As models assemble backstage ahead of the runway, a quieter transformation unfolds at 235 W 46th St. In a rare pocket of stillness inside Sony Hall, Iris Stryx — an emerging musical artist on the cusp of releasing a new EP — stands absorbing the charged atmosphere, poised on the edge of a metamorphosis of her own.
It is her first New York Fashion Week and at Runway7’s 10th anniversary, there are the sights and sounds of slender architectural silhouettes, stylists murmuring in half a dozen languages and bass from the main hall seeping through the walls like a second pulse.
“Well, this is my first fashion week ever,” Stryx says, eyes still tracking the choreography of the room. “I saw a lot of different styles, emerging styles. It gave me a lot of inspiration to start my own line — probably named after my daughter, Halo.”
Sitting front row, she delivers this not as a grand announcement but as a thought still forming ’mid-sentence, as if Fashion Week itself has accelerated her imagination. New York, she adds, has done the rest. “It’s a vibrant place in and of itself. Combining that with the fashion has just been a magical experience.”
From Audience to Auteur
Unlike industry veterans who scan shows for commercial signals or trend forecasts, Stryx, an independent artist, watched with the receptive intensity of someone encountering a new language.
“Maybe a label? I’m thinking that might be,” she says, sounding faintly surprised by her own ambition. “But honestly, I found different outfits in each line. It was more like a collaboration of everything — picking the strongest elements from each.”
The method will sound familiar to anyone versed in contemporary music production, where sampling, hybridisation and recombination are the grammar of creativity. Stryx’s prospective fashion venture would follow the same logic as her sound: plural, referential, borderless.
New York, Amplified
If the clothes provided the vocabulary, the city supplied the syntax. New York Fashion Week’s particular power lies in its density — of talent, of ambition, of contradiction — and Runway 7 distilled that energy into a single stage.
“Do I think this connects culturally to New York City? Oh, absolutely,” she says, leaning forward. “It’s representative of the eclectic vibe of the city — bringing different cultures together.”
One collection lingered in her mind: a Tokyo-based presentation marked by oversized silhouettes and graphic patterning. She cannot recall the brand name, (its called Tokyo Vibes), only the visual impact. “Tokyo was amazing. I loved the patterns, the oversized look. If I had to pick one favourite, that might be it.”
The vagueness feels appropriate because Fashion Week, especially on first encounter, registers less as a catalogue of labels than as a blur of impressions — a mood board in motion.
Runway 7 as Microcosm
For Stryx, who hails from the Bahamas and had the No. 1 song in Jamaica last November, her music already draws on diverse influences, the parallels were obvious.
“Seeing the different cultures, the different countries come together under one umbrella was just an amazing experience,” she says.
Fashion, like music, offers a paradoxical promise for Stryx: the ability to travel without moving, to adopt identities without surrendering one’s own.
The Halo Effect
Whether her envisioned clothing line materialises — and whether it will indeed bear her daughter’s name — remains uncertain. Fashion is littered with aborted celebrity ventures. Yet something more durable than a business plan seems to have taken root: a broadened sense of artistic possibility.
With New York now part of her creative home, Stryx’s forthcoming EP will likely reach be shaped by the experience at Sony Hall focusing on how the music looks as much as how it sounds with awareness of additional canvases.
“I’m looking forward to seeing more of it,” she says, with the mixture of fatigue and exhilaration peculiar to Fashion Week’s end.
