New York dispensaries and cannabis brands went all out for Fashion Week 2025. From exclusive apparel to private runway shows, here’s how cannabis and couture are colliding across New York City and redefining ‘high fashion.’
What’s most exciting is that it’s all new. There’s no playbook to consult, and no legacy to live up to—so it can be whatever both the fashion and cannabis communities want. As a representative from the whimsical fashion brand Collina Strada tells Leafly, “Cannabis is chic.”
Gotham dispensary goes vogue with runway bong
At New York City’s Fashion Week for Fall/Winter 2025, the New York-based clothing brand Eckhaus Latta—beloved for their innovative use of unexpected textiles, earth tones, and effortlessly cool silhouettes—sent a bong down the runway. But not just any bong. This one matched the model’s abstract cheetah-print jeans, the tawny and cream tones highlighting the bong’s sculptured shape.
The look was a hit, appearing on the homepage of multiple Vogue websites and featured prominently in the New York Times’ Style section. But what the publications didn’t mention was that the bong was a pointed statement made between New York’s Gotham dispensaries, the fashion brand Eckhaus Latta, and Italian design studio Weed’d, blending the fashion, cannabis, and design industries on an international scale.
According to the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, New York’s cannabis industry generated roughly $758 million in 2024, crossing the billion-dollar mark in January of this year. These numbers align nicely with New York City’s fashion industry, where its biannual Fashion Weeks generate anywhere from $600 million to $900 million every year on top of billions of dollars in wages. It seems obvious that creative people find a muse in using cannabis, but sources that spoke to Leafly said that a stigma persists. Their work, be it on the runway, in stores, or in the broader culture, is to show that people who love cannabis have good taste, and want to share that with the world.
“It’s been really fun to work with some really amazing brands during Fashion Week,” said Rachel Berks, Gotham’s VP of creative + merchandising, who spearheaded the bong idea. “This is our third season being involved with Fashion Week… and the response has been, ‘of course, it makes so much sense.’”
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The challenge this year was to continually push New York’s collective imagination to the limit. “How do we show up for Fashion Week without just having a Gotham shopping bag with products in it? What can we do that goes beyond that?”
Berks previously worked for years in New York’s fashion industry and ran her own lifestyle store, Otherwild, in Los Angeles that carried brands like Edie Parker, so her web of contacts across the industries was vast; last year’s collaborations included filling the designer Grace Ling’s signature “Butt bag” with joints for the runway, and a curated dinner experience with Eckhaus Latta.
The iconic bong came from Berks’s friendship with Milan-based design studio Weed’d, founded by designer Stefano Aschieri, who founded his project on 4/20 2022 in an ongoing effort to normalize cannabis in his home country, whose cannabis laws are far harsher.
“The idea behind the project was to do something that could stand in the middle between performance—because the ritual has to be respected—but also interior design,” he said. The bong was a down-to-the-wire collaboration that positioned cannabis, American fashion, and Italian artisanship as collaborators and allies.
Aschieri works with heritage ceramicists in Venice, many of whom have changed their views on cannabis since working on Weed’d’s unique wares. That the bong came together in a matter of weeks is a miracle, both in time and as a landmark for what the future can hold around the world.
“We really need to convince and help to shift people’s minds from ‘cannabis is bad, it’s ugly, it’s something that is relegated to dark places,’” said Aschieri. “This collaboration, I loved because the conservation and being able to to bring cannabis together with Gotham in the established context of Fashion Week is huge.”
Christian Cowan and Travel Agency team up for ‘High Fashion’
It’s fair to say that the media tends to give cannabis lovers a certain look. We can survey classic stoner movies like Cheech and Chong or Jay and Silent Bob Fight Back, to Seth Rogen’s more recent filmography. New York’s legalization came with ample opportunities not only for social equity in the industry, but also for the mainstream public to see cannabis enmeshed with highbrow and a luxury sensibility.
The cheeky designer Christian Cowan made his runway debut in 2017, and sent a model onto the catwalk in a t-shirt with a loud, glittering cannabis leaf and the words “High Fashion” above it.
“We are in a time where cannabis use is the most prolific. It’s undeniable the effect this has on our creative culture,” Cowan wrote Leafly in an email. “Collaborations like this should always be encouraged, as they always help push the boundaries of what is expected.”
This past fashion week he collaborated with The Travel Agency on a custom lockbox in the Agency’s signature red, full of goodies from brands like Kiva Confections and Flamer. The collaboration was the brainchild of The Travel Agency’s brand engagement manager SRĐA, who joined the company less than two years ago after an extensive career that spanned costuming on Broadway, creative direction, queer nightlife and showrunning.
Back in September, they collaborated with the emerging brand AKNVAS and produced gift bags for everyone at the Danish-born brand’s SS25 runway show. February’s show built on that.
“I’ve always found fashion really on the cutting edge and thinking forward, SRĐA told Leafly. “So as I was thinking about it I was like, ‘oh, what a perfect synergy with cannabis.’ It’s a great conversation-starter in terms of folks that are taste makers being able to see cannabis on a more elevated plane than maybe they had seen it previously.”
Pinks canna-couture brand previews Spring ’25 collection at Jue Lan
How does a new brand stand out among thousands of new dispensary offerings? Pinks is aiming high, with rose-petal pre-roll joints, hand-crafted and presented in collectible pink matchboxes.
Pinks debuted at eight stores in 2024, and they’re now expanding across the five boroughs and upstate with premium ounces of flower (which come with a collectible velvet stash bag) and rose-petal blunts. Founder and visionary Ali Bianco debuted the new products at a private fashion week event attended by top New York retailers and influencers.
Hosted by the Blunt Brunch team at the famous Jue Lan Kitchen in Manhattan, attendees were treated to live music by Bianca Raquel, plus a custom menu of drinks and appetizers. After rave reviews and fab photo opps with dispensary owners and budtenders, look out for the Pinks Spring ’25 collection on dispensary shelves near you in April. Just in time for 4/20!
