Inside the NYC Ballet Fall Fashion Gala 2025
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Photo by Darren Carroll/PGA of America
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ctober 8, 2025. Under the glittering lights of Lincoln Center, Sarah Jessica Parker swept into the David H. Koch Theater wearing a sculptural black gown by Iris van Herpen, wings unfurling from her shoulders like molten metal. The co-chair and creative force behind the New York City Ballet Fall Fashion Gala had once again transformed an evening of dance into a spectacle of artistry, couture, and society.
Couture in Motion
The gala opened with a world premiere by Jamar Roberts, Foreseeable Future, an emotionally charged choreography set to an electronic score by ARCA. Dancers moved in red, flame-like costumes designed by Iris van Herpen, whose visionary silhouettes merged technology and nature. Her garments, rippling, aerodynamic structures, expanded with each gesture, embodying the symbiosis of body and design. Roberts explored “the contradictions between humans, the natural world, and technology,” creating a hypnotic dialogue between movement and form.
The next performance, Gianna Reisen’s Composer’s Holiday, offered a vibrant counterpoint. Reisen, who first choreographed the work for NYCB in 2017 at just 18, revived her piece with youthful precision and daring lifts set to Lukas Foss’s Three American Pieces. The costumes, designed by the late Virgil Abloh of Off-White, brought a streetwise elegance to the stage: billowy, modern silhouettes that transformed classical ballet into something distinctly of the moment. It was a perfect synthesis of Abloh’s urban minimalism and Reisen’s buoyant physicality, showing how ballet can speak fluently in the language of contemporary fashion.
Closing the evening was William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux (1992), a kinetic display of modernist energy performed in Gianni Versace’s iconic costumes. The ballerina’s bright yellow skirt, a Versace signature, was shed mid-performance, symbolizing freedom from classical constraint. Set to Thom Willems’s electronic score, the piece fused precision and provocation. With its razor-edged choreography and unapologetic glamour, Herman Schmerman bridged the past and future of fashion in dance, a tribute to Versace’s enduring influence and Forsythe’s radical genius.
Society’s Grand Stage
Beyond the stage, the Fall Fashion Gala unfolded as a social masterpiece. The grand foyer of the Koch Theater glittered with champagne, couture, and conversation. Gala co-chairs Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Fox, Nicole Ari Parker, and Bridget Everett mingled among artists, donors, and luminaries. Fox and Parker both wore ethereal van Herpen designs. Translucent, architectural gowns that shimmered like kinetic sculptures.
Onlookers noted the night’s aesthetic as a study in controlled extravagance. Men traded black-tie predictability for velvet tuxedos and jeweled lapels. Matthew Broderick accompanied Parker in timeless style, while Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mick Jagger, and Melanie Hamrick embodied cross-generational cultural royalty.
In another corner, Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy chatted with Amy Sedaris, Andy Cohen, and Georgina Bloomberg, a tableau of New York’s artistic elite.
The Art of Patronage
Since its inception in 2012, the NYCB Fall Fashion Gala has raised over $33 million for new works, costumes, and educational initiatives. The event, presented this year by Wells Fargo for the fifth consecutive season, exemplifies how high society sustains cultural institutions while enhancing its own prestige. “We are proud to continue our support for New York City Ballet, a world-renowned dance company,” said Fernando Rivas, Wells Fargo executive and NYCB board member.
The gala’s concept, pairing choreographers with fashion designers, was conceived by Sarah Jessica Parker to celebrate the intersection of couture and performance. Since its launch with Valentino in 2012, more than 30 designers have contributed to NYCB’s evolving visual language, from Thom Browne to Carolina Herrera and Dries Van Noten. Each costume is handcrafted in NYCB’s atelier under the supervision of Costume Director Marc Happel, transforming sketches from global design houses into wearable art for the stage.
This collaboration between dance and fashion has redefined the perception of ballet as both a living art and a luxury brand of its own. Every year, the gala generates new choreography, press coverage, and cultural currency. Proof that the worlds of fashion and fine art now orbit one another with magnetic inevitability.
The Performance of Society
The night’s success lay not just in its artistic triumphs but in its symbolism. To be present at the Fall Fashion Gala is to be visible within a specific echelon of global culture. A space where creativity, philanthropy, and prestige converge. Attending becomes an act of participation in the city’s ongoing performance of identity. As the dancers defied gravity on stage, so too did guests in the audience perform their own choreography of influence: the sweep of silk trains, the glint of diamonds, the murmured exchange between titans of art and finance.
When the final applause faded and the audience spilled into the promenade, the space transformed into a celestial supper club beneath Lincoln Center’s chandeliers. Dancers and patrons shared tables, toasts, and laughter, as music from a live quartet threaded through the crowd. There was a sense of creative communion. The shared belief that beauty, when elevated to ritual, becomes legacy.
The Legacy of Elegance
The Fall Fashion Gala’s endurance lies in its ability to blur boundaries: between fashion and art, commerce and creativity, spectacle and sincerity. It captures the essence of New York’s elite cultural ecosystem: restless, visionary, and deeply performative. Each year, it renews a centuries-old alliance between wealth and the avant-garde, reminding the world that patronage is not merely generosity but a declaration of identity.
As guests drifted into the crisp October night, clutching their gilt-edged invitations, the city glowed around them like a stage still humming with applause. The evening had reaffirmed ballet’s place at the crossroads of high art and high fashion and New York’s role as the beating heart of both.
Because at its most refined, fashion is not just what one wears; it’s what one chooses to uphold. And on this night, under the gilded arches of Lincoln Center, the city’s most discerning patrons upheld something extraordinary: the belief that art, beauty, and society are forever entwined in motion.
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