The Totally Chill Evolution Of 6397

The last day of New York Fashion Week is always a comedown of sorts. By Day Six or Seven, depending whom you ask, small talk has run out and a week of champagne-fueled nights has wreaked havoc on any REM sleep (not to mention the hangovers). What a pleasant surprise, then, when I arrived on the fifth floor of 495 Broadway for the debut runway show for 6397 — downtown legend Stella Ishii’s 13-year-old line of wardrobe basics — and the ambiance couldn’t have been more jolly. Ishii was standing at the door of her 30-year-old space in Soho to greet longtime friends, clients, and the motley crew of artists and creatives that have made 6397 the unofficial uniform below Canal Street. After more than a decade of these clothes, Spring/Summer 2027 marked a leveling up for what is the most chill and, honestly, New York brand in New York — and it remained, as ever, a family affair.

When I dial in to chat with Ishii and Jennifer Smith, head of sales for 6397, postshow, they both tell me this isn’t by mistake. “We did it on our lookbook budget, and it came together with a lot of people who wanted to support us doing a show,” Smith says. “That, in part, is what you as an audience member felt, because it was a collective effort from so many people for us to make it happen.” Smith’s brother was on lighting, longtime friend Ariella Starkman did the production, and when Ishii reached out to superstylist and previous 6397 collaborator Miyako Bellizzi to collaborate and Bellizzi was available, that’s when they knew a runway made sense. “Why now? Well, why not now? We’ve never done this. We’re more of a low-key brand,” Ishii says. “The conversation was all the reasons why we should do a show. More and more it became ‘Well, why not?’”

Ishii is something of an industry dark horse. After working in Japan with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons in the ’80s, she founded The News (North-East-West-South) showroom in 2000 to bring emerging, craft-forward brands to multibrand stores. She helped launch the vision of many New York designers at the start of the new millennium, especially in the early days of The Row and Alexander Wang’s careers. (She now counts Grey’s, Visvim, and Common Projects as clients.) In 2013, Ishii was looking for classic skater-style basics she always fell back on, like dark-wash jeans, slip dresses — as she gushes to me: “I have a huge collection of slips and camis over the years. These are foundations and they don’t change over time, and I always like things like that” — and T-shirts with boyish fits. 6397 (the alphanumeric spelling of news) was born, and with a truly contemporary price point and no-fuss sense of style, became a favorite of gallery girls, fashion people, and of course, Ishii herself.

Fast-forward to 2020, and with the pandemic looming large over the industry, Ishii didn’t know what the future of 6397 would be. Turns out she only needed to do a gut check with herself and move forward with her intuition in the driver’s seat. She had always had the idea of hiring designer Lizzie Owens on the back burner. “I thought, ‘If we’re going to continue with this, I’d like it to evolve,’” Ishii says. “We talked about what’s missing from the brand, and what you’re seeing now is really that. I thought, ‘It’s time to knock on Lizzie’s door,’ and I did.” As Owens was transitioning into another role (that of a mom), the synergy once again aligned for her to shift gears in her career and join 6397 as design director.

Since 2021, Owens has brought a design-forward lens to the classic denim, shirting, suiting, and outerwear on offer. Her unique sense of proportion and color has lent itself to sequined barn jackets, Day-Glo-bright cotton layers, and bright corduroy pants and, as Smith says, “bring it to a new place to balance out the pragmatic aspect of 6397 that we always want. Not boring pragmatism, but make useful, comforting clothing and make it exciting.” The last few seasons have seen more expansion in this vein, and the shock of color for Spring 2026 and beyond have naturally led up to the design-forward place of Spring/Summer 2027 — but as Ishii and Smith tell me, everything designed for their first runway show was for market, with zero show-specific pieces. Owens wasn’t sure about a runway show at first, she says via email: “I was initially so intimated planning for a show with such a small team and on such a small budget, but it ended up being so fun! Fashion shows are the optimal way to show clothes and I feel so lucky to have experienced that firsthand.” In a sea of collections with pieces made just for the seven-minute runway, it’s a breath of fresh air to see a 100%-produced collection. Desirability made accessible? Now that’s a novelty in fashion.

If Owens started bringing a designer’s eye and dose of saturation to the brand, then Spring/Summer 2027 might be the most feather-light and concise expression of this progression yet. The classic feeling of gauzy clothing in the dead of a New York summer met with the unavoidable cool of Santa Monica — a place Ishii called home for a stint in the ’90s — and the unhurried moments spent on a beach. In fact, as Smith explains, Bellizzi recently relocated to New York’s Long Beach and spends her mornings taking in the ocean breeze. For the show day, Bellizzi grabbed a few bagfuls of sand and toted them to Soho for another real-life kismet moment of reality meeting the runway. As perfectly said in the show notes: “The collection also responds to the realities of hot weather and city living: how to feel naked and beachy in an urban environment while still feeling confident and chic. When it is hot, the streets are dirty and you are walking everywhere, comfort becomes essential.”

6397 has always been a brand unconcerned with trends and more about how it wants people to feel in its clothes, which is to say, comfortable. The styling, hair, and makeup on the day lent themselves to this well, makeup artist Alex Levy explains: “Because the casting for the show featured extended friends and family of the brand, it was important to me that the beauty enhanced everyone’s features rather than distract with something too directional. I wanted to evoke that newly bronzed skin effect where the complexion is a bit red and flushed, and also incorporated some sand on the feet for a few models as if they had come directly from the beach and onto the runway. It was a nice, cinematic touch to paint the picture of this summer girl on the go.”

When I ask Ishii about muses, there are no A-listers mentioned (although, I must say, Julia Fox and Richie Shazam looked both comfy and delectably mature in the front row) or literary characters rattled off, but instead, she lists off the runway models she enlisted who are also friends, including manager of Dashwood Books Miwa Susuda; artists Alison Peery, Lua Beaulieu, and Emma Kohlmann; filmmaker and photographer Cheryl Dunn; author Yumiko Sakuma; and actor-singer-model Kiko Mizuhara, the latter of whom was all smiles when I dipped backstage to grab pictures of the ladies getting ready. She was brought on by Bellizzi, whom she counts as a friend, and she opened the show in a technical nylon jacket, which parlayed into the breezy looks that continued with the show.

Classic shirting was done in jersey, tucked in to reveal a long skirt rendered in Japonaise Hawaiian print; capes hung over plaid dresses; loose striped ponchos paired with relaxed pants; and boy shorts worn with even more boyish tanks and knits. It was instantly desirable, intuitively styled, with insight from the models leading directly to design and styling choices — a feedback loop we can get behind. “[Casting] is a long process, and they inspire us with their style or with their personality, their sense of humor,” Ishii says. “So something shifts, and it remains and it continues, but that’s life, right? It just continues to evolve that way.”

More than anything, 6397 is directly bringing the streets to the people with its clothing and, with its first runway show, expressing how an elevated occasion like a catwalk doesn’t mean stuffy, unapproachable clothing. The democratic feel of the show, with mismatched furniture serving as seats (mine was what appeared to be a church pew) and the original Beaux-Arts floors still holding strong, lent the day with the most unfussy flair of the week. I, for one, loved watching as friends of friends cheered one another on from their seats — many people forsake chairs and benches for an organized pile of criss-crossed showgoers — and the finale felt less like a proof of concept and more like a celebration.

Smith emphasizes that the future of 6397 will officially include menswear (I already shop the brand, as its unisex-style fit suits me) and stay at its competitive price point: “We really try to be thoughtful about it because we want them to be clothes people buy, and they buy more of. It’s the clothing that you actually wear.” As ever, the main design and merchandising conversations, while spirited, always come down to if someone in the room would wear it. The fact that the room is filled with women of diverse background and life experiences shows in the product.

Ishii is happy that simplicity and clarity of thought have won out the day. Her keen sense of what women actually want to wear — women with jobs who have places to go, trains to catch, and lives to lead — has kept her not only curating the best independent brands with her showroom, but with 6397, continually being in conversation with the people she dresses. As we end our Zoom call, she again stresses that part of all this magic comes from being at the right place and the right time. “I think it was the right thing to do the show for the Spring/Summer season. There’s something bigger than us that just puts things into place. To me, it felt like that happened. It reiterated that it was good we did this. We were supposed to do this.”