New York Fashion Week: Prabal Gurung explores impermanence

NEW YORK (AP) — Does a butterfly know it was once a caterpillar? How do we fill those fleeting moments between beginning and end, joy and despair?

With moody luxury clothes, of course.

Prabal Gurung was thinking deep this season. He installed a mirrored square runway reflecting an opulent blue light display at the main branch of the New York Public Library for a fashion week show Friday exploring the Buddhist concept of “anichya,” or impermanence.

In butterfly motifs, wool jackets and hues of vermilion, saffron, burgundy and dusty pinks, Gurung was thinking of his homeland, Nepal, where he hasn't been since before the pandemic. He was motivated by a 10-day meditative retreat he recently experienced to “silence everything.”