Search Results

On Beyoncé, Baudrillard, and the new Western aesthetic. When Texas-born superstar Beyoncé announced a pivot to country music, it was inevitable that she would launch a thousand think pieces about who — or what — gets to be country. The image of the cowboy has long been far away from the realities of ranch life. The old idiom “all hat, no cattle” is a yeehaw way of calling someone phony for wearing a Stetson. But, as with any heavily-commodified cultural token, the origin point of the authentic cowboy is long lost. Almost two centuries of romanticization have created a hyperreal Western aesthetic, one that is not observed or genuine. Instead, an idyllic vision of an imaginary America, re-packaged for sale. The earliest versions of what we today know as Western wear arrived in the southern United States with Franciscan missionaries in the early 1800s. From the tall-crowned hats to boot spurs, North American cowboys adopted and adapted the workwear of those missionary vaqueros (literally translated as “cowboys”). By the 1870s, Texas was Texas, and the North American cowboy was a distinct aesthetic figure, cloaked in symbols we recognize today. Stetson hat, bandana, long-sleeve button-down shirt. Leather or canvas jacket. A modified version of cavalry boots, structurally reinforced with decorative stitching. Early cowboy gear featured delicate beadwork, heavily influenced by the Great Plains tribes — including the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe — which would become definitive of Western wear in later decades. But as soon as he walked and roped, the cowboy was commodified. The U.S. Census Bureau officially recognized the end of the Frontier Era in 1890 — and the mere idea of the cowboy quickly loomed larger than the cowboy himself. By the turn of the century, his uniquely American image had traveled around the world, in dime novels, newspaper serials, and traveling shows. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show began as early as 1882, a blend of circus and rodeo that capitalized on (and contributed to) the cowboy’s mystique. The traveling show cowboys were sharp-shooting, prize-winning, costume-wearing characters, unencumbered by the banalities of ranch life. There was already a divergence between the guy working cattle and the cowboy sans cow, whose livelihood was less about ranching than it was about performing capital-C Cowboy. No longer was the cowboy tied to Texas. Western wear catalogs offered a little bit of cowboy lifestyle to anyone anywhere. Americans from Buffalo to Los Angeles could own calfskin jackets and ten-gallon hats. German immigrant Levi Strauss’ sturdy denim jeans quickly transcended their workwear origins to become a national staple. By 1950, the television screen had absorbed the open ranges and skies. The Wild West was a full-blown commercial industry. Will Rogers. The Lone Ranger. Gene Autry. Red Rider. More than a historical figure, the cowboy was an aspirational figure — the American knight errant. He looms large in the national imagination because he is a distilled symbol of America’s most cherished values: bravery, independence, and steadfast adherence to morals. Celebrity Western wear designers like Bernard “Rodeo Ben” Lichtenstein, Nathan Turk, and Nudie Cohn pioneered a new and bejeweled iteration of the cowboy look. All three men immigrated from Eastern Europe and learned about the American West from early cowboy movies, frequently filmed in Europe (hence the name “spaghetti Western”). These designers crafted embellished stagewear for country music artists and silver-screen cowboys that blended the embroidery and beadwork of traditional Western wear with Old World finishing techniques and theatrical flashiness. By the late 1950s, Cohn’s bedazzled suits were status symbols for country music royalty like Porter Wagoner, Buck Owens, and Hank Williams. Gradually, the center of the cowboy universe shockwaved out of the West, away from any real place, and into the simulacrum of Hollywood film. In other words: all rhinestones, no cattle. It’s here that the West truly shifts from a place to an idea. “American West” and “American country” are often vague synonyms, overlapping in meaning and equally nonspecific. Attempts to qualify an identity untethered from location, heritage, or profession are futile. Instead, meaning is attached to recognizable, material objects like cowboy boots. It is, in its purest form, aesthetic. A canonization of national identity through images that could then be reanimated as advertised stuff. Jean Baudrillard called this a uniquely American project, in hyper-contrast to European tradition. In an essay titled “Utopia Achieved” from his 1986 collection America, he writes: “[I]t is not conceptualizing reality, but realizing concepts and materializing ideas, that interests [Americans]… They build the real out of ideas. We transform the real into ideas, or into ideology.” In America, the fantasy comes first, and the material world falls in line. Western wear reconstituted itself yet again to match a new collective fantasy of the West when Ralph Lauren reinterpreted it for high fashion. Cowboy boots hit the runway for the first time with his FW78 collection. Like the famous Western wear designers before him, Lauren grew up on cowboy movies. As a kid in the Bronx,  he was spellbound by John Wayne and Gary Cooper; as an adult, he traveled to Colorado and Texas, only to discover polyester workwear that fell short of his childhood fantasies. Thus, he set to work outfitting a “more authentic” cowboy, alchemizing Western costumes into high fashion. Bolo ties, prairie skirts, and duster coats, patinaed with a singular sense: that putting them on was to claim a little piece of the frontier for yourself. “Ralph was the first designer to go West and find something distinctly American worth repeating on a runway,” observed journalist Phoebe Eaton in a 2006 Harper’s Bazaar retrospective on the designer. Though, of course, Lauren’s discovery was as much about the West of the movies as it was about the geographical West. To say that the West is fashionable again now would be to suggest that it was ever out. The West is too bound up in American culture to ever fully disappear, but Western wear did dip out of the national zeitgeist in the early 2000s, as national mythology splintered in politicized and polarizing ways. Today, the cowboy is undeniably back, reclaimed by the American mainstream. Fringe is everywhere. Concho belts are slung around many a waist. Google Trends show a steady upward trajectory for “cowboy boots” since January 2020. Like Beyoncé, pop star Lana del Rey announced a forthcoming country record called Lasso. Supermodel and noted horse girl Bella Hadid has recently acquired a ranch-ready look, a house in Dallas, and a rodeo-star boyfriend. Meanwhile, Beyoncé has appeared in cowboy-coded outfits that constitute concept art. In an editorial spread for W Magazine, high fashion standbys like Gucci, Chloé, and Proenza Schouler mix with Stetson hats, glittering bolo ties, and a Champion’s Choice Silver rodeo crown. In juxtaposition, each item is defamiliarized, much like the music of Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé introduced her cowboy project as a Beyoncé album, not a country album, “[...] born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed.” That experience drove her deep into the country archive to create an album that revels in the dimensionality of American country music. Beyoncé is reclaiming the cowboy, as only Beyoncé can. Pharrell tackled the same themes with his Western-pilled FW24 collection for Louis Vuitton. In a post-show press meeting, he contextualized the collection as an attempt to represent a more authentic version of the American cowboy, saying: “I feel like when you see cowboys portrayed, you see only a few versions. You never really get to see what some of the original cowboys really look like. They look like us, they look like me, they look Black, they look Native American.” The collection included bolo ties, neck bandanas, and a few lassos. But, apart from some psychedelically-embroidered denim chaps, it felt less like a reanimation of Western wear than a curation of it. The recombinations were exciting but the pieces themselves, spangled suits and yoked shirts, read as literal interpretations of the embroidered suits designed by Turk or Cohn, designs that were themselves a few layers of meaning away from “authentic cowboy.” While models were diverse, the clothes recalled the aesthetics of the Wild Bill era, which purposefully left out the black and indigenous cowboys that Pharrell claims to be representing. The show was, at its core, a timeline of cowboy aesthetics curling inward on itself — a Western diamond-backed ouroboros. When Beyoncé appeared in Pharrell’s signature studded Louis Vuitton suit and Stetson hat at the 2024 Grammys, it recalled the old country stars outfitted in sparkly Nudie suits. Here was a musician-designer collaboration that evoked history and a new, more globalized future. For an iHeartRadio Music Awards appearance, Beyoncé reached for an archival Versace look, from Gianni Versace’s Western-influenced FW92 collection. As she plays with outsider (read: European) visions of the cowboy, she reinforces the parallels that Cowboy Carter draws between country outlaw and Blackness.  The number-crunching Instagram account DATA, BUT MAKE IT FASHION reported a 19% jump in the popularity of cowboy hats in the week following Beyoncé’s country announcement, including celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry. If it feels like a costume, one could argue that cosplaying cowboy is itself the great American tradition — from cowboy hats in California to the lifted pickups in suburban subdivisions. The infinity mirror of Western wear appeared on other European runways, too. English designer Stella McCartney showed a modern spin on chaps, both in paillettes and minimal, studded leather as part of her FW24 collection. Meanwhile, Italian designer Antonio Marras presented fringed fabric chaps as part of a Pre-Fall 2024 collection that seems to have emerged from an alternate universe American West, with shapes and textiles that appear at once otherworldly and appropriative. This is Baudrillard’s hyperreality — perpetual imitation of a forgotten “authentic” original. Texas-born Tom Ford’s 2014 spin on the cowboy boot, cut from high-pile black velvet and balanced on a stiletto heel, contains both the memory of the leather pull-tabs favored by early vaqueros and the costume drama of a Nudie suit. As the Millennium dawned, cowboy boots were deeply associated with country music, which had settled into a cultural low point after a renaissance in the 90s. Fifteen years later, Ford’s boot seemed to be reclaiming the cowboy boot object from that unflattering association. In a review for the New York Times, Suzy Menkes suggested that Ford had designed boots “to put the Rodeo back in Rodeo Drive.” Once Ford had decontextualized the cowboy boot, other major designers tried their hand at the American staple, including many who were not American. Saint Laurent showed tall minimalistic versions of the cowboy boot for SS20, while Danish streetwear darling Ganni has been producing dirt-road-appropriate boots since 2015. Many of the European reinterpretations were more easily recognizable as cowboy boots than the velvet stilettos that Ford created, as if an object farther from its original context was obliged to follow stricter aesthetic rules. Either way — the collective fantasy of the American West was now an international project. Ford is the rare high-fashion designer with deep roots in the American West. Today, Texas brands like Rosecut Clothing and Fort Lonesome work in the spirit of vintage Western wear, but do so outside the gates of high fashion. Meanwhile, European designers riff on the cowboy fantasy. Last year, Maison Margiela’s iconic Tabi boot went west with a new Tabi Western Boot silhouette, that pairs the familiar split-toe design with a slouchy shaft, leather pull tabs, and a pointed toe. Many of the European designers simplify the traditionally maximalist cowboy boot, often with only one distinctly Western characteristic at a time. For FW24, Gucci showed texture boots with a subtle shape and minimal stitching over rich reptilian textures, while the Versace version of a cowboy boot was shorter and untextured with a pointed toe and bootstrap. Meanwhile, Chloé showed slick duster coats that were giving gunslinger, with their high-necked collars and caped shoulders, alongside blousy dresses, thick with ruffles, that could belong in a Wild West saloon. At Isabel Marant, a suede jacket with fringe and leather-lace trim, or a blanket shawl draped around the model’s shoulders, evokes a non-specific Wild West — more fantasy than history. And then there is the West of reality: a massive territory composed of a thousand distinct Americas. The suburban flatlands of Kansas. The rhinestone spectacle of the Fort Worth Stockyards. The nuclear testing legacy of the New Mexico desert. Diverse from the immense ski chalets of Jackson to the shining sea of upper California. Alternately: impoverished or wealthy, fetishized or pathologized. Almost supernatural in scope, the metonym “West” was just an attempt to impose a unifying heritage in a country so big that anything collective could only be fabricated. Enigmatic, even to Americans. Contemporary designers and popstars are doing exactly what Buffalo Bill did in the 1800s: selling a placid, theme park version of the West that never existed and doesn’t exist today. Baudrillard described America as a country founded on “the miraculous premise of a utopia made reality.” A place that coerces naivety from its viewers with an insistence on its artifice. The mythology of the American West appeals to us because it erases reality, with all its violence and moral complexity. To distort it is to reinforce its power; a lesser mythology might be more readily harnessed. Our nostalgia for the cowboy is for a cowboy who did not exist. And to claim the objects of the West, stripped of their practical function, is to wrap oneself in the fabric of that collective fantasy — about a place where natural resources are boundless, good guys wear white hats, and the skies are not cloudy all day. 🌀 Rose McMackin is a Texas-based writer, editor, and cowboy boot collector. Find her on social media at @rosemcmackin.

New perfume lines love a cannabis note. But can the rest of us embrace it, too? Cannabis can smell earthy, woody, green, smoky, and sometimes a bit sour or damp — it can be herbal, and, at times, floral. It can be paired with bergamot, sage, cedar,  or covered up with body spray or Febreze. It’s been known to hang heavy in the air of suburban basements, head shops, and dive bars… or, more recently, on the wrists and necks of the chic and trendy. In the last five to ten years, there’s been a steady emergence of perfumes heavily featuring a cannabis note, elevating the scent to something in vogue in the fragrance world. Brands that are known for being hip and cool all seem to be producing a cannabis fragrance. There are, of course, the classics (Malin & Goetz’s Cannabis, Demeter’s Cannabis Flower), as well as the newer scents from both luxury brands and indie darlings — Dries Van Noten’s Voodoo Chile, Maison Margiela’s Music Festival, Thin Wild Mercury’s Laurel Canyon 1966,  Akro’s Haze, Boy Smells’ Cowboy Kush, and many others. This scent profile, while specific, is not so different from other herbal notes and accords — what these cannabis-centric perfumes really offer us is something undeniably transportive. In 2012, Colorado became the first state in the country to legalize recreational cannabis. Historically, societal attitudes towards cannabis have been negative, with much of its criminalization and demonization in the US tied to racism and xenophobia. Cannabis was associated with the reckless, the lazy, and the underachieving at best — and the criminal and dangerous at worst. But, in the past 12 years, cannabis has undergone a rebrand. Since Colorado, 23 other states have legalized recreational usage, and the way we, as a culture, interact with cannabis has changed drastically — going from a subversive gateway drug to something more akin to a glass of wine. Despite the fact that people still sit in prison for cannabis-related crimes,  cities across the country have dispensaries on main drags; paraphernalia is made to be cutesy, stylish, and look like decor; and the smell, once thought of as dirty and something that needed to be hidden, is not just acceptable now, but fashionable. When it comes to selling these cannabis scents, companies have to tell a story — and the stories tend to look similar. A smoky room with a record player and a guitar, dancing with your hands up at Coachella, silk scarves, flowy fabric, and golden afternoon sunlight. You’re relaxed, you’re carefree, you’re artistic, you’re Daisy Jones & The Six, you’re a part of what Jusbox’s fragrance copy for Green Bubble describes as: “...an earthly paradise, ruled by the original sin: Love. Mankind, folk culture and everyday slow living.” You’re free. These stories may be accompanied by hazy photos featuring beatnik iconography and the cannabis leaf, displayed tastefully, like any other herb or floral.  Perhaps there’s even a note saying this perfume was inspired by some beautiful cosmic event that took place in the ‘60s or the ‘90s. These fragrances often have other notes frequently associated with a hippie vibe, like patchouli, clary sage, mate, and wormwood, but are then brightened and sweetened with citrus, ginger, or vanilla, making them more… wearable. While the growing cannabis legalization and market have sanitized the reputation of the drug (it’s sold in storefronts next to Whole Foods), the story of its scent is still told as a bohemian one. We’ve bottled the sensation of youth, music, and counterculture, and can spray it without the fear of getting weird looks at the office. Concurrently,  as the availability of cannabis and the attitude towards it have shifted, so has the way we consume it. Vaping and edibles have increased in popularity due to their unobtrusive nature and for being friendlier to our lungs and the environment. Not only is the smell becoming less associated with burnouts, but the smell of real cannabis smoke is less prevalent in general — making the scent (and all its stylistic associations) something beyond simply trendy: it’s nostalgic. As Don Draper once said, “Nostalgia — it's delicate but potent. It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone.” The spiced, sometimes skunky smell of past joints wafts through the annals of my mind back to languid teenage evenings with friends, giggling girls watching stupid movies, and woody parks on summer nights. We romanticize the past until our personal memories become cultural memories. Our recollections blend with media and advertisements. I think of fragrances like Juliette Has A Gun’s Lipstick Fever, or Maison Margiela’s Lipstick On, which both seek to capture the iris/violet/rose-y, waxy scent of classic lipsticks. Most lipsticks don’t smell that way anymore. This vintage make-up smell is associated with an older generation, with glamour, with vanities and powder puffs. The smell conjures memories that are not my own, but rather what media, film, and fragrance have taught me to conjure. When selling fragrance, brands turn to storytelling via stunning visuals and evocative copy in an attempt to capture something intangible. Most consumers might not know the exact scent of every flower, but they know what a fresh spring day smells like, and perhaps more importantly, they know how it makes them feel. Fragrance, and the teams that sell it, can work within the landscape of our collective unconscious to trigger an emotional connection to a scent or even create one for the first time. Perfumes featuring cannabis notes are not telling the story of buying pre-rolled joints on your way home from work and decompressing. They’re utilizing modern attitudes on cannabis to embrace narratives from the past in a way that’s endearing, evocative, and romantic. Perhaps one day the scent of cannabis that was ubiquitous in so many college dorms, street corners, and ex-boyfriend's cars will be rare, making it more enticing. It won’t be known as a smell to be diffused out of a dryer sheet, but rather the signature scent of some cool girl you know. Younger folks will not have memories of it, but will smell it in their perfume bottles and have flashes of things they never lived: Woodstock and free love, Dazed and Confused and rebellion — despite never knowing a world where cannabis was particularly rebellious. Is it inevitable to find the scents of a fading world alluring? Will new perfumes boast shoe polish accords? With the rise of electric vehicles, will trendy brands embrace the smell of gasoline (following the footsteps of Snif’s Dead Dinosaurs) and use ad copy about the sexiness of the open road? In our increasingly digital world, will we yearn for the scents of newspaper ink and glossy magazine paper (perhaps in the direction of Diptyque's Papier)? There is something deeply sentimental and fundamentally human about the urge to take the past, take our memories, take hold of the way things once were, and to bottle it — to want to wear our memories on our skin every day (even if it’s a sleek Madison Avenue version of those memories). To use fragrance to signal, however subtly, the way we’d like to be perceived, saying: — I may work a corporate job now, but I was a free spirit once. Can’t you smell the cannabis note? 🌀 Carly Silverman is a writer and producer who’s worked in television + digital media. Her passions are film, fragrance, literary fiction, animation, and the New Jersey music scene. You can catch her doing comedy with Young Douglas or here on X.

How dupes — and quests for virality — overloaded the beauty industry. At the height of full-glam 2016 makeup, Milk Studios, a creative full-service agency, launched Milk Makeup Cosmetics — staffed by founders Mazdack Russi, co-founder of Milk Studios; his wife Laura Russi, an entertainment and fashion journalist; Dianna Ruth, COO; and Creative Director Gregorie Greville. Milk Makeup offered something different at the time; inspired by the authentic and unrelenting amour propre of New York City, it started as a progressive, LGBTQ-friendly, clean beauty brand, launching products like Lip Markers, tubed Eye Pigments, and click-pen glossy Eye Vinyls that were definitely ahead of its time. “High Concept, Low Maintenance,” it once boasted on its website. Milk Makeup was once somewhat analogous to Glossier. If Glossier was the mid-to-late 2010s It Girl, then Milk Makeup was her effortlessly cool and edgy BFF. I remember being 16 and watching makeup tutorials on the Milk Makeup YouTube channel, dreaming of someday being a Milk girl. In the beauty world, there has never been a better time to discover new ideas or curate your personal style — so why does it feel like every new “viral” product is just a copy of the previous one? Have beauty brands lost their edge in innovating unique products? Despite the COVID-19 pandemic halting the world in 2020, the industry has bounced back to pre-pandemic numbers. In 2022, the market generated about $430 billion in sales and is expected to grow by 6% each year — reaching nearly $600 billion by 2027 according to McKinsey. With the recent proliferation of independent beauty and skincare brands, there’s clearly tons of money to be made in this space. Let’s take lip oils, for example. First gaining virality at the beginning of 2022 with the Dior Addict Lip Glow Oil — essentially a lip gloss with skincare benefits — the product spurred countless other brands to quickly release their own lip oils, all to gain a slice of the market share and compete for the attention of beauty blogs and influencers. Similarly, with the hit of Rare Beauty’s Soft Pinch Liquid Blush, brands have released their own line of liquid blush products — some following marketing rollouts and packaging likely to Soft Pinch (i.e Juvia’s Place Blushed Liquid Blush) and some reminiscent of Glossier’s liquid blush offering Cloud Paint (see Quo Beauty’s Featherweight Cream Blush). At Sephora and Ulta displays, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything different or experimental outside of a brand’s core product line — and, instead, you may find the latest dupe of an already-viral product. While a viral product itself may be a marker of popularity and innovation, it also breeds copies upon copies. Of course, none of this means that makeup dupes are inherently bad for the industry or a terrible purchase in and of itself. Dupes are a great option to get a similar product for less money as well as to buy a cruelty-free or vegan option if the original wasn’t. What’s problematic — as the beauty market is, again, already oversaturated — big-name brands aren’t as cutting-edge as they could be. This sentiment especially extends to packaging design, with many brands using the same brand direction, font styling, and kerning. We all know that branding is imperative to the beauty industry, from campaigns to display shelves to even a brand’s core philosophy. In 2022, Jennifer Carlsson, a Sweden-based beauty brand strategy consultant, found that 1,127 brands use a similar sans serif font, and that 1,055 brands use all-uppercase letters for their branding. How can consumers differentiate one brand from another in an already-saturated market — let alone build loyalty? “It’s important for brands to be able to grow and reshape themselves… though of course still hold onto the core,” said one anonymous marketer working in the industry. “Viral brands are easy to identify — it's sort of like fast fashion. If they're rolling out a new product every other week or they have something new dropping imitating a trend that just went viral... that's a little bit of a warning sign.” They mention that rebranding isn’t always a brand decision, and may actually be a stipulation from a retailer, like Target or Sephora — packaging has to be standardized so a product can fit the shelves. At other times, packaging rebrands are done to stay on top of trends. In a controversial move last year, Milk Makeup reduced the size of their highly popular 1.0 fl oz. bronzer, blush, and highlight cream sticks to 0.2 fl oz for the same price of $24. It’s hard to pinpoint why Milk Makeup reduced the size, but it’s possible that the new packaging from the brand was due to merchandising requirements. Household names in the industry, like MAC Cosmetics — a long-time ally and activist for LGBTQ+ rights, since its inception in 1984 — and Urban Decay, a company that launched against the pink-red ‘80s and instead mirrored a more ‘90s grunge sensibility, have matched pace to meet changing cultural moments and answered to their communities. In the 2020s, there are plenty of subcultures — people can find communities in aesthetics online, from coquette to goblincore (really). In comparison to the ‘80s and ‘90s, there has never been a time with so many options to choose from when it comes to beauty. But there’s a missing link: beauty brands today often do not reflect the individuality and authenticity that comes from trendsetters themselves and thus become trendsetting brands in the process. Brands now only mirror what’s already popular and mainstream. As Linda Wells, founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Allure puts it in WWD: “This is a really powerful time where we’re not resting on a singular type of beauty. We’re in this time of the triumph of the individual, fueled in much part by social media.” Without risk-taking, there is stagnation — and the cycle of virality continues to build upon itself. As if a call back to the early days of the brand, Milk Makeup released something cool again this year. The new Cooling Water Jelly Tints are fun and jiggly, like Smucker's jam. It’s so edible-looking that the brand had to announce a PSA that it’s not meant for consumption. To me, this product represents the eclectic, carefree playfulness that first drew me towards the brand as a 16-year-old. While my personal style and tastes have evolved since then, my want for originality in a sea of limitations hasn’t. “We set out to reinvent the beauty industry, not reinvent the customer,” says Gregorie Greville for Centennial — which is an ethos every brand should follow. 🌀 Niya Doyle is a forever East Coast-based writer, beauty buff, and cat lover. She is a freelance journalist for HALOSCOPE covering beauty. You can follow her makeup and skincare journey on TikTok.

New York-based piercer Kaia Martin talks punk, piercings, and possibilities. Feathers, frocks, fringe. Vamps holding vapes. Bleached hair in hues of platinum and pink. Smokey eyes and thick liner. Gelled hair that spikes gravity. No hair at all. Tattooed necks. Tattooed scalps. Tattooed arms. Music that drums your heart like caffeine. The rise of Instagram Reels and TikTok has produced an array of trends, aesthetics, and subcultures marketed toward young women trying to understand themselves and their place in the world. Downtown’s resident piercer, Kaia Martin (who also goes by Fambie), rejects these calls with a radical self-acceptance reminiscent of New York’s bygone era. This is unbridled self-expression where you’re most likely to find it: crammed inside Lines New York’s studio on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, everybody impatient for the show to start. When the music cuts to a mix, the models ascend. Each person is so distinct in their sense of self that no two models look alike in height, shape, or size, but they all carry the same ethereal air. Each outfit is complimented by a geometrical piercing pattern laced up by hoops, ribbons, and bows. One model has overlapping chains draped on her stomach; another’s face is crossed out by red ribbons. A pair of breasts are accentuated by a corset, the areolas framed by five-point stars. A back is threaded together in a delicate flower sequence. White ribbons are pierced into the shape of ribs across one model’s torso and corseted down the backs of thighs and forearms on others. A left eye and neck are knit together by thick, black ribbon and tied into a fragile bow at the end. The models strut down the runway three times, giving the viewer more time to absorb the catalog of looks, which now seem incomplete without the piercings. The crowd grimaces, gasps, and applauds, craning their necks to photograph the grotesque and surreal sight of pain upcycled and reimagined into beauty. Cue Kia Martin, the brains behind the show, who appears at the front of the studio in a monochromatic chrome outfit. “First of all, make some noise for all the piercers.” At just five feet, Kaia commands the space immediately. On a regular day, she assembles herself like an AI-generated image of clashing patterns in polka dot, plaid, or paisley, and a disharmony of colors, all wrapped up in lace, spandex, mesh, or denim. The 23-year-old Virginia-native/New York-transplant has carved out a name for herself in the East Village, ensconced in Manhattan’s temple of punk and pride. When Kaia first imagined a fashion show that exhibited fashion collections and play piercings simultaneously, she couldn’t get it out of her mind until she saw it through. “I became a prisoner to [this] idea and the only way I could set myself free of that was to see the show come to life,” she tells me. Kaia decided to approach Crystal, Lines’ co-founder and an ex-colleague, with the idea. “In my own journey with Kaia, since first meeting when we were working at 6Skulls, this [show] was a long time coming,” says Crystal, whose experience as a fashion designer and creative director for international brands helped materialize and facilitate Kaia’s vision. Lines’ studio was originally House of Field — costume designer Patricia Field’s iconic boutique. Field decided to close shop in 2015 after watching the Bowery change over the course of a decade, but Crystal and her co-founder, Jiwon Ra, saw the potential to honor her work and her vision. “We took a big risk with the space being so big, but, given its history and the history of the neighborhood, we felt like this is exactly where we have to be. Punk was very much my aspiration and my identity, but it died for quite a while. I’ve been bored of the fashion industry for a while, too; it’s all become so commercialized. I wanted to create a Mecca of multidisciplinary artists that could regenerate our economy together. So, when Kaia came to me, I said ‘Cool, this is what I’m trying to do, too.’ I’ve had my visions produced at fashion shows already. I wasn’t here to do that, I was here to help [Kaia] understand what parts and pieces were needed, from good lighting to chairs.” The show took shape over ten weeks. Kaia assembled a team consisting of her most reliable and trusted piercers; sourced several pieces from the collections of seven different designers, like Cloudiejobi and Synph17; and worked with her mentor, Phil, and her apprentice, Wiki, in visualizing the piercings on each model’s body. “Balenciaga did a campaign with the prosthetics of play piercings. I wanted to up that,” says Kaia. “I created 25 looks in total, which turned out to be 23 in the end. The piercings were central to each look, so the outfits and designers worked around them.” Kaia recognized that any large-scale production meant that there would be room for things to go wrong, especially in a show that asked so much of its models and her team. She met with the production team once a week and began to cast models one month before the show, breaking down the procedure to them and ensuring that their comfort and consent were at the forefront of every creative decision. The models were pierced two days before the show using curved barbell insertions to prevent swelling and pain, and, on show day, they were swapped out for hoops. “That was by far the worst pain I had ever felt,” said Wiki, who modeled 52 piercings while simultaneously lacing up other models’ ribbons through their hoops. “But a lot of my own inspiration comes from –– this sounds crazy –– grotesque horror movies. The gore just makes for something more interesting and eye-catching.” Black women and queer communities have always provided the public with the license to experiment with personal style and try on different versions of themselves for size. Forging a capacious and multidimensional existence is, of course, the antithesis of what young men and women are told to do in the digital age. “Being trans, for a lot of trans individuals, modifying [our] bodies is a way to align our physical appearances with our gender identity,” said Wiki. “It empowers us to express ourselves and take control of our bodies.” Kaia, like Crystal, believes that body modification is the highest form of fashion and personal style. “There are a lot of people that do not fit into the mainstream’s stylistic standards. Punk is about people who are willing to be more extreme, and one part of that extreme is pain,” says Kaia. As the music winds down, the gravity of what has been achieved in a show that lasted no more than thirty-five minutes is palpable through the awe that colors the crowd’s cheer. They rest assured knowing that the city’s lore lives on; whatever price they’ve paid to live here will amortize in bearing witness to its art. “I didn’t know that throwing down damn near 640 piercings within a span of two days was possible, but now we know,” concludes Kaia, who later admitted to the panic that gripped her throughout the night. “Let’s see what happens next.” 🌀 Tracy J. Jawad is a freelance writer and reporter based between Brooklyn and Beirut.

“I want to make sure our clothes don't just get tied down to being art pieces or speculative assets. I want to see them used! I want to see them worn!” THIS OUTFIT DOES NOT EXIST. You can wear it, collect it, own it — a gown made of desktop debris, a suit made of individual right-swipes — but you cannot feel it. But in a moment where sensory feeling is secondary to visual experience, how much does that matter? This Outfit Does Not Exist — a blog and newsletter started by artist Dani Loftus — first came on the scene in January 2020, while Loftus worked as a corporate innovation consultant. Inspired by the sartorial discussions happening in the NFT space, Loftus kept an eye on digital fashion as a burgeoning form; she soon left her job, became a founding member of digital fashion investment vehicle RED DAO, and fundraised $1.5 million to build a new project called DRAUP. Originally conceptualized as a “digitally-native Dover Street Market,” Loftus soon realized that there was good creative meat in not merely showcasing digital fashion brands, but creating a whole brand in and of itself. Guided by the ethos “CODE IS THE COUTURE,” DRAUP uses technically innovative, craft-focused systems to create digital clothing — like replicating the warm, deeply human practices of embroidery and pattern-making — and creates clothes with digitally-native narratives. “Fashion is meant to serve as a commentary on the state of society,” Loftus tells me. “And, as a digital fashion brand, all of our collections comment on digital phenomena.” Savannah Eden Bradley: Each drop — from the Swipe Suit to the Trash Gown — feels aesthetically singular. What’s your thought process as you’re designing each digital garment? Dani Loftus: The initial concept behind DRAUP was to embrace the digital nature of the clothing — not to create illusions around it but rather to embrace the new digital medium as core to the clothing itself. So when we create, we begin with a behavior or trend we want to comment on. With the FEED dress, for example, it's all around universal digital anxieties and experiences (such as our fear of running out of battery) or responses to meme culture. Plus, when we work with artists, we have to also make sure the concepts we choose align with their existing practice and body of work. With REUSE x Linda Dounia, for example, we played off of her AI practice where she saves a ton of visual inputs on her hard drive to train her models, and explored the idea of digital waste as a collection concept. After deciding on a concept, our process is quite similar to that of a traditional fashion house. We moodboard; [think of] designs, materials, inspirations; and decide which technical systems are best to bring our works to life. Then, we do sketches — followed by multiple rounds of revision with me, my creative team, and our collaborators if we’re co-creating, before the final stage of digitally dressing our first model and live-tweaking our looks. SEB: How is your taste reflected in the work that you’re doing? DL: I think my taste is reflected in two ways — first, in the wider themes that inspire our collections, and, secondly, in the designs that we create. As the CEO of a digital fashion house, as well as someone who writes about [and] has a history of predicting tech trends, I spend a lot of my time thinking about how the internet is changing us on an individual and societal level. These are the elements I try to comment on in the collections themselves — and [I] love finding news stories or trends that can be used as a design base. On top of that, I’m obsessed with avant-garde fashion. Melitta Baumeister, Noir by Kei Ninomiya, Thierry Mugler, and more are the people I obsessively look to, and it's this element of avant-garde digital couture that I want to bring into our work. There are brands that create more mundane digital fashion, which I think is great. However, for me, what made digital fashion so exciting [in the first place] was the opportunity to engage with styles and pieces I’d never be able to access IRL. The first piece of digital fashion I wore was a metallic gown from Tribute Brand, and I remember how incredible it felt to be wearing the type of work I’d been lusting over, watching videos of [runway shows]. With DRAUP, I want to inspire those emotions in others that wear our work. SEB: There’s been a lot of talk recently about how personal style — that is, personal style that’s constricted by what can be purchased in a store — is being supplanted by “customizing your avatar.” In other words: each person’s style will one day be specific to the point of invention, with trends as a thing of the past. How do you see DRAUP fitting into that? DL: I’m not sure I believe that brands [or] trends will ever become redundant. With the amount of clothes that exist now — with fast fashion producers like Shein, the consistent problematic production cycle, and vintage and secondhand pieces — we already live in an age of fashion abundance. Yet we still follow trends and brands because of the innately social nature of fashion — fashion is a tool for expression, affiliation, status — where what we wear speaks to us wanting to conform and belong to a community bigger than ourselves. Plus the obvious clout dynamic. I think no matter how much freedom of expression we have at our disposal, this will always be true. There just might be more micro-trends and communities to ascribe to. DRAUP-wise, I’d love [for] us to become a brand that really defines the zeitgeist of the digital age and allows for expression that reflects the emotions we feel as digital natives — as well as new sets of aesthetics, design practices, and tools. SEB: On another note: I loved the REDUCE shapewear project and how it questioned the idea of bodily beauty standards. What inspired that drop? DL: Thank you so much! REDUCE was a part of our sustainability series REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE — a three part drop that consisted of collections that reflected on societal issues that were seeping into [the digital landscape]. For REDUCE, we were really interested in the issues of body image, and the new problems that the digital world has brought about in that context. We wanted to confront this problem in a way that was humorous and tongue-in-cheek, but also drew attention to the fact we fetishize beauty standards that are literally unreal — the quantity of FaceTune on influencers, the prevalence of filter culture. We chose shapewear both because its purpose is to distort the body and also because we’ve seen a rise of influencer led-shapewear brands, like SKIMS, which we parodied heavily. We co-created the collection with a phenomenal voxel artist called Patternbase, who is both a textile designer and an OG in one of the first digital worlds called CryptoVoxels. We saw voxels as a fitting fabric focus for this drop, as voxels are what lay at the base of every digital asset and determine what size they take up — and this led to our [campaign] slogan: “Reducing your resolution to help you fit in online.” The drop ended up consisting of five different pieces with a selection of patterns designed by Patternbase. Our team designed a generative system which decided the shape, pattern, and more importantly the fit of these garments — the latter based around seven different stereotypical body types found in online culture. Important, here, is that because the selection process was generative, the sizing was utterly random — leading to [another campaign slogan]: “Fits as arbitrary as our beauty standards.” SEB: There’s also something to be said about fashion’s massive collecting market — like sneakers or archival designer finds — which has exploded in popularity over the past decade. Do you think DRAUP speaks to a new kind of fashion connoisseur? DL: A great question! Yes, I definitely think we do. Digital fashion expands who will want to consume fashion for two reasons. Firstly, because we are no longer tethered to a physical body, which, as we all know, substantially impacts our consumption choices. And, secondly, because the assetization of fashion pieces in the digital market — the fact these can be so much more easily traded and rented out — also changes the game and who wants to participate. In regards to DRAUP, something that surprised me was the fact that, last year, the majority of our pieces were bought by men who were connoisseurs of digital art rather than women into fashion. These collectors were fans of the artists we worked with, as well as the artists we co-created our collections with, and began exploring fashion as an alternative asset class. Many initially came to me sheepishly saying things like “As you can tell, I’m not a fashionable person IRL but I really like your work.” That really showed me how much digital fashion opens up who wants to consume [it]. I also think the digital components of our clothes lend themselves to new avenues for collectors — on-chain transparency around provenance; rental with no risk of wear and tear; an evermore liquid market for trading; now shipping, sizing. These are things we’re actively exploring as we think about our platform. However, I want to make sure our clothes don't just get tied down to being art pieces or speculative assets. I want to see them used! I want to see them worn! That's the biggest rush for me. SEB: How do you see DRAUP evolving? What’s on the horizon? Where do you see DRAUP’s longevity manifesting? DL: One of the most critical — and challenging — things about DRAUP is that we truly believe in digital fashion. Even if we were to create physical pieces, which I don’t foresee in the near future, we would always be digital-first. In this early market, this means that we constantly have to be thinking about who our consumer is and what their needs are. Last year, our mission was to help seed the concept that code could be couture [and] to elevate how digital pieces are conceived of. We made some real leaps, here, such as attracting an art collector base and having our work sold as the first ever digital fashion piece at Christie’s — but there’s still a lot more work to do. This year, we’re focused on helping our clothes become culture (and for digital fashion to infiltrate the wider fashion space). With our new collection, FEED, we drop a garment inspired by a digital phenomenon every 1-2 weeks — and while a garment is live, we will dress anyone who applies to wear it for free. The idea here is that momentum breeds momentum. We want to help people understand why they'd wear digital fashion — as well as to get digital clothes all over the feed to spark desire. In just two weeks, we’ve seen over 150 people sign up. Plus — as is a little-known fact about most luxury brands — accessibility is key. [While] we want to establish ourselves as couture players, people need to feel as if they can have a piece of what we're creating. Last year, we were selling dresses from $2,000 to $4,000, which I think was leaving [sic] people out. Looking to the future, we’re thinking of ways we can marry our collector and wearer market. People will want different clothes for different reasons and different things from their digital clothes. The educational and storytelling component that we really try to over-index [at DRAUP] is both to help educate people on what digital fashion is and can be — and also to tell the stories around why digital craft should be seen as significant. 🌀 Savannah Eden Bradley is a writer, fashion editor, gallerina, Gnostic scholar, reformed It Girl, and future beautiful ghost from the Carolina coast. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the fashion magazine HALOSCOPE. You can stalk her everywhere online @savbrads.

“Land of the Free” shirts — a national thrift shop staple — come from one of the most insidious veteran’s charities. You know those shirts that are in every thrift store? The ones that say “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave,” and have a design of an eagle flying across the American flag on them? The ones that have become a sort of stand-in for the cheap schlock that clogs the racks? They’ve been around since I started thrifting in the mid-2010s, and each time I see them, I’m amazed by the sheer quantity that must be out there. I’ve seen them in Canada. How can they possibly have made it out of the US? Yet still, I’ve never been able to find out where they come from. There’s discussion online about it, but nothing specific, and I couldn’t turn up a single article going into depth on this. So, with that in mind, I set out to find whoever makes the shirts and figure out why they do it. I first spoke with a thrift store manager located in Chicago, who requested to remain anonymous. She told me that the T-shirts have been coming in for at least the several years since she began working there. When I asked how many arrive in an average month, she indicated that it varied too much for her to give an estimate, but that the number was typically between three and twenty. Since donations are processed outside of her store, she could not tell me anything about who was sending them in, but she did indicate that the influx has been relatively steady over the years. I turned to Reddit, where a couple of threads speculate about where the shirts come from. As it turns out, they’ve spread well beyond North America; people report seeing them as far away as Jordan and Thailand. Yet, for all that, there was only one mention of someone actually getting the shirts from the source. One user, @Irowells1892, reported that their grandfather started receiving them, among other cheap household goods, after donating to a couple of “patriotic” organizations. Irowells, who asked to be identified by their username, told me that “As [my grandfather’s] health declined, he was more susceptible to junk mail asking for donations, and donated a small amount to a couple of ‘charities.’ That got him on pretty much every mailing list known to man. They'd end up sending constant junk mail begging for donations, and maybe a couple times a year they'd send some very cheap, low-quality products as incentives/guilt trips.” They also said that they had donated the items in bulk to a thrift store after their grandfather died. Unfortunately, they were unable to tell me which charity the shirts came from, specifically. At this point, I felt stuck. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to find anybody who knew the source of the tees. I wasn’t even sure that they were all coming from the same place. But just as I was about to try another tactic, my partner stepped in. “There’s a sticker on some of the shirts that are listed on eBay,” they texted. Duh. One listing even had a photo of the sticker that was big enough to read. And that’s how I found out that the T-shirts come from the Disabled Veterans National Foundation. I still needed to know: why are they sending them out? How many are out there? Do the shirts actually bring in enough donations to cover their production costs? I called the DVNF headquarters, and was directed to email the organization’s Director of Direct Mail, a man by the name of Patrick Heron. As of this writing, I’m still waiting for a response from him. That downtime, though, gave me the chance to look into the DVNF itself. According to its website, the foundation aims “to meet the needs” of at-risk veterans “through targeted programs and collaboration with other organizations in communities throughout the country.” Pretty vague. More concretely, they list grant programs and the distribution of “comfort kits,” as well as a free self-study mental health course. Fair enough, but the programs listed online seemed tiny given that the shirts they send out are so omnipresent. They only sent out four thousand aid kits last year. How could they possibly have made so many t-shirts that some thrift stores have dozens on the shelves at a time? And how is it possible that this one, relatively minor, charity has more shirts in thrift stores than seemingly any other? It turns out that the DVNF has a rather unenviable reputation. The foundation is the recipient of a one-star rating from Charity Navigator and an F from Charity Watch. Previous investigations have found that, as of 2012, 99% of donations went to paying just two contractors in charge of direct mail. Around $20 million per year goes to postal marketing, dwarfing the amount that is put towards the charity’s stated aim. If they’re sending shirts to potential donors, then their lopsided budget explains why they’ve made so many of them. To see if this was still the case more than ten years later, I checked the foundation’s financial statement for 2023, and found about $481,000 paid as salaries between four upper-level managers, $941,000 in total compensation to employees, and twenty-seven million dollars listed as “postage and shipping.” Given that this makes up the vast majority of the DVNF’s $31 million in expenses, it has to cover the $23 million that they are paying to three independent contractors: Innovairre, Veradata, and PEP response systems (the first and last of which share a listed address in New Hampshire). The roots of this arrangement go down to the DVNF’s founding in 2005 as an experiment in fundraising for a small regional conference of the National Association of State Women Veterans Coordinators. According to Mother Jones, the founders brought on an advisor — a retired Marine officer named Larry Rivers with a “wealth of contacts within the veterans charity movement.” Rivers put the DVNF in touch with Brick Mill Studios, a subsidiary of a larger company named Quadriga Art, which Rivers had worked with as a paid sales agent. Rivers then pitched the DVNF founders a nationwide mail campaign to raise funds. Despite only aiming to gather about $50,000, the campaign brought in over $10 million and cost $15.6 million within a year; Rivers skimmed millions in commission on the arrangement. His daughter, Raegan, was then made Chief Administrative Officer of the DVNF in a non-competitive search process — which, predictably, led to a continuing engagement with Quadriga and a direct-mail budget that persisted in dwarfing all other expenses. A core part of the strategy that has drained the foundation’s coffers is sending out gifts like tote bags, calculators, and, yes, shirts to potential donors. I found a blog post comparing the gifts sent by various veteran’s charities, which rated the foundation’s package as the most extensive (it also includes a picture of the shirt, confirming that they are, in fact, sent out to solicit donations). With tens of millions pouring into these marketing campaigns, the number of shirts that they send out seems more explicable. Along with the merch, potential donors often receive pamphlets detailing heartbreaking stories of veterans, who supposedly stand to benefit from funds flowing through the charity’s coffers. Their website has a page dedicated to testimonials, usually with photos and quotes. But not only are donations mostly going towards marketing, the DVNF has at least once been found to have invented a testimonial out of whole cloth. Until 2014, mailers included pictures of “Arnie,” a homeless vet who “suffered severe brain and leg injuries” in an attack on his vehicle. The Foundation told donors that they were trying to get him into a hospital, and that “Another urgently important gift of $10…$15…or $20 today can lay that blanket of security and concern over a hero like Arnie.” The campaign was put to a stop when the New York Attorney General found that Arnie had been completely made up. After the exposure of the Arnie campaign, Quadriga and its affiliates agreed to pay $25 million as a settlement — including $10 million in damages to programs for disabled veterans and $13.8 million in debt forgiveness to the DVNF. Quadriga was then reorganized under the name Inovairre. Despite being ordered to make several changes, including “ensuring that start-up charities and Quadriga entities have separate legal counsel, disclosing potential conflicts of interest, performing due diligence to be sure that fundraising appeals are accurate, and providing charities with more information about projected costs and revenue of fundraising campaigns,” marketing from Quadriga/Inovairre still makes up the bulk of the DVNF’s expenditures. From the other end, I did see that some of the organization’s disbursements to veterans’ centers across the country were in the form of goods, including men’s shirts. I couldn’t find any information on the specific garments that were donated, but it would make sense if some of the same shirts were donated in bulk to other veteran support groups, and those organizations then sent them to thrift stores when they had nothing else to do with them. Still, the size of their in-kind donations seems to be rather small. As mentioned before, their website lists a meager 4,000 comfort kits donated in 2023. Per the Mother Jones report, most of the in-kind donations were things like coconut M&Ms, which were rarely useful to the recipient organizations. It seems clear that the vast majority of the shirts are sent out through marketing efforts, rather than as donations from the DVNF itself. So, there we have it: these shirts are sent out by a shady veterans’ charity as part of their absurdly bloated direct marketing campaigns in order to guilt donors from other charities into donating. They’re then sent off, never worn, to thrift stores, where they sit on the racks, piling up as more come in. It’s a perfect example of the way that cheap manufacturing can drive clothing waste, and of the insidious ways in which charities can use guilt and patriotism to cover up shady practices. And we can expect to continue seeing them until they stop bringing in funds. 🌀 The Disabled Veterans National Foundation (DVNF) did not respond to requests for comment. Zakir Jamal is a writer based in Montreal.

Savannah and Maren met over Slack to talk about what it might mean for fashion. Savannah Eden Bradley, Editor-in-Chief: Maren, you beautiful genius, hello. This is our first time doing, like, a back-and-forth Slack convo as reported to HALOSCOPE which is very very fun. I’d love to know how you’re feeling re: the TikTok ban (if it happens or not!) right now. Maren Beverly, Fashion Writer: Hello 🌸🌸. Ok, so full disclosure: I’ve had TikTok deleted since December-ish — and I haven’t really missed it. Alternatively, I’ve spent a good amount of time on Reels, which feels content-wise less engaging, which was kinda the point for me — to feel like my brain was less dominated by TikTok speak and the fast cycle of trends. BUT, as a fashion/beauty world follower, I’m really interested to see how brands would transform in a TikTok-free world now — it’s how so many brands have pivoted and made themselves “cooler,” or at least gotten themselves in front of Gen Z eyes. People used to pick up a print magazine for fashion news, but now it happens so quickly on TikTok. It all feels faster and cheaper. SEB: I’m the same way. I get on TikTok for maybe five minutes once every other day and it’s just for saving recipes, or, like, trying to figure out how to use my Dyson blow dryer. I’ve posted a little here and there but there’s nothing about it that really pulls me. We’ve actually neglected building up HALOSCOPE on TikTok because that environment — fast speak, bad facts — doesn’t necessarily translate to what we’re doing. Like you said, so many brands have pivoted, now — Burberry, Loewe, Jacquemus — and have gone all-in on TikTok strategy. Reels, to me, has never really pulled me, either, because I’m not spending that much time on my Explore page. But they do well. I imagine that the brands that found success on Reels first and TikTok second (like Mirror Palais) are going to be fine. MB: Right, the form doesn’t really allow you to “hold something in your hands” for a moment and really learn, observe, or just explore interests, which I feel like lots of people in the editorial world are lacking and craving. I just wonder where trends will spring up from now, and maybe a reset is needed. Would everyone be wearing red tights and silver flats right now without the platform? I want more people to buy what they like to buy because they like it, not because a niche micro influencer posted about a product. 🕯️🤌🏻🍸 SEB: Daisy Alioto over at Dirt did a great slide deck about “Artist as Media Company,” where she talked about Web3 optimizing for taste instead of scale, which I think speaks so well to what so many people — especially people our age, who can’t remember a pre-social media Internet — are craving. And for all of TikTok’s flaws (and broadly impersonal quality) it has arguably the best taste algorithm out there, which is why it’s so easy to a) develop a more refined taste palette and b) discover new trends. So I think, like you said, the big question for fashion re: the TikTok ban is how trends are going to move forward, now. Nobody’s on Instagram anymore, really. It’s all migrated to TikTok. And yes! Nobody would be wearing red tights! We’d all be dressing in H&M basics like it’s 2019 again. SEB: IIRC you said earlier that “Everyone should be reading more” which, YES! I think that’s why fashion Substacks are so popular right now, especially Emilia Petrarca’s SHOP RAT where she trendspots IRL and patently doesn’t engage with online trends. It’s such a breath of fresh air to see people talking about fashion in real life again. MB: LOVE Substack for fashion news and commentary, there’s been such a migration towards the platform and the elevation of the writer’s voice. SEB: People have spoken about TikTok being a balm for personal style and individuality, because you see so many people wearing truly one-of-a-kind fits, but then you remember the days of Man Repeller and the blogging era and Style Rookie and all of that. Weirdo clothing has always existed, it’s just that 2010-2019 was a very ""monoculture"" decade where social media (and online shopping) replaced a lot of what was unique. It’s easy to think that it was always that way, but it really wasn’t. TikTok OOTDs are no different than what you can find in Vogue Street Style archives. MB: Ugh I miss Man Repeller. SEB: It crashed and burned so crazily but it had a very precise vision! MB: I also just question the need for everyone to document their “cool, unique” personal style. I’m kind into the idea of someone being a cool dresser and not feeling the need to share it with an algorithm. SEB: Yep, exactly. The peril of TikTok is that it suggests that anyone can be an influencer — which on paper seems like a diplomatic idea but is extremely, extremely bad. I say this as someone whose livelihood partially depends on existing online. When you start moving and thinking and posting like a “content creator,” with everything potentially monetized or scrutinized, you take fewer chances and you become less of an authentic human being existing online. It’s corny, but it’s true. And the TikTok infrastructure is basically built for you to acquiesce to that. If you’re posting every single fit on TikTok, is it always honest? SEB: But ultimately, too, I guess the bigger question is if TikTok’s ban will set a dangerous precedent even outside of fashion. It’s very easy to be all “SOCIAL MEDIA BAD!” but it’s a part of our lives. I’m not a jurisprudence expert so I won’t pretend to be one, but when you have the power to cut off one source, you have the power to cut off many more. I don’t even want TikTok gone! I just want it to be better. And I especially want more people to recognize that good judgment is an affordable luxury. You can decide what trends to follow or to forget, who to listen to, who decides, why you should care, and, most of all, how much you engage with it all. You can log off and engage with IRL fashion anytime you want (and, well, you should). But the important thing is that you can. It’s about having that choice. MB: Everyone is living in a Truman Show of their own making through TikTok!! Maybe I just want fashion to care less about TikTok and find more creative, tangible, in-person, living breathing ways to engage us all. SEB: Agreed agreed agreed. MB: And don’t get me wrong, TikTok is a great way to make fashion accessible to all, and to hear from voices that haven’t been deified by the industry. Like, it’s cool that everyone can be a critic and show off their style, from anywhere, not just from the offices of Vogue. I just hope the interest on TikTok can spill out into other areas of engagement. SEB: 100%. If TikTok goes away, it might spur people to build new things (bring back blogs!) instead of letting individual platforms dictate how they engage, shop, dress, think, feel. Maybe we’ve got to rip the Band-Aid off. 🌀 Maren Beverly works in the beauty industry in NYC and loves to spend her free time reading, writing (for HS!), vintage shopping, and seeking out cool cocktail bars in Brooklyn. Savannah Eden Bradley is a writer, fashion editor, gallerina, Gnostic scholar, reformed It Girl, and future beautiful ghost from the Carolina coast. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the fashion magazine HALOSCOPE. You can stalk her everywhere online @savbrads.

What does Gisele Bündchen’s return to the spotlight mean for the industry? Gisele Bündchen was first discovered in a Brazilian mall in 1994 at just 14 years old. Since then, she has become one of the most recognizable faces in the fashion industry. Often remembered for opening up a new era of bombshell beauties in the middle of the infamous heroin chic period, Bündchen popularized the horse walk — a potent and firm movement on the runway. From her famous tears on Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 1998 runway (titled "Golden Shower”) to winning Model of the Year at the VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards at the age of 19, Bündchen has appeared on countless runways across the past 20 years — and is the record holder for most Vogue covers in the history of the editorial world. With numerous brand contracts, Bündchen became one of the original faces of Victoria's Secret Angels, alongside Adriana Lima, Heidi Klum, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Tyra Banks. From the original Supermodels — such as Naomi, Christy, Linda, and Cindy — to the glamorous Angels, these two groups were the first generation to redefine whole brand identities through their individual beauty, and now face the challenge of aging. One could argue that many of the opportunities available to them now are campaigns and projects that nostalgically look back to the past. Are older models trapped in a box in which viewers see them through the lenses of the past rather than the future? Despite those tough questions, models like Bündchen have had tremendous power and impact, and now have to navigate a changing industry with aplomb. One could remember the 2006 Victoria’s Secret show as if it were today — with the sound of “SexyBack” blaring across the loudspeakers to boot. Here was a fierce-eyed Bündchen walking past Justin Timberlake, while she wore sparkly white lingerie and yellow feathery wings. Not only had Bündchen already worn what was then the most expensive lingerie ever created — a $15 million diamond and ruby-encrusted "Fantasy Bra" at the 2000 fashion show — but she was also carving out space for herself outside of the Victoria’s Secret brand. Most notably, Bündchen became John Galliano's muse for his infamously sensual (and provocative) 2000s Dior campaigns. From Versace Haute Couture Fall/Winter 1999 to Dior Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2008, the Brazilian supermodel established herself as one of the highest-earning models in the world between 2002 and 2016, according to Forbes. To this day, she consistently appears on their list of highest-paid stars. Although she formally retired from the runway in 2015, with a final walk at São Paulo Fashion Week, the supermodel's trajectory is far from over — she continues to delight fashionistas with her presence in magazines and campaigns. Despite being two months into 2024, Bündchen has already been named the face of various campaigns — including for brands such as Balmain, Frame, Hugo Boss, and Alaïa. In Balmain’s "An Ode to Love, an Ode to Icons" Spring 2024 campaign, photographed by Rafael Pavarotti, the model poses in Olivier Rousteing's shimmering, vibrant, floral, and delicate looks from the SS24 Ready-to-Wear collection. Bündchen introduces the Jolie Madame bag — Rousteing's latest creation named after the house's iconic eponymous silhouette, which also pays homage to Monsieur Balmain's daring post-war designs. As Vogue Brasil reported, Rousteing and Pavarotti found inspiration for the photoshoot in Pierre Balmain's gardens. For the duo, these images embody the brand’s timeless notion of heritage, femininity, and elegance. Thus, Bündchen's casting is as well thought-out as their inspirations. “Gisele is more than a model,” stated Rousteing for Harper's Bazaar in February 2024. “She doesn’t take a job just for a job. Every minute of her life is about getting inspired and elevating herself and her soul.” "I've been obsessed with her since I was a teenager, mostly because of her incredible personality," he continued. Her Bündchen’s personality — and will-try-anything-once ethos — seems to be a decisive criterion in assigning her to a project. She's the one who says yes to posing in a swimsuit when it's freezing. She's the one who says yes to the out-of-body experience of representing her country at the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics in 2016, walking 125 meters in a long-tail dress by Brazilian designer Alexandre Herchcovitch. That courage was no different at Balmain. With less glitz and vivid hues from Balmain's blooming paradise, Bündchen also stars in Frame's Spring 2024 campaign, photographed by Erik Torstensson in a classic yet contemporary wardrobe. The model wears some of the label's new looks, including perennial blue jeans and an ultra-’80s oversized blazer. Bündchen as a minimalist icon goes beyond Frame. “Instantly recognizable. This BOSS unlocked her power to pave her way to the top. Now, she's gone full circle. Can you guess when she first walked our runway?” writes Boss in the caption of a reel featuring the not-so-mysterious model. Bündchen, alongside Matteo Berrettini, Adwoa Aboah, and Lee Min Ho, poses for the label's Spring/Summer 2024 "Be Your Own Boss" campaign in soft tones and light textures for an ageless feel. The model wears minimalistic ensembles — such as an oversized sleeveless jacket in stretch wool, a one-shoulder blouse with fringed scarf detailing, and straight-lined black pants. There is no other way to say it: she's a boss. Aside from being the boss — and one of the most famous models of all time — Bündchen has done it all as a businesswoman, writer, philanthropist, environmental activist, mother, and Alaïa icon. “To me, she is the Alaïa woman," says Pieter Mulier to WWD. "Her connection to the house is so intimate. Wearing Alaïa is natural for her." With sharp attention and a unique sense of the brand's ethos, Mulier keeps its sophisticated and exotic appeal while carrying on the work of the legendary Tunisian couturier Azzedine Alaïa. The creative director also succeeds in preserving Azzedine's muses. "I fell in love with Azzedine. I’d fly across the world to do his show," Bündchen shared in ELLE's January 2003 issue, wearing an elaborate yet fluid gown while honoring Mr. Alaïa. For the Winter/Spring 2024 campaign, first, Maison Alaïa just shared a sneak peek of some fittings with the model on their Instagram. At Riverset Studios, under the lens of Tyrone Lebon, Gisele Bündchen combines empowered beauty and sensuality in a fresh and sunny atmosphere. Her looks vary from a red-coated flared skirt — worn as a strapless dress — to a structured and cinched leather coat; a white blouse with a latex pencil skirt; a pink flared dress; and a black slip-striped long gown. In some shots, she sports calfskin Shark pumps, a white goatskin Le Teckel bag, and even the brand’s iconic ballet flats in fishnet textures, inspired by classic Japanese shoes.  No matter the outfit, the accessory, or the footwear, according to Mulier’s notes, “She becomes the incarnation of the Alaïa woman.” Reflections regarding the significance of her return emerge in one’s mind. Why is there so much interest in Bündchen's reappearance? Naturally, she's one of the most iconic models of all time — the pioneer of the horse catwalk, the inspiration for the term "bombshell" and the expression "über-model" — one could only thrive with her appearance. But there are attractive motives beyond those. With an early entry into the industry, Bündchen has had to deal with many uncomfortable situations where she had to expose herself and sacrifice her autonomy (including at the aforementioned McQueen show). Now, at the top of the industry — and as a mother of three —  Bündchen is rebuilding her career on her own terms without abdicating her priorities. Now, the Brazilian model values a different lifestyle that made her reshape her professional life. Instead of looking back over her former career or engaging in nostalgia, Bündchen has her eyes on the future, pushing boundaries of what an older model can do in the process. She is no longer suffering through chaotic fashion months or living tirelessly for her job. The model is simply doing what she wants, when she wants, and how she wants — and looks cool doing it. Following her divorce from Tom Brady, Bündchen transitioned to a new type of professional motherhood, leading to the launch of these reflexive campaigns. But popular reaction to Bündchen’s return has less to do with her marriage, nostalgia, or private choices. After all, the model continued to participate in campaigns during her years off the runway — be it for Colcci, Arezzo, Victoria's Secret, or Louis Vuitton. Rather, the reaction, here, is about how Bündchen is carving out new space for “legacy” models, and how much that matters — especially given the prison that society has become for women and how those constraints affect our understandings of  beauty and fashion. In an era when young girls are already preoccupied with skincare and makeup like never before, and women in their 20s getting fillers and Botox to avoid wrinkles, Bündchen’s Renaissance is a reminder that we are the energy we emulate — and not our bodies. Nor relationships or rumors. Most of all, her return  serves as a poignant note that no matter time, history, or appearance, true icons are eternal, and they can set their own standards. Bündchen has demonstrated for over 30 years that the fashion world is hers. As one of the most successful and influential supermodels of all time, her impact is unquestionable and solidifies her status as an eternal fashion icon. Will she return to the runway? Only time will tell. 🌀 Ana Reitz is a Brazilian fashion writer who breathes fashion. As a Latin American fashionista, she values a diverse and inclusive fashion landscape and aims to make a difference in the complex yet beautiful industry that surrounds her. She writes anything fashion-related for her own Substack For Fashion’s Sake.

It’s simple: we’re becoming the men we wanted. Lately, I’ve had a fondness for loafers and a keen eye for lost causes. I know veering from heels toward flats isn’t profound. Neither is the perennial urge to swear off men (more on that later). It’s worth noting, though, how women’s fashion has changed considerably over the past 40 years. The 1990s in particular heralded a major turning point in the industry, shedding the pomp and froufrou of the ’80s to reveal a sleeker, more minimalistic look canonized by fashion icons like Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. Though trends ebb and flow, changes in the tides of fashion have often reflected the sociocultural and political climate of the era. The evolution of women’s fashion is on my mind because of another remarkable shift I’ve been witnessing post-pandemic. I can’t help but notice how the garb of this current fashion epoch is riding the coattails of fourth-wave feminism. In a turbulent world where more and more women are electing to delay marriage and childrearing — with many more choosing the single, child-free life — changes in women’s fashion have followed suit, especially in the form of menswear-inspired styles engulfing the market. We’ve banished the chevron peplum tops, skin-tight jeggings, and loud geometric jewelry that practically defined the 2010s. The end of an era, thank goodness. Now, we don oversized blazers (like this one famously worn by Lady Di), crisp Oxford shirts à la Bessette-Kennedy, understated jewelry, and sleek leather footwear. It’s no surprise we turn to the past for menswear inspiration. The late '90s was an era of tremendous social upheaval that fueled a hunger for personality; Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy were iconic because their celebrity and street style made closet basics look elevated, accessible, and more importantly, so damn good. Modern silhouettes and textures inspired by these women serve as a timely reminder that some things just never go out of style. Major retailers like Everlane, Madewell, and Banana Republic are just a few brands that have embraced, updated, and perfected this look, curating ultra-polished style edits with pieces like ’80s inspired blazers and wide-legged trousers. Much of today’s androgynous clothing is a modern take on closet staples that have been around for ages, at least for men. Women began experimenting with more masculine styles during the Victorian era, with the introduction of bloomers in the mid-19th century. Pantaloon-like garb subsequently became a statement of defiance among early women’s rights activists like Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These acts weren’t greeted with impunity. Abolitionist and Civil War surgeon Mary Edwards Walker endured multiple arrests between 1866 and 1913 for dressing like a man (here she is decked out in what appears to be a three-piece suit.) Trousers became more acceptable during World War I as women began entering the workforce, though this was a matter of practicality rather than social progress. Not until the Interwar Period did slacks really make a breakthrough, thanks to celebrities like Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, who were frequently photographed in menswear. But these styles weren’t considered truly fashionable until after World War II, when for the first time we witnessed the mass production and availability of tailored pants, crisp shirts, and other traditionally masculine attire on the market for women. Superficially, the trend of menswear-inspired pieces like tailored button-downs and quarter zips that drape just-so is a great thing. I favor a more androgynous aesthetic, with my feathered shag haircut and boyish figure. There’s a casual elegance to the menswear look that oozes sophistication and a je ne sais quoi appeal. There’s a stylistic savviness, too. Pieces like structured shirts and high-waisted trousers will always be utilitarian in their timelessness, comfort, and customizability. The right pairings can be professional or informal, befitting the office or a casual lunch. The proliferation of menswear for women holds symbolic significance as well. The androgyny and clean lines of contemporary women’s fashions embody many of the feminist values of our time like independence and assertiveness — just as the sleeker postwar looks foreshadowed the rise of the women’s liberation movement two decades later. These styles are also the sartorial reflection of qualities we have been socialized to associate with masculinity: self-assurance, steadfastness, strength of character. They are, in both aesthetic and essence, antithetical to the inconsistent, unreliable suitors flitting in and out of our lives at their whimsy. Just ask any woman in the trenches — I mean, on the market. Most would say the dating pool more closely resembles a bog, with its waters muddied by irreverent, poorly-dressed, under-educated, and flighty characters. From what I'm told, your average date has all the intent and vitality of a pair of polyblend pants plucked off the clearance rack at Zara. But hey, at least the pants won’t stow away in other people’s dressers behind your back. And they’ll definitely last longer than he will. Choosing a romantic companion is as much of an investment as a high-quality coat. Over time, the coat will reveal flaws — maybe a loose stitch or a minor stain — but it’s nothing a lint brush and a quick trip to the dry cleaners couldn’t fix. It’ll still keep you warm. The shortcomings of boyfriends and husbands are much less predictable and much more damaging. No wonder so many of us are opting for solitude — and what an auspicious time it is to be alone. Even with reproductive rights under virtual siege, women enjoy more freedoms now than at virtually any other point in history. We’re among the most educated members of society and make up a significant part of the workforce. We own credit cards and property and businesses. We’re free to do what we like, say what we like, and wear what we like. But the price of freedom has been costly. Independence and disinterest in being cared for are not the same thing, yet the two have somehow grown to conflate. We don’t need men to hold open doors for us, so they don’t. We can buy ourselves flowers, so they don’t. We look after ourselves, so they don’t. The irony is, for all our autonomy, it can often feel like we’re in perpetual servitude to the male ego — as if it’s a repository in constant pursuit of physical and mental fulfillment without any genuine reciprocity of those efforts — only to be discarded when our emotional coffers inevitably run dry. Transaction complete. Thankfully, we can choose different men and different clothes. Wearing pants is certainly not a political statement anymore; when we shrug into a blazer or slip on a pair of brogues, we aren’t giving the finger to the establishment. But these clothes are an expression of something that transcends daily routine: they’re a sartorial suit of armor that lends us the security and resolve of which so many of us have been deprived, redefining masculinity and its ideals with a stylish fervor in the process. It’s simple. We’re becoming the men we wanted. The menswear-inspired style of dress is almost a form of escapism. Clad in a waistcoat or tapered trousers, you don’t have to be you. Well, you’re still you; but you could be the premium, ad-free, 4K restoration version. You could be a clean-cut hedge fund manager (if you’d gone to business school), or the aristocratic heir to a sprawling estate (if you’d come from nobility). It’s a charming fantasy borne of a reality where so much online chatter is focused on becoming our best selves; self-improvement seems to be the rallying cry for influencers, the girlbosses, the ones with the “5 to 9 before my 9 to 5” routines. Never mind that this kind of do-and-be-better content for male audiences is manifestly absent. But I digress. As we approach the halfway mark of the 2020s, I wonder how women’s fashion and sense of identity will evolve over the next decade. Which trends and feminist ideas will endure while others fade into memory? Only time will tell. Until then, I hope he texts you back. 🌀 Neha Ogale is a twenty-something freelance writer, recovering coat hoarder, and indie film enthusiast based in NYC. You can find her on Twitter @urbangremlin.

And we talked to Frances Solá-Santiago about how it came to be. THE LITTLE BOOK OF… series is very near and dear to my heart. Published by Welbeck (now Hachette), these mini-histories on brands like Gucci, Givenchy, Prada, Dior, and even Vivienne Westwood are not only incredibly well-researched but are subtly bridging the fashion education gap. (This reads like PR fluff, but it’s true — I’ve read the Prada book at least thrice). Released earlier this month, Frances Solá-Santiago’s THE LITTLE BOOK OF BOTTEGA VENETA joined the series — and thank god it did. Bottega Veneta has always been somewhat of a dark horse against the larger houses, due to its slick edge, love of aesthetic transmutation, and deeply Italian sense of style and substance. To this day, the brand is one of the few labels that innovates and surprises with consistency and without pretense — and has some of the best marketing in the world. For HALOSCOPE, we sat down with the NYC-based Solá-Santiago and asked her about how the Little Book came to be. SEB: I’m curious about the genesis of the book — as well as your personal genesis as a writer. Take me to the beginning. FSS: For me, it all started with The Hills on MTV. I’m from Puerto Rico, where fashion is not much of an industry, so I had no idea that I could make a career in this industry until I watched Lauren Conrad in her internship at Teen Vogue. That was my entry into fashion, and although I first wanted to become a designer, I eventually settled for fashion journalism. I went to school for journalism in Puerto Rico and later moved to New York to do my master’s degree at the City University of New York, where I focused on fashion reporting. The path to the book and my current job is a bit complicated — I’ve worked in everything from video to content marketing to pay the bills, while focusing on getting freelance assignments in fashion on the side. I landed my job in 2021, which was a dream role for me. I was actually commissioned the book by Welbeck Publishing, since it’s part of their Little Book series. I truly thought it was a scam when I first saw the email, but it thankfully was a great surprise. I chose to write one on Bottega Veneta because it’s one of the most impactful luxury brands today, yet there isn’t much written about the history of the brand. I saw it as a good opportunity to dive into its heritage and highlight what makes it such a relevant brand today. SEB: What draws you to Bottega Veneta as a brand? FSS: I think Bottega Veneta is one of the few luxury brands that can really hold craftsmanship as one of its main pillars. Every creative director has really made that the core of the brand, even if they’ve expanded into other categories beyond leather goods. I’m also really drawn to the idea of having no logos, but letting your signature weave speak for itself. It’s something that each creative director has reinterpreted for themselves and I’m so eager to see how it evolves. SEB: With [evolving] in mind — Bottega Veneta has become a dominant cultural force and has radically shaped the luxury landscape across the past few years, consistently topping the LYST Index since 2019. What do you attribute that massive sea change to? FSS: Daniel Lee’s tenure was absolutely pivotal to this. His ability to grasp internet culture and the fashion industry at the same time really made the brand a must-have. For years, Bottega Veneta was known as a stealth-wealth brand (not in a TikTok-quiet luxury way, though), and that came with an almost unapproachable aura. Tomas Maier, who helped the brand until 2018, was not really interested in creating “It” bags or more culturally relevant moments — so when Lee stepped in with a different approach, that really changed the narrative for the brand. SEB: Speaking of narratives…  the Jodi bag has quickly become synonymous with the brand itself, under the creative direction of former CD Daniel Lee. You mention that part of the selling point is the bag’s youthful spirit. In your opinion, do you see that spirit across the rest of the Bottega Veneta brand? FSS: It’s interesting because so much of youth culture today is consumed through social media, and Lee took Bottega Veneta off of Instagram and other platforms. Yet, it’s impossible to scroll social media without seeing Bottega Veneta. I think that’s a unique dichotomy that really helped Bottega Veneta because, even though they kept releasing campaigns, people mostly consumed their products through other peers. And that made the brand much more approachable and desirable to a younger demographic. SEB: What was the most surprising, shocking, or interesting thing you learned while doing your research? FSS: One of my favorite facts about Bottega Veneta is that Giles Deacon was the creative director for a hot minute. The brand really wanted to get with the Y2K phenomenon in the early 2000s, so Deacon tried to make it very colorful and full of logos. Needless to say, it didn’t work. But those collections are so interesting to see as part of the brand’s archive. I wonder if anyone will ever tap into them again. SEB: I love that you talk about BV’s approach to color-as-branding in this book. Could you elaborate a little more on how Bottega green has taken over our feeds, closets, and lives? FSS: The way that Bottega Veneta creative directors have long reimagined logos is fascinating. And Bottega green is a great example of that. Lee used this hue in clothing and accessories, but also in the brand’s shopping bags and other promotional materials. It became the de facto logo because it was such a unique shade of green. Some of Bottega Veneta’s early work had this shade of green, so it was interesting to see Lee referencing the brand’s archive and making it his own. SEB: What do you hope readers take away from this book — especially devoted fashion acolytes? FSS: So much of what we know about Bottega Veneta today is through the lens of Lee and Matthieu Blazy’s tenures. But this era is literally a quarter of the book. I want them to look back to the work of people like Edward Buchanan, Giles Deacon, and Tomas Maier, and to learn about the brand’s deep history of craftsmanship. SEB: And last, but certainly not least: do you have a favorite Bottega Veneta piece or collection? FSS: Oh, this is hard. But I think it’s the intrecciato knee-high boots that were first created in the ‘60s and Matthieu Blazy has reincorporated into the brand. They are just such a showstopping piece. 🌀 You can purchase The Little Book of Bottega Veneta here. Savannah Eden Bradley is a writer, fashion editor, gallerina, Gnostic scholar, reformed It Girl, and future beautiful ghost from the Carolina coast. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the fashion magazine HALOSCOPE. You can stalk her everywhere online @savbrads.

A peek inside the wild and wonderful world of hats. For centuries, a good hat was a fixture in every wardrobe. Whether it be a cotton coif, a beaver felt hat, or a molded wool fedora — people wore hats all the time. Have to run to the store real quick? Throw on a hat. Going over to your friend’s house? Better take your hat. Leaving your home for literally any reason at all? Don’t even DREAM of forgetting your hat! But these days, walking outside in a fabulous little cap earns you a one-way ticket to Clown Town. A hat is considered trying too hard — it’s too over-the-top, too goofy. Once a proud staple of the standard wardrobe, they’re now relegated to the most dedicated fashion lovers among us. Don’t you know? We’re all about comfort and ease now. We’re Clean Girls with chocolate syrup hair who won’t disrupt your visual landscape too much while walking by — and a Jean Paul Gaultier SS98 red beaded ship hat doesn’t exactly scream “blending in.” In 2022, The Gentleman’s Gazette published an inquiry into why no one wears hats anymore. Writer Preston Schlueter came to four main conclusions: CLIMATE CONTROL Most places these days have air conditioning. So, while you’re getting dressed in the morning, you’re not really anticipating being out in the elements for too long. Schlueter explains that you’re really just “leaving your heated office for 20 seconds to get into your heated car, which you’ll [...] then leave for another 10 seconds to enter your heated house” — no need to bundle up in your Ötzi bear fur hat. CHANGING NOTIONS OF SOCIAL CLASS Have we beaten the “quiet luxury” buzzword into the ground yet? Either way, the truth remains, most rich people prefer to wear a regular-degular grey t-shirt (that just so happens to be a $300 special-order from Italy) over the classic robe à la française. PREVALENCE OF AUTOMOBILES Can you imagine wearing a tall, plumed Victorian hat while crammed into a Nissan Altima? MEMELORDS The “Tips Fedora” meme of the late 2010s decimated the possibility of men’s hats being cool again. Even as a noted #Lover of Fashion, I can’t look at a fedora without thinking about “M’lady.” It does, admittedly, harsh the hat-wearing vibe. Despite the waning popularity of hats in the general public since the 1960s, we’ve had some incredible millineric contributions in the high fashion space over the last couple of decades. Stephen Jones is one of the most famous milliners (that means “hat makers”) in fashion history. In the late ‘70s, he entered the scene as a flamboyant club kid studying at Central Saint Martins. Following his graduation, he opened a glamorous hat shop in London which captured the attention of celebrities like Boy George and Princess Diana — that then catapulted him into the public eye. But it’s his decades-long collaboration with John Galliano that has produced some of the finest hats the world has ever seen. Specifically, his work in the John Galliano Fall 2007 Ready to Wear Collection is of note. It’s a master class in “fine hattery.” Vibrant birdcage cloches and haunting chiffon veils — his designs are so inventive and bold. They harken back to an older sense of design and theatricality without being kitschy or costumey. You really can’t ask for a better fashion fantasy. Stephen Jones still maintains a cadence of regular work today — having just made a couple of hats for Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour — and his influence continues to ripple throughout the fashion space. Former employees of Jones, Adele Mildred and Gabrielle Djanogly, founded HOOD London in 2015 and have been responsible for some pretty big hat moments in recent years. We have HL to thank for the lovely headwear in Richard Quinn’s AW22 and SS23 collections (especially this look on Linda Evangelista for Vogue!), this hood worn by Barry Keoghan in his recent photoshoot for W Magazine, and So. Many. Incredible Dita Von Teese pieces. I had long been a follower of Adele Mildred — after discovering the bridal headdress she created for her 2013 nuptials, I knew she was a gothic glamour girl after my own heart. HOOD London’s designs are often a little bit darker and Old Hollywood inspired. In their stock, you’ll find little hoods that hover somewhere between “haunted medieval baby” and “Anita Ekberg’s devil costume.” They’re fabulous. I often find myself gravitating towards designs that are darker in nature. I love a moody fantasy. One of the most famous moody fantasies is Alexander McQueen’s “Dante” show for Fall/Winter 1996 RTW.  The hats and headwear in the show included hoods and horns and feather nooses — all designed by Philip Treacy. Philip Treacy is a milliner that has long been a high fashion darling. Before he had even graduated London’s Royal College of Art in 1990, he got a job working under the aforementioned Stephen Jones (remember what I said about Jones’ influence making waves in the fashion industry? I wasn’t joking. That guy was a big deal). His career has spanned decades and his work in hat-making has evolved through different styles and genres of interest over the years. My favorite Treacy pieces are his hats inspired by nature — what can I say? The man knows how to make a bug in the hair look chic. All this to say… There are some cool hats out there. We only need the gumption to wear them. For the past year and a half, I have been tip-toeing into the world of wearing hats. I have successfully worn a hat outside of the house only one (1) time – and that was for my engagement pictures. Even then, I took the hat off after we left the photographer’s studio to go to lunch. I felt like wearing a fluffy fur stole and a nearly see-through nightgown in a small diner was attention-seeking enough — I didn’t need to jump the shark by adding a hat. That’s the trouble with maintaining a sense of bold style in a world that prioritizes sameness. It takes a good deal of bravery to stand out like that — a bravery I often don’t have. Which is funny coming from a person who owns a closet of exclusively “weird clothes.” Sure, I’ll wear a sheer lace dress to the grocery store, but I draw the line at a sun hat. An important thing for all of us to remember is: not all staring is bad. Sometimes, people are just thinking: “Damn, that hat looks cool.” 🌀 Kaitlin Owens is a vintage fashion writer, movie buff, lover of good eats, and a women’s size 7.5 (if any shoe brands are reading). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Dilettante Magazine. You can find her on socials @magdilettante.

The late designer, who served as Givenchy’s Creative Director from 1996 to 2001, has been one of the most contentious appointments in design history. The expressive styling duo of Law Roach and Zendaya struck once more on the Dune: Part Two press tour, with the actress donning a circuit-board suit from Givenchy’s FW99 Ready-to-Wear collection — one week after another remarkable Thierry Mugler FW95 Couture archival pull. As Zendaya, as always, commanded exalting attention, fashion historians' mouths hung agape — for this was no usual Givenchy artifact. This was Givenchy designed by Alexander McQueen; considered by many to be the most complex and contentious pairing fashion has ever witnessed. Already generating controversy with his nonconformist works, of which he had created just eight, 27-year-old Lee Alexander McQueen took on the prestigious position of artistic director at Givenchy on October 15th, 1996. He had finished design school a mere four years prior. During his tenure, McQueen would produce 18 collections for Givenchy, meanwhile balancing his namesake label which he had founded in 1992. What would this defiant architect, bursting with vigour, bring to a luxury fashion house established with naught gimmick and endless class? In his own words, given to Hilary Alexander of The Daily Telegraph soon after his appointment: “I may be quite mad on the public circuit, but I’ve got my head screwed on — tight with a wrench.” The impending four and a half years would prove arduous. In many ways, the fleeting occupancy of the house by John Galliano ahead of McQueen should have acted as a slight buffer. After all, Galliano had initiated a more exuberant energy at the house — as he would go on to show at Dior and Maison Margiela. His scintillating, theatrical creations were far larger than anything beheld at Givenchy previously. When Galliano chose to break the mold introduced by Hubert, audiences cheered. When McQueen chose to do the same, audiences jeered. Inspired by the mythological legend of Jason and the Argonauts’ quest for the Golden Fleece, McQueen’s primary presentation (SS97 Haute Couture) signalled a fresh journey — one which endeavoured to honour Givenchy as well as invite in a contemporary mode of storytelling. Saturated in white and gold with distinct ancient Greek motifs, the show accented McQueen’s impeccable tailoring talent and enchantment with birds of prey. The reception to this newfangled creative was far from encouraging — to put it lightly. The ladies of the couture sorority were “taken aback, it seemed, by the sheer excess of youthful vitality and confusion parading before them in outrageous clothing. The distinctly now was clearly passing them by,” as noted by Hilton Als in The New Yorker. McQueen would pragmatically reply, “I’m not Givenchy. I’m Alexander McQueen.” If he could direct garment stories inspired by elegant mythology, McQueen could equally master the sensual art of seduction, proposing tight-fitting leather pantsuits, leopard-print skirts with alluring thigh-slits,  and suggestive strapless dresses for his sophomore outing — FW97 Ready-to-Wear. “He is also committed to creativity 120 percent. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here,” McQueen declared of LVMH’s Bernard Arnault at the dawn of his residency. How far would that willingness for creativity stretch? McQueen would not be afraid to test, and push, the boundaries. Strongly influenced by restrictive Victorian silhouettes, and a continual adoration of Scottish tartan, McQueen’s work for FW97 Haute Couture could easily be mistaken for works constructed for his own label. None of the restraint and delicacy of Givenchy was evident. McQueen had been handed more money than he could dream of to create to his heart's content — is it any wonder, therefore, that Hubert de Givenchy’s DNA dissipated in one fell swoop? Collections inspired by Dolly Parton (with many rhinestones), Japanese Art Deco (with intricate embroidery), Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner (which he closed wearing opaque metallic contact lenses) and Anastasia Romanov (who, in this imagination, escaped to the Amazonian jungle after her family’s downfall) ensued. It was for SS99 Ready-to-Wear that McQueen, who had allowed his ungovernable artistic licence to take glorious control, attempted commercial simplicity. Inspired by smokey jazz clubs, here were calm, pared-back garments in varying tones of grey, white, and black. “It’s kind of a new approach for me, trying to cut down the theatrical and trying to concentrate on people who buy clothes,” he said of this uniquely composed project. It was the first, and ultimately, only time McQueen would determine to cater to the traditional Givenchy consumer. The pieces were technically sound, however, the lack of intense passion was deafening. One would never assume this was the work of the complex genius Lee Alexander McQueen. For SS99 Haute Couture, dedicated with great tenderness and vulnerability to McQueen’s aunt Patsy, late 19th-century features were married with leather biker pants, as well as checkerboard jester prints featured on acrobatic bodysuits. The half-woman, half-cyborg ethos of FW99 Ready-to-Wear (the collection Zendaya’s ensemble hails from) hinted at the endless computer-based possibilities at our fingertips on the brink of the new millennium. Modelled by fibreglass shop window mannequins, FW99 Haute Couture was displayed much like an art exhibit. “It was so you didn’t focus on the models but on the clothes,” McQueen explained to Suzy Menkes at the time. By the time he reached his closing presentation for Givenchy, McQueen had secured a life-altering deal with the Gucci Group (now Kering), who acquired a 51 percent majority stake in his eponymous label — allowing for major expansion and further investment. It was this that would pave the way for McQueen to create without the cracking whip of a house’s legacy. It was also this that would be the true making of a legend. Speaking to Andrew Wilson for his 2015 biography of the designer, a longtime friend of McQueen, Chris Bird, suggested: “I really think the reason he sold his share in the company to the Gucci Group was really to stick two big fucking fingers up to Bernard Arnault.” Arnault was seemingly committed to creativity back in 1997 — just perhaps not 120 percent. Julien Macdonald replaced the turbulent designer as Givenchy’s Creative Director. Under Macdonald’s tenure, he chose to reinstate Givenchy’s precursory codes, meanwhile retaining a fragment of the sex appeal McQueen dared to introduce. On the other hand, McQueen continued to extend his imprudent, revolutionary, and legendary shows to a global audience at his namesake label, changing the face of the industry forevermore. He may have shaken up the inner workings of Givenchy, come under fire season after season, and made his complaints transparent, but McQueen would eventually come to terms with this period of his artistic life. Of the time, he stated: “I treated Givenchy badly. It was just money to me. But there was nothing I could do: the only way it would have worked would have been if they had allowed me to change the whole concept of the house, to give it a new identity, and they never wanted me to do that.” It is unquestionable that this unsettled chapter provided some of McQueen’s most enigmatic moments and, ultimately, confirmed that no one, regardless of how much money provided, could tie McQueen down — he would always find a way to float onward and on his own terms. 🌀 Molly Elizabeth is a freelance fashion writer and commentator based in London.