Colleen Allen Spring 2027: That Ballerina’s a Witch

For a designer with a rather composed demeanor, Colleen Allen sure makes a lot of noise.

The 2026 LVMH Prize semifinalist hadn’t even returned from the competition in Paris until the day before her NYFW presentation Monday. And yet variations of the phrase “that’s so Colleen” could be overheard in front rows and at appointments, referencing anything that sort of resembles her brand of Gothic romance. To paraphrase lyrics by Charlie XCX, a member of Allen’s celebrity fan club: “She sets the tone, it’s her design.”

And like any true trend-setter, Allen stays a step ahead. For spring, she leaned away from the brooding Victorian look that’s garnered her attention over the last two years, lifting things up, up, up — literally — like a ballerina on pointe.

“This season I was really thinking about dance as this sort of religious, ecstatic spiritual practice,” Allen said, referencing Pina Bausch and Martha Graham, female choreographers who “think about women from their own perspectives.”

That’s always Allen’s raison d’etre and she accomplished it by stripping away the tutus and froufrou, reconstructing a more intimate wardrobe around how dancers actually prefer to dress for warm-ups, complete with enlarged versions of her croissant-shaped bags for trips to the studio.

Her collaboration with Swedish Stalkings served as the base, layered with ultra-cropped boleros and slim, low-riding pants elongating the torso. Necklines sitting below the bust did the same for the chest and neck. “I wanted to evolve the proportion. I think that was my biggest focus,” Allen said.

Elsewhere, gowns draped beautifully in a haphazard manner, as if a ballerina twirled directly into bolts of velvet fabric. And one needn’t break into a full grand jeté to reap the dramatic benefits of trapeze coats or gauzy white dusters and capes, great for alternative brides. They picked up enough breeze to enchant just walking to and fro in Allen’s TriBeCa loft.

Counter to all that levity, she placed a single mannequin in the center wearing a brick-colored jersey column embellished entirely in metal paillettes (picking up the sleeve alone was a workout).

“She’s sort of the armor, the Joan of Arc spirit, the protector of the season in a way,” explained Allen, who refers to all her garments in the third-person, giving them life.

She may be a ballerina, but she’s still a witch.

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