Miguel Villalobos and Zaldy
Dear Shaded Viewers,
Fashion has always depended on patrons — the difference now is who they are and what they’re willing to risk. This Sunday, September 13th, at 9:00 p.m., Zaldy presents his Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Johnny Overboard, in the Bard Room at the Chelsea Hotel, as the first designer supported by Auger, a new incubator founded by Dave and Leigh Anne Clark to give proven, industry-respected talent the resources and visibility that an increasingly contracted retail market makes so hard to come by.
It is not a small thing to say out loud right now: building and sustaining an independent fashion label has rarely been harder. I have spent my career around designers who are adored within the industry — reviewed, photographed, dressed on celebrities, awarded — yet still struggle season after season to find the backing that would let them grow past that recognition. Talent has never been the shortage. Runway slots, production budgets, and the kind of patient capital that doesn’t expect an immediate return on a collection are.
Dave and Leigh Anne Clark know something about building things at scale. Leigh Anne Clark was recently named to the foundation board at FIT. Dave spent twenty-three years at Amazon, rising to CEO of its worldwide consumer business, and in 2024 he and Leigh Anne co-founded Auger, a supply-chain AI company that has since raised $150 million. Leigh Anne serves as Auger’s co-founder and president of fashion and beauty, and was recently named to the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Foundation Board — a fitting extension of a career spent close to the industry’s supply-chain realities, if not always its spotlight. Together, the Clarks have chosen to put some of that same operational instinct — and a meaningful amount of their own generosity — toward something with no obvious return at all: giving a single designer, each season, the platform to be seen properly.
For Auger’s first season, that designer is Zaldy.
Born Salvador Goco in Cheshire, Connecticut, in 1966, Zaldy trained at Parsons and finished his degree at FIT before modeling for Thierry Mugler, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Vivienne Westwood — an apprenticeship in fashion from the inside of the garment as much as behind it. He became head designer for Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B., his first real foothold in ready-to-wear, before moving fluidly between fashion, nightlife, and pop spectacle in a way few designers ever attempt, let alone sustain. He has built costumes for Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Pink, and remains the designer behind Katy Perry’s Las Vegas residency, PLAY, including her now-iconic Beer Can dress. His work for Cirque du Soleil spans three productions — Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour, the permanent Las Vegas production Michael Jackson ONE, and Volta. He designed Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid in 2019 and the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
And since 1992, he has dressed RuPaul — a collaboration now well into its fourth decade, and one that has earned Zaldy three Emmy Awards and a Costume Designers Guild Award for his work on RuPaul’s Drag Race. His namesake label launched in 2002, and this past February he opened a men’s line, Boys Like Me, folding the same performance-proof construction that defines his stage work into ready-to-wear tailoring.
It’s a résumé that would suggest a household name, and yet, like so many designers of real substance, Zaldy has built his career largely out of the retail spotlight — celebrated by the industry, worn by icons, but without the infrastructure that turns a body of work into a brand people can actually buy into season after season. That gap is precisely what Auger’s incubator is built to close, and Sunday’s show is its first test.
Sunday, September 13, 2026, 9:00 p.m. — Johnny Overboard, Spring/Summer 2027 — The Bard Room at the Hotel Chelsea, 222 West 23rd Street. Cocktails follow in the Solarium.
Later,
Diane
