New York Fashion Week has its models, its designers, its celebrities and its front rows. But last night, September 8, some of the most irresistible models walking into the spotlight had four legs—and some of them were looking for homes.

CatWalk FurBaby, presented by ELYSIANImpact and Seven Runway returns for its fourth year at Sony Hall in Times Square, bringing together fashion and animal rescue for an evening appropriately billed as “Where Fashion Meets Compassion.” Created by ELYSIAN founder and publisher Karen Floyd, the event pairs designers with animal rescue organizations, transforming the traditional Fashion Week runway into something considerably more meaningful.

Karen Floyd, Marc Bouwer, his dog and friend

This year’s show brought together 11 designers and ateliers supporting ten rescue organizations, with Anne Fontaine, Bless by Bless, L’Agence, Cate Brown, Hot Girl Quilting, Marc Bouwer, Magpies & Peacocks,

Victor De Souza

Victor De Souza, Halyna Shunevych, Any Old Iron and D’Marsh Couture taking part.

Prince Mario Max and Karen Floyd

Yes, there was couture. Yes, there were celebrity judges and Fashion Week glamour. But it was the rescue dogs that were the point.

Lessa Roland

That distinction is what has allowed CatWalk FurBaby to become more than another event competing for attention during an increasingly overcrowded Fashion Week calendar. Each designer walked in support of a participating rescue, giving animal welfare organizations something extraordinarily valuable during NYFW: visibility.

Here comes the dog

The concept comes from Floyd’s passion for animal welfare and her belief that philanthropy and fashion don’t need to occupy separate worlds. CatWalk FurBaby uses the spectacle of a runway show to direct attention toward rescue, adoption and the organizations doing the decidedly less glamorous work of caring for abandoned and vulnerable animals every day.

Karen Floyd, Jean Shafiroff

The formula has already attracted formidable names in fashion. Previous CatWalk FurBaby participants and guests have included NYFW founder Fern Mallis, supermodel Carol Alt, philanthropist Jean Shafiroff who was a judge this year and designer Nicole Miller, while DJ Chloe Jane has appeared wearing Tommy Hilfiger. The event has also earned national attention, including coverage in Forbes.

Carmen D’Alessio and guest

There is something particularly clever about putting rescue animals into the middle of Fashion Week. Fashion is built upon desire: the dress we suddenly need, the bag everyone wants, the image we imagine ourselves becoming. Animal adoption asks us to look at desire differently. Instead of asking, Do I want this?, it asks, Can I give this animal a life? Unlike a handbag, that decision loves you back.

Gizmo was one of the lucky dogs to be rescued. Sitting in the front row with his human

The evening also reflects a larger movement within fashion toward purpose. Consumers increasingly want to know what the brands they support stand for, where things come from and whether all that beauty is attached to anything beyond commerce. CatWalk FurBaby doesn’t pretend a runway can solve the enormous problem of animal abandonment. It does something more practical: it puts the organizations trying to solve it in front of people who might donate, adopt, volunteer or simply pay attention.

The host for the night was Charles Charlii Sebunya

Behind the event is ELYSIAN Impact, the philanthropic arm of ELYSIAN, which focuses its charitable work across five areas: women, children, service, animals and the environment. According to the organization, ELYSIAN Impact has disbursed more than $17.5 million over the past decade, with donations going directly to nonprofit organizations.

 Dr. Christina Rahm

For the participating rescues, however, the impact of the evening isn’t measured only in dollars. Every animal placed before an audience becomes an individual rather than a statistic. One face can accomplish what thousands of numbers cannot. Someone sees a dog. Someone falls in love. Someone decides there is room in the apartment after all.

That is where CatWalk FurBaby gets this exactly right.

Eliza

Fashion Week gives New York plenty of beautiful things to look at over the coming days. There will be extraordinary clothes, impossible shoes, parties, celebrities and enough photographers to make crossing certain blocks of Manhattan nearly impossible.

Opening it with compassion isn’t a bad statement about what beauty ought to mean.

The best thing walking the runway this Fashion Week might not be wearing the clothes at all.

CatWalk FurBaby took place September 8 at Sony Hall, inside the Paramount Hotel in Times Square.

Look for Part 2 on who was adopted and who won the awards.

H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe praised New York Fashion Week 2026 as a defining global fashion moment, celebrating the city’s unmatched scale, inclusivity, and message of unity.

New York Fashion Week has always carried the pulse of the city around it. In 2026, that pulse feels especially strong, as designers, visitors, journalists, photographers, television crews, models, stylists, and fashion devotees gather across New York for one of the most visible cultural moments of the year.

For H.H. Dr. Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe, the season represents more than another turn of the fashion calendar. He has described New York City as the most important fashion metropolis in the world, pointing to the remarkable number of shows, designers, visitors, and international observers that have given NYFW 2026 its broad cultural force.

His message was delivered with particular energy at Runways on Fire, a public fashion production staged in the heart of Times Square at Father Duffy Square. There, Prince Mario-Max opened New York City from what he called the cold heart of the universe, receiving thunderous applause as the runway came alive with beauty, style, and a message that reached beyond fashion alone.

The event placed fashion where New York so often expresses itself most powerfully, before the public. With hundreds of journalists, photographers, and television crews present, along with tens of thousands of spectators and passersby, Runways on Fire became a vivid expression of fashion as shared culture. It was a runway built for visibility, connection, and civic celebration.

Prince Mario-Max praised the way fashion brings people together, regardless of where they come from. His remarks centered on love, peace, and inclusion, presenting New York not only as a fashion capital but as a city whose creative strength comes from its openness. In his view, New York’s global influence is rooted in its ability to welcome different voices, cultures, talents, and audiences into one dynamic fashion landscape.

That sense of inclusivity is central to New York Fashion Week’s identity. The city holds heritage fashion houses and rising designers, luxury presentations and public showcases, established industry figures and emerging creative communities. Its runways, sidewalks, studios, hotels, galleries, and public squares all become part of the same story. Fashion in New York is polished, ambitious, immediate, and accessible.

NYFW 2026 has also arrived at a moment of renewed focus on American fashion. With major names and emerging labels contributing to a packed season, the city has reaffirmed its role as a global platform for design, media, culture, and commerce. The energy surrounding the week reflects not only the strength of the official schedule but also the many independent events and public-facing productions that expand fashion beyond traditional venues.

A Public Runway With a Purpose

Runways on Fire gave that broader movement a striking public stage. Times Square, already one of the most recognizable urban settings in the world, became a place where fashion, entertainment, and purpose met. The event’s visual drama served a deeper message, that style can gather people together and create a shared moment of recognition.

Prince Mario-Max’s appearance added ceremonial weight to the production. His praise for New York as the world’s most inclusive city framed the runway as more than a spectacle. It became a celebration of creative unity, where beauty and design were presented alongside a clear call for love and peace.

In a season filled with presentations, designer debuts, brand moments, and cultural events, that message gave Runways on Fire its distinction. It reminded audiences that fashion’s influence is strongest when it connects people across backgrounds and invites them into a wider sense of belonging.

New York’s fashion power has always come from this combination of ambition and openness. The city can host glamour at the highest level while still allowing the street, the public square, and the wider community to shape the atmosphere. It is a place where fashion is not confined to a room. It moves through the city and becomes part of daily life.

For Prince Mario-Max, that is what places New York ahead. More shows, more designers, more visitors, and more global attention have made the 2026 season feel expansive and confident. Yet the deeper achievement is cultural. New York has turned fashion into a meeting place, where creative expression becomes a language of welcome.

As NYFW 2026 continues to unfold, Prince Mario-Max’s message stands as one of the season’s most generous statements. Fashion, at its best, is not only about what appears on the runway. It is about the people gathered around it, the stories they carry, and the sense of connection a great city can create.

At Runways on Fire, New York offered that connection in full public view. With beauty, style, applause, and a message of love and peace, the city once again affirmed its place at the center of global fashion culture.

There are certain conversations that simply belong in New York, and putting Gustavo Dudamel and Lin-Manuel Miranda together beneath the stars in Central Park feels like one of them.

On September 23, The Public Theater will bring back its Public Forum Duets with Public Forum Duet: Gustavo Dudamel & Lin-Manuel Miranda, a free, one-night-only event at the revitalized Delacorte Theater. The evening will combine conversation with live musical performances as two very different musical forces talk about music, life and, most intriguingly, what both mean in New York City.

Dudamel arrives at a fascinating moment in his relationship with the city. The celebrated conductor is the incoming Tang Music & Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic, bringing with him not simply an international reputation but a deeply held belief in music as something that should reach beyond the traditional walls of the concert hall.

Miranda hardly requires an introduction to a New York theater audience. The creator of Hamilton has become one of the city’s most recognizable artistic voices, but his connection to The Public makes this particular pairing especially appropriate. Hamilton began its New York life at The Public before moving to Broadway, making The Delacorte an unusually fitting place for Miranda to join a musician beginning his own major new chapter in the city.

What makes the evening particularly appealing, however, is the word duet.

The Public Forum series has long been built around the idea that conversation itself can be a form of performance. The Public describes the program as a place where “art, ideas, and action collide,” bringing artists, thinkers and public voices together to examine the larger questions moving through the culture.

Dudamel and Miranda should have plenty to discuss.

One comes from the world of orchestras, where hundreds of years of musical tradition meet the challenge of attracting the audiences of tomorrow. The other helped take American history, hip-hop, musical theater and immigration and turn them into one of the defining theatrical phenomena of the 21st century. Both have spent much of their careers challenging assumptions about who certain kinds of music belong to and who should be invited into the room.

New York has always been a city that absorbs musical languages and makes something new from them. Classical music, Broadway, jazz, salsa, hip-hop, opera and countless sounds carried here by generations of immigrants coexist within a few subway stops of one another. Yet arts institutions everywhere are confronting the same question: How do you honor tradition without allowing tradition to become a gatekeeper?

Dudamel and Miranda have approached that question from very different directions. Bringing them together isn’t simply an appealing celebrity pairing. It offers the possibility of a conversation about where music goes next—and who gets to come along.

Best of all, the evening remains rooted in one of The Public’s defining principles: access.

Free tickets will be distributed on September 23 in several ways. Distribution outside The Delacorte begins at noon; an in-person lottery will be held at noon in The Public Theater lobby at 425 Lafayette Street; the TodayTix digital lottery remains open until noon that day; and a standby line at The Delacorte can begin distributing available tickets as early as 6 p.m. Public Theater members can also reserve seats with an additional donation.

Public Forum Duet: Gustavo Dudamel & Lin-Manuel Miranda — tickets and information

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about the whole proposition: gather New Yorkers in Central Park, put two extraordinary musical minds onstage, add live music and see where the conversation goes.

In a city increasingly divided into algorithms, audiences and carefully targeted demographics, perhaps there is still something radical about simply gathering together to listen.

On September 23, New York gets one hell of a duet.

How fitting it is that Micky Dolenz has chosen this month to release his latest recorded album, Timeless.  It hits the marketplace just in time to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the debut of The Monkees TV show that started it all.  And, it is a refreshing reminder of how pop music fans first fell in love with Micky’s voice, and 60 years later it is still as strong and distinctive as ever.

Although Timeless is only a six-song EP, it still provides living proof of how ageless Micky’s voice and energy is—right up to today.  This is the perfect platform to show off these half-dozen new Dolenz performances which seem to fit right into any era of Monkees music.  Produced by Sam Hollander, John Hughes, and Pete Donnelley, Timeless perfectly captures one of the most celebrated voices of rock & roll.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the Timeless release is the fact that it contains new music from several of the same songwriters who made The Monkees’ 2016 Good Times! album such an appealing hit.  These returning contributors include, Andy Partridge of XTC, and Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, plus the addition of Paul Westerberg of The Replacements.  Also included here is the song “Waiting For Day,” which was written Vicki Peterson of The Bangles, and beautifully sung by Micky as a duet with his beloved sister Coco Dolenz.

There are also several hints of classic Monkees audio references on Timeless.  The song “In The Center Of My Hears (There Is a Force Commonly Known As Love)” starts out with some of the same recorded “party patter” of voices that began “Don’t Call On Me” from The Monkees’ Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones album back in 1967.  Furthermore, Micky gives the same kind of command to his delivery on that song, similar to the group’s 1968 song “D.W. Washburn.”

Part of the beauty to this six-song EP of an album is that it contains something old, something new, and several songs sounding classically “Monkees.”  Without a doubt, the best part of all is the fact that Micky Dolenz sounds like he is having as much fun in the recording studio than the did circa 1966.  In other words, “Timeless” is the fitting title to this album, because that word describes Micky Dolenz to a tee.

Another reason that I am especially happy to see and hear this new EP from Dolenz, is that it is referenced and included in the new third version of the book I’m A Believer, by Micky Dolenz…and me!  As the co-writer on this hit book, I am thrilled to announce that a new 2006 commemorative edition of the book has just been released.  It contains a new updating chapter by me, and a newly updated Discography as well.  The book originally came out in 1993 from Hyperion Books.  Then it came out in 2004 from Cooper Square, with a new chapter from me.  This new 2026 version from Lyons Press gave me the platform to add still another chapter, and to report everything that has happened to the group since the second version came out.  Most notably the updated include the individual passing of Micky’s trio of Monkee brothers:  Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Mike Nesmith.

Thankfully, we still have Micky Dolenz here with us. His energy and enthusiasm lives on in his Timeless EP, and in the book I wrote with him:  I’m A Believer.  I wish all of you Monkees fans out there a “Happy 60th Anniversary!”  Rock on, Micky Dolenz!  I know I will be celebrating it, in Timeless fashion!