Wrap-Up: Designers Who Knocked NYFW SS26 Out of the Park
Check out 1202 MAGAZINE’s favorite shows and presentations of the season.
Photography by Go Runway
New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2026 was abundant with ready-to-wear collections that featured strong storytelling and a cultural embrace. These collections came with elements of avant-garde, couture, and groundbreaking concepts from both emerging and established designers and fashion houses. Check out our favorite shows and presentations of the season.
Advisry
Photography by Hatnim Lee
Advisry goes back to the basics and raises it by 100. For its Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Advisry’s creative director, Keith Herron, tapped filmmaker Éric Rohmer to inspire 4 Moral Tales. They’re not just clothes. Advisry immerses us into its cinematic universe to confront morality’s subtle yet complex characteristics, gestures, emotions, contradictions, suppressions, and self-reflection.
We see a play on the avant-garde with details such as pockets in the shape of hands, fuzzy mittens with matching collars and scarves, a knotted beanie, and a monacle with Advisry’s logo. They combine the avant-garde with timeless pieces, like oversized denim with buttons on the side, textured leather jackets, purses, messengers, and duffles, knitted and patterned sweaters, two-piece sets, zip-ups, and hoodies.
Agbobly
Photography by Johnny Nguyen
Play is essential for a child’s spirit, cooperation, and development. For its sentimental Spring/Summer 2026 collection, grief births Agbobly’s Pentagames. This season is dedicated to Jacque Agbobly’s late brother, who passed away two years ago. The collection portrays the conflict between childhood competition and cooperation in play, while some children are forced to grow up quickly and make decisions beyond their will.
Memories resurface for Agbobly as the setting of the show is his aunt’s bar, Happy Bar Land, where they reflect on core familial events. Many of the garments throughout Pentagames represent playfulness through functional, movable, and versatile pieces, including oversized garments. The oversized elements of each piece are reminiscent of “abloni” clothing in their home country of Togo, which Agbobly and their brother wore for all occasions.
Assembly New York x Indigenous Enterprise
Photography by Hannah Turner-Harts
Despite building this country and preserving its beauty and resources, Native Americans are severely underrepresented in the fashion industry. This season, Assembly New York collaborated with Indigenous Enterprise to display an intimate launch event for their STILL HERE collection. The event wrapped with a live powwow outside of the space to bring fashion, music, community, and tradition together.
The STILL HERE collection features graphic tees, hats, and fine jewelry designed by Native silversmith Lionel Thundercloud. With a run at the Joyce Theater until September 21, Indigenous Enterprise aims to preserve Indigenous culture and traditions while also pushing them forward to evolve and thrive abundantly.
Gabe Gordon
Photography by firstVIEW
Gabe Gordon and Timothy Gibbons take us to the scene of the crash at the demolition derby. In Gabe Gordon’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, AUTOEROTIC, they delve into the concepts of sex, queerness, love, death, and violence, and how they can collide like a car crash. Like their previous collections, Gordon and Gibbons explore American masculinity and its psychology: fantasy with autobiography, nostalgia with horror, and whimsy with trauma.
Drawing inspiration from Madonna’s Erotica and David Cronenberg’s Crash, AUTOEROTIC challenges how we carry memories through garments such as knitwear, denim, hardware, and more. Each piece represents the antithesis of how we can release the constant need for control as a form of resilience.
Head of State
Image Courtesy of Head of State
For Spring/Summer 2026, Head of State merges Nigerian culture, mythology, and futurism in their collection, If Heaven Could Talk. Each color palette throughout the show represents different elements of Nigeria’s landscapes and mythological characters: blues like the Osun River, Earth tones like Ògún, the god of war and iron, and warm colors like Sàngó, the god of dance, virility, lightning, and thunder.
While many of the garments are reminiscent of past silhouettes, designer Taofeek Abijako continues to evolve the brand to challenge Western fashion. Suits, dresses, and pants display a sense of structure in every look—from geometrical shapes of dresses, asymmetrical lapels on blazers, to African accessories complementing button-down shirts.
Jane Wade
Image Courtesy of Jane Wade and A Brooks Consulting
Jane Wade has always been acclaimed for blending corporate wear with couture. This season, the brand goes from the top floor executive-level down to the warehouse. The Fulfillment acknowledges labor, surveillance, and manual work, as well as their effects on humans. When does the human become the machine, and when does the machine become human?
Spring/Summer 2026 explores various workforces, and this collection resists the idea of becoming invisible, further underscoring the importance of humans who work in labor and how we often neglect our well-being in the process. We see this through Wade’s acclaimed silhouettes of hardware, tactile pieces, intentionally-tailored suits, dresses, bottoms, and avant-garde garments with sculptural components served with a purpose.
Luar
Image Courtesy of Luar
La Fantasía pays homage to designer Raul Lopez’s beloved home country, which is the Dominican Republic. For Luar’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Carnival blends with the brand’s distinctive tailoring and color palette. Details of Carnival’s characteristics are evident in La Fantasía through the use of feathers, masks, glitter, and paint.
Luar has always been acclaimed for confronting colonization in their looks. This season, Lopez challenges it with strong drapery, textures, materials, and patterns, a meaningful color story. They pull it together with modern yet timeless finishes in outerwear, headwear, formal wear, and renowned accessories.
Taottao
Image Courtesy of Lindsey Media
Whether it’s dressing up in clothes or dressing a doll, playing different characters can bring us an unspoken sentiment. Taottao’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection brings us nostalgia during the days we played with dolls—an almost archaic concept now that children are so technology-centered. This season features designs we often dress dolls in: feminine colors, dainty fabrics, and soft patterns.
Taottao designer Yitao Li presents the tension and conflict between innocence and edginess. The collection features Taottao’s signature plaid pattern and patchwork. Playfulness and performance meet sensuality and a hint of eeriness of lost youth in body-contouring dresses, bodysuits, tights, and accessories like their renowned shoes and purses.
Who Decides War
Photography by Go Runway
Throughout civilization, cities were often destroyed, turned to ruins for long periods of time, then rebuilt at an even greater scale. For its 11th season, Who Decides War mirrored that concept in its Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Read the Room. Layered garments, distressed fabrics, and textured details embody a society that has fallen and needs to be rebuilt. It can also be seen in details that resemble cracks and roots that emerge from the ruins.
The show tells a color story of the tense cycle of ruins to regrowth. The palette begins in dusty greys, charred blacks, woodgrain and sand, moving through rust and oxidized tones, and concludes with soft greens and blossoms to represent that both nature and infrastructure can be reclaimed. Throughout the show, singer Leon Thomas graced the runway by performing in a full WDW look instead of the everyday fast-paced runway track.
5000
Image Courtesy of Lindsey Media
Oakland design house 5000 tapped into tranquility and ease for their Spring/Summer 2026 collection. While the brand is known for adding drama and couture elements to its ready-to-wear, this season, it focuses on function and how clothes can impact our daily lives. SS26 pays attention to small details, such as folds, seams, drapery, and tailoring.
This season, 5000 includes elevated essentials, like relaxed and fitted two-piece sets, trousers, blazers, trench coats, maxi skirts, bomber jackets, and more. The color palette of the collection is intended to bring serenity to both the wearer and viewer—with muted Earth tones of greens and oranges, and neutral black and white pieces that can pair with anything in your wardrobe.
