It’s incredibly difficult to prove that something no longer exists. Jackson Wiederhoeft of New York-based brand Wiederhoeft tells me this as we sit in their studio a week before their spring/summer 2025 show. In front of us are sugar cookies shaped like poodles with sugary pink and white icing and a tiered wedding cake (it’s fake). Behind us, a rack of more than two dozen white corsets hangs on hangers.
Lately, Wiederhoeft has been fascinated by the extinction reports that the government publishes each year. One in particular served as a major inspiration for the most recent collection: “There’s a bird that’s really been an inspiration for the show. It’s called the Kauai Oo. It’s a small songbird. They used to live in Hawaii and it wasn’t officially declared extinct by the government until last year, but the last time it was seen was 1985 and the last time it was heard was 1987,” they say. “Studying species is so interesting because it’s really hard to prove that something doesn’t exist. It takes a long time.
The Kauai Oo has an extremely distinctive song. It’s actually one of the few reasons scientists can officially declare the bird extinct, Wiederhoeft says. “No one saw it for two years. They could only hear it because it had such a distinctive song.” The bird they were listening to was the last of its kind, and the song was a mating call; it flew around the island for two whole years, looking for a mate that didn’t exist. There was a gap in the duet because there was no one left to finish it.
“It’s like…a beautiful tragedy,” Weiderhoeft says. That’s important to him, because the brand is all about storytelling. “I can’t even really start designing a collection until I know what the story is. My brain honestly works more like a costume designer. You can’t design costumes if you don’t know what the story is. Characters need a time, a place. It’s much more interesting for me to provide an emotion.”
New York was always the goal, and that’s how Wiederhoeft ended up at Parsons. They describe their career in design as a happy accident: “It wasn’t really my choice. I started out more in theater, and in high school I got really into the drama club—I ran that shit. Against all odds. Usually there’s an actor or someone on the show who’s the face of the drama club. But it was me,” Weiderhoeft says.
When they moved to the city, they began interning at an off-Broadway show called Queen of the Nightfor which Thom Browne designed the costumes. Wiederhoeft worked with the costume designer, who helped transform Browne’s designs into things that could be worn on stage. For Wiederhoeft, who would later work for Browne before they started their own brand, the experience was a lesson in the ways fashion can create drama. Ultimately, he realized that fashion was great because you get to be the director.
“I love the art form of costume design so much. But ultimately, you’re always completely following someone else’s vision. And as a fashion designer, you have so much autonomy to build a world. I get to basically direct a little Broadway show every runway. The casting, the set! And I really responded to that vision, and when I saw Thom [Browne] “It helped me realize how much you can do with fashion in terms of storytelling.”
Although the brand has only been around for half a decade (yesterday marked its five-year anniversary of its spring 2025 show), the Wiederhoeft runway has become one of the most anticipated events of the week, because you never know what you’re going to get.
Last season, Weiderhoeft was inspired by the idea of a salon, so he created rows of chairs that were meant to look like the floor plan of a mansion, with a floor covered in smoke that swirled around the models’ feet as they propelled themselves down the runway. The season before that was called “Night Terror at the Opera” and was held at the experimental theater La Mama, where the spring 2024 collection was presented as a three-act catwalk featuring 19 dancers.
“If you’re going to get everyone together for 10 minutes and have them look at something, you might as well make something worth looking at. You put so much work into the collection, so we might as well go the extra mile and put on a show,” he said. Like the Kauai Oo bird, fashion shows that feel like a performance have long been considered extinct. Wiederhoeft is bringing them back.
Another thing Weiderhoeft is bringing back is corsets, a garment he has become known for and considers as important a value as performance. “When you put on a corset, you see a new side of yourself and you feel powerful. It’s just a really exciting way to discover a new side of yourself and with that, new emotions.”
He then describes a corset manifesto he read, which offers two approaches to thinking about the way it constricts your body. “One way to use it is to make yourself really thin and you’re compressing the whole body. And another way is to manipulate the body to make the waist smaller or the bust bigger. You’re manipulating.” The latter is more their approach. “I just want everyone to feel like they can look fantastic, that they can just be beautiful. And there’s no reason why everyone can’t love corsets. Everyone deserves that feeling of becoming this powerful version of themselves. It’s not a costume, it’s an enhanced version of yourself.”
The Spring 2025 collection also marks the debut of their new corset sizing program. “We have our core corset, the Lost corset, now in 68 sizes. It’s really a statement about inclusivity and the power of the corset as an object of body euphoria. It’s a more modern approach, because there’s a place for everyone.” This is a very important message from Wiederhoeft. “I just want to make sure that everyone feels like they can be a part of it, it’s a drama club! Drama club is like a haven for the freaks. A lot of people in the Wiederhoeft universe are definitely drama club-adjacent.”
I was unable to attend the Weiderhoeft show this season because I had to travel for two international weddings. One of them was my best friend’s; she chose Weiderhoeft for two of her bridal looks. I woke up to a series of text messages from other friends, some who work in fashion and some who don’t, talking about the show and the world that Weiderhoeft has created.
There was talk of long, embellished pink opera gloves and a short silver minidress, a gray jersey corset, and a sparkly pink embroidered dress worn with a matching bag with a rope-like strap around the model’s arm. But what caught my eye the most was the way everyone was talking about them: as clothes they could see themselves (or me) wearing.
Wiederhoeft’s world isn’t for the passive observer; it invites people in. Reading the posts, I’m reminded of one of the last things Wiederhoeft revealed to me: “Wiederhoeft isn’t too cool for school. That’s something I care about. I want it to be for everyone.”
And there won’t be an extinction report anytime soon, that’s for sure. “I’m here for the long haul and I’ll die trying,” he continued before I left his studio. “I believe in this.” And so do I and everyone else who’s ever stepped foot in the Wiederhoeft world.
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