New York Fashion Week is September 10–15 this year, which means for six days the city will be full of gorgeous models on the subway, black cars double-parked outside random downtown buildings, and at least one person aggressively saying “we’re at capacity.”
If you do not work in fashion, know a publicist, have 800,000 Instagram followers, or happen to be dating someone who does, getting into the major designer shows is still mostly not happening. That does not mean Fashion Week is off limits.
In fact, there are more public shows, pop-ups, museum exhibitions and Fashion Week-adjacent events than there used to be. Some are free, some require a ticket, and some mostly require you to be willing to loiter stylishly in SoHo. Here’s how to participate without a personal invite from Anna Wintour.
The official CFDA New York Fashion Week schedule runs September 10–15, 2026, with more than 70 runway shows and presentations. The big-name shows on that calendar, think Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Calvin Klein, Thom Browne, Carolina Herrera, etc., are generally still invitation-only.
But there is a parallel universe of independently produced runway shows that sell tickets directly to the public.
The Bureau is holding public runway shows at Gotham Hall from September 11–13. No industry connection required. General admission starts around $125, with reserved seating and front-row packages available if you want the full fantasy.
If you’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada and want to see a fashion show while you’re in NYC, this is the move.
There’s also a separately ticketed Rose Ball after-party at Gotham Hall on Friday, September 11, with an open bar, DJs and a live performance by the Ying Yang Twins. Tickets currently start at $249.
Runway 7 is taking over Sony Hall from September 8–13, with ticketed shows featuring a mix of emerging, international and independent designers. Tickets generally start around $150.
Art Hearts Fashion is also running shows September 10–13 at the Angel Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side. They tend to be theatrical, younger and considerably less buttoned-up than the traditional industry shows. Public ticket information is being released as Fashion Week gets closer.
And Indigenous New York Fashion Week has a particularly accessible mix of events this year. Its runway shows are ticketed, including a September 11 runway with tickets listed at $75, while its marketplace runs September 11–13 and is open for shopping and livestream viewing. Relative Arts is also holding a free grand reopening with pop-ups, DJs and performances on September 10.
Honestly, some of the most entertaining Fashion Week action happens outside the shows anyway.
SoHo, the Lower East Side, Tribeca and Chelsea tend to fill up with brand activations, pop-ups, launches and parties during Fashion Week. A lot of them are free and many are announced only a few days before they happen.
Brands use Fashion Week as an excuse to give away things no one technically needed until they were free: coffee, skincare, tote bags, fragrance, makeup, hair styling, drinks.
Fashion Week Online maintains a public events calendar, and Rockefeller Center also recommends watching for late-breaking free screenings, panels and brand activations as the week gets closer.
This one opens at the Museum of Arts and Design on September 12, smack in the middle of Fashion Week.
Nike: Form Follows Motion traces roughly 50 years of Nike design, from early prototypes and running shoes through the brand’s massive influence on sports, streetwear and global culture. It’s the first comprehensive museum exhibition devoted to Nike and is making its U.S. debut in New York.
The Museum at FIT opens Doll Dressing on September 16, literally the day after Fashion Week ends.
The exhibition looks at the long relationship between dolls and high fashion, including the period when dolls were essentially miniature fashion models used to communicate new styles across countries, and later when designers began creating elaborate fashion specifically for dolls.
Most importantly: the Museum at FIT is free.
If you’re here right at the beginning of September, catch United Flags of Fashion at Rockefeller Center before it comes down on September 4. It’s FREE!
More than 120 flags designed by American fashion designers are flying around The Rink, including work from Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Carolina Herrera, Vera Wang, Diane von Furstenberg and Prabal Gurung.
Wear whatever you want. The beauty of Fashion Week is that someone nearby will always be dressed much more strangely than you are.
Do not buy “NYFW tickets” from a random reseller without checking what you’re actually buying. The official CFDA shows and publicly ticketed independent shows are different things.
Expect plans to change. Venues, times and guest lists move around. Check everything again the day before.
Follow brands and venues on Instagram while you’re here. Pop-ups and free events often appear there first.
September weather is unpredictable. You may be dressed for fall while New York has decided it is still 87 degrees. We’re also in NYC’s monsoon season – an umbrella is always a good idea.
If we were visiting New York and wanted to experience Fashion Week without blowing $1,000 or developing a fake career in fashion PR, we’d probably do this:
Friday, September 11: Walk SoHo and the Lower East Side in the afternoon, checking out whatever pop-ups have materialized. Stop by the Indigenous NYFW marketplace. Drinks downtown later.
Saturday, September 12: Go see Nike: Form Follows Motion at MAD, then splurge on one publicly ticketed runway show if you really want the experience.
Any Fashion Week day: Figure out where one of the big designer shows is happening and people-watch outside.
September 16: If you’re still in town, go to the Museum at FIT for Doll Dressing. Admission is free.
You will have participated in New York Fashion Week. No clipboard, credential or strategically cultivated friendship with a Condé Nast employee required.
We’re going to let you in on a secret – Long Island City (LIC), Queens is actually the best neighborhood to stay in while you’re visiting NYC. It’s counterintuitive but LIC’s location just outside of Manhattan makes it extremely accessible.
We opened The Local in LIC in 2013, and one of the things that still surprises first-time guests is just how close we are to Manhattan. Depending on the train, you can be in Midtown in one or two stops.
So no, staying in Queens does not mean staying “far away.”
Long Island City sits directly across the East River from Midtown, and multiple subway lines connect the neighborhood to Manhattan. The UN is a pretty iconic location in Manhattan – we’re just across the river.
From The Local, you can get to places like Grand Central, Times Square, Central Park, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn without spending half your day in transit. Our nearest subway hub is Court Square, just a few blocks away.
One of the best things about staying in LIC is that Manhattan becomes the view.
Head down to Gantry Plaza State Park or Hunter’s Point South and you’ll be looking straight across the river at Midtown, including the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.
Sunset is especially good. Unlike some of the city’s observation decks, it does not cost $40+ to stand there and look at it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with visiting Times Square once. There is also a reason most New Yorkers avoid that area like New Jersey.
Long Island City is still a neighborhood where people live, work, walk their dogs, go to bars and complain about construction. You have diners, coffee shops, restaurants, parks, art spaces and little businesses mixed in with new residential towers and old industrial buildings.
For more of the places we actually send people, check out our guide to eating, drinking and hanging out in Long Island City.
LIC isn’t just convenient for Manhattan. It also puts you in a very useful spot for getting to Greenpoint, Williamsburg and other parts of Brooklyn.
We LOVE the G Train. Fun fact: it is the only train that does not connect to Manhattan. It’s all about the boroughs, baby! The G Train starts and ends at our nearest stop, Court Square, and takes you deep into Brooklyn.
If your New York trip includes restaurants in Williamsburg, bars in Greenpoint, a visit to Prospect Park, or friends who live somewhere that is not Midtown, LIC makes a lot of sense as a home base.
LIC is also conveniently located for New York’s airports.
LaGuardia is relatively close, like door to gate in 20 minutes or less on a good day. JFK is accessible by public transit or car, and you have multiple options depending on your timing and budget.
We already put together a full guide to getting to The Local from JFK, LaGuardia and Newark, because, yes, airport transportation in New York deserves its own explanation.
Hotel prices in New York can get wild, especially in Manhattan.
Staying in Long Island City can give you significantly better value while still keeping you very close to everything you came to see.
That’s especially true if you’re open to staying in a hostel.
At The Local, you can choose between shared dorm rooms and private rooms. You can see our rooms here, so there’s a pretty wide range of ways to stay depending on your budget and how much you value having a bathroom entirely to yourself.
LIC is a particularly good fit if you:
If your dream New York trip is waking up to views of New Jersey, fending off droves of lookyloos coming in and out of your hotel, or lining up with other tourists at Starbucks for your morning coffee, LIC may not be what you’re looking for.
TBH, that sounds like our living nightmare.
The Local NYC is a hostel in Long Island City, Queens, a few minutes from Manhattan by subway.
We’ve been here since 2013 and have spent more than a decade sending guests to our favorite restaurants, bars, parks, museums and strange little corners of New York.
If you stay with us, ask the front desk where to go. We have opinions.
Long Island City (LIC) sounds far but it is one subway stop from Manhattan. Whether you’re staying at The Local or not, everyone visiting NYC should plan to spend some time on this side of the river.
We’ve been here since 2013, which means we’ve watched LIC change a lot. There are considerably more glass towers now. There are also better restaurants, more bars, a lot more happening along the waterfront and, thankfully, still plenty of magical Queens energy mixed in.
This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive guide to Long Island City. It’s the stuff we actually recommend to our guests, most of it within walking distance of The Local.
If you’re going to do one cultural thing in the neighborhood, make it MoMA PS1.
Housed in an old public school building, PS1 is MoMA’s more experimental Queens sibling. The exhibitions tend to be contemporary, occasionally bizarre and generally more interesting to talk about afterward than another room full of paintings you already saw in an art history textbook.
It’s also very close to The Local, so this is an easy one to work into a morning or afternoon without turning it into a full blown museum day.
If you’re here in summer, check what’s happening outside too. PS1 has a long history of making its courtyard part of the experience and they’re known for their “Warm Up” day parties.
Yes, you should go see the Manhattan skyline. No, you should not pay $40 to stand on a nauseating platform to do it.
Walk west through LIC toward Gantry Plaza State Park and Hunter’s Point South Park. You’ll get some of the best views of Midtown Manhattan in the city, including the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings across the East River.
The old gantries are remnants of LIC’s industrial waterfront, and the whole stretch is particularly good around sunset. Bring a coffee, bring a beer, bring someone you like, whatever.
If the weather is good, keep walking south through Hunter’s Point South. The waterfront walkway is a nice foil to the urban jungle.
One of our favorite newer additions to the neighborhood is Soothr LIC, just a couple of blocks from The Local.
The original Soothr in the East Village built a pretty devoted following for regional Thai food and noodles, and the LIC location is much bigger and more ambitious. The room is beautiful, the bar is serious, and it works equally well for dinner with a group or for sitting down to a proper meal after a long day of walking around New York.
We wrote a whole thing about it [Soothr has big Bangkok energy], including what we like to order and when we’d go.
Dutch Kills has been one of our default recommendations since The Local opened.
It’s dark, low-key and very serious about cocktails without making the whole experience feel particularly serious. In a city where bars appear, become impossible to get into and disappear again approximately every six weeks, Dutch Kills has been doing its thing in LIC since 2009.
If someone at the front desk sends you there, this is why. If they don’t, they might be gatekeeping.
Our full Dutch Kills write-up is here [Dutch Kills – an LIC standby].
One of the best changes in LIC over the past few years has been the food.
There’s (formerly Michelin starred!) Casa Enrique for Mexican, Little Banchan Shop for excellent Korean banchan and bibimbap (with Michelin-starred Meju hiding in the back), and a growing collection of Chinese, Thai, Afghan and other restaurants that have made LIC much more of a food destination in its own right. Soothr’s arrival is part of that story too. Recent restaurant guides from both Eater and The Infatuation now devote substantial lists to the neighborhood, which would have been fairly unimaginable when we opened The Local in 2013.
If you want a recommendation based on what you actually feel like eating, ask us. This is one of those things real people at a front desk remain surprisingly useful for. Don’t be shy!
Before assuming you need to go into Manhattan or Brooklyn for something to do at night, check Culture Lab LIC.
It’s an arts and community space near the waterfront with live music, exhibitions, performances, markets and other events. In warmer months especially, there is often something happening outside at The Lot.
The programming changes constantly, which is the point. Check their calendar or ask the front desk what’s on while you’re here.
The subway will almost always be the fastest way to get around New York.
The ferry is so much more fun.
NYC Ferry stops at Hunters Point South and Gantry Plaza, making it an easy way to turn getting somewhere into a mini sightseeing trip. Depending on your plans, you can use it to head toward Brooklyn or Manhattan while getting a completely different view of the city from the East River. The best part about the ferry is THE PRICE. The ferry is generally just a little bit more expensive than a subway ride, making this the cheapest cruise you never booked! Oh, and they sell snacks and drinks on board.
Not every meal needs to be a destination restaurant.
One of the pleasures of staying in a neighborhood instead of a tourist district is being able to eat like someone who actually lives here. Grab a bagel. Sit at a diner counter. Get coffee from somewhere that does not have a line of 47 people because TikTok discovered it last Tuesday.
Court Square Diner is the classic old-school option nearby and, importantly, it’s open 24 hours. It’s exactly what a New York diner should be: enormous menu, booths, coffee and absolutely no need to have done any research before walking in.
This sounds like a cop-out. It isn’t.
LIC is a neighborhood of strange contrasts: old industrial buildings next to new residential towers, tiny restaurants under elevated train tracks, art spaces, film studios, warehouses, waterfront parks and some legitimately beautiful Manhattan views.
Walk down Jackson Avenue. Wander through Court Square. Head toward Hunters Point. Look at the old signs and loading docks that haven’t been replaced by condos yet.
Then get on the subway when you’re ready. Manhattan will still be there.
One of the reasons we opened The Local here is that LIC gives you both versions of New York.
You can be in Midtown Manhattan in minutes, spend the entire day doing the New York trip you came here to do, and then come back to a neighborhood with its own bars, restaurants, parks and actual New Yorkers walking their dogs.
Or you can ignore Manhattan for an afternoon altogether.
We strongly recommend doing that at least once.
The Local NY is at 13-02 44th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens. If you’re staying with us and want a recommendation, ask the front desk. We have strong opinions.