New York, early September. Fashion Week was the perfect excuse for a stay in a city where the lights genuinely do feel like inspiration made visible, not the postcard cliché, but something closer to a mood you can’t shake once you’ve lived inside it. I spent a full year here once, so this city has never been neutral territory for me. But this time I came back with a specific curiosity: after immersing myself in Berlin’s event scene and its particular fashion bubble, how different would things actually feel on this side of the Atlantic?
In Berlin, you know what you’re signing up for. Black is the unspoken uniform, and deviating from it can feel like a small act of rebellion. You can never go wrong with it, because it’s a safety net that quietly discourages risk. Arriving in New York, I was determined to have the full experience, which, fittingly, started the same way it would have in Berlin: finding an apartment through a friend of a friend, one contact leading to the next. By chance, I landed in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Greenpoint has long been anchored by a large Polish-American community, and that history is still visible everywhere, traditional Polish delis and restaurants sitting comfortably alongside third-wave coffee shops, natural wine bars and live music venues. Former warehouses along the waterfront have quietly become galleries and artist studios. Some people call it the new Beverly Hills of New York, and walking its streets, I understood the comparison. It’s calmer than Manhattan, certainly, but the skyline is still there across the water, the people still look effortlessly put-together, and between the young families, the corner coffee spots,the small galleries and the vintage shops, there’s a version of glamour stood for itself.
After a few days of settling in, my first event arrived: a celebration marking 100 years of Montblanc‘s leather goods. I dressed differently than I would have in Berlin, still tailored, but far more colorful and chose a butter-yellow dress for the occasion. The venue was the Crane Club in Manhattan, a restaurant reimagined as a bar, dripping with old-world charm and vintage detail. It had the kind of atmosphere that feels curated down to the last brass fixture, and the crowd matched it, everyone dressed up, classic, considered.
I spoke with actor Paul Anthony Kelly, who told me about his upcoming film, The Housemaid Secret, hard not to think of the first instalment’s most talked-about scene while he described it. Paul Anthony Kelly, more recently known for playing John F. Kennedy Jr. in FX’s Love Story, has signed on for The Housemaid’s Secret, a title that gives away its own premise, centered on a domestic worker drawn into her wealthy employers’ darkest secrets. He’ll star opposite Sydney Sweeney, who returns in the lead role, and newcomer Kirsten Dunst.
Later in the evening, conversations drifted toward creativity and what New York does to people who move through it, first with German actor Trystan Pütter, then with Anna Schürrle.
By the time I left, I was already anticipating what New York Fashion Week itself would bring. There’s a particular phenomenon that happens during Fashion Week here: the city stops hosting the show and becomes the show. Between the US Open pulling in its own international crowd and Fashion Week doing the same, New York in early September operates at a different frequency entirely, every sidewalk a casting call, every corner a potential backdrop. Furthermore, I was curious to see who would turn out for the COS show I’d been invited to. The event landed amid real turbulence, a scandal involving the CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Steven Kolb, who now stapped back from his position, was unfolding in the background, but the show itself stayed composed: a classic venue with the Brooklyn Bridge framing the runway, a setting that suited COS’s aesthetic of clean lines and quiet confidence almost too perfectly. Simple,classic pieces, but never boring, for sure. I was particularly taken with a sheer purple look that moved through the collection. The guest list pulled in an international mix: actors, model and interview subject Elias Becker, with whom I later spoke about his own personal style, model Stefanie Giesinger, content creator Gaius Okami, and model Angelina Frerk rounded out a crowd that felt like a second, informal runway of its own.
The real story of Fashion Week, though, often lives in its margins. I ducked into a magazine shop where someone behind the counter admitted, half-laughing, that they’d be relieved once the madness of the week was finally over. What struck me most was the general indifference New Yorkers have toward each other’s choices. A man on the subway wearing a full face mask might register as strange at first glance. But then you remember the heat, the stale underground air, and the logic clicks into place immediately. It’s practical and, in its own way, refreshing that no one seems to care enough to stare.
And then there’s an openness. A stranger telling you “you look cute” in passing isn’t a profound compliment. It doesn’t need to be. But it costs nothing, and it lands anyway, which is exactly what I keep coming back to about this city. Perhaps that’s the real takeaway from two weeks spent chasing shows, events, interviews and skylines: a small, renewable case for why we should all, generally, be a little more generous with our compliments.
Berlin taught me the safety of black and the comfort of blending in. New York, on the other hand, taught me something else this September: that showing up in butter yellow, saying the kind thing out loud, complimenting a stranger on the subway, none of it makes you less serious. It just makes you visible. That’s what Fashion Week actually sells, the permission to be a little more colorful, a little more open, a little more generous than the city you came from usually allows.
Now I’m heading back to Berlin with plenty of inspiration and a handful of new trends in my suitcase, but the thing I’m really bringing home is New York’s don’t-care attitude, straight off its streets and out of its subway cars.