New York in September is the most specific version of itself. The light changes. The industry arrives. The city, which has been accommodating tourists since June, snaps back into its actual identity with a speed that feels like a door closing.
Sartiano's bar — The Mercer Hotel, SoHo, New York
The fashion week calendar divides the year into two kinds of September: the September in which you attend, and the September in which you do not. Both are legitimate positions. This piece is for the people in the first category — specifically, for the question of where to be between the shows, and how to make a week that is structurally exhausting feel, at moments, like something more than its schedule.
The answer, as with most fashion week questions, starts with the hotel.
In-room dining — The Mercer Hotel, September morning
SoHo in September
SoHo during New York fashion week is not what SoHo was, but it is also not nothing. The neighbourhood — which spent two decades as the city’s most significant fashion district, then another decade being replaced by that designation, and is now in a third phase that nobody has quite agreed on what to call — still functions as the industry’s informal centre of gravity during September. Not because of the shows, which have migrated over the years to venues across the city. Because of The Mercer.
The Mercer Hotel has been on the corner of Mercer and Prince since 1997, and its lobby has been the informal headquarters of a particular subset of the fashion industry for most of that time. The buyers who have been coming for twenty years. The editors who stay out of loyalty and also because the rooms are genuinely good. The creative directors who find the building’s bones — Romanesque Revival, 1890, high ceilings, wide windows — more congenial than the alternatives.
The city snaps back into its actual identity with a speed that feels like a door closing. September in New York is the most specific version of itself.
The Splendid Edit — Issue No. 01
The Mercer Hotel, SoHo New York — Photography courtesy The Mercer Hotel
What to do with a free hour
The free hour in New York during fashion week — and there is, most days, exactly one — is most usefully spent either in the hotel or in one of the very few places that do not require you to be anything. The Mercer’s in-house bar, the Submercer, is one of them. A walk through SoHo’s cast-iron streets at seven in the morning, before the city reconstitutes itself for the day, is another. The High Line in September — before ten, before the tourists, before the afternoon crowds that make it feel like a different kind of infrastructure entirely — is a third.
The point is not what you do with the hour. The point is that you recognise it as an hour, rather than an interlude between obligations. September in New York offers this recognition, if you are paying attention. The city is good at reminding you that it exists independently of your schedule.
The Splendid Edit will cover New York fashion week in full in Issue No. 02, September 2026. The Mercer Hotel: mercerhotel.com.
Photography courtesy of The Mercer Hotel, New York — © The Mercer Hotel