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.

Labor Day has arrived, which means retailers would very much like you to believe that absolutely everything you have ever wanted is suddenly a bargain. It isn’t. Some of these sales are genuinely excellent; others are merely ordinary prices wearing very enthusiastic red signs. The trick is knowing what is worth buying now, where the deepest discounts actually are and what should stay firmly in your shopping cart until later.

Fashion is surprisingly strong this Labor Day, particularly if you shop the sale racks rather than the shiny new Fall 2026 collections arriving just in time for Fashion Week. Bloomingdale’s is one of the standouts, with selected designer clothing, shoes and handbags marked down as much as 70%. Nordstrom has thousands of markdowns, including Free People, Paige, Spanx and Tory Burch, with some reductions reaching 80%. Macy’s is advertising savings up to roughly 60–65%, depending on the department.

For a less expensive wardrobe refresh, this is also a very good weekend for basics. Gap has knitwear, denim, outerwear and other pieces marked down as much as 50%, while J.Crew is offering an additional 40% off already-reduced sale merchandise. Banana Republic has selected wardrobe pieces discounted as much as 40%, and Levi’s has 30% off selected styles. Those are the places to look for denim, shirts, trousers and transitional pieces that will carry you into fall without paying full September prices.

Home is where Labor Day gets serious. Williams Sonoma has one of the most aggressive offers we’ve found, with its Warehouse Sale reaching 75% off and an additional 20% off clearance. Pottery Barn and West Elm have markdowns reaching 70%, while Crate & Barrel is offering discounts up to 60%. If you’ve been waiting to replace bedding, cookware, furniture or something substantial for the apartment, these are considerably more interesting than buying another sweater simply because it is 30% off.

Furniture shoppers should also look at Wayfair, where the Labor Day Clearance reaches 70% off rugs, furniture, storage and décor. Ashley has selected furniture up to 70% off, while CB2 is offering reductions up to 50% across furniture, mirrors, lighting, rugs and tabletop. The usual warning applies: never buy a sofa because the percentage looks impressive. Measure the room first. There is nothing chic about discovering your fabulous 70%-off sectional blocks the front door.

For appliances and home improvement, The Home Depot has more than 1,000 Labor Day sale items across appliances, tools, grills, outdoor equipment and patio furniture; some current individual discounts exceed 40%. Lowe’s is offering discounts reaching 50% across selected appliances, outdoor products, tools and home merchandise. This is exactly the kind of purchase Labor Day is good for: the refrigerator you actually need, not the air fryer that somehow becomes irresistible at 11:47 p.m. because it is $28 cheaper.

Mattresses are another genuine Labor Day buy. Saatva, Casper, Avocado, Bear and Mattress Firm all have significant promotions running. Casper’s discounts reach 35%, Bear’s 35%, Avocado’s 20%, while Mattress Firm is offering savings of up to $700 on selected mattresses and related products. Labor Day remains one of the few sale weekends when waiting to replace a mattress can actually pay.

Outdoor merchandise is another buy now. Patio furniture, grills and summer entertaining pieces need to disappear from stores before holiday merchandise takes over. The Home Depot has current patio and grill reductions exceeding 50% on selected products, and other home retailers are clearing outdoor collections as well. Buy the patio set in September and enjoy feeling terribly clever when you pull it out next May.

There are, however, things I would not rush to buy. The newest Fall 2026 designer fashion is arriving now, and unless something is likely to sell out, paying close to full price during Fashion Week season makes little sense when markdowns will come later. The same applies to holiday toys and many electronics: Black Friday and Cyber Monday will bring another enormous round of competition. There are exceptions—Best Buy and Walmart do have legitimate electronics promotions this weekend—but don’t replace perfectly functional technology merely because Labor Day has given it a sale sticker.

The best Labor Day strategy is therefore wonderfully simple: buy what retailers are trying to get rid of, not what they’re excited to sell you. Summer fashion, outdoor furniture, mattresses, appliances, furniture and clearance merchandise are where the leverage is. Brand-new fall collections, holiday merchandise and impulse electronics can wait.

Remember 70% off something you actually wanted is a bargain. Seventy percent off something you never needed is still money spent.

Fall fashion officially arrived in Tribeca as QVC gathered Coco Rocha, Nicole Miller, Mally Roncal and Aimee Kestenberg at Fouquet’s New York for an intimate first look at the season ahead.

Held September 2, QVC’s Fall Fashion Kickoff brought together four women with distinctly different points of view, offering a preview of the collections and new pieces arriving on the network throughout the fall. But the evening’s biggest reveal belonged to Coco Rocha, who offered guests a first glimpse of her first-ever QVC apparel collection, set to launch later this season.

Coco Rocha Celebrates Her First-Ever QVC Apparel Collection! Photo by Lauren Cassot

For Rocha, one of fashion’s most recognizable models and certainly one of its greatest posers, moving from wearing the clothes to putting her own name and perspective behind them is an intriguing next act. Her career has always been built on transformation—she can change the entire attitude of a garment with a shoulder, a hand or one perfectly calculated glance—so seeing how that understanding of clothes translates into a collection of her own is worth watching.

Aimee Kestenberg Shows Off a Standout Style from Her Fall Collection Photo by Lauren Cassot

Designer Aimee Kestenberg was also on hand, showing off a statement jacket from her latest fall collection.

Mally Roncal holds up a denim jacket from her new fashion collection with QVC. Photo by Lauren Cassot

Beauty powerhouse Mally Roncal gave guests a closer look at a denim jacket from her new QVC fashion line. Nicole Miller, whose name has been part of the New York fashion vocabulary for decades, rounded out the fashionable foursome.

The choice of Fouquet’s New York was equally fitting. With its Paris-meets-downtown-Manhattan atmosphere, the Tribeca hotel supplied an elegant backdrop for an evening that was less sprawling fashion spectacle and more stylish preview of what women may actually want to wear once New York’s temperature finally decides that summer is over.

That may be the more interesting direction fashion is taking this fall. The distance between runway fantasy and clothes designed for real wardrobes continues to shrink. Personality matters. Wearability matters. And increasingly, the woman behind the clothes matters just as much as the label sewn inside them.

Rocha, Roncal, Kestenberg and Miller each arrive at that conversation from somewhere different—model, beauty entrepreneur and designers with their own established aesthetics—but together they offered QVC a decidedly New York way to welcome the season.

Summer may still be hanging onto the city, but inside Fouquet’s, fall had already arrived.

New York Fashion Week has always been as much about what happens between the shows as what happens on the runway. This September, one of those moments will smell remarkably like fall.

On September 14 beginning at 10 a.m., NEST New York will take over Chelsea Triangle in the Meatpacking District with a complimentary Cardamom Latte café, turning the launch of its new Cardamom Latte Eau de Parfum into something New Yorkers can both wear and drink.

The concept is wonderfully simple: take the notes of a fragrance and put them into a cup. Visitors can stop by for a free fall-inspired cardamom latte while experiencing the scent that inspired it, transforming what would ordinarily be a perfume launch into a small sensory playground in the middle of Fashion Week.

Cardamom Latte was practically made for September in New York. The fragrance combines cardamom with jasmine petals, coconut milk and vanilla cream, moving between spice, floral notes and something warm and deliciously comforting. It is fragrance borrowing from café culture, then café culture returning the favor.

There is also something distinctly New York about launching it in the Meatpacking District during Fashion Week. For years, the neighborhood has been one of the places where fashion, beauty, nightlife, food and street culture continually collide. A perfume-inspired coffee shop appearing for a day in Chelsea Triangle feels considerably more interesting than another fragrance bottle sitting beneath perfect lighting at a traditional launch party.

It also taps into the increasingly blurred line between beauty and experience. We no longer simply want to smell the perfume or see the dress. We want to enter its world. Here, scent becomes taste, a perfume counter becomes a café, and discovering a new fragrance becomes part of wandering through New York during one of its most stylish weeks.

The pop-up is also conveniently located just steps from Sephora, where the Sephora-exclusive Cardamom Latte Eau de Parfum can be purchased after visitors have had their first smell—and their first sip.

NEST New York’s Cardamom Latte Café takes place September 14 beginning at 10 a.m. at Chelsea Triangle in the Meatpacking District. The lattes are complimentary.

Fashion Week may be concerned with what New York is going to wear next, but for one morning, it will also be concerned with how New York smells—and apparently, how it takes its coffee.

Every January, we perform the same rituals….. new year, new beginning, new diet, new exercise program, new haircut, new wardrobe, new promises. We wake up on January 1 and somehow expect ourselves to become an entirely different human being because a number changed on the calendar overnight. I think we’ve got it backwards. What if September is when we begin?

Fall has always been a season of transformation. Nature changes color before it releases what it no longer needs. The air changes, the light changes, children return to school, vacations end and life acquires structure again. There is something about September that has always felt more like the beginning of a year.

I want to begin somewhere we’re frequently told is superficial: the outside. We are constantly told that genuine transformation has to happen from the inside out. Certainly some of it does, but I think the reverse can also be true. Sometimes changing something on the outside gives the inside permission to follow. Sometimes seeing yourself differently begins the process of thinking about yourself differently.

So the first assignment is deceptively simple: figure out what you want to look like. Not what fashion magazines tell you to look like. Not what your partner prefers, what your mother always liked, what somebody on Instagram is currently selling or what you’ve been told is appropriate for your age. Forget all of that. When you look into the mirror, who do you want to see?

Have you secretly wanted short hair for years but kept it long because everyone tells you how beautiful your long hair is? Cut it. Have you always wanted long hair but continually give up during the awkward growing-out stage? Start growing it now. By January, you’re four months closer. Have you wanted pink hair, silver hair, bangs, no bang, curls, sleek, something dramatic or something completely natural? This isn’t really about becoming prettier. That’s precisely the trap you should avoid. It is about becoming more recognizable to yourself.

If you don’t know what that looks like yet, make a vision board. An actual one. Go through magazines, photographs, fashion pages, Pinterest, whatever speaks to you, and collect images instinctively. Don’t overthink them at first. Then look at what you’ve chosen. Vision boards are harder than they sound because eventually you have to stop collecting pretty pictures and ask yourself why you’re attracted to them. Perhaps every person you’ve chosen has short hair. Perhaps everyone is wearing enormous glasses, tailored jackets or bright colors. Perhaps the homes you’ve selected are peaceful and uncluttered. Perhaps every image contains nature. Your choices are telling you something. Listen.

Then make the hair appointment. Get the manicure and pedicure. For me, manicure’s and pedicure’s have always been part of my personal checklist for returning to myself. If I’ve been sick for a long time, one of the first things I want when I begin feeling human again is a manicure and pedicure. There is something wonderfully restorative about looking down at my hands and feet and thinking, “There. That’s better.” Does a manicure solve your life? Not, bt sometimes we don’t need to solve our lives before we begin caring about them again.

Next, go through your makeup. Open the drawers, bags and cabinets and throw away what is ancient, dried out, broken or hasn’t touched your face in years. Then go play. Go to Sephora. Look through the new fall collections. Look at magazines and photographs and see what people are doing with color, texture and shape. Remember that you are gathering possibilities, not accepting instructions. Maybe this year’s dramatic burgundy lipstick makes you feel fabulous. Maybe it makes you look as though you’ve been dead since Tuesday. Both discoveries are useful. The purpose isn’t to become fashionable. The purpose is to become intentional.

Transformation rarely happens because of one enormous decision. It happens because hundreds of tiny decisions eventually begin pointing in the same direction. That is why fall is perfect. September doesn’t demand completion; September simply asks us to begin. October gives us another month to continue. November lets us adjust. December allows us to look at what worked, what didn’t and what still needs attention.

Suddenly New Year’s Eve is no longer an emergency meeting with ourselves. There is no desperate list of ten things we’re going to change beginning tomorrow. No punishment for everything we failed to accomplish during the previous year. No fantasy that midnight possesses some transformational power unavailable to us at 3:17 on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Instead, December 31 becomes an inventory. What did I miss? What still doesn’t feel like me? What needs attention? What do I want to carry forward? What can stay behind?

Time to look into the mirror and meet yourself.