Fashion
Runways on Fire Ignites New York Fashion Week in the Heart of Times Square
New York Fashion Week may belong to designers, editors, buyers and the invited few, but on September 8, fashion walked directly into the middle of Times Square and invited everyone to watch.
The Fashion Week Experience’s “Runways on Fire” transformed Father Duffy Square into an outdoor runway, effectively kicking off Fashion Week with a five-hour celebration of emerging designers, international culture, music, entertainment and street-level New York energy. Better yet, it was free. No velvet rope, impossible invitation or carefully guarded front row was required. Tourists, New Yorkers and fashion devotees could simply stop in the middle of Times Square and watch fashion happen around them.
Produced by The Fashion Week Experience in partnership with HealthJox Foundation, Inc., with James Corbett and Dewry DuRoi Bradford behind the production, Runways on Fire was deliberately conceived as something broader than a conventional runway presentation.
The idea was to connect fashion with culture, community and social impact while creating visibility for emerging talent that doesn’t necessarily have access to Fashion Week’s more established rooms.
The HealthJox component gave that mission additional purpose: the New York City nonprofit works with at-risk youth through programs addressing mental health, sports, creativity and career development.
There was something particularly appropriate about doing it in Times Square. Fashion Week can occasionally become so insulated that it forgets clothing ultimately exists outside the fashion industry. Here, the audience wasn’t confined to editors studying a collection from folding chairs. It was New York itself. Models walked against one of the most recognizable urban backdrops in the world as the constantly changing Times Square crowd became part of the show.
The afternoon moved through multiple presentations rather than attempting to impose a single fashion identity. Emerging designers and independent brands were given room alongside entertainment and cultural presentations, creating something closer to a fashion festival than a traditional runway show. The Dan Smith Brand was among those featured, while Trouble to Triumph brought a bold urban-lifestyle sensibility to the runway, styled by @ichepalms_ip. The emphasis was less on retail-ready conformity than personality—giving designers and creatives a chance to show audiences exactly who they were.
One of the day’s most colorful presentations turned the runway outward, celebrating countries and cultures from around the world. Prince Mario-Max was among those who walked, adding a wonderfully unexpected touch of international pageantry to an event already taking place beneath the sensory overload of Times Square. It worked because Runways on Fire wasn’t pretending to be a hushed Paris salon. It understood its location and embraced it.
That accessibility may have been the event’s greatest strength. There is an enormous amount of conversation within fashion about diversity, inclusion and creating opportunities for new voices, but Runways on Fire made the concept remarkably literal: put the runway in a public square and remove the price of admission. Suddenly the person who never receives a Fashion Week invitation can stand beside the person who attends shows professionally. A young designer can see a possible future. A child walking through Times Square can see models and designers who look like them. Fashion stops being something happening behind a door and becomes something happening in their city.
The partnership with HealthJox Foundation reinforced that idea. Runways on Fire was designed not simply to promote clothing but to use fashion and entertainment as vehicles for youth empowerment, mental-health awareness, community engagement and opportunity. HealthJox describes its larger mission as helping young people develop practical skills and pathways toward sustainable careers, making fashion one part of a considerably larger conversation about possibility.
There would be plenty of polished rooms, celebrity arrivals, champagne, impossible shoes and carefully curated guest lists in the days that followed. That is Fashion Week, too, and frankly, some of us rather enjoy it. There was something refreshing about beginning this one outside.
Before New York Fashion Week disappeared behind its doors, Runways on Fire put fashion in the middle of Times Square and let the city have the first look.
Beauty
When The Met Meets Madison Avenue: Bobbi Brown Turns Masterpieces Into Makeup
Only in New York would it make perfect sense to take Monet, Klimt, Redon and Cross out of the museum and put them in your makeup bag.
Two decidedly New York institutions have come together for the limited-edition Bobbi Brown x The Met Collection, pairing the beauty brand born in New York City with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and transforming details from some of its celebrated works into objects considerably more portable than a masterpiece. The result is part makeup collection, part miniature art exhibition—and considerably easier to take home from The Met.
The collaboration draws upon works by Henri-Edmond Cross, Gustav Klimt, Odilon Redon and Claude Monet, translating their colors and imagery into packaging that makes opening an eyeshadow palette feel just a little more decadent. It is an inspired pairing because cosmetics and painting have always shared a language: color, shadow, light, texture and the occasional illusion.
At the center of the collection is an eight-well eye shadow palette filled with golds, bronzes and browns in matte and shimmering finishes—the sort of shades that can move easily from an understated New York afternoon to an evening when understated has left the building. A three-in-one Brightening Blush offers that elusive lit-from-within flush, while the Luxe Eye Shadow provides multidimensional shimmer for anyone who believes eyelids deserve their own little work of art.
The lips haven’t been neglected. Bobbi Brown’s Luxe Lipstick gets the museum treatment with skincare-infused color and a pressed, canvas-inspired bullet, while the Extra Lip Tinted Balm delivers a sheer, pH-reactive wash of color with plumping hydration. In other words, one can now contemplate great art while simultaneously wondering whether one needs another lipstick. We know how that usually ends.
The cleverness of the collaboration lies in the packaging. Rather than simply stamping The Met’s name onto a cosmetics case and calling it culture, the collection brings actual works from the museum’s holdings onto the pieces themselves. The compacts become tiny canvases, turning something normally destined for the bathroom counter into something you may be reluctant to throw away once you’ve hit pan.
There is also something wonderfully New York about the entire enterprise. The Met has spent more than 150 years collecting objects of beauty from across civilizations. Bobbi Brown built its reputation on a distinctly modern idea of beauty. One hangs masterpieces on Fifth Avenue; the other gives us the tools to create our own faces before heading out the door.
High art and highlighter were probably destined to meet eventually. The limited-edition Bobbi Brown x The Met Collection is available now through Bobbi Brown Cosmetics.
You may not be able to hang a Monet in your apartment, but apparently you can now keep a little piece of The Met on your vanity.
Events
Alice + Olivia Thinks Pink as Stacey Bendet Kicks Off Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Madison Avenue turned decidedly pink Thursday night as Alice + Olivia founder Stacey Bendet brought together fashion, cocktails, music and a little retail temptation for something considerably more important than another fashionable New York soirée: the opening of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and a monthlong initiative benefiting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Bendet hosted the evening at Alice + Olivia’s Madison Avenue flagship alongside Emily Rockefeller and Dr. Elizabeth Comen, with Jenny Mollen, BCRF’s Donna McKay, Jennifer Rubio, Julie Macklowe, Sofia Karvela, Natalie Mackey, Dani Stahl, Ebony Wiggins, Carolyn Angel and Aqua Parios among those joining the celebration. Cancer survivor, philanthropist and advocate Quiana Parks supplied the music, giving the evening a particularly personal connection to the cause.
Because philanthropy needn’t be dreary, there was plenty to play with. Guests could customize purchases with embroidery, head to the charm bar to create pink phone charms, sip Bricoleur Vineyards Isla Rose Brut Rosé, LALO Tequila cocktails and The Macklowe Pink Manhattans, and indulge in appropriately pink sweets. If Breast Cancer Awareness Month has an official color, Bendet clearly saw no reason not to run with it.
The evening was more than pink for pink’s sake. Fifteen percent of net proceeds benefited BCRF and its work supporting breast cancer research, while the party launched Alice + Olivia’s larger October campaign. Through October 31, customers who donate to BCRF at an Alice + Olivia boutique or online will receive 15 percent off a purchase.
Bendet has also given two Alice + Olivia favorites a limited-edition pink treatment for the campaign. The signature Willa Blouse arrives in blush silk crepe de chine with vivid hot-pink detailing, while the Dollie Cardigan also gets its own pink moment. Twenty dollars from the sale of each piece will benefit BCRF. The Willa, priced at $395, is particularly clever: polished enough to survive long after October, while still making its point.
New York is only the beginning. The initiative heads next to Chicago with Giuliana Rancic before moving west, where Bendet will be joined by Paris Hilton and Kathy Hilton for the Los Angeles celebration. For the Hiltons, the partnership carries an especially personal meaning: Kathy Hilton’s mother, Kathleen Richards, died from breast cancer in 2002.
There is always a danger during Breast Cancer Awareness Month that the pink ribbon becomes so familiar we stop seeing what it represents. That is where an evening like this works best. The fashion gets people through the door, the cocktails keep things festive and the shopping makes participation easy—but the money goes toward research into a disease that continues to alter families everywhere.
On Thursday night, however, there was no reason purpose couldn’t arrive wearing fabulous clothes.
Shop pink. Give back. And if you’re going to make a statement, Madison Avenue isn’t a bad place to make it.
Events
Amy Green and GIADA Reimagine Cashmere for a More Conscious Kind of Luxury
Ahead of Climate Week, Amy Green unveiled Vegetable Cashmere® at The Core Club, bringing fashion, innovation and environmental philanthropy together in one very stylish room.
Luxury has always been about desire. Amy Green would like to add responsibility to the equation.
On Sunday, September 20, activist, entrepreneur and environmental advocate Amy Green gathered an intimate group at The Core Club for the unveiling of GIADA, her new luxury fashion brand built around an intriguing proposition: what if the sumptuous feel we associate with cashmere could be created without cashmere at all?
At the heart of the collection is Vegetable Cashmere®, a plant-based fiber made entirely from soybeans and designed to mimic the extraordinary softness and hand of silk and traditional cashmere. The material is 100 percent biodegradable, offering an alternative to animal-derived cashmere while maintaining the tactile pleasure that makes luxury, well, luxurious.
That distinction matters. Sustainability in fashion has too often arrived with the unspoken expectation that consumers must sacrifice beauty, comfort or sophistication in order to make a more responsible choice. GIADA is attempting something considerably more interesting: removing the sacrifice from the conversation.
“GIADA was created from a mother’s love for her children and my belief that future generations deserve a kinder, more thoughtful world,” Green said. “I wanted to create something that proves elegance and ethics do not have to exist separately. Luxury can be beautiful, functional and desirable while still reflecting compassion for animals, people and our planet.”
The inspiration for the line and creation was her daughter Giada Viola.
The debut collection centers on beautifully conceived vests marrying soft-touch vegan materials with plush vegan shearling, creating pieces intended to move easily between practicality and polish. Thoughtful details include dedicated iPhone and lip-gloss pockets—because sustainability needn’t mean abandoning the realities of how women actually live—and the collection even includes matching “mommy and me” styles.
There is another smart layer to the concept. Rather than feeding fashion’s relentless appetite for newly manufactured material, GIADA transforms existing in-stock materials into limited pieces. Each vest is handmade in New York by skilled women artisans, placing craftsmanship and longevity back at the center of the luxury equation.
That makes the collection less about seasonal disposability and more about intention. In an industry built around convincing us that last season is already obsolete, there is something refreshing about creating fewer pieces, making them well and expecting people to keep them.
The luncheon itself reflected Green’s ability to bring together seemingly disparate worlds. Melissa Gorga, Ramona Singer, Scarlet Rose Stallone, Caroline Alt, Candace Bushnell, Jackie Siegel and Natalie De’Banco were among the guests gathered for the intimate presentation, with special gifting from Re-Q Health and LashnSpice.
But the timing of GIADA’s unveiling is hardly incidental.
The launch arrives just ahead of Climate Week and leads directly into Green’s Footprint of Life Gala on Thursday, September 24, where leaders from entertainment, fashion, sports, philanthropy and environmental advocacy will gather for an intimate evening honoring Adam Met and Planet Reimagined.
This is where the story becomes considerably larger than a vest. Green has long understood something that can get lost in the enormous language surrounding climate change: ideas accomplish very little sitting alone in a room. Innovation needs advocates. Conservation needs funding. Environmental movements need people capable of opening doors, creating alliances and turning concern into action.
GIADA applies that philosophy to fashion.
It is also why Green has committed 15 percent of GIADA’s proceeds to conservation initiatives through The Green Vision, her organization supporting wildlife, biodiversity, oceans, forests and the ecosystems upon which all of them depend. The purchase therefore becomes connected to something beyond the garment itself.
There is, of course, an enormous amount of work still to be done around fashion’s environmental footprint. No single fabric or collection solves an industry’s problems. But innovation rarely begins by solving everything. It begins by asking whether something we have accepted as necessary actually is.
Do luxury fibers have to come from animals? Does sustainable fashion have to look overtly sustainable? Does environmental responsibility have to exist outside glamour, celebrity and aspiration?
Green’s answer is clearly no.
What she unveiled at The Core Club wasn’t an argument against luxury. It was an argument for redefining what luxury means.
Perhaps the most modern luxury isn’t simply possessing something beautiful. It is knowing that beauty did not have to come at quite so great a cost.
Celebrity
Presley Gerber Had Everything Money Could Buy. It Could Not Buy Him Peace
Presley Gerber was beautiful. Almost startlingly so. He had the genetics of two models, the face of his famous mother, Cindy Crawford, and an entrance into a world most people spend their lives trying to reach. He was born into money, fame, access and extraordinary privilege. He became a model himself, working for major fashion houses.
His sister, Kaia Gerber, became one of the most recognizable models of her generation. From the outside, the Gerber family seemed to possess the kind of life our culture continually tells us is the prize.
Presley Gerber died Sunday at 27 years old. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner, he died at a rehabilitation facility. His family has confirmed his death and asked for privacy during what their representative described as a “very difficult and painful time.” As of this writing, no cause of death has been determined.
That last fact matters. We do not know what killed Presley Gerber, and his death should not become an invitation for strangers to diagnose him after the fact. What we do know is what he chose to tell us while he was alive.
Presley had spoken publicly about depression and his struggles with mental health. He created “Mental Health Mondays,” using his social-media platform to discuss those struggles and try to help other people experiencing their own. Years earlier, he tattooed the word “misunderstood” across his face, later explaining that he chose it because that was how he had felt throughout his life.
In December 2025, his disclosures became considerably more troubling. He spoke publicly about panic attacks, loss and the medications he was taking. He also expressed fear about medication withdrawal and frustration that, after seeing numerous psychiatrists, he felt he needed more direction in managing what he had been prescribed. He told followers that he was speaking because he hoped someone listening would realize that they were not alone.
There is something heartbreaking about that now.
We live in a culture that is very good at measuring what somebody has and remarkably bad at understanding what somebody carries. Presley Gerber had beauty. He had famous parents. He had money. He had access. He had opportunities most aspiring models could only dream about. None of those things tells us what it felt like to wake up inside his mind every morning.
That may be the hardest thing for people to understand about suffering. Pain does not conduct a financial background check before entering the room.
Money can buy excellent doctors. It can buy treatment, privacy, beautiful surroundings and opportunities unavailable to millions of other people. Those advantages are real and should not be romanticized away. But money cannot guarantee peace. Beauty cannot guarantee self-worth. Fame cannot guarantee that somebody feels seen. Loving parents cannot climb inside an adult child’s mind and repair everything hurting there. Sometimes the people who appear to have been handed the entire world are fighting battles invisible to everyone looking at them.
Presley’s life also reminds us how little a photograph tells us. We look at beautiful people standing on red carpets and unconsciously complete the rest of the story ourselves. Beautiful means happy. Wealthy means safe. Famous means fulfilled. Successful means whole. None of those equations is reliable.
Perhaps that is why the word Presley once chose to put on his face feels so haunting today: misunderstood. We cannot know everything he meant by it, and we shouldn’t pretend that we do. But we know that a young man surrounded by enormous privilege nevertheless felt misunderstood strongly enough to write the word across the face the world considered so beautiful. There is an uncomfortable lesson in that.
We spend enormous amounts of our lives chasing the things we imagine will finally make us safe from unhappiness. More money. A better body. A beautiful face. Recognition. Connections. The right family. The right address. The right career. We look at people who possess those things and think they have somehow crossed an invisible border into a life where ordinary human suffering cannot reach them. There is no such border.
Presley Gerber was someone’s son. He was someone’s brother. He was a young man who struggled, talked publicly about those struggles and tried to turn some of what he had experienced into something that might help another person. Whatever the medical examiner ultimately determines about how he died, that deserves to be remembered alongside the photographs, the famous surname and the headlines.
Twenty-seven is terribly young. And somewhere tonight, behind all the celebrity attached to this story, there is a mother and father who have lost their son and a sister who has lost her brother. Fame does not protect them from that grief either.
You can be gorgeous. You can be famous. You can be born into money, prestige and opportunity. You can seemingly have the world waiting at your feet. And you can still hurt.
Perhaps Presley Gerber’s life asks us to stop assuming we know who has everything.
Sometimes everything we can see has absolutely nothing to do with what is happening inside.
Art
Annie Watt Celebrates 20 Years Behind the Lens—and Gives the Next Generation a Shot
There are photographers who document New York society, and then there are photographers who become part of the society they document. Annie Watt belongs firmly in the latter category.
Sometimes a photograph does something far more important than document who was in a room. Walking into Watt’s 20th anniversary photography exhibition at The Consulate, hosted by owners Kiril and Miki Mihajlov, one photograph on the wall stopped me. There was Annie with Judy Gilbert and my friend Errol Rappaport, who passed away last year. For a moment, Errol wasn’t someone I was remembering. There he was again, caught in a living moment among friends. That is the peculiar magic of a photograph: it can collapse time. Someone who is gone can suddenly walk back into the room.
Nearby were photographs of Prince Mario-Max, another familiar figure in New York’s social and philanthropic world, among the many faces Watt has captured during a career chronicling New York—and, during the season, Palm Beach. Taken together, the walls weren’t simply displaying photographs. They held pieces of lives, friendships and celebrations, a social history preserved one shutter click at a time.
On September 16, Watt turned the camera back on her own remarkable journey with a one-night-only exhibition and fundraiser celebrating 20 years of the Annie Watt Agency, 2006–2026. But the evening wasn’t simply about looking backward. Net proceeds benefited scholarship programs at the School of Visual Arts, helping promising young artists move forward.
For two decades, Watt has been a familiar presence at galas, benefits, openings and celebrations. Her ability to make people comfortable in front of a camera, coupled with her celebrated eye for posing, turned what began as the work of one independent photographer into the far-reaching Annie Watt Agency. As her bookings grew beyond what one photographer could handle, Watt began sharing assignments with other photographers, eventually building an agency whose work now extends from New York and the Hamptons to Palm Beach and beyond.
The Consulate proved a natural setting for an exhibition built around people. Guests mingled over wine and delicious hors d’oeuvres while live jazz played and Watt’s photographs transformed the restaurant into a temporary gallery. The people in the room weren’t simply looking at photographs; many were part of the world those photographs preserve.
Even better, guests were encouraged to take their portraits off the wall and bring them home, allowing the exhibition itself to disappear piece by piece as the evening progressed. What had been part of the gallery became a personal keepsake.
Among them was a private portrait experience with longtime AWA photographer David DuPuy, including a studio session, professional hair and makeup and finished digital portraits. Veteran New York nightlife photographer Steve Eichner offered a signed copy of his celebrated In the Limelight along with a collector’s print, while other offerings included professional event photography, private portrait sessions and a posing masterclass with Watt and photographer Amber de Vos.
It was an especially appropriate way to raise money for SVA. The expense of becoming a photographer doesn’t end with tuition. Cameras, lenses, lighting, editing equipment and studio time all arrive before a young photographer has acquired the clients necessary to pay for them. Here were established photographers using the profession they had already built to help open the door for those still trying to enter it.
The Annie Watt Agency has grown to include photographers and videographers working across society, portraiture, fashion, architecture and events. Watt’s New York team has included DuPuy, Jill Nelson, John Sanderson, Barry Williams, Frank Rocco and Eichner, while the agency’s reach extends well beyond Manhattan.
Yet expansion has never erased the quality that made Watt successful in the first place. She understands that society photography isn’t simply about proving someone attended a party. A good event photographer catches the fleeting exchange across a table, the laugh that lasts three seconds, the dress at exactly the right angle, the expression someone didn’t know anyone else had seen. Watt has built a career around turning those seconds into something permanent.
She has also repeatedly connected that work to philanthropy, with previous exhibitions benefiting organizations including the Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope, the Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach and Spoons Across America.
There is something wonderfully circular about celebrating twenty years of a photographer’s career by investing in people who are only beginning theirs.
For twenty years, Annie Watt has photographed people at moments they wanted to remember. Standing in The Consulate looking at Errol again, I was reminded that sometimes those photographs eventually become far more important than anyone imagined when they were taken.
On this particular night, they did something else as well. They helped give another young artist the opportunity to pick up a camera and begin preserving moments of their own.
What better way could there be to celebrate Annie Watt’s first twenty years?
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