New York Fashion Week A/W 2025 highlights: Tory Burch to Thom Browne

While New York Fashion Week usually heralds the start of a consecutive month-long stint of ready-to-wear shows, this season the city stood alone. As the other three fashion capitals shift back a week to reflect the later menswear and haute couture shows, New York was 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 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 on Friday 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 rounded 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 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

Thom Browne

After a season’s break, Thom Browne returned to his position as New York Fashion Week’s closing act with a typically theatrical outing which took place amid a spiral of 2000 paper origami birds. As the show began, two ‘ornithologists’ – clad in the American designer’s signature grey suit – took their places at a desk in the centre of the space, observing a pair of ‘love birds’ trapped in a single white cage. ‘Two caged love birds long to be free,’ he explained in a letter to guests . ‘As they peer through the enclosure, a fantastical flock flies past. “How marvellous would it be,” they wondered, “to be exactly who we wish to be?”.’ It set the stage for a collection of fantasy and wonder, beginning with tailoring – here in newly oversized proportions, a shift for the label – which was then abstracted into plays on varsity and collegiate wear, reimagined in tweeds and herringbones (the tailoring fabrics were also used to create dramatic flared-waist gowns, some overlaid with trompe l’oeil opera coats). The loosening up of the silhouette was echoed in a more eclectic mood which ran throughout: a bolder use of colour, clashing assemblages of print, and patchworked fabrics lent a new energy to the Thom Browne look. As such, it made a satisfying closing act to New York Fashion Week, delivered with a theatrical flourish which stood as a riposte to the mood of ease and reduction which has largely defined the week.

Michael Kors

‘Dégagé chic’ described Michael Kors of his A/W 2025 outing at New York Fashion Week yesterday (11 February 2025), using the French term – which translates as a feeling of nonchalance, a freedom from constraint – to describe the mood of easy, undone glamour which has long been a hallmark of the American label. What followed was a collection with a thrown-on feel – Kors talked about the idea of a woman grabbing a coat and wearing it with her hands stuffed in the pockets – with just-oversized tailoring, sweater dresses, and fuzzy faux fur jackets capturing a mood of both comfort and elegance he said was inspired by the women he encounters on the New York street. Even when Kors upped the glamour ante towards the end of the show, this sense of ‘dégagé chic’ held: a series of full-length sequinned gowns were cut with the easy, unrestricted proportions of a tunic. ‘This show was inspired by the laid-back elegance that imbues the spirit of our homes and our new Madison Avenue store,’ the designer described. ‘Timeless, warm, modern, architectural yet sensual, [it] exemplifies [a sense of] cosy modernism and hands-in-the-pockets chic.’

Tory Burch

Tory Burch has long drawn inspiration from the traditions of American sportswear, particularly the work of Claire McCardell, who pioneered the genre in the 1950s (rather than referring to sportswear in its literal sense, American sportswear instead refers to ease of silhouette and simplicity of fabric, which was a riposte to the formality of European couture). For her A/W 2025 collection, Burch – who in recent seasons has championed a more experimental approach when it comes to material and shape – said she wanted to offer a ‘twisted’ take on American sportswear. ‘A second glance at classics: prim cardigans are slashed through the sleeves; sweatpants are in Japanese brushed jersey; sweaters are embroidered to look like tweed,’ she elaborated. ‘A wardrobe collected over time, where each piece becomes irreplaceable: the perfect blazer, a favourite dress, a worn-in sweatshirt.’ It made for a collection with plenty to covet: sinuous dresses and knit sweaters twisted around the body to suggest a mood of elegance but were cut with a signature ease, while suggestions of preppiness – once a hallmark of Burch’s label – were subverted, like in a crisp, striped shirt blown up in size with enormous flared sleeves. It is exciting to see where this newly liberated designer moves next.

Coach

Last season at Coach, British designer Stuart Vevers said he wanted to mine the ‘optimism of youth’, capturing a spirit of teenage experimentation and rebellion which has been a throughline of his recent collections for the American brand. The loosened-up approach seems to be resonating with younger consumers, with Coach rising ten places to number five on consumer tracker Lyst at the end of last year (buoyed, in part, by the success of the brand’s ‘Brooklyn’ bag). For his latest outing, held at the Park Avenue Amory, Vevers continued his astute pitch to Gen-Z shoppers by melding symbols of Coach’s heritage – namely a use of leather and a palette of brown and beige – with baggy, low-slung jeans, luminous sunglasses, shaggy animal prints and moments of play, like a pair of bunny-shaped slippers that were soon ubiquitous on social media. Largely the garments had a lived-in feel (jeans were torn or patchworked, while handbags were scrawled with doodles), with a series of bags from the brand’s Re(Loved) upcycling project also appearing on the runway.

‘My vision for fall was to ground the collection in all the things that make Coach so distinct as a fashion house: our heritage materials and palette, our commitment to repurposing and “re-loving” secondhand garments through craft, and our belief in the power of community and self-expression,’ Vevers said of the collection. ‘There’s a clear, cohesive idea here in terms of materials, silhouette and styling, and that comes from knowing who we are and what we stand for.’

Eckhaus Latta

This season, designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta talked about an attempt to capture reality. ‘It’s anti-snobbishness, it’s fact-based, it’s sanity first,’ read the collection notes by New York it-girl publicist-slash-writer Kaitlin Phillips, who talked about a return to sincerity, of clothes rooted not in fantasy but real-life. ‘There is something to saying what you mean at a time when things are dire, as they always are in America.’ So followed a cast of characters who appeared to have wandered straight in from the sidewalk and onto the runway, some grasping mobile phones or bongs in hand, others with hair scraped back with makeshift scarf headbands or their faces shielded in sunglasses (in the baltic conditions, the double-sweater and gloves of the opening look seemed particularly apt for the day). It made for some great clothes that twisted the quotidian wardrobe in typical Eckhaus Latta style, from fluffy-collar bomber jackets and cleverly layered jersey basics to a continuation of the great knitwear of recent seasons (particularly charming were fuzzy cardigans and sweaters naively topstitched along their edges, as if fixed by hand). Another highlight was the spoils of a collaboration with Ecco.Kollektive (an ongoing collaborative project from Danish tannery Ecco), seeing the addition of some seriously desirable pieces in leather – from slouchy hobo totes and patchwork pants to a perfectly formed leather hoodie. The last’s already on our wish list.

Khaite

‘What if David Lynch remade a Merchant Ivory movie?’ asked Cate Holstein with her latest Khaite collection, which paid ode to the seminal American filmmaker who passed away last month. Taking place at the Park Avenue Armory, the blockbuster show unfolded on a vast circular runway by architect Griffin Frazen inspired by the yellow-brick road of The Wizard of Oz, Lynch’s favourite movie (Holstein’s runway presentations increasingly have the big-league feel of her European counterparts). The clothes themselves captured the kind of ominous sensuality that runs throughout Lynch’s oeuvre – Holstein said she is a particular fan of the 1990 movie Wild at Heart – melded with the period flourishes of Merchant Ivory Productions. This included plays on the corset (raw-edge panels of fabric wrapped around the body and nipped the waist), mutton sleeves (here appearing on deconstructed panelled dresses), bustles, faux-fur stoles and opera gloves, though the strongest pieces captured Holstein’s powerful brand of glamour, like majestic wide-shouldered leather jackets, 1980s-inflected faux-furs, and sinuous tailoring-wool dresses.

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.