It’s in the sinews of Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen’s community that her latest collection for Fall 2025, “i’minlovewitheverythingandiknownothingatall” takes shape.
As guests filed in, previous collection model Lulu Yao Gioiello sat perched on the floor in front of the stage. Dressed in a highly structural dress within a hallmark silhouette of the brand (laced-up, radically round, creamily oat), she said, “We’re friends. I was in her first show, and I’ve used her pieces and photo shoots for a book series I publish.”
This process repeated itself throughout the afternoon of the day’s event, where various guests chimed in to share their connection to the brand and Whalen herself. These included a stylist who sourced her looks for an upcoming magazine shoot featuring Anna Delvey (who walked in the show), as well as Whalen’s industry veteran mentor Judy Collinson (a former fashion executive by way of Barneys, Dior and Burberry), swathed in rich layers of quilted, felt wool blankets and a bonnet to match. “She’s doing something that’s so beautiful and interesting. It’s truly art. From the moment we met, we were in sync,” Collinson explained.
Looks this season were neolithic, primal, Victorian or radically contemporary, depending on where one looked. Silver plates produced in collaboration with artist Vasaris Balzekas rested across the chest of one model, the rest of their look made up of white bloomers and a flowing nightgown. “The show brings together a sense of darkness, foreboding and heaviness, but then communing in space together to think about how we can lead and uplift one another,” Whalen explained to PAPER backstage.
In the vaunted auditorium of Performance Space, an array of six large mats featured candles, glassware and natural ephemera across the floor; they served as a complex, witchy concentration of altar-esque proportions. “The candles are a physical way of sharing life and bring people closer into your space. There’s also something counterintuitive about doing a fashion show in candlelight — it forces people to be present in a new way,” Whalen shared.
Long, flowing tresses grazed the backs of characters in a gray gown and a wildly geometric crinoline skirt, respectively. Spindly nail beds and hair texture were sourced from bee and candle wax, and unisex corsetry dominated torsos above shoes that were grounded in wood blocks, skinny stiletto daggers and tied with strips of fabric or hidden from sight altogether by tumbling lengths of naturally-dyed fabrics.
The show played out as a slow, lilting procession around the candle-lit mats, as each look circled the space before resting in formation in front of a spot in the middle of the auditorium. The designer’s final walk was reimagined as Whalen herself arrived in the collection’s only black look: a sheer-ish black top attached to an open crinoline-forward moment breaking around the midriff into two, distinct legs. She kneeled thoughtfully in front of each candle present on-stage, blowing out every single one in careful turn.
As the final flame flickered out, the room sat in a weighted hush — part reverence, part reflection. There was a heavy second before applause; rather, an exhalation passed through the audience like a silent understanding. After all, Whalen’s work has never been about spectacle for spectacle’s sake, but about conjuring something deeper — an invocation of feeling, memory, and yearning romance.
Photography: Kohl Murdock
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