Diane von Furstenberg is back on the runway, and for Spring 2027, a new designer is figuring out what DVF can mean now. Henry Zankov makes his debut at the house, bringing a deep familiarity with its history and a very different kind of energy.
DVF has always been about liberation. The wrap dress made that idea almost impossibly simple: put it on, tie it, move. It was sexy without being precious, glamorous without being restrictive, and became one of the defining pieces of American fashion. More than fifty years later, that sense of freedom remains at the heart of the brand.
Zankov knows the house inside and out. He spent four years at DVF working in knitwear from 2014 to 2018, before establishing his own label, known for its exuberant use of color, pattern, and knitwear. He returned to DVF in 2024 as a knitwear consultant and was named artistic director in May of this year. Spring 2027 marks his first full collection for the house.
What makes the collection interesting is the conversation between the two languages. There is plenty of DVF: wrap dresses, fluid jersey, animal prints, strong color, and clothes that seem designed to move rather than sit still. But there is also plenty of Zankov. Stripes become graphic, colors collide, knitwear takes on new proportions, and familiar DVF shapes are given a little more freedom.
The breeze did some of the styling on the High Line. Chiffon, silk, jersey, and long, loose layers caught the air as the models moved from day into evening. There is something particularly appealing about clothes that seem to come alive when they move. A dress twists around the body. A skirt opens as it walks. Fabric trails behind. The effect is easy, sensual, and distinctly DVF.
There is something unmistakably 1970s New York about the collection — the jersey, the wrapping, the saturated color and the way the clothes move around the body. It feels connected to the freer, more experimental language of the era without becoming a period piece.
Rather than treating DVF as a fixed formula, Zankov seems to be figuring out which parts of its vocabulary still have something to say. The wrap, the color, the body, the movement — these are starting points rather than rules.
Across the collection, familiar ideas are opened up and mixed with Zankov’s own instincts. Graphic stripes sit beside softer draping. Knitwear becomes a major part of the conversation. Long skirts, narrow dresses, loose layers and abbreviated shapes move easily from day to night.
Taken together, the pieces suggest a new DVF vocabulary taking shape: familiar, colorful, fluid and increasingly Zankov.
One look in particular caught our attention: a long-sleeved striped knit top in saturated bands of pink, green, mustard, navy and blue, falling almost to the hip and paired with a loose khaki-camel skirt that wraps and folds around the body. The color is unexpected, the proportions are modern, and the skirt has that slightly improvised quality that makes the whole thing feel alive.
It is a look that captures the possibility of this new chapter. It doesn’t try to reproduce the past, but it doesn’t reject it either. The stripes, color, and length of the top feel distinctly contemporary, while the wrapped skirt brings everything back to the ease and sensuality that have always been part of DVF.
This is the exciting part of a new designer arriving at an established house: watching the vocabulary evolve. Zankov has inherited a remarkably recognizable language. Now he gets to play with it.
Zankov isn’t closing the book on DVF. He’s opening it again.
DVF.
