Anna Sui ❤ the ’90s
All designers have a post-show ritual. In the ’90s, this was Anna Sui’s: “The monitor very rarely worked,” she explains, “so my father would take pictures of everything that came out. Because my show was usually in the evening, the next morning we’d take the film to get developed, and then we’d go get the newspaper and breakfast, and then we’d go pick up the photos. Not only did I see what the runway looked like, but also who was in the audience.” With the publication of The Nineties X Anna Sui (Rizzoli) during New York Fashion Week, you, dear reader, can partake in a similar act of discovery. Organized in themes like the baby doll and the slip dress, the book relates fashion to culture, and offers a picture of an industry—and a city—that operated at a different pace. “I think it was much more intimate,” says Sui. “Nothing was so polished back then. I have to tell you, I never analyzed back then, I would just do. I just wanted to create the idea that I had in the back of my mind.”—Laird Borrelli-Persson
Doin’ It For Themselves
As recently as the era of the supers, runway models did their own hair and makeup. For spring 2026, Rachel Comey is resurrecting the practice. “Since we are always inspired by the real lived experiences of our models, we feel confident that they’ll know exactly how to do their own makeup and hair for their looks… They’re all interesting adult women with points of view, after all,” says Comey, who is returning to the New York Fashion Week calendar after a year of showroom appointments. “As much as I love a large backstage production, an intimate gathering with women putting their own lipstick on and chatting feels like a room I want to be in. Intimate, personal, open to spontaneity. A place where women are getting dressed for other women, words and mirrors shared.”—NP
The Art of Dress
Jason Wu is becoming quite the art connoisseur. Having collaborated with the Chinese artist Tong Yang-Tze, from whom the Met commissioned work for the Great Hall last year, this season the designer is working in tandem with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation as it marks the 100th anniversary of the proto-Pop artist’s birth. Rauschenberg “had a lifelong interest in working with fabric,” said a representative of the Foundation, and because he was “interdisciplinary in his approach to everything, we felt like this project was something that he would’ve been excited by.” For his part, Wu says: “because I don’t come from a traditional fashion background, I just appreciate design.” Wu hasn’t worked with his source material in a literal way; rather, Rauschenberg’s collages have informed his approach to the collection, which is built around classic American style. At a time when our national identity is being called into question, Wu said “it feels relevant for me to celebrate what [Americans] have done…. “It’s good to be reminded we’re not just a commercial business-only, transactional country. There’s a lot of beauty and thought that actually originated here.”—LBP
Talking Shop
Johnson Hartig’s Libertine, a cross-country enterprise founded in 2001, is putting down roots in the city where it debuted on the runway, and opening an appointment-only salon on the Upper East Side. A light-filled former artist’s studio, the space will have the largest selection of Libertine available in one place. “It’s just going to be so exciting to have a space where we can do anything we want in New York City,” said Hartig, who has personally created the collages that decorate the walls. “It’s going to be a movable feast, so [the decor] will change periodically…. It’s really going to be an immersive, incredible experience for the client.”—LBP
