Michael Kors’s Fall/Winter 2021 Show marked the designer’s 40th anniversary celebration
In the heart of New York City’s Theater District, Michael Kors’ unmistakably cosmopolitan Fall/Winter 2021 collection marked the designer’s 40th-anniversary celebration. Just outside two Big Apple institutions, Sardi's and the Music Box Theater, with the Broadway signs for shows like Come From Away and The Lion King in the distance, models paraded down a stretch of 45th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenue, in festive combinations of leather, glitter, and fur. Whether coincidence or fate, more than the garments but rather the entirety of Kors' anniversary fashion show captured his legacy as a regarded figure in fashion as well as New York.
In 1981, a young Kors launched his name brand collection at the famed New York City department store Bergdorf Goodman. While he spent several years in the late '90s/early '00s as the head designer at Celine, he's spent most of his career cultivating and growing his own label. Both he and his brand center themselves around the city and its culture, of which Broadway is a vital component.
A longtime supporter of the stage, the designer's Fall/Winter 2021 show opened with a message from some of Broadway's biggest names: Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, Judith Light, Rosario Dawson, Billy Porter, Renée Elise Goldberry, and many more. The actors joined Kors in asking viewers to support Broadway and its 87,000 employees who have yet to get back to work since the beginning of the pandemic. The group encouraged fans to donate to the Actor's Fund, a charity that supports members of the entertainment community.
Following his message, models jaunted out of Sardi's in chic, intentionally cut pieces boasting rich reds, nudes, black, and white as Rufus Wainwright croons Broadway classics from inside the theater. Each look, a sharply tailored gem, supposed a timeless elegance that could blend into the Broadway nightlife of any generation—a perfect summation of Kors' last 40 years. Finally, Naomi Campbell closed the show in a glittering black gown before joining the rest of the models in the theater with Wainwright to applaud Kors on four decades of stunning work.
