Spring 2026 marks Brian Reyes’s return to fashion with a made-to-order collection of streamlined evening looks. Apart from a stray fabric corsage there is nothing extraneous to his designs, many of which are as sleek and narrow as the skyscrapers in the city Reyes calls home.
Twenty-five years ago this Bogata-born, self-taught designer started his career in New York with stints at Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, and Oscar de la Renta—all titans of American design. In 2005 Reyes decided to establish his own line. From his spring 2006 debut it was clear he cosigned the “lady” aesthetic and polished dressing, and he continued in this vein through his last collection for resort 2011. His muse for that season, he said at the time, was “a girl who brings her roots with her,” and that’s exactly what he’s done for his second act. In fact two of the looks in this first offering are reissued styles.
In the interim between Reyes 1.0 and 2.0 the designer worked at TSE and Calvin Klein Underwear. From 2013 he took up photography seriously under the tutelage of Martyn Thompson. Reyes is currently working on his first book and he photographed this lookbook at the Academy of Arts and Letters. Fashion was never far from Reyes’s mind—“I still design collections in my books; it’s something that I can’t really walk away from,” he said. The tipping point came when the designer’s archive was shipped to his home. Reviewing it, he said, “the thing that really resonated the most for me was all of these building blocks that I had in the collection that I never really could develop because I was always moving to different collections and designing and runway shows and all of that.” There’s an assured quality to these pieces, particularly a double crepe corset dress that marries a lingerie feeling with black-tie sophistication. Three “fins” on either side of a deep–V neckline on a double satin dress create a sense of depth and seem to nod to clean-lined Art Deco motifs. Many of these looks have back interest; Reyes filled in some of the open space with pendants made in collaboration with jeweler Dove Drury Hornbuckle.
Reviewing his past work not only stoked Reyes’s passion for American sportswear, but spurred him to find a new way of working. Looking through the archive, Reyes was struck by how many samples he made, and felt were necessary for shows. This project, he noted, “is completely different . . . the idea is to keep it really contained.” At a client’s request the designs you see here will be made in standard sizes, but color and fabric choices are available. “Everything is quite clean,” the designer noted. “It’s not meant to be precious, but to be utilitarian pieces that work—and they’re seasonless.”
