There’s a new strain of fashion fantasy taking shape in New York, one that trades the sterile futurism of the last decade for something more emotional, more theatrical, more human. At the center of it is Tyler McGillivary, a designer building worlds that feel both intimate and surreal. Since her debut Date Night collection at New York Fashion Week, she has treated the runway less as a platform than a stage, using it to explore desire, spectacle, and the small dramas of everyday life.
In Date Night, her NYFW debut, she reimagined the city as a flirtation, sequined and cinematic. In Mermaiden, staged on a ship at Pier 17, complete with Sara Paxton in tow clutching a conch, she plunged that spirit underwater, blending Y2K nostalgia with the folklore of the siren. Together her last two outings form a dialogue between eras, rooted in a dialectical form of sensory exploration; terrestrial and aquatic.
But beneath the camp and sparkle lies a quiet insistence on sincerity. McGillivary’s vision resists cynicism: her casting is radically inclusive, her storytelling defiantly fun, her aesthetic maximal but never hollow. In conversation with LIMINUL, she opens up about inclusivity, camp, and the joy of creating collections that feel like entire worlds.
You staged your latest collection, Mermaiden, on a ship at Pier 17, closing with Sara Paxton holding a conch. It felt equal parts mythic and millennial fever dream. What pulled you to merge folklore with Y2K nostalgia?
When thinking about the themes that will anchor each of our collections, we gravitate towards ideas that persist throughout history and have been reimagined in various forms. The myth of the mermaid is something that feels as mystical in a contemporary or recent nostalgia form as it does in ancient depictions. It was fun then to integrate the imagery from those two timelines into a series of pieces that felt firmly rooted in both worlds.
Casting for Mermaiden was body diverse and inclusive at a moment when many runways are regressing. How intentional was that choice, and what do you hope it communicates?
The reality is that it is wholly intentional across runways that hire exclusively XS and small models to disregard the reality that women have different bodies. I have been thinking a lot about this in reflecting on our runway and the return to single-size runways across the planet. Women have differently sized and shaped bodies as a fact. This has always been the case and always will be the case. It is a reflection of the beauty of women as they are to have models of different sizes on the runway, while it is a rejection of that reality in an active and unnecessary way to present only one size model as beautiful or dressable. I hope it communicates just that we love women, we love dressing women, and we want them to spend more time feeling beautiful and fabulous and less time worrying that they’re not the right size.
Your motifs flirt with camp, martinis, shells, and clams, yet the shows never tip into costume. What does camp mean to you right now as a designer, especially as ideas like “recession core” are being thrown around as having returned?
I would say that I love camp, but don’t necessarily want our pieces to live in that world. They’re meant to be playful and fun, but feel elevated and emotional. I can feel the return to minimalism seconds away and I think as a designer you have to be aware of those changes in consumer interest while also staying true to your vision and the idea that things always swing back around. It’s a fun challenge for us to think about what’s interesting in the air right now and run it through a TMG lens.
Your first collection for NYFW, Date Night, was rooted in New York nightlife with taxis, martinis, and cityscapes. How do you see that debut in conversation with the mythology of Mermaiden? What did you learn from the first time around in staging runway shows?
When we conceived of doing shows, we knew we wanted them to have a theatrical, magical quality to them that almost made them feel like performances. I grew up watching 90s and 2000s runway shows that really are like little plays. They have a beginning, middle and end with supermodel characters steeped in glamour. We really wanted to bring back elements of that (though on a far tighter budget). This is the connective tissue to me; fashion should be fun, and you should get a show and a little drink to watch it.
With Date Night and Mermaiden, you created two distinct universes back to back. Do you see your collections as chapters in one narrative or as stand-alone worlds?
These collections are very different and speak to my split brain as a designer and person. I love romantic, whimsical, flowing designs as much as I love graphic, bold prints, and the two often compete for attention in our world. I don’t necessarily think it’s a perfect practice that I designed them so differently, but we had been doing things very differently in our DTC space prior and now are very aware that there needs to be a more obvious through line. I’d say I’m always learning.
In the span of two seasons, you’ve gone from debuting at NYFW to showing a collection that blew up online, and now to establishing a presence in Paris. What has that ride been like for you, and what comes next?
It’s been truly non-stop. I had dinner with two of my team members recently, and we were all sort of just shaking our heads like how did we get here. We’re in a big state of transition, and I have to remind myself to appreciate where we were as much as where we’re going. I have a hard time sitting in a moment, but I am happy to be in this one right now. We’re preparing for our February show, and I know it’s going to be even crazier than the last.
Cody Rooney is the Editor in Chief and senior contributor at liminul.
He is a PhD candidate, digital content specialist, writer, editor, multi-media artist, and photographer.