Whatever Our Souls Are Made Of
Review of Altuzarra Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Love and loss. Melancholy on the moors. Romantic history as personal armor.
Continuing his approach of drawing inspiration from literature, Fall 2025 saw Joseph Altuzarra turn to one of the most iconic and tragic love stories in the canon: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. After taking last season off from the runway to show his collection via a presentation, it was a welcome return to see one of New York’s most thoughtful designers back on the runway – especially with a collection that undertook such a rich consideration of love and loss.
While Altuzarra first built his business on dresses, the post-covid era has seen him do great work to expand the brand into other categories. The cold and desolate beauty of the Yorkshire moors, where Brontë herself lived in relative seclusion and where her novel unfolds, offered a unique space to explore outerwear and knitwear. Coats with dramatically sweeping shawl or cape structures, fair isle knits, and angular fur-lined jackets all seemed perfect for wandering among the heather at dusk, lamenting a lost love. There were other smart nods to the history and geography of Brontë’s world as well, like the lacy cuffs and high collars that updated aristocratic styles or the somber and sober garb the Brontë’s clergyman father would have worn.
But more deeply connected to the novel’s themes than these direct sartorial references was the beautiful acknowledgement that love and loss are ineluctably intertwined. Contrasting with the outerwear’s sense of protection, light and layered sheer silk dresses exposed the body and fluttered past like a memory, exuding vulnerability and ephemerality. Prints featured dried wildflowers or lipstick stains, mementos of past love. Fragile crystal embroideries transformed garments into a set of armor sculpted from frozen tears.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
This season, the focus shifts from narrative to a singular, compelling character – a woman who wears her history as armor, unafraid to show her scars. This woman is deeply connected to her past but refuses to let it define her, embodying a fearless, unaplogetic spirit.”
THE WRAP UP
The collection moves deftly between cocooning protection and revealing vulnerability, always confidently connecting these moods – which could have come off as disparate – back to the presence of the central heroine. That consistent thread also means that the brand’s efforts to expand feel completely organic: telling a broader, deeper story rather than trying to appeal to a wider customer base.
It’s a story that is universal and a character that is familiar, but Altuzarra brings it vividly to life once more with a nuanced exploration of the way romantic history and memory shape, but don’t define us.
