For two years, the fashion industry had been asking the same question with increasing anxiety: what comes after sweatpants? The Spring 2023 collections, presented during New York Fashion Week in September 2022, finally provided an answer, and it was not what many expected. The dominant mood was not the revenge dressing that commentators had predicted — the explosion of color and exuberance that was supposed to mark fashion's post-pandemic liberation. Instead, what emerged from the runways at Spring Studios and venues across Manhattan was something more nuanced: a quiet confidence, a deliberate elegance, and a rejection of the ironic detachment that had characterized much of pre-pandemic fashion.
The week opened with a sense of occasion that had been missing from the previous two seasons. The September 2021 shows, while symbolically important as the first fully in-person Fashion Week since the pandemic, had been tentative affairs, with reduced guest lists, masked audiences, and an atmosphere of cautious optimism. By September 2022, the caution had largely evaporated. The front rows were full. The after-parties were packed. The energy on the streets around Spring Studios in Tribeca — where clusters of photographers chased street-style subjects between shows — had returned to pre-pandemic intensity.
The Collections
Michael Kors, who closed the week with his collection at the Terminal 5 concert venue on West 56th Street, set the tone that many other designers echoed. The collection was built around what Kors described as "American luxury, redefined" — clean lines, natural fabrics, and a color palette that ran from sand to slate, with occasional punctuation in gold and deep burgundy. The silhouettes were relaxed but precise, designed for bodies that had spent two years in elastic waistbands and were not ready to return to restriction. The message was clear: sophistication does not require suffering.
Tory Burch, showing at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, presented a collection that drew on the aesthetics of 1970s Manhattan — flowing dresses, wide-leg trousers, and oversized sunglasses that evoked the era of Studio 54 and Halston. The venue choice was significant; the Navy Yard, once a symbol of Brooklyn's industrial past, has become a hub for the borough's creative economy. Showing there signaled Burch's alignment with a fashion geography that extends well beyond the traditional Midtown-to-Tribeca corridor.
The New Guard
The most exciting presentations came from a cohort of younger designers who used the Spring 2023 season to establish themselves as the future of American fashion. LaQuan Smith, whose body-conscious designs had been gaining momentum for several seasons, staged a show on the observation deck of the Empire State Building that was equal parts fashion presentation and spectacle. Against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline at sunset, his collection of curve-hugging dresses and sharply tailored separates looked both glamorous and inevitable.
Peter Do, the Vietnamese-American designer whose architectural approach to clothing had made him a critical favorite, showed a collection that was among the most intellectually rigorous of the week. Working primarily in black and white, with occasional interruptions of a vivid cerulean blue, Do presented garments that deconstructed traditional tailoring and reassembled it into something new — jackets with asymmetric closures, dresses with structural seaming that evoked the lines of a building rather than a body. The show, held in an empty warehouse in Chelsea, was quiet, precise, and deeply impressive.
The street style that surrounded the shows reflected the collections' emphasis on quiet luxury. Where previous Fashion Weeks had been dominated by logo-heavy, look-at-me outfits designed for social media visibility, the September 2022 crowd favored understated, impeccably tailored ensembles that communicated status through quality rather than branding. The shift was noticeable and, among the photographers who document street style for a living, somewhat controversial — beautiful, yes, but harder to capture in the kind of attention-grabbing image that drives Instagram engagement.
The Business Picture
Behind the aesthetics, the business reality of American fashion was mixed. The CFDA reported that the number of designers showing on the official calendar had recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but the composition had changed. Several established brands that had shown during NYFW for years had decamped to Paris or London, seeking the international audience that they felt New York could no longer reliably deliver. Their departure was offset by an influx of emerging designers, but the net effect was a Fashion Week that was younger, more diverse, and less commercially established than its predecessors.
The week concluded, as always, with the knowledge that what had been shown on the runways would take months to reach stores and even longer to influence the broader culture. But the direction was clear. American fashion, after two years of pandemic-induced uncertainty, had found its footing. The aesthetic was confident, the craftsmanship was elevated, and the mood was one of cautious, clear-eyed optimism — not the giddy excess of a party after a long absence, but the steadier satisfaction of a discipline that has survived a crisis and emerged with a clearer sense of its own identity.
