New York Fashion Week Has 126 Separate Events This Season, and Diane von Furstenberg Is Back

New York Fashion Week officially begins on September 10, and the calendar is dense enough to require planning even for people who are only watching.

This season takes in 63 runway shows, seven presentations, 43 by-appointment or extended presentations, six digital shows and eight New York Menswear Day shows. That is 126 activations in total.

For anyone attending, that means a genuine transport problem. For anyone following online, it means an uninterrupted week of content and commentary.

The return worth clearing space for

The headline booking is Diane von Furstenberg, who has not shown in nine years. A designer of that standing returning after that long is the kind of event a season gets remembered by.

The rest of the schedule is substantial. Tommy Hilfiger, Luar, Thom Browne, Proenza Schouler, Eckhaus Latta, LoveShackFancy, Christian Siriano, Tory Burch, Wiederhoeft, Khaite and threeASFOUR are all showing, among many others.

KidSuper's People's Runway also returns to Brooklyn, presenting work by a group of designers based in New York, which remains one of the more genuinely interesting fixtures on the calendar because it is not built around established houses.

63 runway shows, seven presentations, 43 by-appointment showings, six digital shows and eight menswear shows

It starts before it starts

Several designers show ahead of the official opening. Ralph Lauren, Coach and Rachel Comey all present on September 9.

That is worth knowing if you are trying to follow along, because the first significant collections of the season land a day before most people start paying attention.

There is also a notable non-runway event on the same date. The resale platform eBay is staging an immersive exhibition of rare and archival American fashion, curated by Carlos Nazario. A secondhand marketplace mounting a curated archive show during fashion week is a reasonable indicator of where the resale market now sits in the industry's self-image.

The scale is the story

It is worth sitting with the shape of that calendar, because it says something about how the week now works.

Sixty-three runway shows is the traditional business. The 43 by-appointment or extended presentations are something else: a format that exists because a full runway show costs more than most labels can justify, and because buyers and editors increasingly want to handle the clothes rather than watch them pass at speed.

Six digital shows is a small number, and a telling one. The pandemic-era assumption that the runway would substantially move online has not held. What has survived is the hybrid arrangement, where the show is physical and the audience is mostly not.

What is actually being shown

A point that trips people up every September: these are spring and summer 2027 collections.

The clothes on the runway this week are not for this autumn. They are what will be in stores in roughly six months, which is why the week functions as a forecast rather than a shopping guide. What you are watching is an argument about what people will want to wear next summer, made by designers who committed to it months ago.

How to follow it from elsewhere

Most people will follow this on social media, where the shows arrive in fragments, out of order and stripped of context, within minutes.

For anyone wanting the full runway rather than the highlights, a handful of platforms carry livestreams, including FashionWeekOnline and Accelevents. Both charge a fee per day.

That is the trade this season offers. The free version is fast, partial and extremely loud. The paid version is the show as the designer intended it, which given that 126 events are competing for the same week of attention, may be the only way to actually see any of them properly.