ZALDY SS '27

ZALDY Returns to NYFW With the Help of Logistics and Supply Chain Company, Auger

HALFWAY through fashion-week, with the celebratory glimmer of New York’s most beautiful and best-dressed approaching its zenith, certain themes have emerged. Americana-inspired brands such as Ralph Lauren and Coach, with the chauvinism of the semiquincentennial hanging in the air, have reconsidered the notion of the American Dream their looks have historically exuded. Reinvention has also come to the fore with brands like Diane von Furstenberg, which returned to the runway after almost a decade under designer Henry Zankov. 

For the eponymous label ZALDY, reinvention isn’t as exigent. Having debuted at NYFW this past winter with the collection “Boys Like Me,” the three-time Emmy Award-winning costume and fashion designer, known for creating outfits for stars like Gwen Stefani, Lady Gaga, and RuPaul, has forged a brand that is still relatively nascent. His inaugural presentation spliced business attire (ties, suit jackets) with extravagant, androgynous styles that recalled the flamboyant and urbane looks of the New Romantic movement. 

Joining forces with Auger, a logistics and supply chain company sponsoring the event, and PR legend Kelly Cutrone, the label’s SS27 presentation, creatively staged in the Hotel Chelsea’s restaurant El Quijote, took the performativity of the runway to scintillating heights. As guests were seated at tables and immersed in an ambiance reminiscent of the old salons of Paris, the models filtered in and boasted designs that toyed with tropical, pirate-like themes, ushering in a whirlwind of seafarer whites, decadent splashes of burnt yellow and island green, and fantastical patterns conjuring exotic lands. The collection also employed intrepid yet minimal looks that felt so quintessentially New York, with olive trench coats framing barely visible undergarments, a shimmery black leather jacket and trousers, and a fancifully sheer black cocktail dress with a ruby red bedazzled choker. These outfits felt appropriate for the season too, when denizens, nursing the dregs of summer while preparing for fall, take to pairing cold and warm weather clothes. 

With so many houses trying to turn a new leaf, the tenacity and freshness of ZALDY’s label is an exciting reprieve. Yet, having worked as a designer for over thirty years, he still has to grapple with the quandary of how to recycle influences in a way that avoids being derivative. This collection, he tells VALŪS, “was like revisiting and pirating my whole experience. I took from my old collections. I took from my culture in the Philippines.” His word choice couldn’t have been better. What is fashion if not an illicit seizing of our many intimate details to form a public narrative? 

ZALDY hit a key point that many designers, especially those desperate to create something “new,” could learn from. Reinvention, for him, isn’t necessarily about novelty but synthesis. Historical contexts, personal experiences, and past projects need to be combined in a way that feels authentic and specific. And those two factors can only come to fruition if designers are willing to be vulnerable and, to borrow his phrase, “pirate” their lives.

ZALDY

Photos courtesy of RANDY BROOKE and ZALDY and PEOPLE'S REVOLUTION