Matriarchy, Gynecocracy, Queen-dom, Her-archy, She-volution… Fempire.
As the Doomsday Clock ticks a second closer to midnight, we dream of turning an upside-down world on its head. Imagine a world where power moves sideways and care is currency. A world that doesn’t just reverse outdated norms but rewrites the script entirely—keeping what works, reconfiguring the rest.
This philosophy runs through everything we do. We take what’s been cast aside and make it new. This season, we raided thrift stores in New Jersey and transformed heirloom wedding dresses into modern Collina couture—honoring the women who came before us by adapting their legacy to the present. Outerwear follows the same ethos: men’s wool coats, stripped down and rebuilt with a softer, more fluid sensibility. No unnecessary waste, no sad sheep. Just reclamation—of materials, of power, of possibility.
Collina Strada
Photos: Alessandro Viero on behalf of GoRunway
Now, imagine a world where unruly femininity, queerness, and disability aren’t embattled but emphatically embraced. Where what has been dismissed as excessive or unfit for the mainstream is exactly what shapes the future.
Until then, we brace for the present. We suit up. Protective gear on, shields and masks up. Hiding the tears, turning them into something else. Letting our freak flag fly, while knowing that sometimes stealth is survival.
In the distance, the hum of childhood scripts: tiny kitchens, mini-launderettes, the plastic trappings of preordained gender roles. As the regressive old tropes try to claw their way back, we lower our shades and say, I don’t know her.
Femininity is not a set of instructions. It’s a mess of beautiful contradictions—fierce and soft, dark and illuminating, private and protective, unapologetically visible and glam. Claim your space as a way to make room for others.
Be the star that you are.
CREDITS
Collina Strada AW25
Creative director: Hillary Taymour @_collina
Art Director: Charlie Engman @charlieengman
Stylist: Jorden Bickham @jordenbickham
Hair: Mustafa Yanaz for Bumble and Bumble
Makeup: Dick Page for Ilia
Casting: Morgan Senesi, Ignacio Murillo, and Kathryn Costigan
Bags: Made with Tomtex
Shoes: Collina Strada x Puma and Collina Strada made with Fctry
Socks: Happy Socks
Knitwear: Guilia Bortoli @rimaglio
Music: Oyinda and Low Noon
PR: Karla Otto
Production: SIrat Kaur
Lighting: The House of Jax
Sales: 247 Showroom and Plus Plus World
Special Thanks: Google, The Climate Pledge, Gotham, Joe and the Juice, Voss Water, WME, CFDA, and the whole Collina Team
ABOUT
Collina Strada
Collina Strada isn’t just a fashion label, it’s also a platform for social issues and awareness. Created by Hillary Taymour, her main concern is staying true to her craft, and staying on course to becoming a fully sustainable and radically transparent brand in the near future.
Based and manufactured in New York, the brand’s cult status core pieces transcend trends. Taymour’s designs are imbued with a fearlessly fluid attitude, re-inventing classics and unexpected details. Collina Strada embodies humor and youth. The brand DNA is now firmly cemented in the ability to look inward, even when we’re loud and expressive on the outside. Season after season, Collina Strada’s goal remains the same: to encourage self-reflection through clothing. How can you be the best version of yourself today?
Showing each season on the official New York Fashion Week schedule, Collina Strada has reimagined their shows to spur others into action. Runway shows have tackled global problems from racism to politics. “We are in a crucial state of change right now and the more we [do, the more we] can impact others to take action.” – Hillary Taymour
Bumble and Bumble
Bumble and bumble began as a New York City salon in 1977, where Bumble and bumble hairdressers clipped, colored and styled their way into prominence in magazines, on runways, and backstage around the world.
The brand is inspired by masters of the craft – hair stylists and colorists who are obsessed with technical and artistic excellence through bold self-expression. Bumble and bumble invents products to meet these professionals’ exacting standards that are also easy enough for anyone to use. From the iconic, wave-enhancing Surf Spray to the bestselling, mega moisturizing Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil range, these well-loved products are used by the pros in Bumble and bumble salons and by millions of people around the world at home every day.At Bumble and bumble, we believe in really great hair on your own terms.
Our mission – to provide a range of high-performing products and techniques inclusive of every hair type, texture, and styling preference so that you can create the hair you want every day, every night, every time.
Pro-curated, backstage-vetted, and life-tested for real, powerful results. www.bumbleandbumble.com
ILIA
Clean, skin-centric beauty ~ We believe in skin that looks like skin—and radiance that comes naturally. With transparency as our guide and color as our vehicle, we challenge the conventions of clean beauty to create something radically new, through safe, potent formulas that protect and revive your skin. www.iliabeauty.com
TÔMTEX
TômTex is an award-winning New York-based biomaterial company that produces revolutionary, bio-based, high-performance material using Chitosan, a biopolymer derived from seashell or mushroom waste. TômTex’s mission is to create innovative material designs that parallel life cycles observed in nature, and that serve as alternatives to the production methods that have contributed to our world’s environmental crisis. TômTex’s two proprietary materials, the Series M (mushroom chitosan), and TômTex Series WS (waste seashell chitosan), both offer sustainable, accessible, and practical alternatives to currently available commercial material options.
Founded in 2020, TômTex is the brainchild of Uyen Tran, who was born and raised in Vietnam—during a time when the country became one of the world’s leading textile manufacturers. TômTex brings together Tran’s first-hand familiarity with fashion’s urgent ecological impact with her past experience working as a fashion designer for the likes of Alexander Wang and Ralph Lauren. In 2020, Tran was named to the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 list in the scientific education category. www.tomtex.com
PUMA
PUMA is one of the world’s leading sports brands, designing, developing, selling and marketing footwear, apparel and accessories. For 75 years, PUMA has relentlessly pushed sport and culture forward by creating fast products for the world’s fastest athletes. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products in categories such as Football, Running and Training, Basketball, Golf, and Motorsports. It collaborates with renowned designers and brands to bring sport influences into street culture and fashion. The PUMA Group owns the brands PUMA, Cobra Golf and stitched. The company distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs about 20,000 people worldwide, and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach/Germany. www.puma.com
FCTRY LAb:
FCTRY LAb is an independent footwear company co-founded by Omar Bailey, a veteran footwear designer and the former Head of Innovation at Yeezy/Adidas. FCTRY LAb partners with creators and brands across music, sports, fashion and entertainment to create innovative world-class footwear, and bring these products to market direct-to-consumer. The business model is built upon a more equitable revenue share for creators and a faster speed to market.
The company’s Los Angeles headquarters features a state-of-the-art design studio and prototyping lab that encourages creators to experiment and push the boundaries of design in every product. FCTRY LAb has partnered with notable athletes, artists and brands including: rapper NLE Choppa and the now viral ‘Duck Boot’ NFL cornerback Jalen Ramsey and his bespoke performance cleat; luxury fashion brand Collina Strada with her first ever fashion boot to hit the market; and many other influential creators. FCTRY LAb is funded by a diverse group of venture capital firms, top professional athletes and angel investors. www.fctrylab.com
HAPPY SOCKS
Happy Socks is the original colorful sock brand. In 2008, Mikael Söderlindh and Viktor Tell had a vision: bring happiness and color to every corner of the world by turning an overlooked everyday essential into an outstanding design piece that combines quality, craftsmanship, and creativity. In short, Happy Socks. While all Happy Socks are still designed in the Stockholm-based atelier, they are now sold in over 40 countries through Happy Socks’ Concept Stores, at selected retailers, and via www.happysocks.com.
THE CLIMATE PLEDGE
The Climate Pledge is a commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040—a decade ahead of the Paris Agreement’s goal of 2050. Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism in 2019, and became the first company to sign the Pledge. The Climate Pledge is a cross-sector community of global companies working together to address the climate crisis and solve the challenge of decarbonizing our economy. theclimatepledge.com
GOTHAM
Gotham, the world’s first cannabis concept store, is a female-founded, mission driven, arts-and culture-forward legal cannabis dispensary in New York City.. The brand – where culture and cannabis meet – offers expertly curated cannabis alongside elevated apparel, home, and lifestyle goods for a discerning consumer. Gotham’s flagship, located on Bowery and 3rd St. in the East Village, debuted in 2023, fusing art, design, fashion, and culture alongside the state’s best cannabis. In 2024, Gotham began to expand its community across New York to offer bespoke experiences state-wide, opening their second location in upstate New York in the creative community of Hudson, NY at 260 Warren Street. With their third location in Williamsburg, at The Refinery at Domino, Gotham proves that they are a pioneer in the industry with one of the first retail operations in the state-of-the art and historic facility. Working to revolutionize the narrative around cannabis consumption, Gotham creates a sense of welcome to their local communities and has solidified their place within the cultural zeitgeist of New York with in-store activations, collaborations with creative leaders and tastemakers, and elevated events. Visit Gotham online at www.gotham.nyc
CFDA x GOOGLE
Fashion is essential to the ways that people express themselves and their individuality. From adaptive clothing lines to more inclusive sizing, designers are increasingly considering how they can design pieces for people from all walks of life.
Google partnered with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), an industry leader in fashion, to launch a Fashion Fellowship that explores how insights from Google’s building for everyone approach could be applied more to the fashion design and development process. Because when you build for everyone, you create better outcomes overall.
The Fashion Fellowship aims to support designers in their mission to create designs that truly speak to the wide range of experiences and backgrounds that people come from. We hope this can kickstart more conversations about how fashion can further represent people from all walks of life.
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