.new collection
Shao New York: For the Rebel in a Suit
*NYFW Spring/Summer 2025
written Malcolm Thomas
Shao New York's sophomore collection is a cut above.
Shao New York designer, Shao Yang is loosening up the seams of tradition. In fact, nothing about her calculated ascension in fashion is traditional at all, except for her clothing, sort of. (More on that later).
Having wrapped her second show (her first made headlines on the roof of Anna Delvey’s apartment), it’s clear that the emerging label is more than just hype. She proved that Wednesday evening, as she closed out the Spring/Summer 2025 season of New York Fashion Week with a show that her publicist, Kelly Cutrone, proudly coined over a microphone before it began, “from rooftop to runway.”
The actual title is Class of 98: Rebellion Remastered. The program was printed on thick stock paper, and it felt and read like a cleverly written manifesto rather than show notes. However, Yang’s point of view is clearly laser focused. Yang described the collection as an antidote to the Instagram nostalgia social media is currently trapped in and more as a tribute to old-school teen angst before we spent more time curating our brand image on our phones than spending it at the park or driving around town with our friends. A simpler time, one could argue.
What’s not up for debate—Shao New York’s mastery of tailoring. She also owns another business, The Tailory, which designs bespoke suiting aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community, probably one if not the first of its kind. The thirty-five look collection—rooted in leather, denim, and cashmere, also has some really impressive trompe l’oeil shirting because as Yao states in the program, “let’s face it, the ’90s were all about illusion”. Of course, there was a lot of statement suiting, too. Call it a redux of the boss bitch energy archetype Donna Karan created in the 80s but bejeweled.
While inspired by the youth culture of the '90s, these were the kind of clothes that make you want to grow up fast. The kind of clothes a young Carrie Bradshaw might wear on a night out with Big, perhaps, as he rolls down the window of his town car, takes one last look at her and says, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”
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(c) SHAO New York seen by Randy Brooke, NYFW 2025 - Spring/Summer 2025