The week the fashion industry looked up and noticed the weather. Fresh from a historic gold at the Milan Winter Olympics, figure skating champion Alysa Liu traded the ice for a surrealist pastel salon to front Nike’s new Studio Fleece campaign, and in doing so became the unlikely face of a season preoccupied with what to wear when the forecast refuses to cooperate. The 20-year-old, who grew up in Oakland and built a reputation for injecting a Gen-Z, alt-leaning sensibility into a famously conservative sport, told Hypebeast that her off-duty wardrobe runs on two principles: mobility and comfort. That translates to baggy sweatpants, oversized hoodies, and sneakers, the exact vocabulary of the collection she is now selling.
Studio Fleece is not a one-off graphic drop but what Nike is billing as a unified system, developed with insights from more than 300 women and priced between 60 and 95 dollars. Jill Gonzalez, the brand’s senior product line manager, framed the launch to Retail Dive with disarming plainness, noting there is nothing more authentic to sportswear than a fleece hoodie. Liu is one node in a wide constellation of ambassadors that includes Sha’Carri Richardson, Jazzy Davidson, and K-pop’s Karina, though the campaign’s creative choice to clone Liu’s signature blonde-and-brown halo hairstyle across several models divided fans online, some arguing it diluted the very individuality that made her worth casting.
If Liu represents the styling side of weather-readiness, RAINS represents the engineering. The Scandinavian label, long synonymous with sculptural rainwear, officially stepped into footwear this week with its first waterproof boot collection, built around two silhouettes: the Dry Boot and the Mirage. Shaped with footwear architect Martin Sallières, the range moves from a classic Chelsea cut to an exaggerated clog, riding on responsive cushioning and grid-patterned outsoles that borrow their geometry from the New York City block. It is a quietly clever piece of design logic, translating the brand’s minimalism into something that functions in a downpour, and it arrives precisely as unpredictable weather becomes a genuine purchasing consideration rather than a seasonal afterthought.
Cinema and couture collided at Christie’s, which partnered with 20th Century Studios on an exclusive online auction of the original wardrobe from The Devil Wears Prada 2. The charitable sale benefited the Committee to Protect Journalists and the CFDA, offering screen-worn lots that read like a fantasy inventory: Meryl Streep’s prototype Valentino Rockstud pumps, Anne Hathaway’s Gabriela Hearst dress, and the feathered Bad Binch TongTong gown worn by Lady Gaga. Ahead of bidding, Christie’s mounted a free public exhibition at its New York gallery, giving the sequel’s devotees a firsthand look at styling that has become a story unto itself.
Tokyo, meanwhile, absorbed two significant openings. Nigel Cabourn unveiled its largest Kanto-area flagship in Omotesando, a cultural hub for the designer’s devotion to traditional craft that debuted his first café, Nigel Cabourn COFFEE, in partnership with Tokyo roaster Pappelburg. Early patrons left with a vintage motel-inspired keychain engraved with personalized messages from the late designer. A short distance away in Aoyama, Seoul’s Andersson Bell opened its inaugural Japanese flagship inside a 1993 brutalist building, co-designed by studio I IN around the brand’s ethos of the beauty of contrast: raw concrete set against polished, colorful fixtures.
The week closed on the garment that started the whole weather conversation more than a century ago. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Burberry announced The Burberry Trench: Crafting an Icon, a free retrospective marking the house’s 170th anniversary and running from September 21, 2026, through January 3, 2027, in the rarely seen Prince Consort Gallery. Organized across three sections, Invention, Craft, and Creativity, it traces Thomas Burberry’s 1879 invention of waterproof gabardine through 19 modern runway reinterpretations by Christopher Bailey and Daniel Lee, and includes archive objects shown publicly for the first time, among them a trench once owned by couturier Hardy Amies. The display lays the groundwork for the museum’s permanent Burberry Gallery, arriving in autumn 2028. Seven stories, one throughline: fashion is finally dressing for the sky.
