After a successful return to New York Fashion Week last season, the Public School New York founders are raising the volume as their fall collection hits stores.

Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne will unveil “The City is Mine” Wednesday, their first ad campaign since relaunching Public School after a seven-year hiatus. It also marks their first campaign since 2017.

The campaign was photographed by Joshua Woods and features Idriys Ali-Chow, the 25-year-old model son of Dao-Yi Chow, alongside Scott Barnhill and MJ Marte. It was shot after dark and follows the cast through the streets, waterfronts, cars and bridges of New York City.

“We worked with Josh Woods, who was someone that we saw coming up on our first go-round with Public School,” Chow said. “Being able to reconnect with him and have him shoot our first campaign was really a special moment.”

He said the storyline in the campaign “follows the arc of Public School — talking about the creative choices that we made, nodding to our past, but really looking forward to the future.”

The images were shot mainly on film and the choice of Barnhill, a supermodel in the 2000s, along with Ali-Chow, who “represents the future,” was intended to reference the brand’s own journey, Chow said. The campaign also features a Toyota Century car, only 10,000 of which were made, which was Public School’s attempt to “get at something a bit more thoughtful. We wanted to shoot a real campaign, not short little content snippets.”

The duo, who were engaged in other creative pursuits while their brand was on hold, acknowledged that their return was slow — and that was intentional. They first resurfaced in 2025 when they participated in the Met Gala by creating a custom look for NFL star Justin Jefferson, followed by a recreation of a supper club last September during fashion week where waiters, entertainers and even elevator attendants wore Public School.

In February, they made a return to the runway with a show titled “Everything Is Now.” They will show their spring collection on the catwalk on Sept. 10.

Osborne described the return as a “slow leak. We wanted to get all our ducks in a row for the return and not try to return for return’s sake.” He added that by coming back slowly, it allowed them to “nurture” their creative ideas and “really respect the time and the craft.”

As a result, the reaction to the fall collection was “pretty overwhelming,” Chow said. “I don’t think Max and I expected it to be this strong. In our wildest dreams, we didn’t think that we would get this much love and reaction. So we feel really grateful for the opportunity to be able to come back, but come back in this fashion, where people are supportive and really want to see us return.”

Among the retailers who purchased the fall line are Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, they said.

Osborne said that they weren’t entirely sure it was the right time to stage a return, but when they looked at the market, “it was the same feeling we had when we first started Public School. It felt like there was nothing out there for us to buy. We felt there was something missing and that we needed to come back.”

His partner added: “You just kind of know when it’s the right time. It had been something that we were planning on getting back to, but it never felt exactly right. There was no scandal, there was no beef between us, we really just needed to reset. And once that reset settled, both Max and I were really itching to get back to it.”

During their hiatus, they kept busy with different creative endeavors including the launch of Osborne’s AnOnlyChild women’s brand and Chow’s turn as creative director for New Era and the now-defunct Brady brand from Tom Brady.

“I’m not good at sitting still,” Chow said. “So as Max and I were resetting and going through our own processes, I just needed to stay busy. Looking back on the things that I worked on, I’m really grateful for those moments because it gave me perspective on what I would do once we returned to Public School. Those seven years apart went by really quick, but a lot happened in that time span.”

For the upcoming show, they said to expect the Public School offering to continue to evolve. “The first show was like a homecoming of sorts — just reintroducing all the things Public School is known for. There was a lot of looking backward. Spring/summer ‘27 is continuing that process of refining all the codes, but looking forward and developing what that uniform will look like for 15 or 20 years from now.”

So where do they see Public School seven years from now?

The goal, they said, is to balance a direct-to-consumer and wholesale business that will include a return to brick-and-mortar that will be financed through a seed round from friends and family and income from the brand itself.

“We’ll have a few stores,” Chow said, “including a flagship in New York City. The goal is for us to grow our business through our owned channels.”