Design runs through the pulse of New York. Each week somehow brings something fresh: a new product design collection, a studio or showroom opening, an exhibition, a fair, a young collective or designer’s debut or the comeback of a veteran. The city’s design calendar is rarely ever empty, especially from late summer into fall. COLLECTIBLE New York arrived last year in this crowded field, following its success in Brussels since 2018 as a widely regarded contemporary design fair. Its 2024 NY debut found an eager audience, setting high expectations for its return this year. Yet, beyond the spectacle of objects, the fair positions itself as a testing ground for ideas—questioning how collectible design circulates, what it signifies and whether it belongs to culture, commerce or both. Does it still stake out new possibilities between functional art and commodity, or is it settling into a codified market category?

This year’s design fair, held from September 4 – 7, 2025, at the Water Street Associates building in Manhattan’s Financial District, made the most of its panoramic 360-degree views. The setting showcased the works of 123 exhibitors presented across six curatorial sections: MAIN, BESPOKE, FASHION, NEW GARDE, CURATED and VIGNETTE, offering a range of solo booths, group shows and curated installations galore. Equally important was its mix of attendees: seasoned collectors, young designers, casual visitors, design lovers and crossover audiences from The Armory Show. After attending the myriad design offerings of COLLECTIBLE New York 2025, here are some pertinent highlights we took away from this year’s escapade.

In the MAIN section, where studios and designers presented their recent collections, New York studio Kawabi greeted visitors with lamps made of Japanese kozo paper, delicate yet confidently scaled. Design collective (I)NTERVAL built a cinematic living room oscillating between nostalgia and speculative futurism. UK-based Novocastrian’s Otterburn Chess Table in brass, oak and leather commanded attention, while artist Francesco Rosati’s Silver Tablecloth – Idea for a Table, part of playinghouse's group show, cast shadows of pause. Antwerp-based gallery Uppercut staged a dialogue of textures by pairing Linde Freya Tangelder’s brushed and cast aluminium furniture designs along with lacquered cotton pieces, with Yoon Shun’s aluminium and oak wood furniture pieces.

The BESPOKE section emphasised craft and intimacy. New York-based designer Kritika Manchanda’s As You Were offered a post-functional chair-and-table that shifted between structure and softness, holding quiet domestic rituals. Colombian artist and designer Marcela Cure explored memory, materiality and maternal legacy in her pieces, as Turkey’s HOMA fused marble and mirror in its Orbis collection. Montreal’s Atelier Alz and the duo Alexis & Vanessa reminded visitors of the beauty of pared-down woodwork and material purity. Conversely, Syndicate Architects presented their Polygon Collection in a ‘furniture as a process’ concept. Instead of bringing finished pieces, they transformed the furniture into a process by collaborating with a small workshop in Manhattan and creating only two new pieces just days before the fair, using locally sourced materials.

CURATED, under its theme In Praise of Folly, spotlighted emerging and mid-career studios unafraid of wit or politics. Georgian designers Tika Shelia and Ano Jishkariani of Around the Studio presented a stainless steel Riot Shield Screen referencing unrest at home. US-based Autumn Casey offered Fairytale, a lamp design riffing playfully on Tiffany glass. Fefostudio’s Fifth Stage, a surreal, hand-built ceramic egg holder, merged gastronomy and design. French designer Lucas Cambier blended brutalist rigour with hand-finished warmth in the Garriga Chair, and White Dirt’s quilted wall pendant blurred light, sculpture and textile.

Meanwhile, the FASHION section explored the intersection of design and fashion through materiality and process, furniture for retail environments, as well as interior architecture for runway presentations. Some standouts included The Roll-Up Chair by NY-based spatial designer and architect Caroline Chao, created in collaboration with G-STAR; the very colourful and stylish love seat, When The Oceans Drank Atlantis by American designer Andrea Spiridonakos; and the Towel Stools by Austrian designers Laura Dominici and Basil Schu.

VIGNETTE, presented with Farrow & Ball and curated by Michael Hilal, invited designers to stage scenes where the vintage met contemporary, including works by Emily Thurman Interior Design and Umberto Bellardi Ricciv. At the same time, the NEW GARDE section spotlighted younger galleries and collectives, among them Tang Thousand and Silence Please, who built a unique listening room for the new Pilot Sofa, layering music and light into the design. Another experiential booth came from the collaboration between Studio S II and Bond Hardware, where music and fashion were merged with speakers inspired by body modifications, a modified Marcel Breuer chair was presented alongside intriguing jewellery, complete with an on-site piercer.

A true highlight of this year’s design event was its talk programme. In the building’s lobby, the independent, designer-led brand for rare and collectible furniture, furniture store Rarify created a unique space where design, comfort and conversation flowed naturally. The programme ranged from discussions on Collecting Collectible Design and How Design Shapes You to Heirlooms and Hardware, where each panel went beyond the visual or functional beauty of objects, while touching on personal, cultural and nostalgic weight. In doing so, it underscored why collectible design matters and how it continues to generate work for many.

Beyond exhibitors and conversations, the festival's return signals and offers a lens to consider the line between functional art and collectible design which has been perceived or experimented with for decades: since the late 1960s when fine art and applied art began to blur; through Cooper Hewitt’s 2004 exhibition Design ≠ Art: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread, which proposed that 'design is not equal to art, but neither is it greater or less than art'; and into the provocations of Critical Design and Droog Design. COLLECTIBLE New York’s second edition joins this lineage, framing contemporary pieces both as a cultural commentary and market object, a heady mix of both. Post the fair's experience, it is crucial to ruminate on where collectible design sits in that history of the art–design debate. Is design considered to be equal to art—as loved, as cherished, as kept, as transferred, as historic, as valuable and as much a quiet, potent currency?