FANG NYC’s Fall/Winter 2026 Channels Berlin’s Rave-Era Optimism For A New Generation
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By PAGE Editor
At a moment when fashion often feels caught between nostalgia and uncertainty, Fang Guo is choosing optimism.
For his second New York Fashion Week appearance, the Beijing-born, New York–based designer presented FANG NYC’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection as both homage and proposition—a study of 1990s Berlin rave culture reframed through the brand’s gender-expansive lens. The result was a lineup that felt less like costume and more like cultural memory, sharpened for today’s social climate.
The collection draws from Anfang/Beginning: Berlin 1994–99, Christian Stemmler’s photographic documentation of his circle of friends during the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stemmler’s images—afterparties in cramped apartments, street-cast style moments, portraits pulsing with intimacy—captured a generation rediscovering freedom through self-expression. For Guo, that spirit resonates now.
“One of the key inspirations of the collection is Anfang/Beginning,” Guo shared backstage. “The images capture the authenticity of the time… I wanted to emote a sense of hopefulness under the current social climate that often feels disjointed.”
That tension—between fragmentation and unity—became the thesis of the runway.
Reworking Subculture Through A Minimalist Lens
Rather than leaning into rave-era maximalism, Guo distilled the visual language of the period. Striped and checkered motifs, seen frequently in Stemmler’s photography, were reinterpreted in clean, contemporary proportions. The silhouettes oscillated between structured tailoring and draped fluidity—yin and yang rendered in wool, knit, and leather.
Workwear detailing and industrial textures grounded the collection in FANG NYC’s evolving design codes. Grommets punctuated garments without tipping into cliché; leather pieces felt sculptural rather than aggressive. The balance was deliberate: tenderness against hard-edge, masculine codes softened by pliable construction.
FANG NYC has consistently positioned itself at the intersection of gender and self-determination. Founded with the intention of diversifying fashion for queer-minded communities, the brand challenges inherited binaries while maintaining wearability. Knitwear remains a cornerstone—graphic yet comforting, statement-driven yet body-conscious.
This season, Guo extended that ethos into outerwear and tailored separates that invite layering and reinterpretation. The clothes suggested utility without rigidity—garments designed to move between after-hours intimacy and public assertion.
A Runway As Arena
The staging underscored the narrative. The show space evoked a brutalist sports arena entrance: concrete floors marked with track-and-field lines, punctuated by patches of astroturf. It was an unexpected collision of athletic iconography and underground culture—a visual metaphor for discipline meeting spontaneity.
The installation created a dialogue between structure and improvisation, mirroring the collection’s internal contrasts. Live music by Alex Godfrey amplified the mood, while movement direction by Julian Grubman emphasized the garments’ fluidity against the stark environment.
Production was handled by TBHNN, with creative direction led by Guo himself. Styling by Liv Vitale, casting by F10 Casting, and beauty teams including Zenia Jaeger (Submission Beauty) and Mike Martinez (Cutler Salon) maintained a stripped-back sensibility that allowed the clothes—and the community they reference—to remain central. Select footwear was powered by Dr. Martens and Ariat, grounding the looks in durability and subcultural heritage.
Technology As Creative Infrastructure
Behind the scenes, FANG NYC partnered with Dropbox, positioning the tech platform as an enabler of creative clarity. In an era when collections are shaped as much by digital workflows as atelier craftsmanship, tools like Dropbox Dash—its AI-powered universal search—underscore how contemporary fashion houses operate.
From mood boards to final look distribution, the partnership highlighted a broader reality: innovation in fashion is increasingly hybrid. Creativity flows not only through fabric and form but also through systems that support collaboration.
A Global Perspective, A Local Pulse
Guo’s trajectory—from Beijing to San Francisco’s Academy of Art University to New York—inflects the brand with cross-cultural sensitivity. His work reflects a curiosity about identity formation across geographies, filtered through the refuge he found in queer underground spaces.
FANG NYC does not simply blur gender lines; it interrogates the assumptions that constructed them. By revisiting Berlin’s mid-’90s creative awakening, Guo suggests that moments of rupture can birth new aesthetics—and new solidarities.
Fall/Winter 2026 is less about revisiting rave culture than about reclaiming its communal optimism. In a season marked by uncertainty, FANG NYC proposes that liberation is not a relic of the past but an ongoing practice—stitched into stripes, reinforced with leather, and walked confidently across concrete marked for motion.
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