You don’t truly know panic until you’re desperately fumbling for your phone, sloppily thumbing your passcode to open Shazam in time before a song you don’t know but want to know ends. We Shazam because it lets us in on a secret, makes us privy to information that in that moment we simply cannot live without. In Shazam we trust, am I right? Nowhere is that more true than at a fashion show, where the music is the information: It tells us how the designer or creative director wants us to feel about a collection and it shapes the way we respond to it, even on a subconscious level.
Music is one of the deciding factors of how much we will remember a moment, how sticky look No. 13 will be in our memory bank. Are we meant to be aroused by the presentation of the clothes? Are we meant to feel nostalgic? Disoriented or disturbed? The sounds of the runway will tell us most of what we need to know if we tune in. At New York Fashion Week’s spring/summer 2026 season, the music was the journey, taking us somewhere that felt like the liminal space between sleeping and dreaming, becoming a repeating prayer, tapping into the self that’s both esoteric and animalistic, reminding us of what once was.
The show of Mexican brand Campillo, titled “Repetición,” started with an original composition that featured a poem by the philosopher Nezahualcóyotl, whispered again and again like a mantra over the twinkling sounds of nature: “Amo el canto del cenzontle, pájaro de cuatrocientas voces, amo el color del jade y el enervante perfume de las flores, pero amo más a mi hermano, el hombre.” The music for the show was created in collaboration with Ruzzi, a composer from Chihuahua, Mexico, over a series of late nights where she and designer Patricio Campillo sent ideas back and forth. Ruzzi describes the soundtrack as a “roller coaster of emotions.”
“It’s about having Mexico in different versions of time,” Campillo says of the soundtrack, which jumped from classics and familiar favorites — “Perfume de Gardenias” by La Sonora Santanera, “Desvelado” by Bobby Pulido — to the future, with the premiere of a Spanish cover of Daft Punk’s “Something About Us” by Ruzzi. The clothing honored this idea of repetition as mantra, as prayer with a series of in-house knits — a Mexican intrecciato, the Campillo team says — which was a nod to tradition, the rituals and crafts that make us who we are. “When you’re an emerging designer, I feel there are a few things that create attention for the spectator of a show — that’s the casting, the clothes, of course, and then the music, the tension between these three elements,” says Campillo.
Eckhaus Latta‘s spring/summer 2026 show was also framed by a poem at the opening of the show notes, which read:
God has a plan
We are all waitresses
In his sick little restaurant
(A collection of words that will 100% live in my mind rent free for years to come.) There were more than three young babies that I spotted in the front row (and Zoe Latta held her new baby during the finale walk) creating a symphony of coos and whines as we waited for the show to start on the sweaty top floor of a warehouse. The show notes also revealed that the sound would be done by the DJ and producer Galcher Lustwerk, who has been underground-famous since the 2010s for his choppy, full-bodied dance and electronic music. Lustwerk went to Rhode Island School of Design with the designers, Mike Eckhaus and Latta, which allowed him the freedom to create an energy through the music. “We know how to subliminally communicate things and ideas,” he says of his creative relationship with them.
Lustwerk played a set of original productions all made in the last two weeks, which he describes as a “New York, ‘70s, ‘80s, Nuyorican vibe.” The sounds and the clothes mirrored each other in the sense that both were layered. Live drums, congas, strings and piano filled the space at a sexy, fast clip, as male models wearing cut-out shirts with exposed nipples and studded belts walked down the runway and — a highlight — another model in a flippy skirt and heeled sandals walked with a lit blunt down the runway. (The babies were vibing at this point.)
The soundtrack at Diotima’s show hit a climax with the sound of a woman moaning, breathing rapidly and heavily as looks that were electric with movement and color walked the runway, creating a subtle tension in the room, guests shifting slightly in their seats. Titled “Bacchanal,” the women’s collection by Rachel Scott transported onlookers to Carnival in the Caribbean. “Carnival, born as a response to colonial domination, is an anti-Imperialist act — culture that flourishes in the face of violent oppression,” read the show notes. The soundtrack, designed by Jordss, a third-generation Jamaican DJ from London, went from atmospheric to embodied — riffing off of Scott’s tailored waistcoats, crystal mesh knit and fringe — in colors described as “fluo lime” and “passionfruit.”
Annua Sui’s show honored the past on so many levels — Sofia Coppola and Marc Jacobs in the front row; the inspiration of her show being Mabel Dodge Luhan, a creative colony in Taos, New Mexico, which attracted artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams in the early 1900s; the fact that it happened at the iconic Chelsea Hotel — and the music felt like the heart of it. Taking us from the late ‘80s, to the most nostalgic parts of the ‘90s, to current day. The sweet sounds of Mazzy Star, the Velvet Underground and Nico, Wednesday, Wet Leg and Cowboy Junkies filled the space as models in prairie silhouettes and shawls paraded down the runway.
For Khaite’s spring/summer 2026 season, smoky fog billowed at the feet of the models in leather coats, voluminous, sculptural mini dresses and chunky knit skirt sets with a soundtrack that was equally as spectral. The tracklist included everyone from Blur, to Darkside to — in an energy shift — Chopin.
Arguably, fashion show music hits when it’s a blend of familiarity with something completely original and perhaps a bit off.
Waiting for the Collina Strada show to start, a collage of disorienting club music played through speakers lining Pier 6, interspersed with voices, advertising spots for Shamwow, the sparkly sound that a fairy makes after landing from the sky in a movie, layered on top of each other and repeating over and over to a maddening clip — like the tape your subconscious mind plays between falling asleep and dreaming, when you are trying to get through life with all of its horrors. Scary, familiar, intriguing — and ultimately fitting, as the collection was meant to explore the Jungian concept of the shadow self.
When asked about the musical direction backstage, which was worked on with New York artist and DJ TT Britt, designer Hillary Taymour said, “Friendly Fascism,” referencing the 1980 book by Bertram Myron Gross. When asked to say more, she responded, “Have you heard of fascism? Do we have to talk about that? Isn’t it kind of, like, noted?” When prodded again on how living under fascism shaped the musical direction for her spring/summer 2026 show, Taymour elaborated: “It’s important to talk about what’s going on and not be scared to question things that are decided for us.” The final song at Collina Strada was an operatic rendition of Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” with its sharp and frankly underrated lyricism, leaving us with the haunting line, “My world’s on fire, how ‘bout yours?”
Thankfully, in this way, most of the music at fashion week spoke for itself — ideas that stood on their own or let us in on the bigger picture.
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