What is it about Prabal Gurung that when we’re in the worst of times he’s somehow able to find the best of times? Coming away from his rather lovely spring 2026 collection, “Angels in America,” which was held at St. Bartholomew’s church on Park Avenue on Saturday afternoon, that was the feeling: much needed joy and positivity at a time when both are in short supply (and look like they could run dry any minute). It was a collection, Gurung said at a preview, that had come from “a place of deep reflection, not just about beauty, but the world we’re living in, this fractured world, where hope seems to be the most radical form of resistance.” You’ll find a clue to his defaulting to buoyancy in his excellent memoir that came out earlier this year, Walk Like A Girl, a moving and honest—maybe too honest, but that’s him, never sugarcoating the truth, or indeed his truth—book about growing up an outsider in Nepal, before navigating the world far away from home and that exact same feeling. What does abound in his memoir though: The ability—the need, really—to choose optimism, no matter what.
Ostensibly, at first glance, “Angels in America” was a collection about Gurung focusing on what he does well: languid dresses, here in looser sleeveless shapes which tapered to the knees before exploding into volume; aerated lace-like blouse-y knit sweaters atop slouchy wide pants; and, elaborate evening confections, sometimes strapless, and other times with voluminous swooping backs. His colors sang: hot pink, coral, vivid yellow, and lavender, their intensity tempered with black, white and a gilded beige, in fabrics such as brocade, taffeta, and embossed cloque. There was a delightfully artisanal way with handwork: A dress which looked like it was sprouting gleaming golden plumage, another a froth of fluttering embroidered flowers. You could sit and watch, and enjoy, and just leave it at that.
Yet with Gurung, there’s always intentionality. The choice of St. Barthlomew’s, a church, historically a haven, a safe space, a place where no-one can harm you. The colors of the tiles and the decor might have been mirrored by some of those in the collection, a harmony that was heightened by the live choir singing Don McLean’s “Starry, Starry Night,” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and (I was getting chills at this point), “Running Up That Hill” by Saint Kate Bush the Divine. At the preview, Gurung of course acknowledged Tony Kushner’s seminal 1991 play Angels in America, about the state of the U.S. amidst the AIDS crisis, and how important it is to him. In Gurung’s mind though, he was asking himself, he said, “Where are our angels? How do you have a conversation as an artist, as a creative person with the people around you, without being shrill, or didactic, or preachy? The angels here aren’t celestial beings. They’re angels who walk among us.”
As he was mulling over the collection, and looking to locate a real feeling for it as he worked, Gurung revisited in his mind Nepal and thought about the hijras, people who are non-binary, and who he’d written about in Walk Like A Girl. (He mentioned also reading Arundhati Roy’s new-ish memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, which also chronicles the importance of hijra people.) That got him thinking about, he said, “marginalized bodies, from Black and brown and the trans communities. When I was growing up in Nepal and India… the trans community and people who were non-binary were my saving grace; they were my angels. I wanted to do a collection that celebrated them, but without doing a slogan T-shirt, you know what I mean?”
So he did two things. He incorporated Nepal’s trumpet flower, a bloom associated with the worship of angels, and morphed it into the collection’s silhouettes. And for another, he turned to an organization in New York, Gender Liberation Movement (GLM) a national grassroots collective working towards, they say, “body autonomy… and the pursuit of fulfillment.” Gurung had met some of the people involved in GLM during Covid, and he turned to it to help with the tone and messaging of the collection and how he’d frame it, though the stellar casting—the show opened with model Colin Jones, and closed with actress Dominique Jackson—and the subtle nod to the colors of the trans pride flag in the collection was all his. “I don’t think I’m solving anyone’s problems,” Gurung said, “but with this I have the space and an audience for the 10, 12 minutes of a show, and can say, ‘Listen, this is everyone and everything I want to honor. I would love for you to be a part of it.’”