At a New York Fashion Week increasingly crowded with emerging voices, Tang Chi Couture offered something distinctly its own: a world built around darkness, romance, craftsmanship and emotion. On Sept. 11, New York-based designer Maggie Fan presented her first solo NYFW runway at The Georgia Room, unveiling the 25- look Spring/Summer 2027 collection, “In Between…”. Following Tang Chi Couture’s runway debut at London Fashion Week in 2025, the NYFW presentation marked an important homecoming for Fan, who is based in New York, and a significant step forward for the young couture house.
Fan’s work has always been rooted in storytelling. Her previous collection, Silent Marks, explored the passage of time and the physical and emotional traces it leaves behind. With In Between…, she moves deeper into that conversation, asking what exists within time—and what comes after it. The collection explores the space between life and death, light and darkness, and love and mortality, embracing what Fan describes as a sense of “quiet violence and deadly romance.”
The concept is not simply intellectual; it is translated directly into the clothes. Dramatic gowns feature hand-felted birds, their fragile forms suggesting mourning and vulnerability. One particularly striking look transforms the idea of a love letter into a death threat, pairing a black bird with handwritten red notes. The motif continues into the footwear, where a shoe steps onto a threatening love letter. Elsewhere, two sculptural looks created entirely through hand-felting act as twins, representing opposing forces of light and darkness.
Nature remains one of Fan’s most important references. Custom floral prints were developed from gifted flowers that she allowed to dry and wither naturally, their altered shapes becoming the basis for new textile designs. A dotted velvet motif takes inspiration from the intricate patterns of moth wings, reinforcing the collection’s recurring imagery of transformation, attraction, fragility and danger.
Yet In Between… is not simply an exercise in couture fantasy. One of the collection’s most compelling developments is Fan’s move toward wearability and accessibility. Alongside couture, the 25 looks introduce made-to-order and ready-to-wear pieces, while a new ready-to-wear footwear line translates the designer’s distinctive aesthetic into a more accessible category. Felting, one of Tang Chi Couture’s signatures, is similarly expanded beyond couture into wearable pieces and hand-felted details.
The runway itself extended the collection’s narrative. Designed as a dark, mysterious and slightly surreal environment, the presentation used theatrical pacing, lighting, music and movement to immerse guests in Fan’s world rather than simply display the clothes.
There is a confidence in Tang Chi Couture that makes Fan particularly compelling to watch. Her designs are highly conceptual, but they are grounded in genuine craftsmanship and a willingness to experiment. With In Between…, she demonstrates that she can build an entire visual language around an idea while simultaneously beginning to broaden the commercial possibilities of the brand.
For a designer still early in her trajectory, that combination—a distinct point of view, serious craft and an evolving understanding of the wearer—is worth paying attention to. Tang Chi Couture may have arrived at NYFW as a debut, but Maggie Fan is already designing with the perspective of a house in the making.
