Area's Nicholas Aburn Isn't Afraid to Blend Commercial With Couture

Nicholas Aburn, Area’s creative director, isn’t afraid of blending theatrical, costume-leaning garments with more commercial, everyday clothing into one collection.”I don’t know why more people don’t try to mix them. I’m certainly not putting that rule on myself. I love making commercial clothes and I like making crazy,” Aburn told Fashionista backstage after his Friday night show. For his second-ever runway with the New York-based brand, the designer fused blue denim-on-denim outfits, silky scarf dresses and plush layers of velvet (sculpted into an almost comical cowl-neck gown) into a single vision — one he chose to convey through performance.Just as he did for Spring 2026, Aburn shared show notes in the form of a single-page script. “A stage for theatre. A stage of development. A stage in life,” it reads. The written scene concludes with a woman longfully casting a spell for “a dress that wraps around me like a scarf, a magic that dresses me like a spotlight” to appear on her body.”[The script show notes] are just something that came from my heart the first time, and the fact that people responded to it made me feel like it was a conversation I wanted to keep having,” said Aburn. “I think people are afraid of the idea that we perform as people and I just don’t see why it’s a bad thing. It’s part of letting people know who you are and who you want to be perceived as. The work you’re seeing, they’re performance tools to make yourself be understood the way you want to be understood.”Whether an off-the-shoulder rugby-shirt-turned-dress or a metallic, jewel-toned mini dress with ruffles up to the neck is more your speed, Aburn created something for pretty much every possible occasion. Beyond those looks, the designer also expanded on the brand’s signature crystals, covering T-shirts and pencil skirts in multicolored, iridescent sequins that join together to display various angles of a woman’s portrait. “It does sort of bring elevation [to the Area sparkle]. It doesn’t always have to be crystals, although I love them too,” he explained. “But I’m just trying to challenge myself to have that same fun and sort of ‘pop’ quality with different materials. I mean, they are fully couture pieces.”To close the collection, Aburn used an unexpected medium: shredded lace embroidered with cassette tape, which his team sourced on eBay: “I think it’s just a fun game to keep seeing what you can do. Last season, we were already working with these kinds of weird and sometimes cheap materials. And I think that’s something I intend to keep doing.”Ahead, see every look from Area Fall 2026.

Area Fall 2026. Photo: Launchmetrics Spotlight

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Area's Nicholas Aburn Isn't Afraid to Blend Commercial With Couture

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