Ben Doctor’s ornate clubwear doesn’t struggle for glamour

It’s a couple hours before the Ben Doctor runway presentation at New York Fashion Week spring 2027, and we’re on the fourth floor of a converted prewar in Chinatown watching models cycle through makeup and hair and fittings and lookbook photos. Some have already been armored in silvery sleek, spray-painted bobs and sparkle-encrusted lashes; combined with an abundance of sequins, hits of electric chartreuse, and sly glimpses of bare backs through layers of fabric, they reminded me en masse of metallic beetles scuttling across a rosebush.

A graduate of RISD’s textile design program, Ben Doctor presented his debut collection at NYFW back in 2023. In the years since, his miniskirts and knit dresses have appeared on Clairo, JENNIE, and Addison Rae, in addition to editorial pulls for everyone from MGNA Crrrta to Sabrina Carpenter. At a conceptual level, Doctor’s collections are keenly focused on glitz, but his vignettes of luxury aren’t unblemished: from flight attendants to trophy wives, his muses are snared by capital even as they seek to liberate themselves from ordinary life. In a more literal sense, his clothes are frequently bright and breezy, cheeky or carefree – certainly, his pieces can be more structured and elaborate, but more often they feel like something you might see on an ordinary night out, worn by someone who seems anything but.

Doctor’s spring 2027 collection “Ivory Tower” seemed his most vivid yet, anchoring his cheekiest ideas to some of his most demanding suiting. Doctor tells us that a neon green miniskirt was one of his favorite details from the collection – “the way that the drape looks like columns is really beautiful, and that shape is really unusual in something like a miniskirt.” That draping was also key to a jersey top whose ripples seemed to mimic the scalloped ridges of a seashell; colonnade motifs seemed to recur in a fuschia knit dress adorned with a trophy perched atop a three-column pedestal. More traditional checked wool was counterbalanced by glossy nylon houndstooth in shades of camel and cobalt that crinkled and shimmered beneath the stagelights.

Attendees of the show found a small black envelope at their seat, containing a sample of a perfume made especially to accompany the collection. Formulated by Doctor’s boyfriend Miles Baldi, Chargeback eau de parfum opens with a strong whiff of iris and vetiver before drying down to a smoky leather with tiny spicy hints of pink pepper. On his Instagram, Baldi describes the scent as, "A neo-chypre scent with a dark and cool energy made for scam artists and party goers." The accompanying info card lists fantasy notes like “high rise, “hotel room,” “same clothes,” and “a black card in your pocket,” – “the idea was that it smelled like the credit card of a sugar daddy,” says Doctor – but it’s really the “burnt leather” that shines brightest to me.

The fragrance’s acrimonious edge complicates the warmth of what could be a very inviting leather, and in that regard, it mirrors the central tensions of the collection: armor vs vulnerability, economics vs freedom, or “bitchy” vs “naked,” to use Doctor’s own adjectives. In a similar world-building vein, the delightful afterparty co-hosted with SHAME featured performances by Cortisa Star, B0YG1RL, and The Femcels (mostly DJ'ing), a riotous off-runway addendum to Doctor's material hedonism.

The FADER went backstage at Ben Doctor SS27 to capture the hectic lead-up to the runway show, and spoke to the buzzing designer about working with Ms* Gloom on the show soundtrack and the biggest problems he overcame putting together his New York Fashion Week spring 2027 collection.

The FADER: Talk to us about this season's collection. Where did the seed of the idea come from?

Ben Doctor: I was thinking about struggling in New York – like everyone does – and it's sort of a boring topic at this point, because everyone talks about it all the time. I was like, What happens post- that? What's the alternative? And it drew me to this story of someone who decides to take the easy path and abandon the glamorized idea of the struggle in order to just have a more easy and succinct life. I think I crave that in a way, and want to escape being forced to glamorize the struggle, because it's really not that glamorous. What would really be glamorous is, you know, having money. [laughs]
And maybe the means of doing that now are just marrying rich, or I don't know. But the narrative of the runway is about a party girl who decides to abandon her identity in service of marrying rich, and how it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Like that fantasy that I have to escape myself into a more comfortable life, it comes at a cost where you have to abandon your youthful spirit. And the prints reflect that. There's a lot of youthful prints and sequin that identifies the party girl, and then the suiting and the structures and the wools are maybe more symbolic of a more uptight, sequestered away person who might be trapped in an ivory tower.

The soundtrack for the show was composed by Ms* Gloom. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you discovered her music and why that was a good fit for this collection?

I discovered her when her album dropped, and I really resonated with her sound and her production. I felt like it had the same level of attention to detail and rigor that I crave in my work as well. And I also feel like aesthetically we have really aligned worlds.It just felt like a natural fit.
I had made a few custom pieces for her, and then asked if she would maybe collaborate with me on this runway track, and she did an incredible job. She really captured the energy of the story I was trying to tell, and I felt like it was something we were both experiencing.

You've described the character and the world that you're building with this collection, but in a more grounded sense, who are the people that wear Ben Doctor clothes in real life? [laughs]

They're people who want to feel free and want to feel like it's okay to be bitchy and a little bit naked. And being a little naked is really beautiful because you're being vulnerable, and showing the world that that's actually powerful. I try to create a world in the clothes, and I feel like people tend to resonate with some of the ideas in it. And I think there's details in the clothes too, that are sort of odd or unusual, and maybe it's for someone who wants to stand out a little bit more and wants to feel more confident in themselves.

Was there one particular piece or suiting logistical problem that you had to figure out that was tougher than the others?

The final look that we fit on my good friend Ramona was really challenging. We had to fit it to her body because the jacquard that we developed with my friend Clara Reese was so stiff, and there were issues turning the muslin into a corseted dress. So we had multiple fittings right up until the show, and so that was for sure really challenging.
The most challenging thing this year was—I tend to work in a way where I'm thinking about each individual piece as a little world, and then I work really closely with my stylist, Isabel, who really is able to... um, make the looks work, because sometimes it's just too many ideas. And I have a lot of ideas, and I would love to make a bigger collection to develop some of those, but because I'm a team of two or three people, it can be really challenging to make it the quality that I want. We usually just have to try and make every look as succinct as possible and follow the story, but still add to it, if that makes sense. We try not to have any filler for that reason.