Tag: New York Fashion Week

A years-old New York fashion darling taking its celebrated button-downs to the runway for the first time. An LVMH semifinalist traveling from Mexico City to the streets of Manhattan. An editorial favorite celebrating its tenth anniversary with a runway presentation to close out the entire week.

This is just a taste of what to expect from the brands making their debuts at New York Fashion Week for the spring/summer 2025 season. While some years, the list of new faces is expansive, for SS25, the CFDA opened its gates to only a handful of brands, including Melitta Baumeister, Salon 1884, Campillo, and TWP. These four run the gamut in terms of aesthetics, clients, and offerings; more established designers showcasing sculptural, gravity-defying statement pieces, as well as still-bourgeoning labels reworking wardrobe essentials will be well-represented this season. Below, familiarize (or refamiliarize) yourself with these four names before they’re on everyone’s lips.

Melitta Baumeister

Melitta Baumeister is hardly a new kid on the block. In fact, this year marks the bold, silhouette-forward label’s ten-year anniversary. That milestone—and the recent distinction as the winners of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund—created the perfect excuse for MB to stage its first show at New York Fashion Week. “It proves there is a place for a brand like this,” says MB’s art director Michal Plata of the recognition.

Both Baumeister and Plata, who joined MB in 2016, originally hail from Germany. But when Baumeister presented her MFA collection for Parsons School of Design in 2014, and one particular jacket landed on bona fide brand whisperer Rihanna, there was no looking back. “Suddenly, there was this urgency to do everything now,” Baumeister says of the momentum RiRi created a decade ago. “MB was never planned, it just happened naturally.” Baumeister set up shop in New York, where she’s still based ten years later. Melitta Baumeister quickly made a space for itself in the industry, standing out with artistic pieces that belonged in a museum, not a runway.

But Baumeister is on a mission to prove that her clothes are versatile. When she started her eponymous label in 2014, the designer admits she wasn’t considering the customer, and the resulting pieces reflected that fact. Over the past ten years, she and Plata have been working to maintain the integrity of the design, while creating something actually wearable. “It’s so important that our designs aren’t only in a museum, but also on the street with the customer,” says Baumeister.

The work has clearly paid off. MB has evolved over the past decade into a cult-favorite brand with a dedicated fan base, and will take the spotlight at NYFW. If such a debut didn’t provide enough pressure, nabbing the closing slot on the calendar surely did. When Baumeister and Plata first decided to stage a runway show, they agreed to keep it small, until they learned they would be shutting down NYFW on Wednesday, September 11. “We were like, ‘Oh, now we need to meet expectations,’” Baumeister says.

Baumeister promises an “essentially MB” collection for spring 2025, with the volume, color, and out-there shapes that are signatures of the label (Baumeister’s and Plata’s favorite saying? “You bring the body, we bring the shape”). And while MB is known for its bold hues, Baumeister usually limits herself to one color per piece—a practice from which she is breaking away this season. Of course, MB’s signature artistry will be at play as well, though Baumeister and Plata remain coy on just how MB will evolve for SS25. “There was a point when everything was oversize and scaled up, and a time when everything was wiggly,” Plata says. “Now, in this moment, we may just turn to another sculptural expression.”

Salon 1884

Andrea Mary Marshall named her brand, which she started in June 2022, after the Paris exhibition where famed American artist John Singer Sargent unveiled his painting, Madame X, to the world. “It was my favorite artwork as a child,” the 41-year-old designer tells W of the then-infamous depiction of Madame Pierre Gautreau, which was criticized at the time for its scandalous nature, specifically Sargent’s choice to paint one of Gautreau’s dress straps slipping from her shoulder. Salon 1884 is an esoteric name, without a doubt, but it works for Marshall’s young label, which has become known for its artful tailoring and dramatic draping. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Marshall spent over 15 years working on 7th Avenue to fund her off-hours artmaking. She gained experience throughout those years by dipping her toes into gigs ranging from technical design to art direction.

That baptism by fire may have ended up aiding Salon’s quick success. Marshall has proven she has her finger on the pulse, that she knows what women actually want to wear. She makes clothes for the creative women in her life, “women who shop for themselves, dress for themselves, have autonomy over themselves” she says. “I want them to look and feel empowered.” Marshall gleans lots of inspiration from the ’80s, the time of the working girl and power shoulders. Many of Salon’s previous collections invoke the New Romantic era, but not in a way that feels like a nostalgia play.

This season, though, Marshall is turning back the clock a bit further, to 18th-century Venice with a spring 2025 collection she’s calling Casanova. (Inspired by the Italian adventurer and author, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, whose numerous lovers turned his surname into a noun.) “Casanova had many affairs, but he never had one great love, and there’s a sadness to that,” Marshall explains. “When I designed the collection, I wanted it to bring to mind the feeling of unrequited love.”

Casanova will be presented through a series of self portrait-style photographs, speaking to the hands-on approach Marshall took with this collection. “Craftsmanship is very important to me,” she says. It’s one of the reasons she loves New York City’s Garment District: “I like working with people who make things.” For SS25, Marshall has taken on the pattern-making process for the first time, of which she’s extremely proud. “The thing that is most important to me is that I had my hands on every pattern in the collection,” she adds.

Campillo

Patricio Campillo did not go to school for design—he was a communications and marketing major. “I thought it would be a lot on my parents to come out and tell them I wanted to study fashion at the same time,” he tells W. Instead, the 34-year-old studied abroad in Paris for two years of school, nabbing a job as Tiffany Godoy’s assistant during her days with The Reality Show. “It was either I went to my statistics class or a Dior show,” Campillo says of his time in the French capital. “So it was a no-brainer.” The Mexico City native got swept up in Paris’s fashion scene, but he soon craved depth beyond the nightly parties and events. He began obsessively studying clothing on a more microscopic level.

In 2016, Campillo founded The Pack, renamed to Campillo earlier this year, when the designer gained sole ownership over the project. Campillo sees his time working for Godoy, as well as his days with The Pack, as his formal fashion education. During the pandemic, isolation as well as an illness in the family brought Campillo face-to-face with his roots. “I became conscious of the culture of baggage that I had, and that my family carried, and what that meant for me as a creative,” he says. “Campillo is about recontextualizing tradition, but doing so through a personal lens.”

One day after Campillo gained ownership of his company, he received the news that he was a semifinalist for the 2024 LVMH prize, the first Mexican-born designer to do so. It’s the perfect time for the brand’s rise, with the current popularity of Americana-Western culture thanks to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Pharrell Williams’s Louis Vuitton. At the same time, other Latinx-helmed labels, like Willy Chavarria and Luar, have been making major inroads specifically in the New York fashion scene, which is why Campillo feels comfortable showing at NYFW in a few days’s time. “The Latinx community in New York is very important, it’s very relevant, it’s very present. It’s having its moment,” he says. “Willy and Raul [Lopez]’s success has made me feel safe. I know there’s a sense of community in New York.”

The collection Campillo will present was created in just four weeks, specifically for the LVMH Prize. He describes it as a purification of the essence of the brand. “I’m defining Campillo through something very simple and clean,” the designer says. “It’s stripped of a lot of layers.” Still, he promises an energy to the collection, one akin to a “volcanic explosion or orgasm.” There’s a creative freedom in the clothes, born from a feeling of restlessness. “I felt like I couldn’t hold it in any longer,” Campillo explains. “I just had to do the things I fantasize about without being scared.”

TWP

Trish Wescoat Pound has come a long way since Haute Hippie, the brand she launched in 2008 to great success before selling in 2015. That line was characterized by adornment, prints, and layers—but her current label, TWP is much more pared-back, comprised of versatile basics and elevated sportswear. “I’d describe it as a modern take on American classics,” Wescoat Pound tells W over email. “Everyday, wearable clothes that combine utility and style.”

If the name TWP has crossed your radar, it was likely within the context of its button-downs. The cropped “Next Ex” style and the more classic “Big Joe” have already become must-have pieces among New York’s in-crowd. When Wescoat Pound started TWP in 2021, she focused mostly on the client’s upper half, perfecting these tops before eventually moving on to bottoms. Now, the New Didi, wide-leg, double-pleated trousers, have joined the brand’s pantheon. “They embody a kind of ease and nonchalance that is at the core of everything TWP,” Wescoat Pound says of her most popular items.

TWP speaks to the concept of wearability, which has been the subject of much chatter within the fashion world over the last few seasons. These are real clothes with a clear purpose, pieces that can easily slot into any closet. “So much of fashion is about a particular ‘look’ but I don’t think that’s how women want to dress today,” Wescount Pound adds. “I design pieces that women can make their own.” Clearly, it’s working. TWP has hit a chord, with dozens of distributors purchasing regularly each season, as well as two bricks-and-mortar stores in Manhattan and Sag Harbor. Wescoat Pound is taking a big step with a runway show just two years after the brand’s launch. “I never thought we’d do a show, especially this soon,” she says. The designer promises it won’t be “a conventional runway show,” but something more intimate. “I like to keep it real,” she adds.