Lea Michele, Audra McDonald, and Judith Light star in a window installation inspired by the Metropolitan Opera House
Bergdorf Goodman is marking Michael Kors’ 45th anniversary with an exclusive Fifth Avenue window installation celebrating both the designer’s Fall/Winter 2026 collection and his longstanding relationship with New York. Drawing on the city’s performing arts tradition, the installation brings together fashion and theater while returning Kors to the retailer that played an important role in launching his career.
The connection stretches back to 1981, when Kors was working at Lothar’s on 57th Street and caught the attention of then-Bergdorf Goodman fashion director Dawn Mello. After Mello handed him her card, Kors began sketching what would become his first collection, which Bergdorf Goodman subsequently bought. “To be celebrating my anniversary here 45 years later, with this incredible cast of women featured in the Fifth Avenue windows, is a dream come true and a full-circle moment,” Kors says.
That history is translated into an appropriately theatrical display. Inspired by the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, where Kors staged his Fall/Winter 2026 runway show, the windows are framed by rich red velvet curtains and feature billboard-scale portraits of Broadway stars Lea Michele, Audra McDonald, and Judith Light. Key looks from the collection appear alongside them, extending the campaign’s celebration of New York performers into the physical landscape of Fifth Avenue.
The concept feels particularly fitting for a designer whose identity has remained closely intertwined with the city throughout his career. Rather than treating the anniversary as a retrospective exercise, Bergdorf Goodman connects Kors’ beginnings with his current collection, allowing the same city that launched his career to provide the visual language for the milestone. The Metropolitan Opera House reference adds another layer to that relationship, positioning fashion within the broader ecosystem of New York performance and culture rather than presenting it in isolation.
Fall/Winter 2026 itself is built around what the brand describes as dramatic simplicity, with familiar wardrobe foundations softened through draping and fluid construction. Wool flannel cascade blazers, crepe jersey gowns, and layered tailoring balance structure with ease, while a largely urban palette is punctuated by ruby, raspberry, and wine. Within the theatrical framing of the windows, that tension between restraint and glamour feels especially at home.
For Bergdorf Goodman, the installation also serves as a reminder of the role department stores have historically played in identifying and cultivating American designers. Forty-five years after Mello encountered a young Kors across 57th Street, his work returns to Bergdorf’s windows at a scale considerably larger than where the relationship began. In a city built on reinvention, it makes for a particularly New York kind of full-circle moment.
