For Fall 2025, Collina Strada Offers Protective Clothing as a Form of Political Resistance

By The Citizen on February 7, 2025

With her New York Fashion Week presentations, Collina Strada designer Hillary Taymour often takes the opportunity to comment on social and political issues, whether through the clothing, models, soundtrack or some combination thereof. Every season makes a statement on climate change, “ethical” material consumption and “sustainable” practices. (The brand reuses and recycles materials from past collections to reduce waste, as narrated on the runway in parody versions of popular songs: “Care a lotta is our mission to reduce all the emissions” to the tune of “Pieces of Me” by Ashley Simpson played during the Spring 2025 show.) She’s also one of the only designers throughout the Fashion Month calendar who consistently spotlights and casts models with physical disabilities.

For Fall 2025, Taymour added a few more discussion points to the agenda in light of the current political landscape. “As the Doomsday Clock ticks a second closer to midnight, we dream of turning an upside-down world on its head,” Taymour wrote in her show notes. “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 A world that doesn’t just reverse outdated norms but rewrites the script entirely — keeping what works, reconfiguring the rest.”

Though that’s her idealized vision of the world, Taymour knows it’s not reality — at least, not right now. “There’s been backsliding (in inclusion). Two steps forward, five steps back,” she said backstage at the show. “We’re trying to stay forward. We love forward.”

In an effort to continue moving “forward,” Taymour focused her designs on large, billowing silhouettes of hooded sweatshirts, oversized jackets with decorative (but protection-evoking) shoulder pads, over-the-head scarves and bug-eye sunglasses that covered models’ entire faces.

“We have to hide our tears,” she said. She elaborated further in her show notes, “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 sometimes stealth is survival.”

Later in the show, Taymour also featured two feminine-presenting models in bridal mini dresses. At the end of the runway, one bride cinematically dipped the other, the two kissed, and then skipped off the runway hand-in-hand, giggling and smiling wide.

“We don’t need to be told by our governments what sex we are, what we want to be, how to be portrayed in society. We should be able to make our own choices as human rights,” Taymour said. “Community is important. Community is everything. Love your neighbors. Love everyone. Trans rights, protect women, protect everyone, protect right now. It’s going to be a really hard time in society, so let’s take care of each other.”

See the Collina Strada Fall 2025 collection below.