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.

In the heart of the Theatre District, The Actors Temple is welcoming New Yorkers to celebrate the Jewish New Year with two community events that combine tradition, spirituality and something particularly meaningful this year: giving back.

On Saturday, September 12 at 7 p.m., The Actors Temple will hold a free Rosh Hashanah Second Evening service, open to the community at its historic home at 339 West 47th Street. It is an invitation to enter the Jewish year 5787 not simply through ritual, but through reflection, renewal and community—ideas that feel particularly resonant at a moment when the world could use considerably more of all three.

Rosh Hashanah is traditionally a time of taking stock. It asks us to examine where we have been, consider where we have fallen short and decide how we want to move forward. The sounding of the shofar is both ancient ritual and spiritual wake-up call: the new year has arrived, but entering it consciously requires more than simply turning a page on the calendar.

The following afternoon, Sunday, September 13 at 2:30 p.m., The Actors Temple takes that idea of renewal beyond the walls of the synagogue with Reverse Tashlich, another free community event. Traditional Tashlich symbolically casts away the mistakes and transgressions of the previous year, often beside a body of moving water. Reverse Tashlich turns the ritual in another direction: instead of putting something into the water, participants take something harmful out of it.

It is a wonderfully contemporary interpretation of an ancient idea. Rather than symbolically casting away what we no longer wish to carry, Reverse Tashlich asks participants to help remove litter and debris from waterways and surrounding areas. The spiritual act becomes a physical one. Repairing ourselves and repairing the world are no longer separate ideas.

That concept sits comfortably within the Jewish principle of tikkun olam—repairing the world. A new year can bring prayers, promises and intentions, but eventually intention has to become action. Cleaning a shoreline may appear to be a small gesture against the enormous environmental problems facing the planet, yet there is something powerful about beginning with the piece of the world directly within our reach.

There is also something wonderfully appropriate about these celebrations taking place at The Actors Temple. Founded as Congregation Ezrath Israel, the synagogue has been part of the Theatre District for more than a century and became famous for its connection to performers and entertainment figures. In a neighborhood defined by people telling stories on stages, this small synagogue has quietly preserved a much older story of faith, survival and community.

Both events are free, making them particularly welcoming for New Yorkers who want to participate in the High Holidays without allowing the cost of admission to become a barrier. The Rosh Hashanah Second Evening service begins Saturday, September 12 at 7 p.m., with Reverse Tashlich following Sunday, September 13 at 2:30 p.m.

A new year traditionally begins with the hope that we can do better than we did the year before. The Actors Temple is offering two ways to begin—one by looking inward and the other by looking at the world around us.

Perhaps we need both.

The Actors Temple High Holidays and 2026–27 events

High Holiday tickets and membership

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.

The New York Pops is heading into its 2026–27 season with James Bond, Broadway stars, holiday glamour and the cinematic worlds of John Williams and Steven Spielberg. Under Music Director and Conductor Steven Reineke, the orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with five programs that move easily between Broadway, Hollywood and popular music—exactly the territory The New York Pops has made its own.

The season begins October 23 with 007: James Bond Forever, featuring Tony Award winner Lena Hall. Few film franchises have produced music as instantly recognizable as Bond, where the songs have become almost as important as the Aston Martins, villains and martinis. From Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones to Adele and Billie Eilish, Bond music has always demanded singers with personality, and Hall certainly has that. With a voice capable of moving from rock to Broadway without losing its edge, she is an inspired choice for an evening devoted to 007.

On November 20, Broadway takes center stage with One Night Only: An Evening with Denée Benton and Jordan Donica. Benton, the Tony-nominated star of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and Donica, whose Broadway credits include The Phantom of the Opera and Camelot, join The New York Pops for an evening built around two formidable voices. It is also the kind of pairing Carnegie Hall does particularly well: performers we know from the theatre given the room—and the orchestra—to show us something beyond the roles in which we first discovered them.

Christmas arrives December 18 and 19 with Sleigh Bells Ring, starring Tony Award winner Lindsay Mendez and Derek Klena. The Pops’ holiday concerts have become a New York tradition, and this year’s combination is particularly appealing. Mendez brings one of Broadway’s most distinctive voices and a wonderfully grounded sense of humor, while Klena has the soaring leading-man vocals the season practically demands. Add a full orchestra, Carnegie Hall dressed for Christmas and two nights just before the holiday, and this has all the makings of one of December’s lovelier escapes.

The new year introduces two powerhouse voices on February 5, 2027, with Introducing…Jimmie Herrod and Marisha Wallace. Herrod, who reached a huge national audience through America’s Got Talent, possesses a remarkable range, while Wallace has established herself as a force on both the West End and Broadway. The evening is part of The New York Pops’ Debut Series, placing the spotlight on artists ready for a major Carnegie Hall moment.

The Carnegie Hall season concludes March 5 with John Williams and Steven Spielberg: Movie Magic. This one barely needs explaining. Williams and Spielberg created one of the great director-composer partnerships in film history, producing music and images that became inseparable from one another. Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List—for generations, we have heard Williams’ music and immediately seen Spielberg’s worlds. Hearing those scores played by The New York Pops in Carnegie Hall should be glorious.

Deborah Cox

Before all of that, however, The New York Pops goes underground—quite literally. On October 5, Grammy and Tony-nominated singer Deborah Cox headlines the annual New York Pops Underground cabaret fundraiser at 54 Below. Cox, currently appearing on Broadway in Titanique as the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown and serving as a co-producer of the production, has built a career that crosses R&B, dance music and Broadway. Her extraordinary “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, while her dance career has produced 13 No. 1 hits on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.

The evening begins with a 6 p.m. reception followed by dinner, wine pairings and the 6:30 p.m. performance. Also appearing will be the PopsEd Alumni Ensemble, made up of young musicians who previously participated in The New York Pops’ Kids on Stage program. That connection is important: proceeds from the evening support PopsEd, the organization’s music-education programs, which have reached more than 100,000 New York City students since 1991.

What makes this Pops season particularly attractive is its range. Bond one month, Broadway the next, Christmas in December, emerging voices in February and Spielberg and Williams in March. It doesn’t require audiences to choose between popular culture and great musicianship. The New York Pops has long understood that the two were never mutually exclusive in the first place.

In a city where fall calendars become impossible almost overnight, consider this your warning: Carnegie Hall just gave us five dates worth putting on the calendar before Fashion Week makes us forget what month it is.

The New York Pops 2026–27 season and tickets

New York Pops Underground with Deborah Cox