The 5 Can’t-Miss Brands Debuting at New York Fashion Week Spring 2026

A slightly sleepier New York Fashion Week schedule this season may have your eyes trained directly on the European shows, where many debuts are set to take place in a few weeks’ time. But ignoring New York’s offerings for spring 2026 would be a blunder—because that means you’ll miss the five rookies hitting the CFDA calendar for the first time. Some of them, you may recognize, like Lii, the young brand founded by the almost-as-young designer Zane Li, which has already caught the eye of Greta Lee and Ayo Edebiri (as well as the W staff). There’s also under-the-radar cult-favorite, 6397, stepping out of the shadows after 12 years with its first-ever salon style NYFW presentation.

In addition, Jac Cameron, cofounder of Ayr, has returned to the scene with her sustainable denim brand, Rùadh; Amir Taghi and Dwarmis Concepción add vibrance to their namesake brands via influences from their respective heritages. But each designer has their own story to tell—and they’ll be doing so on one of fashion’s biggest platforms from September 11-16. Familiarize yourself with the five debuting designers and their brands before the chaos of fashion month truly kicks in.

Lii

Zane Li is proof that everything happens for a reason. Just one year after the Chongqing, China, native moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, the pandemic hit. Suddenly, Li was forced into quarantine to finish his pattern-making and draping classes within the confines of his apartment. “Some people would assume you can’t learn anything if you’re not in the studio, working hands-on with a professor,” but the 24-year-old admits the lockdown actually benefited him. “It gave me a lot of free time to explore without worrying about other people’s opinions,” he recalls. “I didn’t have classmates critiquing my work or different professors to deal with. I could just concentrate and explore how I wanted.”

Despite his freeform approach, Li has proven to be exceedingly disciplined. Not long after graduating, while his peers were heading off to work for big-name brands, Li opted to strike out on his own. “I decided, I’m going to make one collection and see how it goes,” he says. That first attempt, released to the world in February 2024, received critical acclaim. The 23-look collection quickly caught the eye of the fashion press, as well as Ssense; the multibrand retailer placed an exclusive order.

Li’s pieces have a simplistic, almost geometric sense to them. When talking about his clothes, the designer often reaches for contradictions. He wants to “build a wardrobe that lies between practicality and fantasy” and “merge casualness with formalness.” But these aren’t just buzzwords. It’s clear Li is inspired by the great couturiers (he often cites Cristóbal Balenciaga as an inspiration), translating a sense of elegance into his own language—one of strong cottons and nylon, for a wardrobe that is as beautiful as it is practical. “I just love how my clothes feel,” he adds. “Anoraks, cotton chinos. I love the touch and the weight. They’re easy to wear.” Conversely, he finds traditional women’s fabrics to be quite “fragile”—so he threw them out the window in favor of his personal favorites. Li’s embrace of these more active fabrics brought Nike to his door; the Lii spring 2026 collection will be sponsored by the sportswear giant and features a handful of looks created in collaboration with Nike, using the brand’s materials. The rest of the collection will build off of Li’s recent men’s show. “I hate to say it,” he says, “But men’s is the practice to make women’s better.”

6397

The chemistry between Stella Ishii and Lizzie Owens is palpable. As they discuss the founding of The News (by Ishii in 2001), the subsequent creation of 6397 (in 2013), and Owens’s eventual onboarding in 2023, they help each other out, reminding each other of details, making sure neither gets away with being too humble. “I don't know how other design studios move forward, but ours is a lot of fun,” Owens says.

6397 is one of those New York insider brands that has benefitted from a quiet but loyal following for over a decade since its founding. After working in sales for some of the biggest names in the industry—The Row, Comme Des Garçons, Maison Margiela—through her multibrand agency, The News, Ishii decided it was time to launch her own project. “You saw something that was missing and a way you could fill it in,” Owens says of Ishii’s desires to launch 6397. “In the beginning, I wanted to make really beautiful basics,” Ishii adds.

Owens and Ishii swear by their superior materials and comfortable, menswear-adjacent proportions, and they’ve done so for years. But over the past few seasons, 6397 has begun its journey from an “if-you-know-you-know label” to a “label you need to know.” Owens is partly to thank for that. After almost a decade of 6397, COVID put everything into jeopardy. Like many brands during that period, 6397 suffered from canceled orders and a drop in sales. “I started thinking, ‘If 6397 survives this, I want to make some changes,’” Ishii says. The number-one shift? Bringing in a designer with a point of view.

Luckily, 6397 made it through the pandemic—and Owens immediately came to Ishii’s mind for hiring. The two have known each other since Ishii did sales for Owens’ own brand, Highland Menswear. “I thought of Lizzie from the beginning when I started the brand,” Ishii says. “I used to think, ‘When I bring a designer in, I would love someone like Lizzie.” (The former executive vice president of Barneys New York, Judy Collinson, also came on board, forming a bit of a dream team.) Owens has added a youthful direction to the brand already celebrated for its quality and consistency.

The designer pulls inspiration from her “outdoorsy, rugged” childhood in Salt Lake City, plus the energy of New York City streets, and her background in menswear (in addition to founding her own brand, she also worked as the senior design director for Alexander Wang men’s for multiple years). “I’ve never been interested in fashion for the preciousness of it,” she says. Owens feels the climate of the fashion industry is perfectly primed for 6397’s moment. “Everyone is exhausted by luxury pricing and the stunts of overdressing and influencers,” she says. “Realistic clothes are really desired now. But people also are so informed, so they have to be high quality. The brand had that DNA already, and I’ve just gotten to refine it.”

Rùadh

Denim brands are a dime a dozen these days, so it’s impressive that less than a year after its launch, Rùadh has found a sturdy place in what’s now a saturated market. But that’s certainly no coincidence. The brand—pronounced “roo-ah”—was founded by Jac Cameron, the jeans whisperer who worked at Abercrombie & Fitch as a denim designer, Calvin Klein as a denim director, and helped relaunch Madewell in 2006 before cofounding denim brand Ayr in 2013. At Rùadh, 41-year-old Cameron combines that experience with the know-how she gained while interning on Savile Row (she got a degree in fashion at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design). “There’s a level of precision very specific to tailoring, but it’s also very translatable into denim, because everything has to be within an-eighth-of-an-inch perfect,” the designer explains over Zoom.

Over two decades of denim experience, a history in tailoring, her Scottish heritage, and a passion for sustainability are what Rùadh’s all about. The brand launched with a pending B Corp status, and Cameron is in the process of getting the full certification. All of Rùadh’s denim is made in the U.S. by B Corp-certified manufacturer Saitex in L.A. “Saitex is one of the most sustainable factories I’ve set foot in,” Cameron says. Rùadh also donates 4 percent of its earnings to charities—specifically Soil Health Institute, a nonprofit working to safeguard and enhance regenerative farming methods. “At this point in time, we’re the most sustainable we can be.”

Rùadh launched last October with an 11-piece denim capsule. The brand has since added Scottish cashmere sweaters, boxy t-shirts, and canvas jackets to the mix. “We’re starting to step into a more fully realized version of Rùadh,” Cameron says. Spring 2026 will see the addition of Italian-made tailoring applied to cotton shirts.

“One of the best things for me is meeting the customer,” the designer says of the advantage of showing at New York Fashion Week. “I love to interact with them, to fit people in the clothes, and to show them how things get made.” Her debut also provides an opportunity to clarify the pronunciation of the brand name in person. Rùadh is Scottish Gaelic for “red,” though it is also “historically related to concepts of resilience and strength,” according to Cameron. “It just felt right. Regardless of whether people can pronounce it or not.”

Amir Taghi

This isn’t technically Amir Taghi’s first time showing at New York Fashion Week. The designer presented a collection for his eponymous brand back in 2014, when he was just 17 years old. “I was a very ambitious young person,” he says with a laugh. “But back then, it was more so a hobby rather than a full-on brand.”

Although Taghi, now 29, has been designing under the label Amir Taghi for over a decade, he dates the current iteration of the label to 2020/2021. “I always had the brand in my back pocket, but that’s when I started full-force,” he says. Even since then, Amir Taghi has gone through some brand-defining changes. A Houston native of Iranian descent, Taghi often combines his Texan and Persian heritage into his work. Previously, this manifested itself in a more minimalist look. “We were always kind of stripping back,” Taghi recalls. But starting with fall 2024, Taghi began embracing his two main inspirations to a larger degree. “We went full-on with layering, embroideries, and prints. We started mixing colors into unusual combinations.” The result is a spring 2026 collection special enough that it warranted a (second) NYFW debut. “I wanted to get to a place where I was really confident and the ideas were polished, and I think it’s perfect now.”

Taghi has been in the industry since he was 16, when he interned at Oscar de la Renta. It was only a few years before the designer passed, but Taghi recalls the late de la Renta still going into the office every day, working hands-on with the fabrics and designs. “That changed my world,” Taghi says. The Houstonian sees similarities between ODLR and his own brand in terms of colors and prints—and also when it comes to a business model. Like ODLR, Amir Taghi has a successful trunk show presence, which allows the young designer to meet his clients face to face. “A lot of designers don’t even know their clients, but for me, it’s the total opposite,” he says. “Knowing the client has defined how I design.”

Despite his young age, Taghi creates for an older woman, between 40 and 80. “Every woman wants to look beautiful and wants to look sexy. It doesn’t matter how old they are.” Taghi describes his woman as “polished but experimental, someone who “likes to stand out whenever she’s in a room.” Someone like Googoosh, perhaps—the Iranian singer and actress who is a muse for Taghi’s spring 2026 collection. He describes her as the “Lady Gaga of her time.”

Dwarmis

When Dwarmis Concepción was about five years old, her mom made a prediction. “One day she told me, ‘You’re going to be a fashion designer,’” the now-35-year-old says. She recalls the moment vividly, a conversation that would send her on the path to where she is now.

To be fair, Concepción’s mother’s prediction didn’t come out of nowhere. At the time, Concepción was a young girl in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, who spent her time drawing dolls and their clothes. She started taking classes to learn how to pattern and sew. The hard work would take her to Chavón School of Design in La Romana, from which she transferred to Parsons School of Design in New York with a scholarship. After graduating, Concepción went to work at Tory Burch, where she remained for over a decade; the staff took to calling her “Baby Girl.” “They really saw me grow up,” she says.

Concepción describes her time at Tory as “a beautiful experience.” There, she was able to touch many sides of the business—and learn from Burch herself. “Working there shaped me, and gave me the courage to start my own brand.”

While Concepción was at Tory Burch, she still worked for herself on the side. She made accessories, and even a few wedding dresses. She also acted as her own walking billboard, designing and wearing her NYC wardrobe, often to the pleasure of those she passed on the street. When a YouTuber saw Concepción’s dress and posted about it in a vlog, the designer received multiple requests for the piece. The demand prompted her to officially start Dwarmis.

Concepción describes Dwarmis as a brand “for the everyday woman.” She believes one of her biggest strengths comes from her love of music and dance, which injects movement into her work. “When I’m designing, I think about how the fabric and the pieces are going to react to a woman’s body,” she says. There are a handful of dresses one could imagine taking onto the dance floor (like a skirt cut for maximum spinning potential). Many are rendered in bright yellows and greens that bring to mind the designer’s Caribbean home. But Concepción’s 15 years in New York have clearly affected her aesthetic: cotton pencil skirts with contrasting top stitching, a swinging trench coat, and a tunic dress feel authentic to the designer’s adopted home as well. “I pull all these things together,” she says of her many areas of inspiration. “It comes out very cool, very feminine and bold, a little country, and a little city.”