FW25 Knows We’re Living In a Dystopia

6 designers being real at the end of the world

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Mar 04, 2025

Since we fell into a rapidly collapsing dystopian timeline after the November elections, I’ve felt like I’m spiraling into a slow-motion, doom-induced insanity, while the world around me shrugs and laughs, as if saying, Well, guess this is normal now. My love for fashion has turned superficial, fixated on aesthetics and materiality rather than on its meaning and intertextuality. And while I love reading into things, I’ve also found myself wondering—can we stop needing to read between the lines for a moment? Can someone just be blunt and name their collection “Fuck Fascism” or something?

I walked into fashion week feeling untethered, my voice a little lost, the magic of emerging and sustainable designers slipping from memory. Honestly, I was afraid I’d be disappointed. But I was also clinging to the hope that this season, fashion might still have the power to move, to provoke, to remind me why I ever cared in the first place. That somehow, the sartorial could drag me out of my hole and whisper, hey babe, we’re feeling insane too.

After a week of reflecting on the shows, I remember why I love NYFW so much. We so often think of clothing in terms of ownership: bought, worn, possessed. But, during Fashion Week, clothing is a prop in a larger narrative, a performance. On the runway, it exists not just to be worn but to be witnessed. Its first and most vital role is to communicate. This season, sustainable designers at NYFW didn’t just show collections—they spoke their minds. And for so many of us, myself included, their stories resonated

We are living in a dystopia, and the designers who showed this season know it. But their work reflected the chaos of now, and beneath it all, nodded to hope and progress. They made it clear: we’re not going anywhere. And they did it through clothing crafted for a future that looks different from the present, a future built on sustainability, existing materials, and garments made ethically, with care and love.

Now that NYFW has ended, I want to turn our gaze to the designers who met the doom and gloom of 2025 with brutal honesty yet still found beauty in our shared resilience, creativity, and refusal to dematerialize.

GABE GORDON - RUBBER BOYFRIEND

My week started at the Gabe Gordon show. Held in the basement of a synagogue in Tribeca, I walked into a projection of two wrestlers in singlets, the camera fixed behind them—dick rubbing on ass—and knew, at the very least, the show would be hot. Rubber Boyfriend queers the nostalgia of American jock culture, blending horror, desire, and subversion into a high school fever dream. Gordon uses hand-crafted, repurposed textiles to reshape masculinity and athleticism into something softer, stranger, and deeply intimate. At a time when queerness and masculinity feel increasingly at odds, his work blurs memory and fantasy and crafts a world where identity is fluid, eerie, and ever-evolving. At the end of the show, designers Gabe Gordon and Timothy Gibbons shared a kiss.

ALEXIS BITTAR - THE PORTAL

Presentations hold a different kind of energy than runways; they’re like looping scenes, moments you can sink into, and Alexis Bittar’s The Portal was one I could’ve watched far beyond its three-hour window. It was true performance art, pulling us into the “Bittarverse” and the year 2050, where a woman sits in front of her mirror in her home untouched since the 80s, trying on her jewelry, alone except for AI robots in latex suits. She moves through her memories with her accessories, each piece handmade in Brooklyn, a physical tether to the past in a world that has abandoned it. The exhibitionist robots blur the line between object and being, commenting quietly on AI, robotics, and ageism. In a world obsessed with immortality and eternal youth, we’ve lost sight of the beauty in decay, in the way things are meant to shift, wear, and eventually return to the earth. Fashion, like life, should be allowed to evolve, to grow old. The Portal was, as Bittar put it, “a meditation on beauty, aging, and the isolation technology affords.”

CAMPILLO - FICTIONS OF REALITY

When I heard that Magical Realism inspired CAMPILLO’s collection, I was thrilled—a Latine designer bringing Latin American literature to NYFW felt both urgent and overdue. The genre feels especially fitting for this moment, where reality borders on the absurd, and we desperately need a reminder that imagination still has the power to conjure something more. Drawing from Latin American literature and surrealist codes, with nods to artists like Remedios Varo, the Mexican sustainable brand delivered a collection that felt almost untethered from the real world—which is exactly why it belonged. Charro tailoring met Mexican craftsmanship, set against a NYC sunset that seemed to cast its blessing in shades of orange, purple, and red, as Mexican rancheras played. There is a lot of fear in the Latine community right now as we navigate our place in Tr*mp’s America. Campillo muffled the noise and reminded us of the poetry we carry, the beauty we create, and the power of our imagination to shape both the present and the future. He closed the show in a T-shirt that read “El Golfo de México”... because that's what it's called.

COLLINA STRADA - FEMPIRE

We can always count on Collina Strada to rebel. Featuring pieces sourced from the thrift stores of my motherland (New Jersey), this collection asked us to view femininity, queerness, and disability as catalysts for change rather than concessions to be accommodated. The collection leaned into darker tones, chaotic prints, and layers that clashed in all the right ways—soft tangled with raw, delicate up against defiant. It felt like a more honest portrayal of womanhood, not something pretty or palatable, but something wild, excessive, and impossible to ignore. And then came Look 33—two brides dressed in white, sealing their runway moment with a kiss. Collina Strada is not interested in returning to “normal”; they imagine a future rebuilt with care, where the outliers aren’t just seen but are shaping the world itself.

DESTROYER OF WORLDS - THE DARK FOREST

What sets NYFW apart from other Fashion Weeks is how much the spirit of DIY-NYC-punk still pulses through the veins of our emerging designers. Destroyer of Worlds was unapologetically literal in its apocalyptic theme (thank you). The show was literally a broadcast from the end of the world, and what better place than the Lower East Side to capture that chaos and madness? It was one of the more colorful moments of the season, almost like an ode to maximalism and a future where fashion works with what it’s got, be it neon bungee shorts, vintage bags repurposed as hats, or any other material encircling the absurdity of consumer culture. But maybe it was also a way of flipping that culture on its head, using it as raw material for something new. The broadcast sent us off with a simple “Good Luck” as a parade of stars walked on. Felt like a fitting, surreal goodbye to a world unraveling.

SELKIE - LIBERTINE

I love that revolution and sexual promiscuity were front and center at NYFW. Selkie delivered just that with one of the most inclusive runways I’ve ever seen. Held in the same church where Alexander McQueen staged his first show, the collection was equal parts beauty and biting commentary. Each elaborate wig held a tiny diorama critiquing Ozempic culture, influencer excess, and overconsumption. A plus-size model walked topless, licking an ice cream popsicle in a deliciously irreverent nod to Vivienne Westwood. Titled Libertine, we should have known this collection would reject the moral policing of an increasingly conservative country. Models of all sizes, abilities, and backgrounds took the runway, including models in wheelchairs draped in disheveled, post-love-making rococo looks, a gorgeous reminder that every body is a sexual body.