In this week’s luxury briefing, a look at the long-term ambitions of NYFW under production company KFN’s leadership. Plus, why executive diversity should be a priority for luxury brands and why Alo is delving deeper into luxury. Also, executive moves and news to know. For tips or comments, email me at zofia@glossy.co
When New York Fashion Week kicks off this week, it does so with a clear new ambition: to become more than a fragmented series of runway shows. Reimagining itself as a city-wide cultural festival — an American fashion equivalent to the U.S. Open — is a primary goal.
The driving force is KFN, a new platform co-founded by Imad Izemrane, the entrepreneur behind creative hub Spring Place, and Leslie Russo, formerly president of sports and culture company IMG’s Global Fashion Events division. Together, they’ve launched the Venue Collective, a decentralized network of fully contracted Manhattan venues offered at no fee to designers. They come complete with backstage infrastructure, technical support and street permitting. At the new hub, anchor shows from Brandon Maxwell, Kate Barton, Simkhai and Altuzarra will test KFN’s one-designer-per-day model. The goal is to remove the operational and financial burdens that have long excluded smaller labels from Fashion Week, while giving each brand a unique stage.
“KFN’s vision aligns with our commitment to advancing NYFW as a global platform for American fashion,” said Steven Kolb, CFDA CEO, in a press release in February. “We look forward to working together to drive innovation and new possibilities for designers.”
For Izemrane, who spent nearly a decade hosting shows at Spring Place, the reset is overdue. “Most designers really don’t want to be sharing the same background as 40 other designers,” he said. “You spend six months working on a collection, and then you get 15 minutes in a space that you have to share with five other brands. It doesn’t work anymore.”
That frustration helped shape the Venue Collective’s model. Instead of forcing labels into a single hub, KFN negotiates short-term rentals across multiple landlords, leveraging what Izemrane calls “buying power.” “When you’re a solo designer talking to a venue, nobody’s going to give you a good deal. But when we’re talking to 50 venues at once, the conversation changes. We can get better terms and pass that advantage on to designers,” he explained. Some locations will operate as hubs, hosting one designer per day, while others will rotate multiple shows in more flexible formats.
The U.S. Open analogy has become Izemrane’s shorthand for the broader vision. “The U.S. Open wouldn’t be the U.S. Open if you only had [tennis players] Djokovic and Alcaraz. It also needs the young, up-and-coming players. Fashion Week is the same thing. You need that mix of emerging designers, established names, and the middle segment that can surprise and shift the conversation.”
Over the past decade, the tennis championship has transformed into a lifestyle destination where Tiffany & Co. designs trophies, Grey Goose serves signature cocktails and American Express builds VIP suites. By contrast, NYFW has struggled with fragmentation since the end of its centralized hub at Lincoln Center in 2015, as major names like Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren continue to show outside the official schedule.
Sponsors this season hint at NYFW’s evolving identity. Technology platform Google Cloud will host AI masterclasses, positioning technology and education at the heart of the week. In addition, the beauty brand Vivienne Sabo will provide experiential beauty activations, the water company Maison Perrier will be the official water partner, and social media company Viral Nation will oversee a social-first strategy aimed at amplifying NYFW’s reach across TikTok and Instagram. The approach feels more experimental than the polished luxury integrations in Paris or Milan, but it reflects New York’s ambition to make the event more accessible, participatory and digitally native.
KFN’s long-term strategy, branded Vision 2027, extends well beyond the runway. “This September is just planting our flag,” Izemrane said. “We didn’t have much time, but next year, we’ll double down. The plan is to create something like Art Basel Miami — but bigger, with fashion at the core, and with music, art and hospitality woven in.”
Future NYFWs will include a fashion-and-entertainment festival during opening weekend, a multimedia exhibition celebrating American fashion, and a centralized digital platform built with Brandon Ralph, formerly of digital agency Code & Theory and now of AI company The UQ.ode. That AI-powered app will eventually integrate show schedules, citywide events and retail tie-ins into a single consumer-facing experience.
In May, Russo said the initiative was built around three pillars: securing investment, building consensus with the industry and starting from a clean slate. She described KFN’s mission as rooted in the belief that “New York Fashion Week doesn’t really belong to any one entity. It belongs to everyone in the industry.” Designers working with KFN are being asked to commit to three consecutive seasons, a move designed to bring continuity to the calendar and deepen audience engagement.
The industry backdrop makes this reinvention more urgent. Luxury spending in the U.S. has softened, while leadership shakeups across major houses have fueled uncertainty. Attendance at NYFW has thinned as buyers and editors opt for curated itineraries or skip altogether. The CFDA estimates that while 250,000 people travel to New York during Fashion Week each year, only a fraction attend shows. The opportunity, and the challenge, is to engage the wider audience of fashion enthusiasts through entertainment-driven experiences.
That trend is hardly limited to New York. In Paris, Jonathan Anderson recently framed fashion itself as a mass cultural spectacle. Speaking to i-D ahead of his Dior Men’s Spring 2026 show, he said: “Mystery is great for a 200-million-euro business. Mystery does not work in mass — it’s about trying to get the audience in. Fashion is entertainment. I think there’s a way to make it personal.”
It’s that pivot from trade event to entertainment platform that defines New York’s current reinvention. “This is only phase one,” Izemrane said. “We call it the platform, and it’s meant to grow with designers, from showrooms to runways to something much bigger for the city itself.”
This season, more than 60 brands will show, from stalwarts like Michael Kors and Coach to newer voices like Advisry and Kate Barton. But the true test will be whether New York can deliver the kind of hybrid spectacle Izemrane imagines: fashion as both high craft and mass entertainment, as thrilling to insiders as it is to the millions watching online.
“One of the things I’m very involved with right now is working with the city and the state,” Izemrane said. “During those two weeks a year, we need to make a much bigger push to support the businesses, as well, because there are 250,000 people coming to New York for Fashion Week, and nobody has ever really created an environment for them.”
Like the U.S Open, success will depend not just on who wins the spotlight, but on whether the entire city feels like part of the show.
Why luxury needs industry outsiders:
A shift toward outsiders in luxury leadership is underway, as underscored this week by Kering’s official appointment of Luca de Meo as CEO. De Meo, a veteran of automotive companies Renault, Volkswagen, Fiat and Toyota, is Kering’s first external chief in two decades. His background in engineering turnarounds and instilling operational rigor contrasts with the creative-first profiles that have long dominated fashion’s C-suite.
“Luxury isn’t indestructible,” said Jamie Gill, founder of the talent agency Outsiders Perspective, which was acquired by the creative strategy collective The Independents’ L’Incubateur this week. “If you don’t get the talent profile right, 100 years of heritage won’t save you.”
The move reflects a growing trend of major houses reaching beyond fashion for leadership. Chanel appointed CEO Leena Nair from Unilever in 2021, while Stella McCartney tapped CEO Amandine Ohayon from Pronovias and L’Oréal in 2023. Ohayon left the company this week.
“Forget DEI as a buzzword, just think commercially,” Gill said. “Other sectors are more financially disciplined, more technologically advanced and more operationally efficient. Why wouldn’t luxury want that perspective?”
What’s behind Alo’s luxury handbag launch
Alo Yoga has launched its first luxury bag campaign following the announcement of its luxury bag launch last week. The campaign was photographed by Steven Meisel. “Wellness is infused in every single part of your day,” Summer Nacewicz, evp of marketing and creative at Alo Yoga, told Glossy — she noted that the bag’s oversized silhouettes were designed for “that girl on the go” moving seamlessly from workouts to nights out. Crafted in Italy, the bags build on the success of the brand’s high-end line, Alo Atelier, which has sold out annually since its 2023 debut and is expanding to biannual launches. The new bags reinforce Alo’s luxury credentials while bringing its “studio-to-street” ethos to a new category: luxury accessories.
Executive moves
- Roberto Lorenzini is stepping down as Tod’s Group CEO of the Americas after more than a decade, with the Della Valle family confirming he will stay on in an advisory capacity during the transition.
- Tom Mendenhall has been appointed CEO of Stella McCartney, succeeding Amandine Ohayon, who is leaving after nearly two years and will remain as an advisor during the transition. Mendenhall was previously brand president of Polo and Double RL at Ralph Lauren, and before that spent over 18 years at Tom Ford and Gucci, serving as evp and COO at Tom Ford and worldwide director of merchandising at Gucci.
News to know
- Valentino has reopened its fully renovated 12,636-square-foot flagship on Via Montenapoleone in Milan. It features Alessandro Michele–designed interiors and exclusive product launches, including limited-edition Vain handbags, plus an early preview of the Valentino Garavani x Vans collaboration.
- China’s Public Security Bureau has fined Dior’s Shanghai subsidiary for violations of the Personal Information Protection Law following a May data breach, citing unlawful cross-border transfers, lack of user consent and inadequate security, though the fine amount was not disclosed.
- Hedi Slimane, after leaving Celine in October 2024, urged the house to “brilliantly reinvent” itself with a new visual identity free of references to his style. The statement is a clear call for Michael Rider’s team to stop echoing Slimane’s aesthetic and define Celine’s next chapter on its own terms.
Listen in
On this week’s Glossy Podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska reflect on the death of Giorgio Armani, unpack Chloe Malle’s appointment as editor of U.S. Vogue and Rachel Scott’s new role at Proenza Schouler, and examine the growing trend of creative directors juggling multiple brands, as Scott will continue leading Diotima. They also discuss MyTheresa’s layoffs at Yoox Net-a-Porter and what they signal for luxury e-commerce. Finally, Parisi speaks with SwissWatchExpo founder and CEO Eugene Tutunikov about how U.S. tariffs and volatile pricing are shaking up the Swiss watch industry. Listen here.
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