Elena Velez Fall 2025: ‘The Age of the Anti-Hero Is Upon Us’
Elena Velez took over the subterranean Artechouse art-tech gallery Sunday night for her fall 2025 show, a dark and sweaty scene with immersive digital screens creating a mythological nautical world for her latest exploration of the female experience.
With fashion’s favorite fraudster Anna Delvey opening in an olive green leather lady suit with fur stole and her ankle bracelet, natch, models descended the stairs into the venue, embodying swashbuckling sailors and lusty sirens, ship captains, virginal captain’s daughters, and otherwordly creatures in the designer’s “anti-Disney ‘Little Mermaid’ story,” as she called it.
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“Then we’ve got a character I’m calling Leech, who is the full de-evolution of feminine mysticism…miasmic and oozy — the kind of force that can be insulating…but also corrosive,” Velez said during a preview, sharing that she dreamed up some of the inspiration imagery using the AI program Midjourney.
It was a bit unclear which one was Leech, but the collection was a transporting mix of workwear, disintegrating knits, corsetry and lingerie silhouettes that had one buyer suggesting Velez might have a place on the design team at McQueen. One extraordinary dress had a pieced black corset dangling keys, over a slashed and draped army green canvas skirt.
“The age of the anti-hero is upon us,” the designer wrote in the show notes, a subtle reference perhaps, to the way the political wind is blowing, at least in some ports.
Things are going well for her, she said, noting increasing sales and upcoming collaborations she has with the Canada National Ballet and Warner Bros. The Milwaukee native is also going forward with her dream to open her own factory in the Midwest, she said, noting that she will begin fundraising soon and has seen interest from Crypto Twitter and other corners interested in the cultural brand she is building.
“It’s such an interesting time to really solidify and make tangible this philosophy of the brand of accommodating other perspectives, and other maker identities,” she said. “It’s how do we leverage that moment and that uncertainty in fashion and in domestic manufacturing in general to really do something interesting?”
Launch Gallery: Elena Velez Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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