New York Fashion Week (NYFW) kicks off this week, running from Thursday, Feb. 6, to Tuesday, Feb. 11. Designers will showcase their collections for the upcoming season with fashion shows, pop-ups, social events, and more.
While many of the shows feature expensive brands, we instead want to highlight local designers that center culture, community, and sustainability. Plus, they are all women of color who inspire others to express themselves with confidence.
Maui x Lolita

Veterans of NYFW, the mother-daughter duo behind Maui x Lolita bring you their SS25 collection. Prepare for maximalist shapes and patterns — and that sassy essence in all their designs.
Co-founder Lolita Malone first found her inner “fly girl” when she and her siblings upcycled clothes in Jamaica to fulfill their fashion dreams with their tiny allowance. She would “frankenstyle” pieces, an approach that has taken her designs into some of the world’s biggest fashion shows.
“Bold, daring women who not only take fashion risks, but are comfortable with how they look and how they dress, and they don’t want to look like anyone else,” says Lolita of the label’s identity. Her daughter, Maui, also lives out this philosophy with her mix of business and fashion savvy. The tag line “Fly fashion, not fast fashion” is truel: Maui x Lolita craft designs in small batches.
Read more about Maui x Lolita here.
Cindy Castro New York

Another NYFW veteran, Cindy Castro began designing in her native Ecuador. She would fix things — even clothes her mother didn’t want her to fix. Years later, her brand, Cindy Castro New York, is working to help fix gaps in transparency and sustainability in the fashion industry.
Core to this is ensuring the fabrics her company uses are natural and biodegradable and made by ethical partners. Castro wanted her line to be an alternative to fast fashion and its often exploitative practices.
“That goes all the way back to the supply chain: making sure that the people at the cotton crops are being paid well, that they have safe working conditions, and that our packaging is biodegradable,” Castro says. “We don’t want to contribute to overconsumption. We don’t want to contribute to our pieces staying in a landfill.”
Read more about Cindy Castro New York here.
Sneaker Girls Club

For a classic laid-back New York look, check out Sneaker Girls Club’s new collection. The scaffold-themed tee pays homage to women and to NYC: the quintessential city structure represents the club’s mission to construct a platform for women in the sneaker industry.
“It’s such a male-dominated world in sneaker culture, so it’s really [about] bridging that gap for women,” Lauren Rawles, founder of the sneaker collective, told Epicenter.
The club also hosts workshops for girls and women to design their own sneakers. Rawles empowers them to use them as authentic outlets — no beads or paints are too colorful for this kind of canvas. Read more here.
The Sourced Studio

This Latinx-owned jewelry and accessories brand had a NYFW pop-up with serious Bad Bunny vibes. You can find customizable charm bars, statement pieces like the “Rich Bitch Ring,” and permanent jewelry welded around your wrist.
The Sourced Studio celebrates culture and community in every piece. The brand sells flag necklaces representing countries like Mexico and Trinidad, and for each necklace sold, they partner with a nonprofit from that country, donating a portion of the proceeds to women-owned businesses and youth programs.
“We celebrate where we come from. We celebrate who supports us,” Reyes says.
Read more about The Sourced Studio here and listen here.
Black Kat Krochet

And who says our cats can’t also look extra purr-ty this week? Monica Martinez’s crocheting and embroidery business specializes in sweater vests for cats. Martinez started the business after crocheting a pink sweater and hat to keep her cat, Chorizo (sausage in Spanish), warm during a heating outage. Chorizo rocked the new look.
Martinez sources threads for Black Kat Krochet from women in Mexico. She connected with them through a friend she met at an embroidery class within Red de Pueblos Transnacionales, a network for and by immigrants from Mexican rural and indigenous communities.
Martinez sees crocheting and appreciation of crocheted designs as a way to bring people together. “When you see what I do, like ‘wow, I’ve never imagined that you do these beautiful embroidery flowers,’” she says. “That’s why you never assume that people are something until you know them.”
Read more about Black Kat Krochet here.
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