I saw the girls before I saw the clothes. They looked smart and self-possessed, with the kind of thrown-together layered looks I learned from the fine arts majors in my freshman year at school. Fittingly, one of those very same classmates is in town from London, and the only store she plans to visit? Ulla Johnson’s East Village boutique. Figures.

Speaking of Valentines, Sergio Hudson’s show was a love letter to MTV’s ’90s fashion show House of Style and Versace, with pastel skirt suits, bright yellow bias-cut dresses, and show-stopping hats last seen in Troop Beverly Hills. With a rainbow color story, a raised runway, and appearances by Veronica Webb and Beverly Johnson on the catwalk, Hudson’s latest vision of excellence is expansive, familiar, and joyful—basically, the fashion equivalent of a rom-com.

I’m just gonna say it: I can’t always procure #OldCeline, but I know there’s always a Khaite equivalent. The items are sometimes stratospheres out of my budget. ($12k for a shearling coat? Like, I would, but I’m saving for a black market kidney…) But with them—and with other more accessible pieces, like slim-cut denim and ingenious wool bodices—Cate Holstein furthers the concept of relaxed, by-women-for-women luxury.

Her clothes ensure a keen sense of adult cool — and assure us that we’ll always be able to undress ourselves after a big night out. (Clothes that a man has to help you unzip? Khaite knows better.)

This is your weekly reminder that designer Olivia Cheng is going to be a big deal. With her signature “chainmaille” dresses—half cottage-core, half Paco Rabanne—she’s using compostable and upcycled materials to create otherworldly looks for her fans, who wait in line outside her tiny West Village boutique for a chance to buy her pressed fruit earrings. This time around, she’s adding knitwear to the mix, along with pearl-embroidered denim and an iridescent beetle dress I’m honestly hoping is a nod to Cruella’s coolest scene.

Good morning to everyone, but especially the French actress Rebecca Dayan! It’s snowing; it’s frigid; it’s Sunday when we should all still be in bed, and you’re posing for photographers outside in a bra?! The commitment. The confidence. An absolute legend.

Designer Carly Mark called her show “a coven,” but it felt more like a family picnic full of crazy half-cousins. Packed into an East Village community center were photographer (and recent Kanye Birkin recipient) Richie Shazam, Succession heartbreaker Annabelle Dexter-Jones, mutual aid activist Kay Kasparhauser, and that girl from And Just Like That who calls Carrie Bradshaw “ma’am” but somehow makes it cute. Everyone exchanged nods before tuning into Mark’s creations, which were great: inventive shapes and surprising accessories (hello to the bat necklace and the handbag shaped like an antique water pitcher), mixed with easier pieces like tailored track pants and plaid blazers. We will keep the puppy print pencil skirt, please, along with the crackling sense that something is really happening here.

Group shows are sometimes tricky, but IN THE BLK gave their trio of chosen designers—House of Aama, Khiry, and Third Crown—a distinct platform to showcase some very different gifts. The mother-daughter duo at House of Aama (Rebecca Henry and Akua Shabaka) dismantled “Southern Lady” tropes with floral lacework and modern silk party frocks.

Third Crown (Kofi and Kristen Essell) used fine mesh and hammered gold to create a new kind of shrouded goddess. And Jameel Mohammed of Khiry probed boxing culture and modern chaos, asking the question “What are we fighting for?” through his thought-provoking looks. Really strong!

In our pic-then-click world, it’s tough to remember that imagery is only half the story. Joseph Altuzarra gave the rest of our senses a wakeup call with metallic mermaid slinkies that clacked together across the runway floor. It was a different sort of siren song—calming, grounding, so casual that it felt almost accidental—but had the salt-stained magic as a glint of something, or someone, coming back ashore.

As a parting gift—or maybe a starting one—Joseph Altuzarra gave showgoers a copy of Moby Dick, the 1851 epic that’s ostensibly about a whale, but really about an American dream that can’t exist because it’s built on the idea that nature belongs to humans instead of the other way around. The book has a rallying cry for misfits and lone wolves and whatever the opposite of “gorgeous gorgeous girls” is. And while Altuzarra’s drop-everything-and-stare dresses won’t hit stores for a few months, you can have the blazing beauty of these words right now, for free, forever:

And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

This article originally appeared on Harper’s BAZAAR US.