On an unassuming Wednesday night in a grungy gallery basement in Chinatown, New York, the perfectly eccentric world of CD1974 unfolded. On February 11th, 2026, Cole Dallas showcased his ingenious, provocative CD1974 collection, Fawning for Grace. He transformed what could have been a conventional runway show into what felt like a creative revolt against every corporate instinct conditioned into us. It was a night of creation for creation’s sake. A collection that existed entirely on its own terms.
Cole Dallas has mastered the art of deliberate deterioration. The craft of making a tastefully ragged garment. He makes dirt the complement to a white shirt. He makes decrepit lace the counterpart to a corset. It’s the epitome of a lived-in look, both delicate and durable. It’s punk, but it’s pragmatic and ready-to-wear.
The collection featured aestheticized apocalyptic attire, where each look told a story of curated chaos. Dallas embraces raw hems, asymmetrical lines, and tactful distressing. Picture: a bridal gown, battered. Combat jackets embellished with grommets and buttons. Mini skirts made of snakeskin and fur. Corsets cascading in fabric scraps. A tailor-made blazer, raggedly cropped. Jeans patched to idiosyncratic perfection. Ostrich feathers augmenting military hats. My favorite pieces in the collection were the irrationally low-rise jeans in both the striped pattern and reworked denim, reminiscent of Alexander McQueen’s “bumsters.” Needless to say, Dallas’s vision is impeccably acute and his aesthetic truly singular. His work stands inimitable. As one photographer put it, “He’s very avant-garde.” While CD1974 is incredibly experimental and boundless, it remains cohesive from the first stitch to the last: a powerful reminder that when the ethos of your art is so crystallized, every manifestation of creativity moves in alignment.
The backstage atmosphere offered a glimpse into the artistic process; the air hung thick with hairspray, cigarette smoke, wine, and vanilla perfume. From afar, you couldn’t tell if it was a scene out of a David Lynch film or a Cormac McCarthy novel. The hair and makeup beautifully rounded out the aestheticized apocalyptic concept. The hair was sculptural, some looks featuring swooping rolled updos, others jagged gelled spikes. Think Amy Winehouse volume, but vampier. Hair assistant @brooke.is.fine described it this way: “Hair is kind of like acting for me. You try to position yourself inside the world that’s being created. It’s connected to a larger storyline. When I’m styling, I tap into that up-all-night, can-barely-get-my-hair-up energy, leaning into the natural texture and flyaways that come from the chaos of living. You can feel it, that real human energy. There’s beauty in crafting something perfectly structural, but creating something that looks undone is sometimes even harder.” The makeup carried the same essence. The looks gave the models a romantic, corpse-like feel: a muted color palette with metallic accents, smudged charcoal shadow, heavy liner, cool gray tones, and slate-colored lips. Like a coal yard kiss — industrial but intimate at the same time.
At half past eight, guests started pouring into the basement. A room meant to seat 70, packed with 100 because fuck the art world that wants you to believe art is about being on a list. Before the show, one timid model asked Cole, “Are we going to do a rehearsal walk?” to which he replied, “Do whatever you think a runway model should do.” It goes without saying that the show was more concerned with undiluted passion than performance. It was a world for “impotent rebels,” as the show notes mentioned. Models trickled through a hand-painted tapestry staple-gunned to the basement ceiling, marching to dissonant, obscured music. Some walked with a cigarette in hand, others with a wine glass, and the crowd-favorite moment was when @jazmikaii and @vivante4ever made out mid runway. Halfway through the show, the soundtrack cut, and @cancelcellectuals gave a cameo acoustic performance, making history with his first-ever public performance. The room was filled with unfettered inspiration for art that’s real and gritty and visceral. Art that subverts expectations. Art that does whatever it wants to do. In the closing walk, Cole Dallas, smoking a cigarette, sealed the night and garnered a cult following. The show was followed by a long train of praises. “My goth dreams,” as one audience member put it.
This collection feels deeply important in our plastic tree world. Contemporary culture is increasingly marked by machine-made artifice. We’ve begun outsourcing our imagination to artificial intelligence and spoon-feeding ourselves a steady diet of copy-and-paste, counterfeit bullshit. Society is slowly surrendering its desire to think, to feel, to create. Moments like these are a reminder to keep creating even when, especially when, it’s not perfect. You can still make something miraculous with dirt beneath your fingertips. You can still write a poem with painkillers in your pocket. You can still dance with sandbags tied to your ankles. You can still crawl towards something holy with bloodied knees. You can still make art with irreverent methods. It’s not just that you can, but you should. As long as it’s authentic. It’s better that way anyway. More true to life. Life doesn’t come polished. It’s beauty and bombs. It’s good and grotesque. It’s ecstasy and entropy. CD1974’s Fawning for Grace is a rare kind of art that unapologetically dares to capture the dichotomous essence of life itself.
Photographed by yours truly
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Love this so much!! Great perspective!