There are a few things you can reasonably expect when attending a yard sale: a printed-out Venmo QR code, boxes of mismatched mugs, at least one good find for your wardrobe and your well-meaning neighbour trying to sell you something they haven’t touched for over a decade. At Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen’s Yard Sale Liberation SS27 show, however, there were far more pieces you’d actually want to take home than there were stray pots and plates (although there were a few of those scattered around). On Sunday, September 13, the rising designer took over two floors above Canal Street and made a statement about radical acts of community. 

“Revolution through repetition, resistance is in our everyday tasks,” read the show notes, where she also mentioned Bikini Kill as a major inspiration for the collection. “Nothing is new, everything is possible”. This included the revival of otherwise discarded objects, like underwear cut from picnic blankets, soft quilted corsets, draped gowns and wire mesh bustles. It wasn’t an invention of Whalen’s signature style but a celebratory mitosis of it: an evolution through repetition. In an era of fantasy dressing, the designer says her pieces are “for the world”, with each garment having its own lived-in quality.

Whalen’s world is one filled with delightful surprises, like a bag of peaches being carried down the runway, or a wire butterfly-esque shape wrapped around a cream corset dress. The designer’s take on old-timey ruffles, bloomers and corsetry is less about sucking you in than it is about creating layers for the eye to dance across. At the end of the show, Whalen entered, cutting one piece of stone fruit cake with peach jam and rosemary whipped cream. Then, the cake was left up front with the metal pastry server beside it – for everyone to share. 

Scroll through the gallery at the top of the page for the entire SS27 collection