everything?
Maybe. The issue is that while there’s so much to say, NYFW is a quiet song led by a few young designers. The rest is radio silence.
Collina Strada, the sustainability-focused brand by Hillary Taymour, used her entire show setup to comment on the climate crisis. While the clothes were some of the designer’s best, with her signature muted tie-dye fabrics mixed in with plaid skirts and shirts, it was the idea that consumption has gotten out of control and we all need to “Touch Grass” that was on display. The soundtrack featured riffs on 2000s pop music, namely Ashlee Simpson’s “Pieces of Me,” with lyrics changed to lines like “enjoy the seasons now because they won’t last.” On the runway, fellow designer Mara Hoffman, who just shuttered her eponymous label for the very reasons on display, modeled the clothes.
Prabal Gurung wore a VOTE shirt as he came out to take his final bow. This was after he dedicated his show to Holi, the Indian celebration of color, spring, and love – and while it was planned before Vice President Harris became the nominee, it was undoubtedly connected.
Tanner Fletcher’s collection included a “Cat Lady,” wearing a pair of wide-leg jeans and a Peter Pan collar yellow top, accessorized with a ceramic cat on a leash. The look was perhaps a not-so-subtle (or maybe ironically accidental) nod to the current discourse around women without children, who VP nominee J.D. Vance called “childless cat ladies”.
Area designer Piotrek Panszczyk partnered with Tinder to create "Bans Off Our Bodies" shirts, which include a literal hand motif on some of the clothing that hit the runway. The two brands also made a significant donation to Planned Parenthood as they called attention to reproductive justice issues on the ballot this November.
Willy Chavarria’s show “América” was a celebration of his Mexican-American heritage and a nod to the farm workers of America, with reworked uniforms featuring cargo pockets and long keychains. “The inspiration was coming from movements like the United Farm Workers Movement, and thinking of those things along with the fact that we’re in a presidential election period,” he told Vogue’s Laia Garcia-Furtado.
Interestingly, farm work is an often overlooked aspect of the fashion industry, subject to exploitation and wage theft. This is one of the first times I’ve seen farm workers acknowledged during a major fashion event for their contribution to the industry.
Then, the eBay and Remake vintage shows highlighted the importance of choosing secondhand clothing.
While these statements were decidedly important, it’s not lost on me that they can quickly be drowned out by a celebrity sitting in the front row or walking down the runway at a big-name fashion show elsewhere during NYFW. Of course, there were plenty of beautiful collections, but why is it that the designers with the most to lose, because they are younger and less established, are the ones who have to take the risk to say something during their moment?
New York Fashion Week could be the epicenter of a changing fashion industry but as Teen Vogue’s Associate Editor Aiyana Ishmael put it to me: “It’s a lot of yap but never enough action.” Every year, the work needed to make the change seems deprioritized by those who could make effective change and instead tossed on the shoulders of those who seem to be screaming into the void. Sustainability is a quiet whisper among the few that care, the runways get less body diverse (aside from a handful of young designers like Bach Mai and Jackson Wiederhoeft), and all the attention that could be on the clothing and its messaging instead goes to the highest follower account. It can't be loud enough if only a few select designers choose to use it to call attention to the issues. And let’s be clear: this very industry perpetrates so many of them.
