Colleen Allen, CFDA Winner, Does Gothic Glamour On Gracie Abrams & Maika Monroe

The die-hard holiday fans are quick to swap out their pumpkins for tinsel and candy canes as soon as it’s November. Like clockwork, Christmas queen Mariah Carey is back in full force with her hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You” rising on the Spotify charts and even doing a Gucci ad featuring the song. But some of us are more hesitant to leave behind the spooky vibes, and on Nov. 2 in New York, both Maika Monroe and Gracie Abrams doubled down on the bewitching fall vibes in the hottest (and awarwd-winning) emerging designer of the moment, Colleen Allen.

Allen is a New York-based designer whose gothic, romantic designs earned her the Google American Emerging Designer of the Year award at this year’s CFDA Awards. She took Abrams as her date, who was fresh off a winning fashion streak on SNL and continued the fall slay in a structured, textured velvet gown featuring a massive scarf-cum-train that she wore across her wrist. Downtown at the premiere of her new slasher film Victorian Psycho, Monroe also chose a Colleen Allen dress from the Fall/Winter 2026 collection, featuring intricate Victorian lace (fitting), intentionally distressed in some places to appear like a vintage heirloom. It’s also undoubtedly sexy and enchanting.

This powerful and subtle one-two punch of witchy black dresses coming on the same night of Allen’s big win is a bit of magic, for sure, but also shows the goodwill the industry has for the designer who branched out and founded her eponymous label in 2024 after working at The Row. Her commitment to intricate glamour with hand-finished details and repurposed materials has drawn fans to her from across the world, including Avantika, Naomi Ackie, Dakota Johnson (who wore the white version of Monroe’s dress for Verity press earlier this fall), and Julianne Moore, making her not only a go-to for our most stylish actresses, but a versatile designer whose designs speak to women of all ages. Here’s to many more seasons of Allen’s impeccable, feminine fashion, and to the women who embody her sensual take on dark glamour.