The Style Across the Aisle Recap is Here!

My phone died twice on September 10th. Not because of anything dramatic — just texts, calls, and photos, one after another, from people who’d been in the room the night before and needed to tell me what they’d just watched happen. A sample of what came in:

Even though this was our third year, I still don’t think I’ve fully caught up to what we built. The fashion was gorgeous and fun, and our presentation was genuinely unique — narrated live by Sara Armet, with DJ Jackski‘s musical composition turning the whole thing cinematic, so that everyone in that room was experiencing the show, and the feeling of it, together. I spent the night moving between backstage and front of house — watching models line up, delivering my own remarks, meeting designers on the main staircase where they’d just met their officials for the first time — and never even made it back up to the Grand Tier to say hello after the show, because everyone found their way down to me instead. It was a blur, the way hosting anything like this always is. We don’t even have all the photos and video yet, and I already can’t wait to watch it again.

Here’s what I’m caught up on: yes, it’s a fashion show. But that’s not actually what it is. What it is, is a community of people who would not normally meet, brought into the same room by fashion. What happens because of the event is the actual purpose of the event. Now try explaining that to someone else.

We hosted Style Across the Aisle at the Metropolitan Opera House this year, with our 48-foot by 36-foot banners outside inviting people in — and for a lot of the people who came through those doors, it was their first time ever setting foot inside The Met Opera. Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb opened the evening himself. “The Opera House is home to the finest artists, musicians and performers in the world,” he said, “and it’s also home to all New Yorkers, from many different backgrounds, disciplines and walks of life.” That’s exactly what Style Across the Aisle is trying to prove every year — and in my own remarks, I referenced something President Eisenhower said when Lincoln Center was first being built: that it would become “a mighty influence for peace and understanding throughout the world.” Sixty years later, that’s exactly the room we curated on Wednesday, September 9.

At that same event: people from public policy, government affairs, politics, fashion, nonprofit advocacy, corporations, technology, and consulting — friends and colleagues from every corner of my own life, and from each other’s, all there together for one night. The Disagree Better campaign was even on-site, filming our models on camera about what it actually looks like to work with someone you don’t agree with — which might be the most on-the-nose proof of concept we could have asked for.

The last few days have carried a lot: the Jewish New Year, the anniversary of September 11th, and reflecting on the power of Style Across the Aisle. I can honestly say that this event means more to me this week than I even understood it did last week.

We spend a lot of energy talking about how divided everyone is, and how our solution is to keep putting people on panels to talk about how divided everyone is. I’m not convinced that’s working, and what I watched happen on Wednesday was something else entirely: give people who’d normally have very little reason to interact an actual reason to be in the same room, then give them something to do together. Fashion happens to be extremely good at that.

Council Member Dr. Yusef Salaam wasn’t on a panel about Harlem — he was wearing Mel Maxi, and it turns out the two of them grew up on the same Harlem block. Former NYC Corrections Commissioner Louis Molina wasn’t talking criminal justice reform — he was walking alongside Maje Louverture of WITNESS to Mass Incarceration’s Art of Tailoring & Fashion Design Program, the same designer he met through Style Across the Aisle last year and has since joined on WITNESS’s board (That’s the part I love: not that they walked together, but that they met, and something happened because they met.) Public Advocate Jumaane Williams walked in a WITNESS look too, styled personally by WITNESS’s founder, Evie Litwok — who brought her own dog, Boo Boo, down the runway with her, dressed in a matching outfit…

The more I sit with it, the more I think Style Across the Aisle works because it’s an immersive experience — and our sponsors are the ones who bring it to life. Model Behavior runs deeper than the wordplay about public officials modeling the runway to elevate small businesses from their own communities. It’s also how a sponsor chooses to show up. At Style Across the Aisle, sponsorship isn’t a check and a logo on the step-and-repeat. It’s a partnership — which means the question we ask every partner isn’t “what do you want to fund,” it’s “how do you want to be remembered.” That distinction is the whole thing, and this year, every one of our partners answered it.

A KPMG-branded wristband got you in the door, and their partners — Ada Neylan, Anna Sternberg, Cindy Cohen, Geoff Plante from the Albany office, Lily Gilbert, May Boucherak, and Paul Hencoski — spent the night with the people, ideas, and businesses in the room, exploring what could become what’s next. Airbnb’s Warren Gardiner, a constituent of Congressman Tom Suozzi‘s (fitting, for a night built on unexpected overlaps), showed up with colleagues from housing and travel to build the environment and provide the amenities where our models and designers got ready before the show. Uber’s Jazmin Kay got everyone there and back with discounted and complimentary rides — and came with Sam Weinberger, who was volunteering backstage at Style Across the Aisle just last year. Kasirer’s Suri Kasirer and her team poured Moët under the toast “Cheers to Showing Up: A Toast to New York.” And the New York Apartment Association — led by former Assemblyman Kenny Burgos, now the organization’s CEO, who’s walked our own runway in years past — turned advocacy into an actual cocktail with his team: The Reset, with the line “Finally, a vacancy we can solve tonight.”

Two days after Style Across the Aisle was the 25th anniversary of September 11, and that wasn’t incidental to how we built this year’s show. The FDNY Ceremonial Unit Color Guard opened the evening, and Emily Vaeth — a decorated EMT and Style Across the Aisle co-chair Carolyn‘s younger sister, recently injured in the line of duty — sang the national anthem before we paused for a moment of silence.

Sixty years ago, when Lincoln Center was being built, President Dwight Eisenhower said: “Here will develop a mighty influence for peace and understanding throughout the world.” I referred to that line in my opening remarks, because The Met Opera opened itself for us to enter, bringing in people from a variety of sectors, and let a fashion show become the soft entry point for greater, deeper relationships to form.

Three years into building this event, I think I finally understand something I didn’t when we started: building connection is not simply putting two people in the same room. It is giving them a reason to need each other.

We are in the process of launching the Style Across the Aisle Foundation to take this beyond one night — education, small-business support, civic programming, more of these unlikely collisions — and we’re open to more partnership opportunities that are win-win.

Also launching this month: The New York Skyeline: Conversations Above the Headlines, with our first episodes featuring Assemblymember Jeff Dinowitz and his son, Council Member Eric Dinowitz — continuing this idea of Common Threads.

As always, I’m open to feedback, ideas, and collaboration — and genuinely excited for what’s next.

See you in the room,
Skye