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New York Men’s Day returns on September 10 at Mercedes-Benz of Manhattan, opening New York Fashion Week for the third year running at that Hell’s Kitchen venue. Presented by PROJECT and Coterie by Informa, the 26th edition features four returning labels and four designers making their NYMD debut. Founded in 2014 by Erin Hawker of Agentry PR, the showcase has run for over a decade as a launchpad for young American menswear talent.
NYMD skips the traditional runway. Each participating brand builds its own styled space within the venue, and guests move through at their own pace instead of sitting through a single scheduled slot. Designers show in one of two windows, morning or afternoon, with a different group presenting in each. Buyers get to handle the fabric up close. Editors get more time to ask questions than a runway allows.
Some past NYMD designers have picked up industry recognition after showing at the event, including nods from the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund. Sebastien Ami showed with NYMD in 2023 and made the Fashion Fund shortlist the following year. Private Policy has shown at NYMD across five seasons and was also named a Fashion Fund finalist during that run. Not every label chases that kind of attention. Some use the platform mainly to build the retail relationships that keep a small brand running past its first two or three seasons.
The event has stayed small, with eight labels total that will show this September, split evenly between returning names and first-timers. That ratio has held fairly steady across recent seasons, according to past NYMD announcements, even as individual designers rotate in and out.
Clara Son, Avon Anglers, Christopher Lowman and Science Project Company are all back for SS27. Son has now shown at NYMD four times, more than anyone else on this season’s list. Details on her September collection have not been released yet, and NYMD’s announcement did not include any preview of the work.
Avon Anglers and Christopher Lowman have both shown in recent NYMD seasons too. Their return gives buyers who already track the work a reason to check back in, and it gives the September lineup some continuity against four names nobody has seen on this floor before.
Those four newcomers are Alienant, Big Ocean x Andy Yu, Ethan Lewy and Ouila. Little has been made public about any of them so far. That’s fairly normal for NYMD debuts. Most of the discovery happens in the room itself, not in a press release beforehand.
Brian Bartiss, VP of Sales for Fashion by Informa, spoke about the lineup when it was announced. He pointed to discovery as the reason the partnership exists at all, framing NYMD as a way to connect emerging designers with buyers and editors who might not otherwise cross paths with them this early. He said backing young talent through platforms like this one matters for where menswear heads next, and that his team is looking forward to September.
Mercedes-Benz of Manhattan hosts NYMD for a third consecutive season. The dealership sits in Hell’s Kitchen and spans 330,000 square feet, giving the showcase a backdrop that mixes car showroom gloss with fashion staging. It sounds like an odd pairing on paper. In person, nobody involved with NYMD seems eager to change it.
The timing carries a bit of extra weight in 2026. Mercedes-Benz is marking the 140th anniversary of the automobile this year, alongside the 100th anniversary of its own name. Whether NYMD planned the overlap or simply landed inside it isn’t clear from the announcement, but the venue partnership sits squarely inside that celebration either way.
September is still months out. Four designers will walk back in with new collections behind them. Four more will show up with no history at NYMD and no guarantees attached. Some names from this list will end up on bigger schedules within a year or two. Most won’t, and that has been true of showcases built this way for as long as NYMD has been running them.
The full lineup is now confirmed. Avon Anglers, Christopher Lowman, Clara Son, Science Project Company, Alienant, Big Ocean x Andy Yu, Ethan Lewy, and Ouila will each show a collection across two presentation windows on September 10. Morning and afternoon sessions will run separately, splitting the eight labels into two groups so buyers and editors can attend both without a scheduling clash. Tickets and press accreditation details have not yet been released. Everything else waits until the doors open at Mercedes-Benz of Manhattan.
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