New York Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights: Christopher John Rogers to Calvin Klein Collection

While New York Fashion Week usually heralds the start of a consecutive month-long stint of ready-to-wear shows, this season the city stands alone. With the other three fashion capitals have shifted back a week to reflect the later menswear and haute couture shows, New York has been steadfast in its early February dates, meaning London will take place over a week after New York Fashion Week concludes (usually, it is just a couple of days later), with Milan and Paris following without a break between.

It has led, perhaps, to a more reduced schedule, with plenty of notable absences, including CFDA Award-winning American designer Willy Chavarria, who chose instead to show during Paris Fashion Week Men’s A/W 2025, as well as Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren, who are both taking a season away from the runway. With that said, Veronica Leoni’s debut at Calvin Klein – marking the American powerhouse’s return to the runway after nearly seven years – made for a buzzy opening act yesterday afternoon (8 February 2025), with the Italian designer expressing a desire to bring back the ‘monumental minimalism’ of the brand’s defining 1990s oeuvre (indeed, Calvin Klein himself gave his approval from the front row). Tory Burch, Michael Kors, Eckhaus Latta, Khaite and Coach will round out the schedule, with Thom Browne and Christopher John Rogers both making their returns to the New York runway after a break.

Here, in our rolling New York Fashion Week A/W 2025 round up, Wallpaper* fashion features editor Jack Moss selects the best shows of the week.

New York Fashion Week A/W 2025: the highlights

Calvin Klein Collection

It was New York Fashion Week’s most anticipated moment: Calvin Klein’s first runway show since the departure of Raf Simons in 2018, now under the helm of Veronica Leoni (the Italian designer worked at The Row, Celine and Moncler before launching her own label Quira in 2020). For her debut, Leoni talked about stripping it back, returning to the codes of ‘monumental’ minimalism and pulsing sensuality which saw the American powerhouse rise to fame – and infamy – in the 1990s. ‘Sexiness has very much been on my mind,’ Leoni said, noting a want to shift the Calvin Klein wearer from an object of desire to the one doing the desiring. ‘I wanted to redefine femininity and masculinity in the landscape of today. So I kept in my mind this idea of American beauty; beauty in the most fresh and pure way.’

As such, there was an interplay between a feeling of 1990s reduction – rigorous tailoring, generous overcoats, baggy blue denim jeans, shrunken wool sweaters – and something more tender (jackets grasped closed in the hand, draped silk and jersey dresses, romantic flushes of red and pink). Meanwhile nods to the brand’s American roots came in cowboy boot-inspired footwear, checkered shirts, and plays on the perennial white T-shirt (Leoni said she was thinking about creating a cast of all-American ‘characters’). It made for a confident opening gambit, with plenty that felt desirable – indeed Calvin Klein himself, who watched on from the front row, said ‘he was happy he had found a new coat to buy,’ according to Leoni. ‘I am really proud for him to feel at home again’.

READ: For her Calvin Klein debut, Veronica Leoni stripped it all back

Christopher John Rogers

For the past two years, American designer Christopher John Rogers – who had a rapid ascent to prominence after his debut in 2018 – has chosen to show during the Resort schedule, meaning a notable absence at New York Fashion Week. Keen to get back in step with his contemporaries, on Thursday evening (6 February 2025) he made a welcome fashion week return with a high-profile show at New York’s Brooklyn Navy Yard. It served as a satisfying reminder of Rogers’ talent, particularly his astute use of colour, which remains a bedrock of the label.

Titled ‘Exhale’, there was a mood of liberation to the collection, which featured his signature contemporary ballgowns and evening dresses – here descending into layers of ruffles, or jutting peplum-like flares – imagined in brightly hued stripes and vivid blocks of colour (he was particularly fond of the colour green this season, he said after the show, naming one shade ‘slime’). What is clever about these pieces is that, despite an innate grandeur, they never feel overwrought or overtly dressed up. This spirit of ease extended into a wider everyday offering this season, from rainbow-hued knitwear to slouchy suiting, some adorned with streamer-like plumes of fabric – a design flourish befitting the evening’s celebratory air.

Stay tuned for more from New York Fashion Week A/W 2025.