Released around Lunar New Year, a moment of renewal and generational continuity, PRIVATE POLICY Fall/Winter 2026 reflects on histories of Asian labor and how they continue to shape the present.
The collection places the experiences of early Asian immigrants alongside those of Asian Americans and new-generation immigrants today, tracing how labor evolves while remaining ever present.
The starting point is the first generation of Chinese laborers who built America’s transcontinental railroads in the nineteenth century. Their bodies and time laid the foundation for the modern American West, yet their contributions have long been excluded from dominant historical narratives. PRIVATE POLICY approaches this history not as something finished, but as a line still in motion, connecting past and present.
Workwear silhouettes anchor the collection. Functional cuts, reinforced seams, and multi-pocket constructions reference garments designed for endurance and survival. These details speak not only to the physical demands of railroad labor, but also to the many forms of labor carried by Asian immigrants and Asian Americans today, including emotional, psychological, and institutional labor that often remains unseen.
Private Policy
A second historical layer draws from the 1980s, a period when Asian Americans increasingly entered the mainstream workforce and Asian designers began gaining visibility within Western fashion. Power shoulders, sharp tailoring, and pencil skirts reference professional dress codes of the era and the discipline required to navigate offices, hospitals, laboratories, and other institutional spaces. These silhouettes reflect both professional ambition and the quieter labor of assimilation, adaptation, and self-regulation.
Material choices carry strong symbolic weight. Utilitarian workwear structures are reimagined in silk-finished and high-sheen fabrics. This contrast introduces light and visibility where earlier labor was absorbed by dust, sweat, and silence, honoring those whose work went unnamed while asserting a growing public and cultural presence today
References to the American West appear through earth tones, rusted reds, office blues, and linear silhouettes. Distressed finishes and worn textures function as records of time, use, and survival, allowing traces of labor to remain visible on the body.
By placing nineteenth-century railroad workwear alongside 1980s professional dress, PRIVATE POLICY traces a broader trajectory of Asian labor, from physical infrastructure to emotional, intellectual, and cultural work. What emerges is not the disappearance of labor, but its transformation and increasing visibility.
PRIVATE POLICY Fall/Winter 2026 is both a letter to the past and a statement for the present. It honors those who built the world without recognition, and the generations reshaping spaces that were never designed for them.
The tracks continue forward.
And now, we are finally seen.
PRODUCTION | 3V CREATIVE PRODUCTIONS
STYLIST | XANDER ANG
CASTING DIRECTOR | ELI ROMANOVA
LIGHTING | STUDIO RRD
HAIR | NARAD KUTOWAROO using UNITE HAIRCARE
MAKE UP | MARIEKE THIBAUT using MAC COSMETICS
NAIL | PATTIE YANKEE
SOUNDTRACK | MAISON LABTONIC
VIDEO AND HOUSE PHOTO | KOHL MURDOCK AT MOMENT DEPT.
GRAPHIC DESIGN | LOADING LOADING
PUBLIC RELATIONS | REP AGENCY
Special thank you
STYLEM, DAVID PROTEIN, CHINATOWN HOSPITALITY GROUP
