Alexander Wang is back on the New York Fashion Week schedule for the first time in years. Some of this fall 2025 collection will appear on the runway next month in what’s being billed as a 20th anniversary celebration.

“This whole year was [an exercise in] understanding where we came from, how these influences growing up contributed to what our visual language is,” he said at a showroom appointment. Few designers have been more closely associated with the aesthetics of downtown New York over the last two decades, but pointing out that he went to boarding school in Pebble Beach, California, Wang highlighted the new collection’s outdoorisms. Like the jean jackets with rainproof water-resistant coverings; the epaulets on tailored suits for slipping a sweater through, or attaching a carabiner; or the marled knits that evoke packing blankets. A quilted snap-front jacket in a Chinoiserie jacquard was overprinted with a flannel plaid motif.

Holey jeans lined with knit looked like an especially useful development—maybe not for a Northern California hiking trail, but certainly for the wilds of lower Manhattan.