Most Americans dream of having a Euro summer. But for top European brands recently, it’s New York or nowhere. After an influx of stateside runway shows over the past year, top luxury houses from abroad are continuing to make the city part of their narrative. Matthieu Blazy decamped Chanel to an abandoned New York City subway station—yes, of all places—for his debut Métiers d’art show in December.
Manhattan was again the focus of that collection’s accompanying campaign, with photographer Craig McDean capturing Blazy’s vibrant archetypal-inspired collection. Models gallivanted around the subway, hung out at the Remedy Diner on the Lower East Side, and posed to the nines on the ferry. One even hopped atop a taxicab and another indulged in a perfectly salted pretzel, a favorite pastime of New Yorkers.
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At Gucci, Demna is also in a New York state of mind. The designer—who is no stranger to a flashy Manhattan show, having shown Balenciaga’s cruise 2023 collection at the New York Stock Exchange—presented Gucci’s latest runway smack-dab in the middle of Times Square.
While at the pinnacle of tourist kitsch, Demna offset the spectacle of Times Square with an artful touch. He released teasers prior to the show inspired by Robert Longo’s series “Men in the Cities.” Shot atop Longo’s New York studio rooftop in 1979, the original images captured sharply dressed figures in contorted motion, which Demna interpreted in various settings.
Just days after Gucci unveiled its cruise 2027 collection, Louis Vuitton presented its own uptown at the Frick Collection. It coincided with the brand’s initiative to offer free evening admission at the museum on the first Friday of every month.
At Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli offered a cinematic approach. The Italian designer creative directed a short called A New York Minute for its fall/winter 2026 campaign, helmed by two creatives with connections to the city: Sarah Pidgeon, who portrayed perennial New York muse Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in Love Story, and director Celine Song, whose films Past Lives and Materialists are love letters to the city.
Across three 60-second films, Pidgeon models the Le City, Le 7 Bowling, and Rodeo bags while navigating the rhythms of everyday city life: Picking up dry cleaning, hailing a cab, and becoming frustrated when a street is shut down to film a very meta commercial.
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New York’s image has always inspired and been in dialogue with European fashion—look no further than Alexander McQueen’s American-flag-patterned boxers for spring/summer 2000 or Riccardo Tisci’s several New York runway presentations for Givenchy. But beyond the runway, it’s evident that designers are now responding to the city’s cultural cachet in a fresh way with messaging and visuals that tap into its iconography without becoming cliché.
And with the Knicks in the throes of the NBA Finals, there might not be a better time to be living in New York than right now.
This article was first seen on ELLE US.