Ten years into building his namesake fashion house, Sergio Hudson is still thinking about the dream he had long before the runways, celebrity clients and New York Fashion Week shows. “It’s such a full-circle moment, because I saw this vision when I was a little kid,” Hudson told EBONY backstage ahead of his Spring/Summer 2027 show. “Being able to show at New York Fashion Week, being able to sell clothes to beautiful women, was always my dream.”
For Spring 2027, however, Hudson wasn’t interested in spending his anniversary looking backward. The codes that have made his clothes instantly recognizable were all there: strong shoulders, precise tailoring, saturated color and the kind of glamour that expects to be noticed. But Hudson loosened his grip on the traditional power suit, introducing a woman who still commands the room but might not necessarily be headed to the boardroom. “You’ll see a lot of younger silhouettes, but you’ll still see a lot of things that my traditional client is going to love,” he explained. “I just want Sergio Hudson to be for everybody.”
That evolution was clearest in the tailoring. A black double-breasted pinstripe suit cut with commanding shoulders was interrupted by a fiery red draped halter top that exposed a sliver of skin at the waist. Elsewhere, Hudson went full old-school glamour with a pristine white belted jacket worn over a fluid, high-slit skirt, finished with a headscarf, oversized white sunglasses and a coordinating handbag. On the menswear side, a glossy magenta double-breasted dinner jacket paired with black trousers and a bow tie proved that Hudson’s appetite for color doesn’t stop at womenswear.
“I want suiting to not be so stuffy,” Hudson said, and the collection was at its best when he pushed against that formality. Transparent fabrics, lace and chiffon softened the architecture of his tailoring while eveningwear allowed him to indulge in pure sex appeal. A sunshine-yellow halter gown twisted across the torso before opening at the waist and thigh, moving with an ease that felt far removed from the rigidity often associated with power dressing. A liquid silver strapless gown took another approach, skimming the body with an almost ’90s minimalism while an oversized circular necklace and sheer wrap supplied just enough drama. Hudson wasn’t abandoning the woman who built his business. He was giving her somewhere else to go.
Backstage, that same idea of individuality carried into the beauty direction. Makeup artist Sir John, working with Danessa Myricks Beauty, looked to women including Veronica Webb, Elizabeth Taylor and Sharon Tate while creating an elongated, lateral eye. The goal wasn’t to send an army of identical faces down the runway. “Everyone is going to the same party, but they don’t have to be twins,” Sir John told EBONY. He described makeup as the “punctuation” of a routine, something that should communicate personality rather than simply reproduce whatever beauty look happens to be trending.
Lead hairstylist Destiny Kelly took a similarly restrained approach in partnership with Camille Rose. Hudson asked for hair that felt “sweet and classy,” allowing the clothes and makeup to do the talking. Using products from Camille Rose’s Guava collection, Kelly and her team created sleek styles, including polished low buns and close-to-the-head looks that reinforced the collection’s sophisticated attitude without competing with it.
But beautiful clothes alone don’t get a fashion house to year ten, something Hudson understands particularly well as the founder of a Black-owned American luxury brand. “You can’t be a successful designer without good business,” he said, pointing to his partnership with Capital One Business and remembering that the company was the first to give him a credit card. It’s a small detail that says plenty about the distance between dreaming about fashion as a child and actually building the infrastructure required to remain in it.
Hudson says he doesn’t enter partnerships with companies he doesn’t genuinely connect with, and that insistence on authenticity has become part of a larger lesson in longevity. For young designers hoping to follow his path, his advice is refreshingly uncomplicated: “If you can’t live without it, keep going.” Ten years later, Hudson clearly has. Spring 2027 wasn’t about preserving Sergio Hudson in amber for an anniversary celebration. It was about loosening the suit, showing a little more skin and proving that the woman, and now the man, wearing Sergio Hudson can evolve without giving up the glamour that got the house here in the first place.