Inside Alice + Olivia’s Wonderland at NYFW

I had accidentally started toward Midtown before my taxi driver kindly informed me that the address was actually north, at 64th and Park. I was already having one of those quintessential Fashion Week afternoons: I had accidentally sent my Alice + Olivia dress to the wrong address (I need to stop traveling, note to self), my backup didn’t fit, and I ultimately arrived about 10 minutes into the presentation wearing my third option. Luckily, presentations are designed for exactly this kind of Fashion Week fluidity. Rather than a traditional runway beginning at a precise minute (even though, let’s be real, they never actually start on time), Alice + Olivia’s Spring 2027 presentation ran from 3 to 5 p.m., allowing guests to move through Stacey Bendet’s world at their own pace. As I made my way toward the event, streets around the venue were shut down, and photographers crowded outside 583 Park Ave., shooting the stream of glamorous women arriving. Inside, the Park Avenue space had been transformed into a surreal garden inspired by Alice in Wonderland . Models became part of the scenery, surrounded by flowers and fantasy while wearing lace, gilded florals, intricate embroidery, sweeping gowns, and dramatic trains, happily posing and smiling at the guests. Elsewhere, a gigantic stiletto served as the centerpiece for another significant development for the brand: the return of Alice + Olivia footwear. I complimented one of the event planners on the production, and she told me, “We were painting until an hour before the event! It turned out so well.” It did. “The season of the dress” If the last several years of fashion have been dominated by minimalism, neutrals, and the (a bit boring) “clean girl” aesthetic, Alice + Olivia offered its opposite. Bendet described Spring 2027 as “the season of the dress.” And dresses were everywhere: romantic florals, lace, sweeping lengths, extravagant embellishment and silhouettes. Interestingly, there was a modern element hiding underneath all that old-fashioned romance: artificial intelligence. Bendet incorporated AI into the development of the collection, particularly as a tool for experimenting with prints and embroidery. Rather than replacing the creative process, the technology allowed her to communicate and visualize extremely specific ideas at a speed that would be difficult through a conventional design process. It was essentially a way of collapsing the distance between an idea in the designer’s head and a visual her team could begin turning into an actual garment. This isn’t entirely new territory for Alice + Olivia. The brand had already experimented with proprietary AI technology for Fall 2026 , using it to create photorealistic visualizations of original embroideries and embellishments. For Spring 2027, the contrast was particularly fascinating because much of the collection looked anything but futuristic: fantastical gardens, elaborate flowers, embroidery, lace, and romantic gowns. Everything was meticulous down to the models’ fingertips. Celebrity manicurist Pattie Yankee invoked the whimsical nature of the collection with Dazzle Dry, layering different colors together rather than giving every model the same expected “Ballet Slippers” manicure. I immediately clocked The Cobrasnake, one of my favorite photographers, who kindly snapped some photos of me at the event before I ran into some friends attending. It’s fun being an editor during Fashion Week. Girlhood, motherhood, and romance Bendet herself went all out on the Spring 2027 fantasy, but there was a more personal undercurrent to all the flowers and dresses. Her 15-year-old daughter arrived in a floral motif, and I noticed something else as I moved through the presentation: many mothers had brought their daughters along. You used to rarely see young girls at Fashion Week events. A noticeable shift. Bendet told Vogue “the magical moment behind girlhood and motherhood had been on [her] mind.” Servers circulated with trays of champagne and rosé. Pastel-colored fortune cookies arrived holding sayings like “fall in love every day.” Then there were mushroom chocolates presented on a tray with an Alice-themed tin. “Wait, are these really mushroom chocolates?” one guest asked. Shortly afterward, she declared herself happier and took a couple more. The Fashion Week crowd Jessica Alba, Paris Hilton, Tiffany Haddish, Shay Sullivan, Brianna LaPaglia, and JoJo were among the celebrities and influencers who attended, with JoJo arriving in a look that felt straight out of the early 2000s. But the biggest surprise was impossible to miss: a gigantic stiletto rising out of the middle of the venue. Models posed around the enormous shoe as Alice + Olivia showed off its new footwear collection. Even the shoe display was maximalist, romantic, and unapologetically feminine. It’s only day one of Fashion Week, but one thing is clear: Romance is back.