Landslide at Lincoln Center, City Ballet's Fall Fashion Gala

The fountain at Lincoln Center does its best work after dark, and on Thursday night it had an audience in tulle. Guests in gowns and tuxedos took their cocktails beside it before filing into the David H. Koch Theater for the New York City Ballet Fall Fashion Gala, now in its 14th year and one of the fixed points on the city's fall social calendar.

The idea has stayed the same since the start. Choreographers make new ballets, fashion designers make the costumes, and the people in the seats try hard to keep up. This year the night also had a rock star in a flower crown.

The Fairy on the Carpet

Stevie Nicks rarely turns up at events like this, and she made the most of it. As Harper's Bazaar described the look, the former Fleetwood Mac singer wore a romantic pink dress with a tiered skirt of layered tulle, covered by a mauve top layer with bustier-style panels and gold stitching. She added suede platform heels, an opal pendant on a chain, stacks of beaded friendship bracelets on both arms and long gold earrings. The finishing touch was a big crown of fresh flowers in pink, white and green. The magazine called it full fairy mode, and that is about right.

Sarah Jessica Parker, the gala's founding chair, came in Simone Rocha, a sheer bubble dress with pink silk ribbons running down it. Rocha told WWD that the dress was adapted from a special show piece in her fall 2026 collection. Parker said she tries every year to wear something by one of the evening's designers, and that this time she had simply let Rocha decide.

"I had nothing to do with it except I'm on the receiving end till midnight. And then you can have it!" Sarah Jessica Parker

Julia Fox went the other direction, in a black velvet tuxedo with big ruffles and a frilly white blouse underneath. Nicole Ari Parker, a gala cochair, arrived early in a custom Victor De Souza gown that recalled Victorian tulle and said the designer reminds her how much she loves make believe. Fran Drescher wore a fitted knit Brunello Cucinelli dress with Saint Laurent earrings and Jimmy Choo heels. Andy Cohen and Bridget Everett were in the crowd too.

Three Premieres, One Song

Then the lights went down for three world premieres. Alysa Pires choreographed Auspicy, with costumes by Viktor & Rolf. Justin Peck made Mirror/Sky, dressed by Rocha. Jennifer Archibald closed the night with Shared Rain, in costumes by Robert Wun.

The surprise sat in the middle of the program. During Peck's ballet, the singer Haley Heynderickx performed Nicks's "Landslide" live while the dancers moved. With the woman who wrote the song in the building, it was the kind of moment that a gala exists to produce. Drescher said beforehand that it was one of her favorite songs and praised the company for refusing to stick to traditional music.

With the woman who wrote the song in the building, it was the kind of moment that a gala exists to produce.

Fox, who has worn all three designers, told WWD over the first course that the Viktor & Rolf costumes were insane and the Robert Wun work was beautiful. She said the room was left with jaws on the floor, and that seeing dance, art and fashion come together that way was emotional.

Supper, Then Dancing

After the curtain came the supper ball, and after supper the dancing, with the company's ballerinas sharing the floor with the patrons. That is the part of the night that never makes the program, and it is the reason people dress the way they do. You cannot sit through three ballets in a flower crown without wanting to dance in it afterward.

The gala is a reminder of how much of New York style happens at night, in theaters and ballrooms, a long way from the shop windows. That idea ran through Ralph Lauren's show downtown last month, and it was in full bloom on Thursday at Lincoln Center, where a song about change got a new set of steps and a room full of people in their best clothes got to watch it happen.