–Zara Korutz
Fashion as Art, Unapologetically
Tara Babylon answers the age-old question “Is fashion art?” by debuting her couture collection at the Voltz Clarke Gallery located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan — a contemporary art gallery focused on showcasing global emerging and mid-career artists. The gallery walls exhibited the designer’s creative process of pattern making, archive pieces from past collections, and images of large-format editorial photographs showcasing the latest collection by a powerhouse creative team with photography by Ben Fourmi, set design by Kerry Reardon & Gonzalo Pita, make-up by New York Makeup Academy, hair by Culter Salon, and styling by Anthony Peddraza.
A Living Gallery of Craft and Intimacy
Tara Babylon’s hand-crafted garments, woven with dazzling embellishments, sparkled to the rhythm of ambient sound. Models of diverse racial and ethnic identities stood poised on pedestals eschewing the typical runway distance in favor of a tactile, intimate experience that allowed for a closer reading of the collection’s detailed craftsmanship.
“Optimism shimmers through every stitch.
A Couture Rebellion on American Soil
Launching a couture collection in New York on the heels of Paris Couture Fashion Week functions as a beautiful act of rebellion. Tara Babylon challenges hierarchical notions of where couture should reside. Her presentation subverts long-held geographic biases that continue to elevate Paris as the capital of haute couture and New York as merely the birthplace of ready-to-wear. In this exhibition, she asserts New York as a legitimate platform for conceptual, hand-made fashion that lives at the intersection of art, heritage, and resistance.
On this night, the crown jewel of the global fashion scene did not belong to Paris. It belonged to Tara Babylon, in New York.
Couture vs. Haute Couture: A Strategic Distinction
What distinguishes Babylon’s work as couture—rather than haute couture—is its method and independence. “Couture” describes custom, hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind pieces. “Haute couture,” by contrast, refers specifically to members of the Paris-based Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM), under the regulatory Comité de la Haute Couture. While the FHCM plays a key role in the global luxury fashion economy—advocating for legislation like the AGEC laws (2020) and the Climate and Resilience Act (2021)—its exclusivity also reinforces Eurocentric standards and access barriers.
Textile as Resistance, Masks as Metaphor
Tara Babylon’s collection, by contrast, democratizes couture as a form of cultural storytelling and artistic expression POV. The strategic use of handmade textile as a medium, combined with bold embellishments and shimmering masks, dares to challenge conventional norms around beauty, gender, and visibility. These masks, glistening and obscure, playfully evoke queerness as something both performative and protected.
These masks, glistening and obscure, playfully evoke queerness as something both performative and protected.
A Designer Rooted in Multiplicity
Her brand ethos is gender-fluid, ethically minded, and sustainability-focused. As an Iraqi-British immigrant now based in New York, Tara Babylon draws on a personal narrative that bridges multiple cultural contexts. “When I moved to America, it was like looking back on my Englishness and Arabness with a microscope,” she says. “The focus of my brand is reinterpreting what ancient Babylon would be today through my vision—and that is a global citizen with a spin on my history.”
The focus of my brand is reinterpreting what ancient Babylon would be today… a global citizen with a spin on my history.
—Tara Babylon
Diasporic Futures and the Dialectics of Identity
The label echoes the work of cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who argued that identity is not fixed, but shaped by a “new dialectic” of globalization. Hall wrote of culture being produced on the margins—those sites where identity is constantly negotiated. Babylon channels this idea directly, using couture not just to adorn the body, but to question and reimagine the self.
A Crown Jewel in New York, Not Paris
The result? A collection that is deeply personal and unapologetically vibrant. Through her avant-garde silhouettes and jewel-laced symbols and motifs, Babylon makes visible a future of fashion that is inclusive, diasporic, and richly narrative. Optimism shimmers through every stitch.
A chic crowd gathered at the gallery to celebrate garments that were beautiful with undertones of subversion holding space for heritage, identity, and rebellion all at once. On this night, the crown jewel of the global fashion scene did not belong to Paris. It belonged to Tara Babylon, in New York.
Zara Korutz is a writer, academic, and media expert. Her work explores the intersections of fashion, culture, and identity. She lives in New York with her dog Bijou.
All photos courtesy Tara Babylon, shot by Ben Fourmi
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