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Style Across the Aisle

A first-of-its-kind, annual, community engagement fashion show where government officials model the runway wearing designers from their districts

09/04/2026

He managed the campaign. Then he ran the office. Then he won his own seat.

Assemblymember Jordan Wright (D-70, Harlem) walks in Mel Maxi.

Metropolitan Opera House | September 9

09/04/2026

Jordan Wright and Mel Maxi are both Harlem, through and through.

Wright taught in Manhattan classrooms before he ever ran for office. Then in 2024, he was elected to represent Central Harlem — the same streets he grew up on, the same district his father once held, the same community his grandfather served from the bench. Three generations of showing up for the block.

Maxi came up under Dapper Dan, the designer whose Harlem boutique the industry tried to shut down before it turned around and called him a legend. Maxi carried that lineage into his own label — custom couture, made uptown, worn by names you'd recognize.

Metropolitan Opera House | September 9

09/03/2026

Two women who built the foundation of what they do now, brick by brick.

Zhuang came to the U.S. from Baipu, China in 2007 as a student, earned a finance degree and an MBA, then spent her free hours filing tax returns for seniors and small business owners in southern Brooklyn. That volunteer work became a career on Assemblyman William Colton's staff, and in 2023 she became Brooklyn's first Chinese-American Council Member, representing District 43 — New York City's first Asian-majority district.

Desrameaux founded The Madonna Label, her Williamsburg ready-to-wear and custom studio, while working full time as Head of People and Culture at the New Museum. She's dressed clients for red carpets, curated runway shows for emerging Brooklyn designers, and still runs an annual charity initiative of her own.

Metropolitan Opera House | September 9

09/03/2026

She came from Baipu, China in 2007 as an international student. She volunteered filing tax returns for seniors and small business owners in Bensonhurst. She spent a decade as someone else's chief of staff. Then District 43 was drawn — the city's first majority-Asian council district — and she became the first person to represent it.

Council Member Susan Zhuang walks in The Madonna Label.

Metropolitan Opera House | September 9

08/31/2026

Last year, with two weeks to find a designer for her first fully custom runway look, Amanda Farías went looking specifically for someone from the Bronx. She found Edwin Reyes in a Hunts Point studio — mostly self-taught, building a name on dresses cut for real women instead of sample sizes. He made her a gown in a quarter of his usual timeline. "I'm in your hands," she told him.

A year later he's fresh off a Vogue feature and she's the first Latina to hold the Council's Majority Leader post. They're back on the runway together.

📍 Metropolitan Opera House | 🗓 September 9

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08/31/2026

Last year, Bronx based designer, Edwin Reyes turned around a custom gown for Amanda Farías in a fraction of the usual time, and she rocked the runway in it. This year, they’re back.

Farías is a Soundview kid who was elected as the first Latina Majority Leader in City Council history and still represents the blocks she grew up on. Reyes is a Hunts Point designer who learned to sew on a machine borrowed from a neighborhood church, and now builds his collections with Bronx artisans.

📍 Metropolitan Opera House | 🗓 September 9

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08/27/2026

Michael Fitzpatrick has been representing the same corner of Long Island for more than thirty years — fifteen on the Smithtown Town Board, and every year since 2002 in the State Assembly. Same towns, same neighbors, no detours.

Tom Greco learned to make clothes by watching his grandmother and aunts do it. First-generation Italian-American, taught at the kitchen table. He started by helping friends and family find suiting for the big days, and built Tomasso Black out of it when the pandemic was closing local businesses down around him.

Neither of them left to build the thing they're known for. They built it where they started.

📍 Metropolitan Opera House | 🗓 September 9

08/27/2026

Michael Fitzpatrick grew up in Hauppauge and has been a proud Long Islander ever since. Fifteen years on the Smithtown Town Board before he ever got to Albany, and he's represented that same stretch of Long Island in the State Assembly since 2002.

Tom Greco built his brand the same way. First-generation Italian-American, raised in a family where his grandmother and aunts were the seamstresses. He learned the craft watching them work, and launched Tomasso Black when the pandemic had local business on the ropes.See them on the runway this NYFW representing Long Island.

Metropolitan Opera House | September 9

08/26/2026

Virginia Maloney spent a decade at Meta before she ever ran for anything — then won a City Council seat on her first try. Georgine Ratelband landed in New York from the Netherlands in 2014 with no pedigree and no client book, and was headlining Fashion Week within a few seasons.

Neither treated "first time" as a reason to wait.

📍 Metropolitan Opera House | 🗓 September 9

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