Living Proof: Backstage at Public School SS27

September 15, 2026

For Spring Summer 2027, we went backstage as Public School New York continued its return with Living Proof, the second collection from designers Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow since the brand’s comeback last season. If the show in February marked a homecoming, the latest collection looks outward, considering the city and everything that comes with navigating it.

The palette moves through navy, black, grey, and stone, with pieces designed to be mixed and matched for a uniform that feels versatile rather than rigid. Backstage, that balance comes through in the way the collection plays with proportion. Broad, structured shoulders sit against short shorts, bringing a lighter element to the collection’s layers. The contrast gives the wardrobe a sense of movement while keeping the Public School attitude intact.

For Living Proof, the idea of the uniform becomes less about a traditional dress code and more about preparing for whatever comes next. Functionality is worked into the clothing without becoming overly technical. Across the collection, practical details are balanced with softer fabrics and unexpected proportions, keeping the clothes grounded in the ease that has long defined Public School New York.

After a six-year hiatus, we saw Maxwell and Dao-Yi return to the brand with a renewed focus on the New York fantasy that has always been at its core. Living Proof pushes that idea forward, building a wardrobe for a city that is constantly changing.

Photos by Spencer Stovell
Text by Dylan Andrews

Check out more from backstage below.

Fashion

TTSWTRS' Virtual Wonderland

At the launch of TTSWTRS’ collection, models strutted about in shattered glass and rose-adorned evening wear on the roof of Nine Orchard in the Lower East Side. In the center of the roof stood a large dining table, with VR headsets on porcelain plates inviting guests to get their fill of TTSWTR's imagined world. The wonderland digitally constructed by the AI team, Katsukokoiso.ai, was guided through by a white rabbit, showing the designs in a dark world of excess and overproduction that collapses for a new world to be formed. In person, it was brought to life for beautiful people. Brocade dresses dripping in fringe, skin-tight marbled activewear sets, and petals overlaid to look like feathers were among the offerings shown by statuesque and silent models standing in front of the New York City skyline.

Attendees were encouraged to try on the VIVE virtual reality headsets as their main course, and then for dessert, some smart glasses, Vive’s antithesis to the Meta glasses. Talking to VIVE, they were adamant about informing me that the intent behind these glasses was privacy first, ease second. Now that technology has long-since moved beyond utility and into accessories, it’s only logical that fashion brands would collaborate with tech companies who are trying to produce their own apparel.

And yet, consumers balk at that reality, as the association of fashion with being beyond commerce never seems to fade, no matter how much we’re reminded that clothing is a business. However, there is hope in beautiful things, and TTSWTRS would like to remind us of this. To instill some faith in humanity’s desire to beautify our surroundings, perhaps all we need is a clear heel with a raffia cocktail dress, hopefully engaging with the global supply chain sustainably.

Fashion

Iseder Takes New York, Literally

Designer duo Sharon Mishiev and Taylor-Paige Garvin is well-suited to celebrate the city with a collection textured in its image. First of all, they’re New York natives, which in this day and age means a lot. More importantly, the two are experts in construction. We’re talking garment construction, but this time around I mean urban construction as well.

The looks appeared to have absorbed the surfaces of buildings: crackled, tattered, and flecked. Some were fixed with actual building blocks coated in a camera roll of nearby streets. Others transposed the effects of exposure and time onto the fabric itself. Deadstock pleather, already decaying, was granted a total shred. Tweed suiting was plastered in, well, plaster. Flakes of it unlatched as the models walked, leaving a gorgeous paper trail which anyone with a pulsed finger will be following.

The night marks Iseder’s fifth showing at NYFW. And while the brand has already established itself as a household name in downtown Manhattan with their I <3 NY rings (as seen on Timothée Chalamet) and cool girl cuts, this season elevated their tailoring chops to the next level. Swagged wool and fitted peacoats bore sophistication without losing the sense of sex that is metropolitan, head-first, easy. The overall result was something like cosmopolitan camouflage, in which the body is positioned indiscernibly from its environment. Accruing pollutants. Witness. Age. To design from the outside-in is to position fashion as a symptom of conditions. Smart, and necessary to withstand the nausea roll of trend. For an independent brand to survive the algorithm, they’ve got to narrate beyond visual impact: this is longevity, baby.

The show situates its beauty “not from an imagined fantasy of New York but from lived experience within it.” For city dwellers, Iseder’s clothes are recognizable structures evoking other-than-tactile sensations: a sculpted tulle gown crackles like static. A vinyl mini dress in lacquered neon, flashing with the nighttime electric. Underlying the collection is an awareness of tension and place. Layered mesh tops tease out opacity and translucence, alluding to the palimpsests that make up most of modern architecture. This is novelty and decay, the abrasion of fashion straddling history and finding context inescapable.

Both Mishiev and Garvin go to Central Saint Martens in London, which for those who don’t know, is essentially a breeding ground for design genius. Yet the two are terrifically humble. When asked about her style references, Garvin cites the people in her own life. Perhaps this is what brings the work its sense of authenticity: legible identity. It is a loyal cast of characters, though joining the familiar faces this go-around is Patch+ on the music. Fierce.

Situated against the sterility of the AI image, Iseder presents a collection material and alive, grainy and real. Never sanitized, never flattened. These are not “Instagram clothes,” though they do photography beautifully. Iseder makes clothing that wants the world in it. Objects to be touched, to be worn— though not always practically. A series of black leather handbags were just skinny enough to carry some cash and a few spare cigarettes. But what else would we need? Maybe a pair of those white leather pants… It’s Iseder’s city. We just live in it.

Fashion

It's Showpony Season

September 12, 2026

This past Thursday, Showpony took the East Village Ukrainian National Home by storm and brought us their Spring/Summer 2027 Runway Collection. Founded by hairstylist Evanie Frausto just this past year, it’s hard to believe this was only their second show. Since its inception, Showpony is proving that they’re willing to take a risk and prance along the edge of innovation in clothing design. The tension between taking something as unexpected as hair and utilizing it to create looks that feel refined is a challenge Frausto excitingly crushes.

office got a special look backstage and saw everything from stilettos covered in neon pink hair to a dress crocheted from braids. For this brand, last touches may include getting your skirt brushed or your dress pat down with hairspray. Behind-the scenes, you entered a world of straight hair, pink hair, curly blond locks, braids, blue extensions, red wigs, and bleach-blond thongs. Featuring a collaboration with COBRAH, who closed the show to a track she wrote and produced, this season of Showpony was rooted in taking provocative chances with a feminine twist.