Menyelek Rose’s World Comes Into Focus

Single digit degrees outside as I made my way to Brooklyn to meet designer Menyelek Rose for a private dinner and preview of his new collection, just weeks before his first official appearance on the CFDA New York Fashion Week calendar.

For more than a decade, the Baltimore-raised designer has been quietly building his namesake label through craft traditions he first learned from his grandmother, particularly crochet.

Each garment begins by hand before being reconstructed into sculptural silhouettes that blur the line between clothing and art. 

The upcoming show would mark his first official placement on the New York Fashion Week schedule, a milestone for a designer who has spent years developing his work just outside the machinery of the fashion system.

The building looked abandoned from the street. Inside, it felt like a commune of artists in motion, warm and electric. It quickly became clear the evening was not simply a preview of a collection but an introduction to the world Menyelek had already built.

Menyelek entered the room reserved, welcoming, certain. I asked what we were in store for that evening. He answered plainly. We would eat well and see the work.

What followed was a procession of curated dishes served by models dressed in his handcrafted garments. The evening felt somewhere between dinner and performance. Menyelek is not one to romanticize speech but is direct and efficient, aware that time moves quickly, but generous enough to share his space.

The setting felt theatrical. Curtains drawn, candles flickering. His inner circle gathered close as if witnessing a passage before the public unveiling. Everything moved with quiet confidence, improvisational but never unprepared.

The collection centers on a story Menyelek calls “The Victorian’s Daughter,” a narrative about lineage and inheritance. At first glance crochet and Victorian symbolism might seem worlds apart, but within Menyelek’s universe they sit in conversation. Armor meets tenderness. History meets intimacy.

By the time New York Fashion Week arrived for the Fall/Winter 2026 season, the private world I had seen weeks earlier was expanding outward.

I returned to the same building, now pulsing with urgency. Models, makeup artists, photographers, assistants all moving with purpose.

The choreography before the choreography.

Menyelek was focused when I saw him before the show, his energy intense but controlled, still warm, still precise. When I asked how he felt, he reminded me the day belonged to the work. When this work ends, more work begins.

By the time the room filled and I took my seat front row, the energy in the building had shifted. What had felt intimate weeks earlier now carried the weight of expectation.

When the show began, the vision crystallized quickly. The runway unfolded like a slow tableau, models moving deliberately through the space like sculptural apparitions. The garments carried their own presence. The focus was never the models themselves. They felt more like vessels carrying the spirit of characters only Menyelek fully knows, though the audience could sense them.

His rejection of excess translated into something romantic and measured. Crochet appeared subtly throughout the looks, woven into headwear and garments that balanced strength with vulnerability.

The show ended in a standing ovation. Menyelek stepped out once, then again. After the crowd thinned he returned to greet those who lingered, looking emotional, the reserved precisionist briefly at a loss for words.

He allowed himself a moment to receive it. But, only a moment. There was still work to do, just one step in the much larger world Menyelek continues to build.