KidSuper brings emerging designers to NYFW All Brooklyn-based, for The People's Runway event

For those who don’t know New York well, it’s hard to understand just how strong the bond is between its residents and the neighborhoods they live in. It’s a feeling that Colm Dillane, founder and creative director of KidSuper, has never stopped affirming: Brooklyn has been and still is the beating heart of his creative vision, even now that his collections find space on the runways of Paris. And it is precisely from this root that The People’s Runway was born, a project designed to bring fashion back to where it all began for Dillane—on the streets, among the communities of his borough. The show, part of the official NYFW calendar, will take place on September 14 in front of Brooklyn Borough Hall, and it won’t be a traditional fashion show, but rather a collective stage built together with borough president Antonio Reynoso. From the selection of hundreds of applications, five emerging designers were chosen to represent the different cultural identities of Brooklyn: Ahmrii Johnson, who blends Caribbean craft and botany; Daveed Baptiste, who works on the theme of migration and the memory of the Haitian community; Kent Anthony, who offers new perspectives on Black luxury; Rojin Jung, who draws on her identity as the daughter of immigrants; and Shriya Myneni, who explores deconstructed and reconstructed forms. All five will be mentored by Dillane in a process aimed at amplifying their creative voices.

Although NYFW has in recent years lost some traction on the international stage, due in part to the lack of big names, it seems that the CFDA has shifted its focus toward new realities, whether emerging or just starting out. A model that has worked brilliantly in London and that in Paris finds its balance between the presence of couture Maisons and new international names, but one that is fundamentally missing in Milan. Entrusting such a project to Dillane means recognizing his unique ability to move between two seemingly distant worlds: the institutional and the informal. The strength of KidSuper has always been exactly this—transforming the chaotic, spontaneous aesthetic of Brooklyn into a language that can be read and recognized within the fashion system. But the fact that such an initiative comes from Dillane and not from one of the major fashion institutions also highlights a clear limitation: the big 4 are increasingly in need of hybrid figures, capable of speaking both to the runways and to the communities, in order not to slide definitively into a sterile calendar, incapable of generating new imagery. As has been the case for several—perhaps too many—seasons now.