Sure, it was cold. Sure, the streets were wet and slushy at times. But it was New York Fashion Week in February, which made bearable, especially when there were so many stunning, fun, and wearable collections to be seen. The hot take: a lot of designers are leaning into natural fibers for fall, and cotton and denim are important to both brands and their customers. From denim to dresses and suits, designers brought it all.

When you wear real cotton, the body reacts well. It breathes, you feel good. And I want people to feel good with my clothes.

Victor de Souza, Designer

Alice + Olivia’s Stacey Bendet, CEO and creative director, named her Fall/Winter collection “The Gilded Age,” and that encompassed every piece, from exquisite gowns to truly fabulous denim. The opulent presentation was held at Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan.

“I wanted to bring denim into a little bit of an elevated era,” Bendet told the Lifestyle Monitor™ in an interview at her NYFW show. “So, we went with Gilded Age opulence and did a lot of beading, embroidery, crystal – intensely intricate denim. There’s even a heat-set crystal denim suit.”

And Victor de Souza, a New York-based designer who embraces “conscious couture,” used NYFW to showcase a signature line of denim, sweatshirts, and tees during a presentation at his Emanuel New York boutique.

“I like quality,” de Souza told the Lifestyle Monitor™ in an interview during his NYFW event. “I wanted these pieces to be more like sportswear, but super, super quality. When you wear real cotton, the body reacts well. It breathes, you feel good. And I want people to feel good with my clothes.”

Top designers that favor natural fibers like cotton and denim have discerned that nearly 8 in 10 consumers (79 percent) in the United States prefer that the clothing they wear most is made of cotton, cotton blends and denim, according to Cotton Council International (CCI) and Cotton Incorporated’s 2025 Global Lifestyle Monitor™, which surveyed 13,026 respondents worldwide, and 1,000 in the U.S.

Shoppers say clothing made from cotton is the most comfortable (83 percent), softest (77 percent), most authentic (81 percent), highest quality (75 percent), can be worn for multiple occasions (59 percent), is the most sustainable (73 percent) and lasts the longest (63 percent) when compared to polyester and rayon, according to the 2025  Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor™ survey of 500 U.S. consumers.

Designer Jack Sivan held a theatrical runway show and presentation entitled “The Murder at Sivan Mansion” at the Georgia Room during NYFW. His Sivan Fall/Winter show gave this murder mystery a fashionable twist that was also sustainable.  

“I consider sustainability a base level requirement for everything,” Sivan told the Lifestyle  Monitor™in a post-show interview. “And doing something like this is fun because I like making sustainability not the esthetic of the collection but just sort of an implicit fiber that’s woven through it. I worked with wool, a lot of cotton, cotton corduroy and I’ve been really into cupro (a fabric manufactured from cotton linters) lately. I think it’s a little more forgiving than silk tends to be, and a little bit more durable, too.”

Sivan’s pieces include tailored capes, pleated skirts, long-sleeve striped woven shirts and  cotton corduroy suit pieces.

Sustainability is also top of mind for Dwarmis Concepción, the designer behind the women’s wear label Dwarmis. She held an NYFW presentation at the Standard Hotel for her Fall/Winter collection.

“Sustainability is important to me because I want to make a change. The earth is suffering, so we need to make a change,” Concepción told the Lifestyle Monitor™ in an interview at the presentation. “We cannot keep producing clothes that are just going to be thrown in the garbage. It needs to last. It’s one of the main goals is to be fully sustainable. I don’t want to keep harming my beautiful planet.”

Research from Cotton Incorporated’s 2025 Global Sustainability Survey shows that many American consumers agree and think about the environment when buying their clothes. 71% of the 1,022 U.S. shoppers surveyed say that sustainability and environmental friendliness is important for their clothing purchase decisions.

Durability factors into sustainable wardrobes, and American consumers consider durability an important purchase driver, with 88 percent saying it’s important that the clothing they purchase be durable enough “to last for a long time,” according to CCI and Cotton Incorporated’s 2025 Global Durability Survey of 1,017 respondents.

Sixty percent of U.S. consumers expect clothes made from cotton to last at least six months longer than those made from synthetic fibers, according to the 2025 Global Durability Survey.

Thanks to all of its features, cotton has the majority of consumers around the globe (59 percent) willing to pay more for clothing made from the natural fibers, according to CCI and Cotton Incorporated’s 2025 Global Lifestyle Monitor™, which surveyed 13,026 consumers around the world.  

That’s a welcome sentiment for designers like Concepción, who said her latest offering, titled “Tierra,” uses stock fabrics and an abundance of natural fibers, especially cotton. The presentation included a long ivory dress with pleating and visible stitch details, a trench jacket with leather detailing and a cotton top with tuck detailing paired with a midi skirt.

“I’m from the Dominican Republic and I have a lot of customers there,” Concepción said. “Cotton is actually easy, breezy, comfortable, breathable. So, I always try to think about my customer there. Also, cotton can be worn all year round, depending on how you style it. It’s so easy to do multiple silhouettes with it: pants, dresses, skirts. You can do every single piece with a different type of cotton. I use a lot of cotton, always.”

Designer Christopher Lowman also leaned into natural fabrics in an NYFW New York Men’s Day collection called “Ski Trip,” that was an homage to ski culture, albeit more après ski than downhill. The designer explained that although he’s not a skier himself, he enjoys sports and was inspired months ago when he read about the winter Olympics. This led to a deep dive into ski outfits, colors and the sport’s overall ambiance.

“You see a lot of denims, a lot of sky blues, some cotton blends mixed in some of the blazers, as well as some cardigans with cotton,” Lowman told the Lifestyle Monitor™ in an interview during the presentation. “You see crow designs on some pieces because I collaborated with an artist named Allen Wilson who added paintwork on the pants, and another look with the birds on the polo.”

Lowman added he enjoyed working with denim because, “it’s one of the more affordable fabrics when you’re doing a collection. We also use a lot of leather, so sometimes we like to balance the leather out with denim. And we use cotton because it feels good on the body. It absolutely makes you feel comfortable. That’s why I like to use it the most.”