FANG NYC SS'27

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The Gender-Bending Brand Returns to NYFW

Written by GAWAIN SEMLEAR

September is the heralder of two cherished New York happenings: fall, and fashion week. As the temperatures drop, so too do our sartorial inhibitions, ushering in a range of provocations, from major fashion houses to up-and-coming designers. VALŪS inaugurated this year’s storied week with the gender-bending line FANG NYC at their SS27 Runway Show held at the Arlo Williamsburg.

VALŪS March '26 Digital Cover star, BARAK SHAMIR

Launched in 2021 by the New York-based designer Fang Guo, the knitwear-focused line embodies a subversive coquetry that challenges categories of expression. The brand arose out of Guo’s frustration with menswear and its “lack of diversity,” confining wearers to either baggy sportswear or constricting suiting. “It’s really important to express ourselves in this dystopian world, and to dismantle toxic masculinity,” he tells VALŪS. Toggling between masculine and feminine, or yin and yang, as Guo refers to it, the label eschews the boundary separating “menswear” and “womenswear” and charts a more androgynous look.

Though androgyny isn’t a particularly new theme in the fashion world. Think back to Yves Saint Laurent’s controversial drop of Le Smoking in his 1966 Autumn-Winter collection; or, decades before that, queer movie star Marlene Dietrich’s interest in men’s clothing, on and off set. Guo speaks to VALŪS about what differentiates FANG NYC from other trailblazers forging a more inclusive path for gender identity in fashion. Unisex pieces, he explains, can be “big enough for every single person to wear. With compression knitwear being [FANG NYC’s] specialty, it is the very opposite of that. It's more sculpting. It's more site specific.” The genderless outfit, in Guo’s world, far from adopting the shapelessness of the proverbial “one size fits all,” finds its apotheosis in our unique forms.

The procession of models on the runway flaunted edgy, fetish adjacent looks tempered by minimalistic silhouettes. A refreshing turn from the grandiose looks presented by fashion houses this past year, such as the campy, animal-like designs by Schiaparelli and Valentino during Paris Haute Couture Week Spring/Summer and the grunge maximalism of Collina Strada at New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter, FANG NYC showcased simple yet lustrous outfits via form-fitting and hypnotically striped dresses, ensembles of diaphanous tops and utilitarian trousers, and silky, cascading fabrics. Unbridled by the visual noise of elaborate costuming, Guo’s craftsmanship came through in full force, corroborating the age-old adage that less can be more.

The show’s pièce de résistance, a mauve wide-hooped dress, was an appropriately indulgent finale. Maintaining the straightforward elegance of previous looks, this design balanced luxury and restraint in a way that avoided making a gaudy spectacle of itself. Evoking the yin and yang of the brand’s ethos, FANG NYC’s SS27 collection, crowned by this final look, employs a brilliant mixture of opposites: hard and soft; decorated and bare; yonic and phallic. It encourages us to embrace the generative tension that can arise out of seemingly disparate categories and reconsider our prescribed identities. Sexy, iconoclastic, and progressively political, Guo’s designs are ingeniously forward-thinking, building the foundation for a world where the individual and not their gender takes precedence.