NEW YORK — New York Fashion Week’s Fall/Winter 2026 shows wrapped up this week with a clear message from the industry’s biggest names: fashion is going green — dramatically, expensively, and with accessories that may or may not be biodegradable within 90 days.
The season’s defining aesthetic, described by reviewers as “apocalyptic earth mother” and by normal people as “someone spilled the garden on a coat,” featured an overwhelming commitment to sustainability. Earth tones dominated every runway from Seventh Avenue to the Meatpacking District, in shades ranging from “rich loam” to “abandoned quarry” to what one designer simply labeled “regret.”
Marc Jacobs opened with a collection of bold, oversized silhouettes featuring what the show notes called “deconstructed maximalism” and what attendees described as “a Jackson Pollock painting that fell on a bathrobe, then got into an argument with a curtain.” The designs were made using 100% recycled materials, a fact the brand mentioned fourteen times in their press release and once in the garments themselves, via embroidered tags that read: “This coat saved two polar bears. You’re welcome.”
“Fashion must reckon with its footprint. This collection is our apology to the earth.”
— Designer, gesturing at a $4,800 jacket made of repurposed fishing nets while standing on a private jet at Teterboro
Prabal Gurung delivered a deeply personal homage to his Nepalese roots, using traditional handwoven fabrics in combination with what his team called “regenerative textile processes.” Critics praised the collection as “a masterwork of cultural heritage and sustainability,” while guests spent the after-party Googling “how do I pronounce regenerative.”
Michael Kors, meanwhile, presented a palette of sophisticated earth tones — described in show notes as “the color of wisdom and restraint,” and by one anonymous buyer as “the color palette of someone who got lost in a forest three days ago and simply gave up.” The collection emphasized “slow fashion” and “investment pieces,” which Kors defined as “things you buy once and wear forever,” and buyers defined as “things that cost $1,200.”
The week’s most talked-about moment came from the Zendaya x On collaboration, which unveiled a new line of performance sneakers combining technical sportswear with high fashion. The shoes, priced at $395, sold out in eleven minutes. Disappointed customers flooded social media to confirm that the sneakers do not, in fact, grant you Zendaya’s cheekbones — a point the brand had, to be fair, never made, but which consumers had clearly assumed.
Industry observers noted that while sustainability messaging has reached an all-time high, so has fast fashion production globally. “We’re talking about saving the planet,” observed one analyst, “while also releasing six collections a year. But the fonts on the sustainability manifesto were beautiful, so.”
Globe News Daily attended Fashion Week on a press pass and left wearing the same jeans we arrived in, which we have decided to call “a statement.”
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