LIVING PROOF: Public School Builds for an Unpredictable City

LIVING PROOF: Public School Builds for an Unpredictable City

The label’s second collection since its return treats modular layers, technical fabric and waterproof galoshes as equipment for daily life

“I think that’s the spirit of New York and us, the resilience and the idea that if you fall down you can get back up and keep trying at getting back to what you love,” Dao-Yi Chow said at the Starrett-Lehigh Building on 10 September, minutes after Public School showed LIVING PROOF.

Resilience is an easy word for a brand to reach for in the season after a comeback. Chow used it to describe something closer to appetite. The label went quiet for seven years and came back to the New York Fashion Week calendar in February with a collection its founders called a homecoming. This one, the second since that return, points forward.

“This is our first love,” Chow said. “This is what we love to do every single day.”

Spring/Summer 2027 asks what a uniform does once school lets out and the education continues anyway. The answer arrived as a wardrobe assembled in parts. Layers open and close, trousers carry a double waistband for stacking, woven shirting meets soft jersey, and the palette holds to n...