THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / New York
From a rooftop above Hudson Yards to a Lower East Side dive bar, a Studio 54 revival on the river and SZA's open-invitation launch for Vans, the nights of NYFW carried as much weight as the runways.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE · NEW YORK FASHION WEEK
Before ten minutes of runway comes a whole choreography of queues, elbows and contained anxiety. After it, when the lights go down, begins the part of fashion week that rarely makes the headlines: the night.
It is there, between cocktails, DJ sets and flash appearances, that a season actually breathes. This September in New York confirmed the rule. The parties were not an appendix to the official calendar; they were an extension of it, planned with as much care as any sixty-look show.
On the eve of the official opening, Danielle Guizio, founder of the label Guizio, set the tone with a pre-launch party on the west side of Midtown. At the top of Edge, overlooking the Vessel, Club Guizio offered something composed and sophisticated, almost an antidote to the nerves that precede show days. Cocktails, pieces from the collection displayed around the space and a few reality-television faces made for an evening more about mood than spectacle.
Further downtown, the first official day took editors and it-girls somewhere else entirely: Ray’s, a low-lit, unpretentious dive bar chosen by UGG and Willy Chavarria to celebrate their collaboration on leather boots. The brief was clear. Carry the grunge spirit of the partnership into a room with no claim to conventional glamour, even if, for one night, it hosted all the theatre of fashion week.
It was also one of the rare seasons in which Chavarria staged no formal show, but that did not mean no performance. Riders from the Aztec Rebels, a Latino motorcycle club, took over the block around the bar, engines roaring and exhaust in the air, a literal soundtrack to the biker aesthetic behind the boot.
If anyone doubted that real parties were back, Coach settled it. The house, founded in a Manhattan loft in 1941, did not simply pick up the bar tab. At Pier 36, on the East River, it staged a production that summoned the nights of Studio 54, with the runway show flowing straight into the celebration, in the same space and the same breath.
A red carpet, a horseshoe bar, towers of champagne and shrimp greeted guests at the door. Silver trays circulated with burgers, fries and coupes while pink balloons bounced across the raised dance floor. Among the familiar faces, the true protagonist of the night was the act of dancing itself: hours of it, driven by Zack Fox and a ghetto-tech set stacked with classics that kept the floor moving long after the show had ended.
Outside, the celebration kept its own rhythm. A newsstand built by the brand became the meeting point for those already leaving, handing out keepsakes and sweets as souvenirs of the night.
The night still had a final chapter. No fashion week is complete without a dose of the unforeseen, and SZA provided it by posting the address, date and time on her own Instagram for the party launching Vansza, her new collaboration with Vans. The meeting point: 260 Bowery.
Outside, the promised chaos. People crowded the pavement holding nothing but a screenshot of the post, asking the door staff whether the singer was really inside. She was. Half an hour of waiting came with a candid warning from a publicist: it was not even worth writing about, because it was impossible to move in there. The line proved at least partly true.
The parties after the show carried as much symbolic weight as the runways themselves.
Inside the red-velvet club, the scene was exactly as advertised: a room packed with rappers, influencers and athletes, pressed together in a vitrine of who was worth seeing and being seen. As the night wore on and a little breathing room appeared, the party turned into a collective exercise in watching the door, everyone waiting to see who from SZA’s guest list would walk in next. Then Kaytranada took the decks, and with the first beats any space the crowd had won disappeared again.
The runway lasts ten minutes. In New York this season, the night lasted until the city decided otherwise, and that is where the week was really written.
Details and further reading: New York Fashion Week · Coach · UGG · Vans.
Instagram: @coach, @ugg, @vans and @sza.
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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