No Tricks in ‘26: Public School’s New York State of Mind

This digital cover story is presented in partnership with Toyota and the New All-Electric C-HR. Ahead of Public School’s Spring/Summer 2027 runway show, Hypebeast follows Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne as they move through New York City in the New All-Electric C-HR. In our cover story, we discuss Public School’s return, the lessons learned during seven years away, and what it means to design for New York today.

“That’s just a New York attitude: no tricks,” Dao-Yi Chow says matter-of-factly from inside Public School’s Garment District studio. “Let’s focus on the clothes, let’s focus on the attitude, and hopefully that will be the thing that people gravitate to — not the other things that are happening.”

He’s reflecting on Public School’s long-awaited return to the New York Fashion Week runway this past February, when Chow and longtime collaborator Maxwell Osborne staged Everything Is Now, their first full ready-to-wear collection in seven years. Yet “no tricks” could just as easily describe the mentality guiding the brand’s second act.

Before Public School stepped away, it was moving at the breakneck pace expected of one of New York fashion’s most celebrated young labels. Founded by Chow and Osborne in 2008, the brand collected the CFDA Swarovski Award for Menswear in June 2013 and, later that year, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund’s top prize, followed by CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year in 2014 and the International Woolmark Prize for menswear in 2015. By then, the pair were simultaneously running Public School and serving as co-creative directors of DKNY.

But even at their peak, Chow and Osborne were questioning the machinery around them. In 2016, Public School combined its men’s and women’s collections and abandoned the conventional February-and-September calendar in favor of twice-yearly presentations in June and December. It was a decision that felt radical at a moment when the industry still largely organized itself around rigid seasons, even as other designers were beginning to question the same system.

That December, Chow and Osborne left DKNY after its parent company, Donna Karan International, was sold by LVMH to G-III Apparel Group. A year later, Public School announced it would step away from New York Fashion Week altogether in pursuit of a new direct-to-consumer model.

Fashion was also entering a period of identity crisis. Donald Trump had just been elected to his first term, prompting designers, musicians and artists to address politics with a new urgency. By 2017, Louis Vuitton was putting Supreme on its Paris runway, while Balenciaga’s frankensteined nightmare of an orthopedic-style runner, the Triple S, was turning the ugly sneaker into a luxury proposition. The lines separating streetwear, sportswear and high fashion weren’t just becoming blurred, but increasingly irrelevant altogether.

From its beginning, the brand built its vocabulary around the contradictions inherent to getting dressed in New York: tailoring meets sportswear, utility meets refinement, Queens meets Brooklyn. A blazer could be worn just as easily with a pair of indigo denim as it could beneath an oversized red satin bomber. A New Yorker might need to look appropriate in an office, on the subway, at dinner and somewhere they hadn’t planned on ending up that night.

Sure, Public School wasn’t alone in defining the period. Alexander Wang, Hood By Air, Opening Ceremony, Supreme and an entire ecosystem of designers, stores, artists and nightlife helped give 2010s New York fashion a particular pulse. But Chow and Osborne offered a distinctly restrained interpretation of it. Their clothes were less about announcing where they belonged than understanding how New Yorkers actually moved through the city.

Seven years is simultaneously a long time and, in fashion, barely any time at all. While Public School receded, neither designer stopped working. Before embarking on separate journeys, the duo first launched Version Tomorrow in 2019, an eco-conscious project centered around blank T-shirts made from recycled materials.

Osborne would go on to establish anOnlyChild in 2020, staging its first presentation the following year and drawing from his Jamaican heritage, New York upbringing, and an upcycling mentality to explore a more personal design language. In April 2024, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Goodwill NYNJ, furthering a focus on fashion and sustainability that had become increasingly central to his work.

Chow, meanwhile, embarked on his own string of ventures, serving as Global Creative Director of Sergio Tacchini, co-founding BRADY™ Brand with NFL legend Tom Brady and SKIMS co-founder Jens Grede, and, in 2024, joining New Era as Vice President of Brand and Creative Director, where he was tasked in part with developing the century-old headwear company’s first namesake apparel collection.

There was also a pandemic, an entirely new generation of designers, the acceleration of social media, luxury prices reaching increasingly astronomical heights, and, politically, Trump leaving the White House only to return for a second administration in 2025. A lot happened while Public School was away.

Naturally, Chow and Osborne returned differently. “We’re putting the business first before the creative,” Osborne tells me. “I think that’s a big switch in our mentality. Coming back older, seven or eight years later, knowing the business a little bit more — just knowing that the business comes first is key.”

That pragmatism doesn’t mean Public School has suddenly lost its creative nerve. If anything, the designers sound more convinced of their instincts, particularly when it comes to resisting fashion’s addiction to the next thing. “Repetition is reputation,” Chow says. “It’s about drilling home ideas and making them worth the energy that we put into them.”

Public School today isn’t interested in recreating the Public School of yesterday, nor does it appear desperate to loudly redefine itself for 2026. Chow and Osborne speak about their time away as an expansion: of taste, of experience, of who they imagine wearing the clothes and of what they now understand it takes to keep a label alive.

That thinking is visible in the wardrobe. Familiar menswear archetypes remain, but their proportions and purpose have evolved. An M-65 field jacket can be reconsidered in a lightweight ripstop for the increasingly hot New York summer. Tailoring loosens, shortens or gets hybridized with the ease of lounge pants. The goal isn’t to reinvent the jacket or trouser for the sake of novelty, but to ask what those pieces need to do now. It’s what Chow calls an “expanded worldview.”

That worldview extends beyond clothes. In May, Public School dressed Wisdom Kaye for the Met Gala in a custom look constructed from upcycled vintage garments. The brand has also been intentional about surrounding itself with different generations of New York culture — from Slick Rick and Marisa Tomei to Michelin-starred chef Charlie Mitchell and Chow’s own sons and their circle of young creatives.

In September, Public School will return to the official NYFW calendar once again, taking on opening night for the second time in a row. For a brand that historically favored Sunday shows — “we used to take people to church Sunday morning,” Osborne jokes — showing early is another example of their increasingly deliberate approach: get in before the fatigue sets in, avoid the noise and protect the idea.

Today, New York looks different. Fashion certainly does. And Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne now approach design, ownership and adulthood with a perspective they simply couldn’t have possessed the first time around.

Yet Public School’s central proposition remains remarkably consistent: create a wardrobe that makes sense for the way New Yorkers actually live, and trust that the rest of the world might find something in it too. “When we talk about New York, it’s really a metaphor for the world,” Chow says. “There are so many versions of New York.”

That may ultimately be why Public School’s return feels timely. New York fashion doesn’t necessarily need another brand chasing the idea of what New York used to be. It could use more brands confident enough to define what their New York is right now. No tricks required.

February was your first full runway show in seven years. What did that show teach you about being Public School again?

DAO-YI CHOW: February for us was like a homecoming. It was really about reintroducing our brand codes and everything that we stand for to the world, so there was a lot of our past built into the collection.

Spring is really like, cool, that was the moment. We’re back. In case you forgot, this is what we’re about. Now it’s time to move forward and start building the evolved language of what Public School and New York are.

You had already broken away from the conventional Fashion Week calendar years ago. Why did returning to NYFW make sense this time?

MAXWELL OSBORNE: We came back to the calendar with a clearer mind. We knew we only wanted to do menswear, and we felt this was the best time for us to show and really champion New York Fashion Week. That energy is fantastic and you want to be part of it.

The future isn’t set. We could still show off-calendar. But for right now, we definitely felt this was the right thing for our business.

How did it actually feel backstage before the February show?

CHOW: We weren’t nervous at all, which was alarming. We were nervous about not being nervous.

There was a calm and a real appreciation for the moment. The title of the show was Everything Is Now, so we tried to live that idea of being present. I think nerves really come from thinking too far ahead or thinking about things you can’t control.

For us, it was this declaration of: This is all that we have in front of us. Everything that happened in the past led us to this moment. We let gratitude be the overwhelming emotion and didn’t really have space to be nervous.

OSBORNE: We talked about it afterward because we’d never really felt that before. Usually backstage, the adrenaline is rushing and you’re nervous about what’s about to happen. This one felt almost slow-motion and fast at the same time. We were just present.

What did February teach you that you’re taking into September?

CHOW: We’re very intentional about making sure there’s a return on anything we do. The show is generally the biggest thing we do throughout the year.

Refinement is a consistent message we want to include in everything. If we introduce a silhouette, we don’t need to move on from it too quickly. We can take time to refine it and make it the best possible version. If that means showing it over three or four seasons, we’re okay with that.

That’s one of the lessons: not being afraid to stick with something. Repetition is reputation. It’s about drilling home ideas and making them worth the energy we put into them. That expands from a silhouette all the way to the show itself.

The proportions of Everything Is Now already felt different from the Public School of 2018. How has the wardrobe evolved with the two of you?

OSBORNE: 2018 is a long time ago. We’ve done a lot between then and now, one of the biggest things being getting older. You learn about yourself, you change, you grow.

You’ll see that even more in the next show, where we’re going to show what the new New York is, what our new New York is and what our new reality is.

So what is your New York wardrobe today?

CHOW: Clarity is really important, and language is really important. When we talk about New York, it’s really a metaphor for the world because there are so many versions of New York. Whether you moved here or you’re native to here, there are so many definitions of what the city is.

When we talk about our version of New York, it always comes back to the same things: ease, a high taste level that comes from exposure to so many different cultures, versatility, and modularity.

The product concept behind Public School is still very much this idea of a system of dress — creating a wardrobe you can return to time and time again and have it remain timeless. Whatever situation you’re in, you can find something.

Ultimately, it leads back to style. The universal idea of New York isn’t necessarily about the clothes you wear. It’s about how you wear them. It’s the attitude.

OSBORNE: You’re going to get that New York uniform — our version of that.

You’ve always returned to menswear archetypes: bombers, M-65s, leather jackets, tailoring. How do you make people care about those pieces again without simply redesigning them for the sake of newness?

CHOW: Menswear has very specific icons — things guys have gravitated toward time and time again. We naturally fall back on those. The question is: How do we make them for the new world?

Things change on a dime every day. We don’t have the same expectations for what the weather is going to be, what the geopolitical climate will look like or what new realities we’ll face.

So how do we inject newness into those staples we grew up on and love? Maybe it’s fabrication, innovation around textiles or construction. That’s how we approach designing for tomorrow: How do we create things that help you face the new world that’s coming?

Public School has addressed politics and the state of the world in previous collections. What is the brand trying to say today that might not be immediately apparent from looking at the clothes?

CHOW: Fashion is just a very small part of who we are and what we do. We’re not using fashion as a form of escapism or burying our heads in the sand. It’s a way for us to connect with what’s happening in the real world.

That authenticity and realness is something we always try to capture, and that means being aware of what’s happening outside of fashion.

When you think about what public school means to a lot of people, it’s often the first environment where you exchange ideas, cultures and ways of living with people who are completely different from you. It’s that immersion in all these different things and people.

That’s at the heart of what we do: this idea of convergence and believing convergence can lead to bigger and better things — not just cool clothes or great taste.

When Public School was first rising, New York fashion had this very visible community around brands like yours, Hood By Air and Opening Ceremony. Coming back now as elder statesmen, can that kind of community be recreated?

CHOW: We’re always hopeful about connecting to our immediate community in New York because local pride is such a big part of who we are and who the brand is. But recreating exactly what existed before isn’t necessarily the goal.

Everything is so fragmented and segmented now. There are all these different versions of New York.

Back then, the market wasn’t as mature. It felt like you were in the middle of this thing that was bubbling and just starting to happen. Now everyone has their own little corner they’ve carved out. You have to have a lane. When we started, the lane itself was still being defined.

OSBORNE: There was a really heavy sense of community. Now, with social media, everybody wants to be so different.

People do shows in all these different pockets of New York. Before, people might all show at Milk Studios and there was a sense that everybody was together, on the bus together.

Now everybody’s trying to get off the bus and drive their own car.

What does the Public School community look like today, then?

OSBORNE: It looks like a lot of people. Obviously, we’re very much Knicks fans, so mention anybody on the Knicks and we’re excited about that. You have the Jay-Zs, but then it’s also the younger generation and younger designers. Dao-Yi’s son, Idryis Ali-Chow, opened the show, and you have his pocket of friends and what they’re doing across fashion, music, and modeling.

Then you have our peers. Having everybody in the same room, speaking the same language across different ages — that’s the dream.

CHOW: That’s exactly what we’re trying to capture. You have Melo [Carmelo Anthony], Marisa Tomei, Waris [Ahluwalia], then Idryis and Khris [Jasper] representing the new generation. You have Chef Charlie Mitchell, a Michelin-starred and James Beard Award-winning chef, and then you have Slick Rick. The God.

You have people from all different fields contributing to New York culture, old and young. That’s the wave we want to be on.

Is Public School thinking more broadly about communicating that world this time around?

CHOW: Definitely. Food, music — there are so many people doing great things that it’s hard to keep track.

One thing we’re trying to be better at the second time around is showcasing what our world actually looks like. It’s not just, “Here’s the shirt we made. Check it out.”

It’s: “Here’s the shirt we made while we were having dinner at this restaurant with our friends who were writing a new screenplay, and they were reading a book they put us onto, so we read it and passed it on.”

That circle is what the world of Public School looks like. It’s something we didn’t really showcase the first time around.

You’ve also made a point of showing up at globally visible moments. How strategically important is something like the Met Gala to repositioning Public School?

CHOW: It’s super important because part of our return is a repositioning from where the brand was when we left.

We were very much around the beginnings of high street. Coming back, everything has gotten more expensive. Luxury has gotten astronomically more expensive. There’s white space where we see Public School sitting.

Someone who bought Public School 10 years ago might be shocked by how much more expensive it is now, but there’s a reason. It’s the experience, the technical capabilities, our supply chain, manufacturing partners, factories, and materials. All of that has stepped up.

How are Dao-Yi and Maxwell different as designers today?

OSBORNE: For me, compared to 2018, there’s much more of a business side to how I approach things.

Before, we had more liberties to design things that maybe only I or someone like-minded would want to wear. Now I want to dress more people.

Maybe there were one too many details on a jacket, when really, if you took it down a couple of notches, you could sell way more of them. I had to look inside myself as a designer and decide where I wanted to draw the line between my personal comfort zone and making something more people can see themselves in.

CHOW: It’s an expanded worldview. Not having such a narrow idea of what people wear.

Ten years ago, Max and I might wear something and think, “Everyone would wear this.” Now the idea is expanded to include more people.

But Max and I are still pretty lockstep in our approach, our likes and dislikes, in fashion and outside of fashion. That allowed us to come back together and hit the ground running. There wasn’t an adjustment period.

Our worldview expanded, and acknowledging that it needed to expand was necessary. But the way we approach design is still very much in lockstep.

Fashion today arguably feels closer to the way Public School has always designed. Does it feel like the industry caught up?

CHOW: That’s always confusing to me. People are always like, “We’re about to go through this era,” or, “We’re leaving this era,” and then the overlap lasts 10 years.

We just try to stick to our guns and not move on from something too quickly. Eventually, something might catch up to us or we might catch up to something happening in the marketplace.

But I don’t think we really think about trends like that.

You’re showing on the first day of Fashion Week again in September. Why is going early so deliberate?

OSBORNE: Even when we weren’t active with Public School during Fashion Week, you could still feel fatigued by all the coverage and everything happening.

We wanted to show early because we wanted our energy high. You don’t want to see too much and muddy the waters. You don’t want to get into the noise or start doing extra things that don’t really have anything to do with the show.

And designers have designers’ disease. If you give us a later date, things are going to change. Move it up and we have to commit. We have to make sure everything is done.

It’s really a challenge to ourselves: hit this date, hit this note and know that we can do it.

There has always been a certain no-nonsense quality to Public School. Is that a fair assessment?

CHOW: Yeah, man. That’s just a New York attitude: no tricks.

You’re not doing too much for the sake of doing too much. It comes back to authenticity and sticking to our roots and how we grew up.

We went into that first show saying, “No tricks.” It wasn’t about having a band play or doing all these other things. It was: Let’s focus on the clothes. Let’s focus on the attitude. Hopefully that’s what people gravitate toward rather than all the other things happening around it.

“No tricks” is one of our seven rules.

Maxwell, you mentioned that one of the biggest changes this time around is putting the business before the creative. Why has that become so important?

OSBORNE: We’re putting the business first before the creative, and I think that’s a big switch in our mentality.

Coming back older, seven or eight years later, we know the business a little bit more. Just knowing the business comes first is key.

CHOW: There’s one thing about having your own collection, and there’s another thing about having a business. We’re obsessed with the latter.

Otherwise, it’s just a hobby for us, and we’re kind of over hobbies.

It’s important that we reestablish a business we can build upon, something that can support our families and ourselves and live for a long time. You need that foundation for something to continue to grow.

OSBORNE: When you realize what this brand meant to people, you realize it wasn’t just us.

It meant a lot to our family, our friends and people we don’t even know. You feel like you want to do right by them by giving them the product and continuing to be the messenger.

We want to deliver that message on a bigger scale.

Last question: Give me three words to describe September’s collection.

CHOW: Attitude. Modularity. Readiness.

OSBORNE: Readiness for the elements.