T’ABBE SS27
Feels like coming home…. if home was a chocolate factory fever dream
When T’ABBE, founded by Talia Abbe in 2025, premiered ‘It Runs in the Family’, theatrics were on full display inside Serendipity 3, an ultra-nostalgic stage preset in highlighter pink and striped arches. Perhaps I’m solitary in the sentiment, but—even lacking a native New York pedigree— the sweet shop institution constantly conjures reflections of childhood visits to the city with my grandmother, my younger brother and I bribed with frozen hot chocolate for each hour spent scouring a shoe department (though I developed a proclivity for the sole search). Abbe invited viewers into a world of yesteryear, peering both back into the wildest dreams of their (my) childhood and into her own lineage’s history.
Mod shapes coalesce with powdered colors, Abbe’s signature inflatable latex confections as scrumptious as the branded milkshakes passed. Models gabbed and bobbled gleefully around the space, crowned by a monstrous purple chandelier reflected in a disco-tiled ceiling— a welcome reprieve from the sullen catwalks that so often crowd one’s fashion week repertoire. In her interpretation of inherited style and modernized silhouettes, Abbe boldly explores her own learned femininity through the decades of her foremothers. SS27 is Abbe’s meditation on the creative contributions of her family’s matriarchs, spun from discovered sketches of a raincoat once envisioned by her grandmother and snapshots of decades past. Abbe interprets the idealism of yesteryear in her garments’ optimistic conversation— from sensible (but nonetheless cheerfully fuschia-trimmed) ready-to-wear blazers to her buoyant bubble gowns. The cartoonish constructions serve up camp to a maximalist’s content, channeling The Jetsons as ardently as a Twiggy editorial. Each example exists in a time we’ve never touched, one we long for, and one wrangled within imagination’s reach with Talia Abbe at the helm.
This season marks a continuation of the New-York-produced brand’s collaboration with Bring Change to Mind, an organization supporting the mental health of youths. Following a nationwide contest amongst young artists, tasked with creating a piece centering self-expression and mental wellness, a print was crafted from the selected contestant’s design to be used throughout the collection. Abbe’s advocacy extends a hand between generations, joining heady nostalgia with a bright-eyed sanguinity, the trademark emotionality of T’ABBE’s singular design sensibility.
