So loyal is Emma Stone to the Louis Vuitton designer Nicolas Ghesquière that the Oscar-winning actor commissioned him to create multiple wedding gowns, even re-wearing one to New York’s Met Gala. But at the beginning of the 2026 award season, the blunt-bobbed redhead revealed a new fashion allegiance. Was Stone joining Jonathan Anderson’s Dior brigade, or switching over to Chanel? No — the movie star had been charmed by an under-the-radar American designer named Colleen Allen.
Allen, who swiftly tailored looks for Stone’s Academy Award campaign — including a sheer floor-length ivory skirt accented with ribbons and a draped ballet chiffon-style top teamed with velvet drawstring trousers — was pleased but ultimately undistracted by such a starry endorsement. “I have an entire fall collection to make,” she says during preparations for New York Fashion Week. “Fashion week is where people really understand the world I’m trying to build. It takes up so much of my brain.”
Allen, 30, is considered a breakout New York Fashion Week talent, one able to hopscotch across wearability and artistry. A former menswear designer for The Row and Calvin Klein — where she worked directly under Prada’s current co-creative director Raf Simons — the Illinois native makes simple, bewitching pieces in soft fabrics and sharp shapes. Allen’s sharply Victorian jacket rendered in black hiking fleece evokes Dracula’s Mina Harker at a ’90s rave in the woods. A white satin bra top and diaphanous embroidered skirt, worn by Lily Allen just a month after her very public divorce, became synonymous with revenge fantasy dressing.
An ability to reconcile a specific kind of girlhood fantasy with the everyday requirements of being an adult makes Allen a singular talent. But she’s also part of a growing group of women making the case for New York Fashion Week’s quiet comeback after years of “is this worth it?” malaise.
Some, like Allen, are new. Others, like fashion show veteran Anna Sui, 61, have been pushing their independent labels for decades. All are committed to the New York ideal of a woman in motion. They make clothes in which to hail a cab, stride through the office, lift a squirming child (or at least a wriggly terrier), and draw the stealth admiration of onlookers in a restaurant.
In the words of Tory Burch, the longtime Manhattan designer and de facto leader of this women’s auxiliary, the current NYFW crop are thriving because they’re living in their own designs. “They are innovative, intuitive, and understand the body and how women want to feel: confident, beautiful, and strong.”
You can see this commitment to on-the-go glamour in the cap-sleeve moire T-shirt dress that Rachel Scott, 42, created for her inaugural Proenza Schouler collection this February; on the navy fringe leather skirts at TWP, the basics label by former Haute Hippie designer Trish Wescoat Pound; in the front-row smiles at Ulla Johnson when a Scandi-inspired cardigan wraps around a floaty party dress like a fuzzy, drunken hug. The ivory hammered silk tops at Fforme, a label by Stella McCartney alumna Frances Howie, slouch off the shoulder with the lazy rebellion of the coolest girl at school. Council of Fashion Designers of America winner Ashlynn Park makes dresses with curved seams that sway down the street when someone walks. The sustainably sourced and colour-drenched brand Collina Strada, run by the enigmatic California girl Hillary Taymour, is favoured by pop stars such as Charli XCX and Rosalia.
Practical freedom is a hallmark of Catherine Holstein, reigning queen of cool at New York Fashion Week and founder of Khaite, a womenswear line whose studded Elena bags are so ubiquitous among downtown Manhattan gallerists and book editors that they’ve become a kind of signal flare for style-conscious women. It’s also emerging in the collections of Veronica Leoni, the first-ever female creative director at Calvin Klein, whose poplin kerchief tank tops and powder-pink slacks are worn by Naomi Watts and Lily Collins.
This is stuff that women want to wear, and they’re willing to put real money down to do it, according to global luxury retailers. Net-a-Porter’s chief buying and merchandising officer, Brigitte Chartrand, says that female-led labels showing at New York Fashion Week are constant high performers in global markets like the UK and Asia, especially proven NYFW runway brands such as Tory Burch and Tibi, because “they all have a point of view” that helps shoppers feel like they’re dressing with intention”.
Chartrand adds that New York’s female designers also embrace utility: they are known for adding more movement in their skirt hems, deeper-cut functional pockets and tiny hidden snaps at the shoulders to help hide the wearer’s bra straps.
“Sometimes New York Fashion Week is derided for being ‘commercial,’ which people seem to interpret as boring. But that really just means clothes that women want to wear and are excited to purchase so they look and feel their best, and isn’t that what all fashion should aspire towards?” says Chloe Malle, Vogue’s US head of editorial content. “I find that the class of female designers helping lead New York Fashion Week in this moment sees how women want to dress today and are meeting them there.”
Jess Graves, the editor of Substack shopping site The Love List, adds that she hears constantly from readers that they want to buy more clothes by female designers. “A designer like Daniel Roseberry at Schiaparelli is incredible but he’s definitely creating a fantasy,” Graves says. “Brands like Khaite and Kallmeyer make clothes for the lives that women actually have.”
From her Brooklyn studio, which faces an industrial construction yard on one side and a pizzeria on the other, Allen says that she “started making clothes because I was trying to come into myself as an adult woman. Fashion is how we process the world around us, and I couldn’t find anything that would help me figure out who I was in my physical body. I needed clothes to conjure who I could be.”
“So many designers,” she adds, “are people — men mostly, if we’re being honest — saying who they think we might be. That can be so cool. But it’s different from what I do.”
New York’s clutch of female-driven designers stands in stark contrast to Europe’s luxury womenswear brands, including Alaïa, Balenciaga, Balmain, Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Jil Sander, Loewe, Mugler and Versace — all of which recently appointed new, male creative directors. (Bottega Veneta, Fendi and Marni gained new women at the helm: Brit Louise Trotter, Italian Maria-Grazia Chiuri, and Belgian Meryll Rogge).
“In New York, you’re valued for business sense; you’re valued for commerce; you’re valued for the power you can imbue through your clothes. And as women, we go to work every day,” says Daniella Kallmeyer, who makes sharp suits for Michelle Obama and Katie Holmes. Although it would be an honour to take over a European fashion house, she wouldn’t do it at the expense of what she’s already built. “We know our clothes can’t be a fantasy — they have to be an extension of our power. I’m selecting fabric with my own hands to help you solve the problem of living. I can’t think of anything more valuable.”
In terms of career goals, Allen says, “I really admire what Rick Owens did. He didn’t take over another house. He built his own house into an entire universe, because he knows himself and his vision so well. That’s my goal. Creatively, I want to build my own galaxy.” She manufactures all of her clothes in New York City, and credits both her loyalty and her ambition with keeping her in the Big Apple. “I visit my factories almost every day, which is so important to me.”
The staunch pride and independence of New York’s current female line-up has even sparked some envy among the fashion folk abroad — including Victoria Beckham. At a recent cocktail party thrown by Vogue in Manhattan, the designer asked Anna Wintour to “meet the girls” — a small fairy ring of New York’s independent female designers who were chatting in a corner, including the whimsical dressmaker Batsheva Hay along with Taymour, Park and party wear designer Kim Shui. Hay recalls that “Victoria was like: ‘I’ve heard all about you and the businesses you’re running. Everyone’s talking about the New York women. She made us promise that we wouldn’t give it up.”
Follow us on Instagram and sign up for Fashion Matters, your weekly newsletter about the fashion industry
