Gold Rush: The CFDA's Golden Girls Lead Party Season

On Monday night the American Museum of Natural History turned into a gold room. Hailey Bieber, Zoe Kravitz, Rose and Anja Rubik arrived together in metallic looks from Anthony Vaccarello's final Saint Laurent collection, then took the stage to present him with the International Designer of the Year award — a farewell staged as a coronation, ten years after he took the house.

The collection itself, shown September 29 under the chandeliers at the Trocadero, ran gold through 49 looks — lame, brocade, lace, latex brushed with gold leaf — before closing in ten black looks while Charlotte Gainsbourg sang. Gold was never decoration for Vaccarello; the house's own notes call it a colour deeply rooted in the history of Saint Laurent, and the CFDA night proved the point: four women, four different golds, one unmistakable message.

For party season, the takeaway is practical, not theatrical. Gold works best as a single statement — a lame gown, a brocade skirt with a thigh-high slit, a sequin midi — against black, bare skin or quiet tailoring. The CFDA trio wore it head to toe because the occasion demanded it; the rest of us can take one piece and let it do the work.

If there is one garment doing the work this autumn, it is the coat — and this season it has gone soft, oversized and unapologetically tactile. Shearling leads: XXL silhouettes at Loewe and Louis Vuitton, curly shearling at Tod's, a cognac belted version at Burberry, and cropped fur-trimmed jackets at Saint Laurent, Valentino, Khaite and Bottega Veneta.

NET-A-PORTER's winter edit, published October 28, reads like a shopping list for the trend: shearling coats that swing between understated and ultra-glamorous, from Nour Hammour's shawl-collared Astoria to Arma's teddy-like Cristina and Toteme's collarless black runway coat — now down to two sizes, a measure of how fast the good ones move.

The styling rule is simple, and it is why the trend photographs so well: let the coat be the outfit. Denim and cashmere underneath, knee-high boots, leather gloves, nothing competing. Faux fur plays the same role at lower stakes — a belted brown midi from & Other Stories, a cropped caramel jacket over straight jeans — texture first, everything else quiet.

Party season opened properly this week. H&M's Holiday 2026 collection landed November 5 with Jazz Age glamour as its brief — fringe that swings, velvet that glows, slip dresses in metallic and lace, a palette that moves from inky black through bronze and gold into soft ivory.

But the smartest party formula of 2026 is not another sequin dress. It is the embellished skirt: sequins, beads, embroidery, sheer mesh and fringe treated as the whole point of the outfit, worn with a quiet top — a knit, a simple blouse, a tailored jacket — so one surface does the talking. The silver sequin midi is the clearest example of the idea.

Velvet is the other half of the equation, and it is everywhere from Ralph Lauren to Khaite to the high street: a scarlet velvet mini, a burnout-velvet midi, a navy velvet dress with shoulder detailing. Buy the texture, keep the silhouette simple, and let one piece carry the evening.

The night's most meaningful win belonged to Rachel Scott. Her second American Womenswear Designer of the Year award for Diotima — she also won in 2024, and took the emerging prize in 2023 — is a vote for craft as structure: hand-worked crochet made by women's artisan groups in Jamaica, set against precise New York tailoring.

Scott founded Diotima in 2021 with her savings, naming it for the priestess in Plato's Symposium, and the label has stayed deliberately small: two collections a year, made to order, crochet as the primary material rather than a decorative afterthought. Her Spring 2027 collection, The Sea Connects Us, pushed further — silk twill cut into waves, dense organza, crochet revealing controlled glimpses of skin, vintage napkin rings worn as adornment.

The win lands while Scott is also creative director of Proenza Schouler, where she showed her first collection in February — the industry's current favourite arrangement, an independent label as the creative signature and a larger house as the platform. American fashion just told us twice in three years that the signature matters more than the scale.