On Sept. 10, just before the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Raul Lopez of Luar held a show in the plaza of Rockefeller Center. The 100-plus American flags that normally surround the sunken skating rink were replaced with flags featuring the Luar logo, and the designer’s runway ran just in front of the building housing “American Progress,” the famous mural by José María Sert.

This was not long after Elena Velez issued a rebel yell of a collection inspired by Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and the women “who define the spirit of a country in disunion.” Think the armor of cowboy corsetry and many more wearable clothes than usual. And just days after Area celebrated its 10th anniversary with a collection that riffed on the slogan “Bans Off Our Bodies,” with silver handprints speckling greatcoats and bodysuits and coats made from so many bristling spikes that they looked as if they’d impale anyone who dared get too close.

Politics has invaded New York fashion in a way never seen before on the runways. Not in a Republican-Democratic way or in the decorative way the red, white and blue chairs at Monse nodded to its coup in dressing Michelle Obama for her Democratic National Convention speech. (The Monse collection, full of striped and sequined polos, was very good.) But in the way the issues that are driving the bigger conversation — immigration, economic inequity, diversity, freedom to make your own decision about your body — are shaping the clothes.

Designers are putting their positions, not their hearts, on their sleeves, and it is happening not on the fringes but in the labels that seem increasingly core to the identity of New York fashion itself. And they are showcasing their statements in the monuments of the establishment — not just at 30 Rock but on Wall Street, courtesy of Willy Chavarria and City Hall, thanks to Who Decides War, which held its show almost next door.