Vogue World is Coming to SF

Vogue World is coming to San Francisco in 2027, and as someone who’s spent years creating experiences through a distinctly Bay Area lens, I couldn’t help but start imagining what it could become here—from the first image that announces its arrival to the campaign, runway, and one big celebration that gives the moment back to the city.

First, the Announcement

How do you tell a region rooted in artistry that one of fashion’s biggest stages is coming to the Bay? You meet it with the same things fashion has always relied on: a human eye, a real place, and one breathtaking image captured through the lens.

• The location had to earn the shot. I went through several of San Francisco’s hills looking for the right combination of grade, architecture, cable-car infrastructure, and perspective before landing on Powell between Sutter and Bush. I wanted the city itself to create most of the drama.

• I’ve always been inspired by André Leon Talley and the sheer grandeur he could bring to a cape. That sense of scale became the starting point: an ever-flowing garment cascading down a San Francisco hillside, then reinterpreted through metallic rail-like detailing and the textures already present in the environment.

• I didn’t want the garment to simply sit on top of San Francisco. Just as fabric eventually becomes one with the person wearing it, I wanted the cape to feel like it had become part of the street—transitioning almost seamlessly into Powell’s crimson cable-car lane and allowing the city to literally carry the announcement.

Then, the Campaign

The announcement gives us the image. The campaign turns that image into a signal.

I kept coming back to this idea of the crimson cape becoming something you never quite knew where you were going to see next—almost a Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? energy, but rooted in the Spirit of San Francisco.

• The cape becomes the calling card. It moves from one moment to another across the Bay, always recognizable but constantly changing form.

• That felt very San Francisco to me. So many of the people who have shaped this place arrived with their own point of view, moved to their own beat, and left some unmistakable mark behind. I wanted the campaign to carry that same energy.

• At Outside Lands, the cape takes flight. It becomes a massive banner trailing behind a pristine white plane above the main stage, timed with a performer carrying that same Vogue World energy below. One image starts to become a citywide mythology.

The goal is anticipation: you know the cape means Vogue World, but you never know where it’s going to appear next.

The Runway — The Ascension

Finding the runway location started with one basic question: where could fashion happen in a way that only makes sense in San Francisco?

Twin Peaks is almost an obvious answer—which is also why it’s easy to dismiss. It’s beautiful, iconic, and logistically difficult. That challenge became part of what interested me.

Vogue World is expected in October, historically one of San Francisco’s better weather windows, but Karl the Fog is still a very real possibility. Instead of designing around the fear that Karl might show up, I wanted to build an experience that actually becomes better if he does.

The result is The Ascension: a fashion journey climbing Twin Peaks, where the city reveals itself little by little and the fog, landscape, technology, history, and people all become part of the show.

1. Arrival / Portola Gate

I wanted the first moment to feel less like transportation and more like crossing into another world. Guests board open-air Vogue World carriages wrapped in greenery, green leather, soft fog, and warm light—an enchanted transport system that begins carrying them away from the city and toward the mountain.

2. Check-In / Lower-Slope Plateau

The first major structure feels like it has been pulled directly from the hillside: a black shipping container sliced diagonally into the mountain, shimmering subtly with gold and overtaken by ivy. It’s functional—check-in, guest services, routing—but it also establishes the tension I wanted throughout the show: nature and technology learning how to coexist rather than compete.

3. Mid-Slope Hairpin

This is the first real reveal of San Francisco below. I kept the audience on the inside of the curve so nothing interrupts the city behind the models. The road itself starts transforming into the runway—crimson carpet appearing almost like a brushstroke painted directly onto the asphalt, framed by vertical beams of light and a thin layer of fog.

And along the climb, the fog becomes a canvas. André Leon Talley appears briefly through the mist—not as a gimmick, but almost like an ancestor of the journey reminding everyone why expression matters in the first place.

4. The Fork / Convergence

Here, the natural road geometry becomes the choreography. Two partially carpeted paths wrap opposite sides of a mound, with models approaching from different directions and converging at the base.

Projected through the mist is Robin Williams—a Bay Area original whose creativity always felt impossible to contain. The moment becomes about different routes, different voices, different ways of moving through the world, all arriving at the same place.

5. The Summit / Finale

By the time guests reach the summit, they’ve already seen the clothes. Now it becomes a celebration.

Shipping containers become an intimate music stage. Fashion artifacts feel embedded into the mountainside like things we’ve unearthed along the climb. A black wireframe globe illuminated by LED continents and small gold points celebrates the way people everywhere use fashion to tell the world who they are.

And Karl becomes part of the scenic design.

The beams of light throughout the mountain aren’t just lighting—they’re meant to catch the fog, haze, and tiny shimmering particles in the air.

I started thinking about Karl almost as a vessel carrying all the little particles that make up the Bay. Those particles are us.

If he rolls in, the entire mountain changes with him.

Finally, The Rebel Block Party

VOGUE WORLD PRESENTS: THE REBEL BLOCK PARTY

Stand for Something and Wear It Out Loud.

After taking Vogue World all the way to the top of the city, I wanted the last moment to do the opposite: bring it completely back to the people.

Civic Center Plaza felt right because it already carries the history of people gathering there to demand something, defend something, celebrate something, or simply make themselves heard.

• The protest sign becomes the installation. The rows of trees are covered in elevated black placards with crimson, gold-flecked brushstroke messaging representing the communities, identities, and movements that have continually shaped the Bay.

• City Hall becomes the stage instead of just the backdrop. The steps hold performances, the crimson path climbs directly toward the building, and the same fog that followed us through Twin Peaks settles across the plaza.

• The point isn’t protest for protest’s sake. It’s about showing what happens when all those individual voices are allowed to exist beside one another—and then turning that collective expression into a party.

This is the public celebration of the entire idea: stand for something, and wear it out loud.

Closing

And after all of that, from the first announcement to the final public celebration, I think the bigger idea is really about what San Francisco can say about the future of creativity.

For me, the tension isn’t technology versus creativity. It’s what happens when innovation starts moving faster than the human imagination it was meant to serve. 

Every generation of artists has taken new tools, from print to film to television to the internet, and bent them toward expression. I think AI and emerging technology can do the same, but only if they remain tools for expanding human possibility, not replacing the people, culture, craft, and point of view that give creativity its meaning.

That’s what makes Vogue World coming to San Francisco so interesting to me. A city built on both invention and rebellion now has the chance to show that the future of creativity doesn’t have to choose between technology and humanity. It just has to remember which one is supposed to lead.