Siren Song
Review of Elena Velez Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Eroded elegance. Nautical drama.
Elena Velez’s enigmatic antiheroine has been swept out to sea: the designer’s Fall 2025 collection, titled “Leech,” is a brilliantly stylized exploration of the dark lure of the depths.
The models didn’t just walk; they swaggered, glided, or stalked among a runway evoked a desolate sea shore through a smart combination of physical set design and digital projection. Lost at sea but boldly confident of themselves, these women are captain’s daughters (Velez’s own father was a sea captain on the Great Lakes), aristocratic ladies who have been shipwrecked and left to fend for themselves, carnivorous mermaids who feast on the flesh of fallen sailors.
Velez’s interest in corsetry and deconstructing historical garments beautifully serves the narrative here: we see the many layers of rigid, confining clothing that women were historically subjected too in the process of being eroded away. Meanwhile, we see the material language of seafaring come to take their place. Dresses mimic a wet sail or an algae-encrusted fishing net, or even seen to be sewn together from seaweed.
The beauty team also plays a pivotal role in bringing this evocative narrative to life, giving new meaning to the “wet look” and amping up those haunting, thousand-yard stares.
It could be easy for this to feel costumey, but for the most part it doesn’t. Some contemporary workwear details that would feel right at home on chilly midwest shores are woven among the flotsam couture, while almost every look has a piece or two that in a different styling context would feel bold, but not dredged up from the abyss – another testament to how strong the styling is here.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
A composite image of the brand muse through an accumulation of our core concepts and founding lore: my nautical upbringing as the daughter of a ship captain on the great lakes, our thematic fascination with women of capacity; both good and evil, and the call of the void that tempts towards the depths of the unknown.
THE WRAP UP
In a world that rewards fashion for being easily digestible in six seconds on a phone screen, Elena Velez’s fashion vision avoids easy answers. There is a rich sense of story here, an atmosphere of danger and desire, and a powerful reckoning with historical narratives of womanhood: but the collection never tells us what or how to think.
That combination of a rich physical presence and a sense of mystery and elusiveness is what makes Elena Velez such a vital and unique voice in fashion today. Like the sea, “Leech” is powerful, expansive, and perhaps, ultimately, unknowable.
