EMILY DAWN LONG SS '27
Making Clothes for Cool Kids
EMILY Dawn Long is a designer and downtown darling based in NYC, where she runs her eponymous brand. Through her collaborative approach to brand building, she’s cultivated a celeb-studded community. Her pieces, designed to dance/work/play in, have been worn by everyone: Justin Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Jonah Hill, Zoe Kravitz, Kaia Gerber, Emily Ratajkowski, Geese, Brad Pitt. Dawn Long is also a 2026 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Finalist.
Dawn Long’s SS ’27 collection was launched in a characteristically unique fashion. She screened a four minute short film, “The Crack of Dawn,” a heist-y caper-slash-catalogue featuring six pieces in her recent collection—the majority of which highlight ultra-low-cut back decolletage, which Dawn Long cheekily refers to as “Southern Cleavage” (Dawn Long is from Georgia).
The collection also features her first foray into footwear and prints, with a pair of leather sandals and Hawaiian print inspired sets. Dawn Long makes both men’s and women’s wear, and her pieces were on prime display at her preview, where her friends and fans sported her iconic Kipling Tank and Utah Dress (which look like they’re straight out of Sex and the City).
The preview was hosted at Michelin-star restaurant Bridges in Chinatown, with the short film playing in a small theatre room in the back. Red velvet drapes darned the walls, and oil paintings by friend and artist Ian Stanton were a focal point. At Dawn Long’s request, Stanton painted a cascading orange and blue skirt, a silhouette that is prominent throughout Dawn Long’s collection, featured as fluid images on the collection’s long, swishing skirts. The original reference for Stanton and Dawn Long’s collaboration were paintings by artists Petra Blaisse and Torbjörn Vejvi, whose depictions of flowing drapes Dawn Long folded in half and reimagined as a skirt.
The preview was decked out with thoughtful attention-to-detail touches, from the yellow and green striped boxes of popcorn stuffed with EDL movie tickets, branded temporary tattoos and Starface pimple patches to the baseball caps adorned with The Crack of Dawn scattered around the room.
While the collection’s roots are bold (re: the butt crack cutouts) and esoteric (re: her artistic inspiration), its pieces are easily wearable and effortlessly sexy. In “The Crack of Dawn,” Dawn Long’s collection is modelled in motion by her friends running around the city, and her drape-front skirt dresses and funky prints pop in rich yellows and blues against the backdrop of the LES.
Despite her success, Dawn Long continues to emphasize that she is making things for her friends, the cool kids of New York, by designing pieces that fill the gaps in their closets. Seven years in the game, she’s just getting started.
Photos courtesy of MATT MORRIS and MAXWELL TURNER
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