SEEKING SANCTUARY
AT BELLA PIETRO

Words by Lily Moskowitz
Images by Kaden Bard Dawson
02.22.2025

This is not your average night at temple. It’s Bella Pietro’s third showing at NYFW, and this season’s menagerie of vampy decadence and cultish glam debuts at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in Manhattan’s Lower East Side - the oldest reform synagogue in the US and the longest standing in the city. After a sold out bridal debut last season, Pietro returns to the runway with DIAGHILEV, a collection for sugarpop renegades and goth girls alike.

Named after Sergie Diaghilev – Russian choreographer and founder of The Ballet Russes – the collection takes dance costuming as its aesthetic starting point. There are tights, flats, and tutus. Yet apart from the opening look’s pointe shoes and pirouettes, this is not the bubblegum balletcore beaten to death by Sandy Liang. Pietro’s dancers are instead (as one of the models informs me backstage) “the deviant Black Swans who didn’t make the cut.” There are Ghostly Clubbed Out Ballerinas, Burlesque-ified Flappers, Diamante-laden Provocateurs. Some curtsy down the runway with languid twirls, others stagger erratically to the haunting ambient score as if they’ve ditched their auditions for a different sort of dance… Potentially in a dungeon or maybe Dimes Square.

The venue is the sort of building you enter and forget you’ve ever used an iPhone. Constructed circa 1849 in true Gothic revival style, the sanctuary casts an ornate escapism upon Pietro’s already fantastical looks. The set design by Grace Jung is exquisite, the cavernous space adorned with webbed canopies, gilded chairs, lowlit candles and ten foot tall bouquets. Is the pouring rain outside a paid actor? Probably not, but it adds a particularly atmospheric ambiance to the evening. Bonus points for the two Venus-like models draped in white robes on either side of the central mantelpiece; they crown the catwalk as if fixtures of the architecture itself.

Izzy Di Pietro is the 24 year old mastermind behind the brand. Originally called Izzy’s World, Pietro’s designs have grown a devout following among the witchy and well-dressed, from Julia Fox to Hari Nef. With a needle and thread at the side of her mouth, Pietro breaks down for me her interest in the collection’s muse. She says that apart from Diaghilev’s involvement in dance, she was drawn to his knack for cultivating creative community:

“I’m a history girlie. I like to study a lot. I liked the art collective part of [the Ballet Russes]. The reason why it was so good… Diaghilev kind of invented what a creative director is: you pick the talent and you direct everyone. I’m a seamstress but just by nature, you know? I’m really good at bringing a fuck ton of people together and all of it matches perfect day of. We just trust it and we go with it, and we serve fucking cunt.”

Producer and stylist Nikki Fina adds that “Izzy prides herself on that as part of her making - at the core, it is about everyone being able to create together.” And backstage truly does feel like an irresistibly sexy Venn Diagram of New York’s most influential, independent, and iconoclastic creatives. Pietro’s ensemble cast features OG Goth baddie Internet Girl, inimitable actress Sophia Lamar, East Village vintage seductress Anna Bloda, self-proclaimed ‘hacktress’ (though I-proclaim prophet of our generation) Ivy Wolk, and DJ / Performer / Renaissance Woman Charlie Byrd. Head-to-toe art deco embellishments are the credit of jewelry designer Ryann Fitzgerald, while the gloriously smudged, smoked and sparkling beats were crafted by MUA Nathan Gross. While he touches up a model’s deep plum pout, Nathan shares the direction for the makeup: a “lived-in feel” evocative of an afters sensuality and post-punk edge. On the hair is stylist Maria Bautista, whose floor-length braids and wet-look ringlets add a flair of Victorian romanticism to the visual narrative.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a capital E Event without the attendance of nightlife photographer and Lower East Side bon vivant Matt Weinberger, who’s been a longtime supporter of the brand. (Some fun lore: Weinberger produced Pietro’s first runway after posting on IG that he wanted to try producing a fashion show.) The iconic and ever-present Cobra Snake is also backstage. All’s to say: if Pietro’s mission was to assemble the dream team, she’s done her job. And the result is undeniable. There’s a palpable and feverish devotion in the green room, a contagious faith in this universe that has been fashioned entirely from independent funding and organizing.

Pictured: Malia Sine (left), Sideara St Claire (right)

Along with its nod to Sergie Diaghilev as The Creative Director To End All Creative Directors, Pietro’s show pays tribute to a landmark of fashion history. Alexander McQueen made his 1996 New York debut (his career-altering collection Dante, for those who mind) at the very same venue. Whether purposeful or not, Pietro’s collection appears to be in conversation with McQueen’s exquisite theatricality and gothic worldbuilding. The headpieces in particular gesture at a McQueen-ish sensibility; in collaboration with designer Sideara St. Claire, Pietro completes each look with a show-stopping hat. Though ‘hat’ is a very loose term here. Emblematic of the millinery of Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones, Sideara’s work is intricate, sculptural. Standout looks include a stark black feather reaching three feet high, a taxidermy swan, and a chandelier-like crown that rotates a full 360 degrees. Sideara expresses the ease of working alongside Pietro: “[Izzy] just lets me go off. There’s so much trust.”

Signature Bella Pietro codes appear throughout the collection: there’s lace appliqué, corset backed bodices, tiered tulle, and adorned négligées. A pale pink leotard embellished with heavy black sequinning gives a dancewear classic the Pietro treatment, and the conventional ballerina’s tutu is reinvented as a canvas for embellishment.

While Pietro is already lauded for her craft in undergarments, this season takes provocation a step further with jeweled bralettes, beaded pasties, and body harnesses that bare the chest in draped charms and chains. Though the emphasis here is costume, individual garments are temptingly wearable for the everyday. A pair of black and white striped mini shorts are an easy grab for spring, and a series of gathered bubble skirts would translate seamlessly to an afternoon coffee date.

The collection’s thematic essence elevates the Pietro aesthetic to a whole new stage. “It’s very much storybook land in here. I feel I’m the Queen’s chesspiece!” shares model Charlie Byrd, whose one shoulder silver mini is not only accessorized with a silver tiara but a chrome staff laden with heavy chains, carried above the shoulders as if enacting crucifixion. Another model wearing a button-backed gown in white silk tells me that she feels “like an antique,” which is not so far off– feathered fringe bustiers and drop waist dresses reference 1920s era flapperdom. History is quite literally woven into the clothing, as rumor has it Pietro sourced authentic Victorian mourning lace from eBay.

Pictured: Anna Bloda, Seriously Sire, Devon Smith (left to right)

Other, perhaps more avant-garde characters include a Bearded Lady, a Netted Siren, and the jaw-dropping Faerie Queen, who closes the show with an eerie waltz to Tchikovsky’s operatic orchestral from Swan Lake. In a coup d’etat crescendo of an epilogue, two vicious vixens pry the Faerie off the stage, howling and dethroned, as Izzy Di Pietro herself is carried out on a royal pink daybed: the Well Deserved Queen of the Evening.

Bella Pietro’s world proves creative collaboration to be a sanctuary of its own and reschedules Sunday service to a Saturday night. After all, the altar is wherever you kneel.