Twice a year, on the third Tuesday of March and September, we step away from the beauty conversation and look at what the big US fashion houses showed for the upcoming season. The fall 2021 New York shows, presented in early September, were the first proper in-person fashion week the industry had seen since fall 2019 — and the energy showed. The collections were less concerned with safety-first commerce and more interested in what eighteen months of indoor life had done to the way people thought about getting dressed. The result was a season that mixed practicality with declarative pieces, and a colour palette that read warmer and more saturated than the muted winter-blacks of the previous year.
Marc Jacobs and the heritage rebuild
Marc Jacobs chose not to show during the official NYFW calendar this season but instead presented a runway show at the New York Public Library in late June, a deliberate move to pull focus away from the in-season scrum. The collection — slouchy plaid coats, oversized parkas, a heavy lean into 1960s and 1970s American sportswear silhouettes — landed as both a personal greatest-hits and a thesis for what the brand wanted to be in the post-pandemic era. By September, the looks were rotating into stores and the buy-now energy felt right for a fall in which people wanted both comfort and a sense of occasion. We expect this collection to define the brand’s fall lookbook well into the holiday season.
Tory Burch’s quiet luxury
Tory Burch showed at the Whitney for fall, with a collection that doubled down on the brand’s recent shift toward a quieter, less-logo’d kind of luxury. Long camel coats, fluid trousers, knee-high boots, and a colour palette of butter, oxblood, and chocolate brown all signalled that the brand was reading the room: customers in 2021 wanted clothes that looked considered without being shouty. The shift from the brand’s earlier preppy-print era to this softer, more architectural silhouette had been building for several seasons, and fall 2021 was where the new direction felt fully realised.
Khaite’s continued rise
Khaite, the brand from Catherine Holstein that had been quietly building since launching in 2016, was firmly in the conversation by fall 2021. The collection’s wide-leg trousers, oversized boyfriend coats, and the now-signature Khaite knitwear were everywhere in editorial. The bag program — particularly the Aimee and the Lotus — had become the new objects of editor desire, and the brand had clearly figured out how to translate the laid-back-luxury aesthetic into a reliable commercial business. Fall 2021 was the season Khaite stopped being a buzz brand and started being a category leader.
Proenza Schouler returns to the runway
Proenza Schouler returned to a proper runway show this fall after several seasons of digital-only presentations, and the energy of designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez clearly benefited from the audience back. The collection played with sharp tailoring, deliberate cutouts, and a smart use of leather across coats, dresses, and accessories. Where Khaite was selling a kind of soft-luxury everyday, Proenza was making the case for a deliberately styled, pieces-driven approach to fall — the kind of clothing that asks for a second look at what someone is wearing rather than blending into background.
Theory’s investment-piece era
Theory‘s fall collection sat firmly in the brand’s recently-renewed identity as the place to buy classic, well-cut, last-forever workwear. The wool-blend blazers, the high-waisted trousers, the oversized cashmere — these are the silhouettes that get reordered season after season at the same prices, and 2021 was a particularly strong year for them. With remote-and-hybrid work becoming the durable shape of office life rather than a temporary anomaly, Theory’s positioning as the brand for clothes that read professional in person and look polished on a Zoom screen finally had its moment.
Reformation’s resale conversation
Reformation‘s fall 2021 was less about a runway moment and more about the brand’s sustained move into the resale and rental conversation. The brand had been the most-cited reference for sustainability claims at this price tier for several years, and through 2021 it pushed harder on its take-back program and its expansion into wedding and party dressing. The fall edit had the dresses we’d come to expect — slip silhouettes, midi shapes, the soft fall-into-velvet pieces — but the meta-story was that the brand was teaching its customers how to think about a wardrobe as a system rather than a series of isolated buys.
The accessory conversation
One of the bigger fall 2021 stories was that accessories were back in the centre of the fashion image after a year-and-a-half of being styled as afterthought-pieces in mostly-from-the-waist-up dressing. The slouchy bag had its moment — Khaite’s Aimee, Marc Jacobs’ Tote, and the comeback of Coach’s Tabby were the three most-cited shapes — and the boot conversation moved from the white sneaker era of 2019 firmly back to a knee-high, mid-block-heel autumn silhouette. Belts narrowed and cinched, jewellery (per our summer roundup) leaned heavy and architectural, and the watch conversation re-emerged as people prepared for in-person work and meetings. Accessories had spent the pandemic earning their place on the wishlist, and the fall shows were where they got their reward.
The colour palette
If the past two years had been dominated by a wardrobe of soft greys, oat beige, and sweat-set neutrals, fall 2021 brought the saturation back. The runway collections leaned into deep oxblood, butter yellow, chocolate brown, hunter green, and a small but persistent thread of orange across leather goods and outerwear. The shift mirrored the makeup conversation almost exactly — September’s deeper-toned lip, the saturated eye, the move from glow to finish. Fashion and beauty were rhyming in a way they hadn’t quite been over the past three seasons, and the alignment felt healthy.
What we will be watching for spring 2022
The next big fashion conversation will be the spring 2022 shows in February, but until then we’ll be tracking how this fall collection translates from runway to retail. We expect Khaite and Proenza Schouler to anchor the editor-favourite conversation, Marc Jacobs and Tory Burch to drive the broader retail shift, and Theory and Reformation to continue defining what an everyday, sustainable, in-person-ready wardrobe looks like in the new hybrid era. We will see you on the third Tuesday of March 2022 for the spring collections.