Three AAPI Designers to Watch This Fashion Month
As the Spring/Summer 2027 collections approach, fashion month once again moves through New York, London, Milan, and Paris. Beyond the industry’s biggest heritage houses, AAPI designers continue to shape the international luxury conversation through perspectives that span cultures, continents, and generations.
Here are three to keep an eye on this season.
Prabal Gurung — New York
Prabal Gurung has long demonstrated how cultural identity can coexist with the vocabulary of American luxury. Born in Singapore, raised in Nepal, and based in New York, Gurung has built his label around color, glamour, femininity, and a perspective informed by living between cultures.
His collections increasingly feel personal, bringing South Asian references into conversation with polished American sportswear and red-carpet dressing. Returning to the official NYFW schedule for Spring/Summer 2027, Gurung remains a designer to watch not simply for what he creates, but for how he continues to expand the idea of what American fashion can look like.
Dhruv Kapoor — Milan
In Milan, Dhruv Kapoor offers an entirely different proposition.
The New Delhi-based designer has become known for blurring distinctions between menswear and womenswear while mixing streetwear, tailoring, graphic elements, and Indian influences. His approach feels particularly relevant to a generation less interested in traditional categories of luxury and more interested in individuality.
Kapoor is scheduled to show on the opening day of Milan Fashion Week this September, placing an Indian label directly alongside some of the industry’s most established European names. His presence is another indication that contemporary luxury is becoming increasingly global in both its audience and its authorship.
Sacai — Paris
In Paris, Chitose Abe’s Sacai remains one of fashion’s most compelling examples of experimentation becoming luxury.
Since founding the Japanese label, Abe has built an unmistakable design language around hybridization—combining garments, fabrics, and familiar archetypes to create something entirely new. Tailoring collides with utility. Knitwear becomes outerwear. Masculine and feminine codes coexist within the same silhouette.
After showing its previous womenswear collection outside Paris, Sacai returns to the Paris Fashion Week calendar for Spring/Summer 2027. The return makes Abe’s next chapter particularly worth watching.
Together, Gurung, Kapoor, and Abe represent three distinct perspectives across three fashion capitals: identity in New York, a new generation of Indian luxury in Milan, and experimentation in Paris.
Their work also serves as a reminder that there is no singular AAPI aesthetic. The influence of Asian designers on luxury fashion isn’t confined to one city, one heritage, or one visual language.
It is already global.
Three AAPI Designers to Watch This Fashion Month
