Every September, New York’s official calendar hands out about seventy slots. This season the CFDA’s preliminary schedule put established houses like Carolina Herrera next to labels that are only a few collections old. The second group is where the next decade gets built. The eight below are a starting list, not a ranking. Each was chosen for a verifiable reason: a jury picked them, the calendar admitted them, or a museum collected them.
Ashlyn
Ashlynn Park founded Ashlyn in 2020, after training in Seoul and Tokyo and working as a designer and pattern maker at Yohji Yamamoto, then at Alexander Wang and at Calvin Klein under Raf Simons. Her clothes are cut with near-architectural precision and built around zero-waste pattern-making. In 2025 she won the CFDA’s American Emerging Designer of the Year and the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, which came with $300,000. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also holds her work in its collection.
Heirlome
Stephanie Suberville graduated from Parsons in 2008 and started out at Rag & Bone, according to Vogue. Her label, Heirlome, was a 2025 Fashion Fund runner-up with a $100,000 grant, and it is on the September 2026 official schedule. If you want to see how a quiet, craft-led brand earns a place on the calendar, follow this one.
Aubero
Julian Louie, described by Vogue as a “California native-turned-Brooklynite,” runs the menswear label Aubero. He launched an eponymous womenswear line back in 2009, so his 2025 runner-up grant shows that emerging does not always mean young. Sometimes it means a second, better-built attempt.
Aisling Camps
Aisling Camps is from Trinidad. She graduated from Columbia University and worked as a mechanical engineer focused on sustainability before studying at FIT, per her studio. Her knitwear is made either by a small team in Brooklyn or by a three-generation family factory in Italy, from Italian yarns. She is a 2026 Fashion Fund finalist, and her show was among those streamed on the public screen at NYFW Live at Rockefeller Center in September 2026.
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen
The designer’s own site calls her label “less of a brand, more of a practice.” Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen drapes, patterns and sews each piece by hand in her New York studio, working from deadstock textiles and antique linens. Since launching the label in 2022 she has shown seasonal collections during New York Fashion Week, often staged as performances. She is also a 2026 Fashion Fund finalist.
Lii
Zane Li was born in Chongqing, graduated from FIT in 2023 and debuted Lii with Fall/Winter 2024. The label is based in New York and mixes sportswear with couture. In September 2026, at 25, he won the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the LVMH Prize, worth €200,000 plus a year of mentoring. He is also a 2026 Fashion Fund finalist, so juries in Paris and New York are looking at the same work in the same year.
Hikari no Yami
Jakarie Whitaker founded Hikari no Yami (“the light in darkness”) in 2020 and incorporated it in 2024. The house draws on Japanese philosophy and the African American diaspora, with deconstructed tailoring, upcycled materials and most pieces made in editions of fewer than fifty. In September 2026 it joined the official NYFW schedule for the first time.
Wiederhoeft
Jackson Wiederhoeft studied at Parsons and then spent three years on Thom Browne’s women’s runway collections. Their debut, “Spooky Couture,” came out in October 2019. A 2022 Fashion Fund finalist, Wiederhoeft has built a following for corsetry, bridal and shows that play like story ballets. It is a good example of a theatrical brand becoming a lasting business.
How to read a list like this
Look at the pattern behind the names. Several of these designers trained at New York schools (FIT and Parsons both come up more than once), and several worked inside established houses before going independent. Programs like the Fashion Fund, which WWD reports has mentored 200 designers since its founding, give them money and introductions at the moment those matter most.
MOAM will profile designers like these in long form over the coming year, and only with their participation. If you are building a label in the city, the directory is where we will be looking.
Editor’s note: facts in this article were checked against the linked sources in October 2026. Details such as dates and deadlines can change, so confirm with the organizers before you plan.
Photo credits: “Female models on the catwalk (Unsplash)” by Kris Atomic krisatomic, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en); “New York Street Fashion (Unsplash)” by Yegide Matthews yegidem, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en); “Seamstress at work (Unsplash)” by Kris Atomic krisatomic, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en)
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