The Best of New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2024

Another New York Fashion Week is in the books, and don’t let social media fool you. There was more going on in New York than influencers crowding the street eager to get into exclusive after-parties. While New York Fashion Week still lacks the star power of its counterparts in Paris and Milan, it makes up for it by treating us to great presentations from up-and-coming designers that will be helping define the future of the American fashion industry for years to come. 

But New York Fashion Week isn’t all about the runway shows. Plenty of important figures in New York City’s rich streetwear community also organize memorable pop-up shops and galleries to take advantage of while we were traversing from show to show. Now that the dust has settled, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite shows and activations that took place across New York Fashion Week. Check out our thoughts on each of them below. 

Each season Raul Lopez mines different aspects of his Dominican heritage to present a story that everyone can relate to. For his Spring/Summer 2024 collection, he explored balance. El Hoyo, a region in the Dominican Republic, whose name translates to “the hole,” was the starting point. He recalled a moment while he was driving and on one side of the street was a club and on the other there was a woman preaching behind a podium. Lopez astutely concluded that people in these two different venues were both searching for the same thing: heaven. This translated to a very refined collection infused with the interesting, off-kilter details Lopez is known for. Tailoring, a Luar signature, included suiting with fabric covered button details, collared shirts with broad shoulders, and ties embroidered with the Luar “L” logo. Some pieces played with the idea of being “pulled back,” reflecting Lopez’s desire to remain close to his roots while growing within the industry. He depicted this with fabric manipulation, showing voluminous dresses with openings on the leg and a draped halter top connected to sunglasses. For evening, he got super refined, showing bead embroidered skirts covered with the Luar logo, and dresses with draped fabric details. Once again Lopez proved why he has taken the highly coveted spot of closing out New York Fashion Week. 

For the past couple seasons, Willy Chavarria has shown his range. He’s known for making oversized workwear inspired by his Latin heritage, but for his Spring/Summer 2024 collection, titled New Life, he wanted to go fully refined. He featured beautifully tailored trousers, blazers (he brought back the oversized flowers attached to the lapel), and shirts. But he didn’t completely abdicate sportswear. He presented track suits, football jerseys, denim jackets, sweatshirts, basketball shorts, and graphic T-shirts. New for the brand is underwear, which had subtle rips and holes. Chavarria brought in some shine with sequined trousers and tank tops. As he grows his brand—Chavarria told WWD he will have a more affordable line with PacSun called “Big Willy”—he still presents his very important point of view

For New York Fashion Week this season, Head of State’s founder, Taofeek Abijako, opted out of presenting a traditional runway show to present an exhibition at the Strada Gallery. The exhibition featured artwork that expanded on Head of State’s past two collections—“Homecoming” and “Memories of Home.” The exhibition was curated by Diallo Simon-Ponte (a writer and curator currently working at Gagosian Gallery) and featured artwork by Cameron Granger, Nola Ayoola, Oluwatobiloba Ajayi, Isabel Okoro, and Lewinale Havette. The exhibit contemplated generations of diasporic movement and how it impacts the ever-changing definition of what home is. Sculptures like Heavy as Heaven, a wooden framework of a house built by Granger, explored the artist’s own personal connection to his late grandmother. And photos by Okoro redefined home under her lens of “normatopia”—a middle ground the artist describes to be the area between harsh reality and a dreamlike utopia. The exhibit also featured an unreleased capsule of looks by the brand

Years before Manhattan’s Lower East Side became known for fashion retail, it was previously recognized as a garment manufacturing hub built off the backs of Puerto Rican garment workers who helped establish New York as one of the fashion capitals of the world. “Objects of Permanence,” an exhibition curated by Mellany Sanchez at Abrons Arts Center, presents the stories of these Nuyoricans behind the Lower East Side’s garment industry alongside clothing that speak toward other local histories within New York City. The foundation of the exhibition was built off the late Ramonita Saez Velez, a Lower East Side seamstress whose tenement apartment and workspace was recreated to exhibit the personal artifacts of Nuyorican garment workers like herself alongside contributions from New Yorkers currently shaping the local fashion industry today. For example, the recreation of her home included an all-cotton tapestry blanket featuring Black Jesus by Tremaine Emory next to an armoire filled with vintage quilts, clothing, and bedding from the 1950s and 1960s sourced by Emily Adams Bode Aujla.
Whereas the recreation of Velez’s workspace exhibited various bits of memorabilia from New York City garment manufacturing unions alongside family heirlooms from Nuyorican garment workers. Other works in the exhibition included a collage by Brian “Procell” that included stickers, hang tags, clothing labels, patches, and flyers of brands that were either made, sold, or heavily worn in the Lower East Side. One of the most powerful sections of the exhibition spotlighted the history of the Puerto Rican–owned Gladiator Gym by presenting a T-shirt as one of the only surviving artifacts of an influential Lower East Side cultural institution. Additionally, a 14-minute documentary by Willy Chavarria and the filmmaker Dani Aphrodite captured various New Yorkers speaking about how fashion is inherently tied to their own cultural history. Sanchez’s exhibition for Abrons reminded us about the stories garments could tell beyond the runway and the larger cultural histories behind the clothes we take for granted.