A mood board propped up in Snow Xue Gao’s store on Bowery featured a collage of enduring 1980s and ’90s power suiting references. They come from a time when layering and three-piece suits reigned supreme, but Gao, who spends most of her time in the shop, is aware that’s not quite how her customers approach their outfits these days. Therefore, she had some modern-day suggestions for them instead.
Outerwear and tailoring have been the through-line of Gao’s collectsions for the past nine years—likely spurred on by a formative moment when Rihanna wore a navy pinstripe jacket from Gao’s Parsons graduate collectsion. (A picture of the singer in said outfit is proudly displayed on one of the shop’s walls.) For fall 2026, key warm-weather pieces included cloud-soft fuzzy coats with shawl collars and a satin lining in wool-made fur (more sustainable than plastic-based alternatives). Jenna Ortega is already a notable fan.
In the reference imagery, peeks of plaid and tweed blazers underneath slouchy outerwear had caught the designer’s attention when flipping through old magazines—but the Snow Xue Gao girl of today is more likely to team her structured wool coat with a printed cardigan or mandarin-collar T-shirt for practicality.
For one-and-done jackets, there were sharp styles with a nipped-in, almost hourglass construction, reminiscent of blazers once worn by Karen Mulder and Janet Jackson. The idea is that Gao’s shoppers could wear them either with their own jeans for a relaxed approach or with tailored trousers from the collectsion for something more polished. “People always say my tailoring makes them look more reliable when they’re at work,” the designer said, laughing.
Gao also wanted to make the kind of elegant draping associated with a bygone era of daywear feel intuitive and easy, hence gray and cream wool coats with built-in blanket scarves, trousers featuring asymmetric overlays, and neat little miniskirts that tie at the waist.
To celebrate the collectsion’s unveiling, the designer was getting ready to open the doors to her shop and invite friends of the brand and local customers to come by, try on pieces, and have their own look book–style image snapped by a photographer. To take home, as a thanks for their support, each would receive one of her popular knitted hoodie-hat-balaclava-bonnet hybrids—a godsend for this unbearably cold New York winter. “I’m all about where fashion meets function,” said Gao.
