Thoughts on Cannes' nudity ban, summer perfume recs, and a sale at Nanushka. Welcome to The HALO Report — HALOSCOPE’s new weekly digest, an of-the-moment mix of news items, opinion pieces, and sale announcements designed to keep you posted on the nitty-gritty of the fashion world and all of its tangents without having to keep a constant eye on your feed.  This week, a leopard head is worn as a chest piece, neckties go nuts, the perfect summer knit is now available, a Palestinian brand with gorgeously embroidered garments offers a generous sale, and more. The latest long-ish reads from the brightest minds in fashion. Responding to Cannes’ retrograde nudity ban, Vogue ’s Most Dressed at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival  by Hannah Jackson calls out everyone from Kristen Stewart to Isabelle Huppert to South Sudanese model Mitchell Akat Maruko Raan, who wore a realistic leopard head protruding from her chest. Most dressed, indeed.  Rabbit Fur Coat’ s Eleanor argues that “ the perfect beach outfit exists ” and involves pleated shorts, plastic sandals, a Youswim suit, and more specific finds to inspire your sandy sartorial choices.  Call HR! I’m Obsessed With Wacky Work Ties  by Christian Allaire for Vogue  is less of a spotted trend and more of a personal proclivity that I’m glad was shared with the world. Some ties, most by artisans and tiny businesses, are truly breathtaking.  For genuinely interesting summer fragrances, The Dry Down Diaries’ “ Summer Perfume Recs ” by Christina Loff featuring several of her most scent-savvy friends cannot be beat. Clue’s “The Point,” recommended by Loff’s friend Jennifer, is an especially poignant pick.  Kari Koty’s Passage Keeper offers up “ The Vintage Lover’s Handbook: Stains and Smells ,” an invaluable resource for thrifters whose biggest enemies are yellowed armpits and stubborn stenches. What to keep in mind — and look forward to — in the past and coming weeks. Tove’s SS25 collection  has some of the first truly unique beachwear I’ve seen in years, with elegantly shredded slides, lacy balloon-silhouette dresses, and more to outfit a vacation or special event.  The Hades Sabi knit  is perfect for summer with its thin weft and off-kilter asymmetry. Sweaters are underrated companions to swimsuits, and if you’re looking for something unique, this is a beautiful option.  Good Squish will launch a bridal collection  in September, previewing a veil that walks the line between graceful and goofy with aplomb, as do the brand’s other offerings, namely its oversized scrunchies.  Stine Goya x Umbro’s collab is coming soon  with pieces inspired by sportswear and refined through the lens of Copenhagen style, ready to elevate an athleisure-oriented wardrobe this summer.  Another athleisure coup is the Adidas x Wales Bonner sequin sneaker, accessible via the HighSnobiety app  and sure to make the street style rounds within the next month or so.  Less about impulse buys — and more about tracking discounts on the pieces already on your wishlist.  Palestinian outfitter Nol Collective offers 25% off with SUMMER —plenty of gorgeously embroidered tops, brilliant knits, and hardy accessories are available under the umbrella of this sitewide discount.  Beaufille’s end-of-season sale  takes up to 50% off the brand’s delicate-but-not-precious semi-formals, with going-out tops and wedding guest dresses abounding.  Take 40% off a selection of Nanushka pieces in its seasonal sale , with Eastern European charm meeting down-to-earth, contemporary sensibilities in pieces like day dresses and funky sunglasses.  Studio Nicholson offers up to 30% off last season in its private sale , and you know the drill—tailored-looking minimalist togs with smart design sensibilities.  Hereu’s  30% off sale   makes it hard to ignore the brand’s flawless summer accessories as the season draws ever-nearer.  🌀 Em Seely-Katz is the creator of the fashion blog Esque, the News Editor of HALOSCOPE, and a writer, stylist, and anime-watcher about town. You can usually find them writing copy for niche perfume houses or making awful collages at @that.esque on Instagram.

Sandy Liang and the specter of working motherhood in the trend cycle of women's fashion. I first started to notice counterculture turn on Flushing-raised designer Sandy Liang  at the release of her SS24 collection . Gallery openings boasted fewer and fewer feet clad in distinctive pink satin flats, people started to become weary of cheaply made dupes, and girls’ boyfriends seemed less and less likely to endorse the purchase of a hundred and seventy-dollar bow headband accessory. By September of 2024, when leaked show notes for her SS25 collection  were railed for sounding vapid and poorly edited, with bylines like “being a princess is a job, just like being a spy girl is a job” — it seemed like the women who built up Liang’s countercultural credentials had moved on from trying to dress like schoolgirls, and wanted something with more substance. The issue of course, being, these critics of self-infantilization had a history with the habit that was storied to say the least, and most of their criticism of what was clearly an intentional affectation hinged on the conceit that you could flirt with twirling your hair and saying you’re just a girl in your twenties, but once you hit 30, it’s time to cut that shit out .  As someone who goes hiking in Mary Janes and has been thrifting Catholic school uniform maxi skirts for the better part of my adult life, I consider myself considerably attuned to the ebbs and flows of how terms like “Lolita,” “balletcore,” “ office siren ,” and “ coquette ” influence the world of contemporary fashion, and moreover, I feel qualified to judge the very touchy boundaries between just criticism of intra-female self-infantilization and mutually enforced misogyny. This is to say, I do not think all of Liang’s current detractors just hate to see women aging, and I also do not think all of her biggest fans are doing restorative feminist praxis by upcharging her often phoned-in sponsored collaborations with Beats , Salomon , Target , and BAGGU  on Depop. Like most divisive issues in contemporary fashion, the situation is nuanced. Something I have rarely seen brought up in the frequent and infinitely retweetable discourse about Liang’s pink ribbon empire, however, is that in 2024, she and her husband, Dorian Booth, had a beautiful baby boy named Rainer . To be honest, this changes a lot for me. As the needlepoint of culture slowly creeps past the innate profitability of slapping a bow on something, I’ve found Liang’s continued efforts to raise a family while carving out a niche for herself in women’s Ready-to-Wear more and more endearing. Her designs, clearly drawn from her on-the-ground experience as a bystander and participant in Flushing and NYC’s vast immigrant culture, seem so much more pointed when the basis for them is no longer imaginative. Put plainly, I find the whole coquette schoolgirl maxi skirt schtick far more compelling from someone who is actively raising a child. I was struck by Liang’s lucidity in her recent Interview  conversation with Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast  — another artist I adore, who knows a thing or two about balancing petty girlish sentimentality with out-of-body maturity. MICHELLE ZAUNER: You didn’t have anxiety about your work suffering? My friend, who just got pregnant, is a painter and we were talking about it and she was like, “Are you more worried about not being a good mother or not being a good artist?” Which I thought was such a horrifying question. SANDY LIANG: I think about that stuff under the surface, but I try to not let myself get wrapped up in it because you’re going to live the answer. “What will my career look like once I have a baby?” If I really thought about that question, it might’ve stopped me. I’m at the point in my life where I’m going to do what I want, and if my work suffers a little bit because of that, then that’s just going to be a part of my journey. This answer seems incredibly liberatory to me. I think of someone like Paul McCartney, whose departure from The Beatles and solo career marked the birth of his daughter Heather and trail-blazed the creation of the “dad rock” microgenre in the singer-songwriter tradition. In these retrospective mythologies, men are not only allowed to have children, but can plumb the depths of fatherhood for artistic inspiration. In this sense, their fall from the annals of greatness is not so much a loss but a transition to something new. How wonderful it must feel as a female working artist to fall off and start a family, to let your work grow more austere or less appealing as you funnel your creative energy into cultivating new life — perhaps the greatest act of artistic creation in history. How chic, as a woman, to actually pursue the great summit of “having it all” — while acknowledging that the choice between an artistic career and a family is so rarely expected of your male counterparts. Better yet, to allow your work to reflect this yearning towards the child — retrofitting the oft-touted idea of yearning for some sort of imagined girlhood into the more meaningful practice of nurturing a real childhood future. I don’t care that Liang’s child is a boy, I’m excited to see how she dresses him — the care and motherly devotion she puts into making his little loafers or frilly little button-up shirts. Danish Rijksakademie-trained artist Lise Haller Baggesen ’s book Mothernism  is an endlessly beautiful assertion of the working mother’s place in contemporary art. In it, she grapples through epistolary dispatches to her sister, mother, and daughter with issues like rape culture, phallogocentrism, and the variability of emotion contained within the enterprise of bringing up a real live human being from your body. She responds to Kristeva’s short but incisive essay “ Motherhood Today ,” in which the seminal post-structural feminist theorist, who, like Liang, had one baby boy, asserts: What we lack is a reflection on maternal passion. After Freud and with Lacan, psychoanalysis has largely been preoccupied with the ‘paternal function’ — its need, its failures, its substitutes and so on and so forth. Philosophers and psychoanalysts seem less inspired by the ‘maternal function,’ perhaps because it is not a function but more precisely, a passion. The term ‘a good enough mother’, coined by Winnicott, who took this theme further than Freud, nevertheless runs the risk of playing down the passionate violence of the maternal experience. In this respect, Baggesen argues for not only the recognition of motherhood’s inevitability in the life of the creative, but also its unique and vibrant socio-psychological point of view: Beginning with the old feminist premise of the female as “the second sex,” and lesbianism as a third, I suggest that motherhood is a fourth  … and hell, who knows? Maybe menopause is a fifth and so on  … Because if we can accept motherhood as one sex among many, we can perhaps relieve the inevitable burden of motherhood perceived as a stagnant destination. Perhaps we can instead introduce it into a conversation opened up by queer theory, in which categories of gender are more fluid, moving and bleeding into each other. To have a true plurality of discourse, we need a conversation, not of motherhood as “myth” or “destiny” but as lived reality, inside (as well as outside) the “hallowed halls” of art and academia.” You might think this is a lot to reconcile with a fashion house whose most recent FW25 collection  included a giant first place ribbon dress appliqué, but with looks including a Toys-R-Us baby tee rework of her brand name, paired with a laminated bright pink Frutiger Aero-adjacent calendar skirt seemingly at home plastered on the wall of a takeout restaurant, I don’t think its impossible to connect the dots. If anything, I’ve actually found Liang’s most recent work to bear a certain self-assured maturity to it, collaging together vibrant colors and Polly Pocket-like dollishness into something that feels quite literally marketed to 10-year-olds. I love that. There’s a photoset that Liang posted to her Instagram recently , in which a friend’s child is swimming in her ballet slingbacks. I think this is the best possible future for her brand identity, one that responds to accusations of problematic infantilization from 23-year-old Substack bloggers old enough to be her nieces with a resounding: “Sorry, I have to make it to daycare in Midtown while still looking fab.” At her best, I see Liang as a sort of zillennial Mary Cassatt, posting pictures of her face smushed up against her child’s in a way that asserts she can occupy the social roles of cool girl, creative, and mom at the same time. Making clothes not only for her own inner child, but for her actual children. There is a quote from Sarah Spellings’ Vogue  Runway review  in which, talking about her SS24 collection, she mentioned she is often inspired by groups of women who are matching — intentionally or not. “They don’t realize how beautiful they are when they’re standing together,” she says. Her work to me has always been this one specific image — a fascination with a group of schoolgirls walking home in Queens. It seems like from this one image, imagined or not, an entire brand identity emerges. This harmony is itself a sort of maternal instinct: to have matching mommy-son outfits, to see your child as a beautiful part of a transcendent whole, picking him up at carpool, one minnow in a school of fish. While talking with Zauner, the elephant in the room is raised: how do women artists who want kids reconcile a rigid creative perfectionism with the often overwhelming burdens of motherhood? Is there a middle path between not losing yourself in the role of homemaker and also holding space for the creative energy one will eventually exert and deplete in the cultivation and curation of a child? If anything, this would be my thesis: that this question is only ever asked of women, and that there is a real and true artistic beauty in becoming more inaccessible and even unsuccessful in the name of bringing up a family — not sacrificing your career, but letting it mold to the contours of your holistic identity as both a woman and a mother. Some may not get it, and that’s fine. But love is not something to be afraid of, and it certainly is not something that diminishes the voice of an artist. Motherhood, in all its psychic intermingling of the woman’s identity with her child’s, demands a sort of fiery creative ego death, one that inevitably impacts the nature of one’s work. If I meet the right person in my 30s, fall deeply for them, and find myself at the precipice of starting a family like Zauner and Liang, how terrifying and how lovely it must be to face these questions. It truly brings me to tears imagining it, how sickeningly sweet it must feel to lose part of your audience, and to look in the eyes of my child and see a whole crowd of adoring fans. ZAUNER: [...] I’ve been doing Japanese Breakfast for nine years. This will be my fourth album, and I would say that every single record I’ve made has been more successful than the last, and I live in constant fear and anticipation of, “When will I plateau and when will I begin to decline?” I don’t want to say this in an interview, but I keep thinking this is this one. LIANG: I completely understand. ZAUNER: And I think in some ways, when I arrive at that plateau, it will be both devastating and completely liberating. 🌀 Audrey Robinovitz is a multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and self-professed perfume critic. Her work intersects with the continued traditions of fiber and olfactory arts, post-structural feminism, and media studies. At this very moment, she is most likely either smelling perfume or taking pictures of flowers.

Boy Smells minimalist, androgynous candles and fragrances decorated everyone’s desks, coffee tables, and vanities. Then came the rebrand. Above: Boy Smells' 2025 packaging rebrand. Of the design, Dirt CEO and co-founder Daisy Alioto coined it "... pearlescent Elf Bars for influencers to tap their nails against.” Boy Smells  burst onto the fragrance scene in 2020 with promises of androgyny and subversion. Early reviewers were drawn to the quirky, oblong cap design, the dissonance of the name, and the brand’s Glossier-pink labels. Boy Smells, owned by “real-life and business partners” Matthew Herman and David Kien, was founded as the pair rejected   the “normative ‘genderless’ caption to beauty and wellness products” in the mid-2010s. Boy Smells’ early scents trended towards androgyny, which is different from that “normative ‘genderlessness’” in that it is marked by the presence of dual masculine and feminine signifiers, instead of a lack of any gendered signifiers at all (think blank-slate scents like Byredo’s Blanche). Its popular scents combine floral and leather notes, cardamom and cedarwood, and marijuana and hazelnut. Boy Smells is, as their marketing copy will not let you forget, not genderless, but gender ful . This positioning as a queer-owned niche brand intent on subverting commercialized queerness has come back to bite. In April, the brand rolled out Boy Smells 2.0., a rebrand that included discontinuing old fragrances, releasing a handful of new ones, and changing the packaging design to a smooth bottle with an orb-shaped cap, which went into effect in mid-April. This rebrand came after a period of commercial struggle and was intended to inject the brand with a much-needed capital boost.  When faced with the new basic flourmands and Rhode-esque bottle redesign, fans of the brand took to social media to express their dismay  and disappointment . The brand that built its consumer base on a message of transgression is now selling run-of-the-mill flourmands and sugary lactonics in bottles that look right at home in a Glow House Sephora haul. Words like “ watered-down ” and “ Gen Z-algospeak ” abound. Despite such intense online backlash that the brand sent out an ersatz Notes app apology via email , Boy Smells seems to be doing just fine — more than fine, in fact. A brand representative told Glossy  that the rebrand wrought Boy Smells’ best sales week in four years. This dissonance might stem from the fact that the rebrand’s target audience is not quite of thinkpiece-writing, Twitter-thread-authoring age. The rounded bottle caps and blown-up logo size are trends popular among tweenage Drunk Elephant enthusiasts, as reported by Beauty Independent  and Puck .  The email, however, is littered with language designed to pacify elder Gen Z’s and younger millennials, featuring vocabulary like “self-expression” and “queer-led.” The website copy reads: “Identity isn't static. And neither are we.” The loss of faith, it seems, was among the thinkpiece age group, disappointed with the brand’s abandonment of its androgynous scents like Suede Pony for tooth-rotting marshmallow scents a la Sol de Jainero. The backlash was significant enough to warrant damage control. Beyond complaints about the new scent profiles — the house of Boy Smells has fallen to the great flourmand influx! — the redesigned packaging is a particularly sore spot. Dirt Media  CEO Daisy Alioto called  the new packaging “pearlescent Elf Bars for influencers to tap their nails against.” Artist and perfumehead Daphne Villanueva told HALOSCOPE: “I know the original packaging was fairly controversial in that people hated the oversized cap, but it felt deco-minimalist to me.” Above: Boy Smells' pre-2025 packaging design The Boy Smells packaging redesign situates the brand in what Jane Song describes as the “pebble-dagger” dichotomy. As Song points out, 2020s beauty products and interior design display an inclination towards what she calls the pebble, and what I will here call the blobform. From Rhode’s pocket blushes to EOS chapsticks, the dagger-like shape of preceding lip products and eyeliners has been abandoned in favor of a rounded, non-threatening, blob-like product design. Song writes : “[The] pebble represents a sense of absolution from overconsumption.” What harm could be wrought by a bubblegum pink blob? Notably, as Song and Alioto point out, the cosmetic blobform runs parallel to the design of disposable vapes. A GeekBar, a Rhode blush, a Glossier solid perfume — your hand curls around the blob as if you were a baby instinctively grasping a finger. As suggested by Rhode’s phone case designed to carry its popular lip gloss, the blobform is something you are never meant to put down. The hot pink Flum Pebble is antithetical to the sharp, phallic image of the cigarette. It is addiction — overconsumption — rendered harmless. This design trend is reminiscent of the humanoid blobforms of Corporate Memphis . You’ve probably seen this art style on Facebook’s login page or in the IBM ads that have littered this basketball season. The Corporate Memphis art style is unnerving in its genderlessness, its race-blindness. It is a half-hearted hand wave towards the human body, exhausted by post-Obama cries for inclusivity in advertising. Here , it says dejectedly as it presents the viewer with sexless purple homunculi rendered in scalable vectors. Fine . This regression to an aesthetic means of blobforms neutralizes any potential for aesthetic or political subversion. Song walks this out in her piece, as does Cassidy Bensko in her piece  on Canva’s dilution of radical aesthetics. The blobform humanoid has no ethnic history, no ostensible sexuality. The pebble blush begs you to forget that “tools of glamour contain power and danger conferred to the user.” Corporate Memphis’ genderless simulacra of the human form, the Flum Pebble, Rare Beauty’s concealers — they all represent a commercial harmlessness. Apropos of nothing, Jia Tolentino’s research into the creative style book of Cocomelon revealed that animators are not allowed to include objects with sharp corners. It is a world where every edge is rounded — it’s a world that cannot hurt you. Is the rounded redesign of Boysmell’s packaging so significant? So politically fraught? It’s not like Boy Smells has never pushed the envelope. Last Pride Month,  the brand released a poppers-themed candle, releasing a Zoom screenshot  of the entire marketing team trying poppers as part of its development. In light of the Trump administration’s raids on poppers factories  across the U.S., this is a substantively transgressive act, one that Boy Smells’ consumers loved. The brand fell back on this goodwill in the rebrand apology email: “We’re still the same team that brought you poppers-inspired Citrush .” The brand has been upfront about the commercial motivations for the rebrand while gripping white-knuckled to their philosophy of gendered transgression. The brand told Beauty Independent  that they were acquired by a “group of gay investors” in early 2024 to bolster capital. Puck calls the rebrand  a “Sephora pet-project” in light of Boy Smells strengthening their partnership with the retailer. The apology email and website copy for the rebrand engage in a complicated balancing act between transgression and profit: “The brand had to evolve in order to survive […] All we ask is that you stick with us throughout this next chapter.” The brand is still, self-professedly, “rooted in genderfulness.” I hesitate to throw around fighting words like “rainbow capitalism,” even as the phrase “gay investors” readily invites it. The point of a business is to make money, and it is perhaps misguided to source your gendered transgression from the Sephora fragrance aisle, sandwiched in between $100 anti-aging serums and endless iterations of YSL’s Black Opium. Whether or not the rebrand represents a departure from the brand’s nominally transgressive philosophy, it might not be the philosophical implications that have put people off from the rebrand — the new Boy Smells might just not be very good.  Old is the adage of a decrease in product quality following a new round of investors or a venture capital acquisition. Euphemisms like “capital infusion” and “overhead” do little to obscure the reality that profits are higher when a product is cheaper to make. As Alioto told HALOSCOPE, her qualm with the rebrand “[Wasn’t] that they seemed to stray from their stated values, it just looks bad and cheap… look at influencers showing the bottles, the line in the colorblocking isn't clean.” The blobform, it would seem, is the physicalization of cut corners. 🌀 Caelan Reeves is a writer from Chicago. You can find her fragrance writing in HALOSCOPE and High Country News .

Thoughts on Pierpaolo Piccioli's Balenciaga appointment, dressing better without trying harder, and a sale at Marc Jacobs. Welcome to The HALO Report — HALOSCOPE’s new weekly digest, an of-the-moment mix of news items, opinion pieces, and sale announcements designed to keep you posted on the nitty-gritty of the fashion world and all of its tangents without having to keep a constant eye on your feed.  This week, a modern Black Dandy teaches us how to journal, speedrun converting your boyfriend to style-cognizant, Balenciaga has a new CD—do we care?, looser, more relevant-feeling labels succeed Sandy Liang and Gauntlett Cheng, sales abound from big-name accessories brands to tiny family operations, and more. The latest long-ish reads from the brightest minds in fashion. As per usual, Viv Chen topped the charts of my internet time this week with “ this is what 80 looks like ” for The Molehill . Chatting with style icon Raymond Holbert, who has kept a journal for over half a century and is the epitome of a modern Black Dandy (I loved Chen’s comparison of his outfits to the looks featured in the Frog and Toad  picture books). The friends touch upon Holbert’s journaling practice and much more—it’s an inspiring, adorable, and stylish read all around.  I recently started dating someone with no interest in fashion, but if I put the YouTube video “ Dress better without trying harder ” by Speeed on 1.75x speed, perhaps he will be compelled by its straightforward, pragmatic, easy-to-implement style tips.  “ Is It That Hard to Design Gucci? ” by Amy Odell for Back Row is a fascinating, incisive questioning into what has become an almost mythological speed bump in the fashion industry: why have so many Gucci Creative Directors been, by all accounts, flops? “ Plumpgasm Nudegasm ” by Jessica DeFino for The Review of Beauty  touches upon the uncanny and the hyperreal of the beauty choices debuted at the Met Gala, from Walton Goggins’ Moroccanoil collab to Doja Cat’s Betty Boop-like mug.  The Wardrobe Edit ’s latest, “ The Style Edit: Going Out Tops, Summer Jewellery & NAP Sale Picks ,” is an easy dose of shoppable inspiration for your burgeoning summer wardrobe.   What to keep in mind — and look forward to — in the past and coming weeks. Pierpaolo Piccioli is the new creative director for Balenciaga , and the crowd… is ambivalent? A choice that seems to pull its punches, Piccioli (yet another white man crowding the upper echelons of the runway sphere) seems to prioritize legacy over innovation, stating, “I don’t want to cancel what has been, because a house is made by lots of people.” Oversized, floppy flowers, colorful knit stripes, and loose, louche silhouettes define Stine Goya’s PF25 —a great alternative for feminine dressers who find the Sandy Liang side of the industry a bit too stuffy and contrived. These pieces feel like the kind you would only think to buy on vacation—a little cheesy, a little brash—but then you’d find yourself reaching for them long past your travels, having embedded themselves in your conception of summer.  Young label Lucille Thièvre has arrived at Maimoun  with slinky, siren-like shirred sets and ornamented cut-out tops—its energy is similar to pre-COVID Gauntlett Cheng, before that label started courting Red Scare hosts and similar types in earnest.  Seeing as the label has started to elicit whispers of criticism from the most forward-thinking fashion minds on the internet, expect to see more collabs like the Easter-coded Tory Burch x Bon Bon  while the former tries to maintain its hard-won relevance.  Ever an under-the-radar label, Clarks collaborates with another IYKYK brand, Engineered Garments , on a capsule of loafers and Clarks’ signature Wallabees decked in fringe and suede charms.  Less about impulse buys — and more about tracking discounts on the pieces already on your wishlist.  Given its past few runway successes and red carpet cameos on the likes of Sarah Paulson, now might be a good time to check out the Marc Jacobs 50% off private summer sale  and consider investing in the brand’s upswing.  Take up to 30% off a collection of richly-hued cardigans, V-necks, and knit accessories like bandanas and socks in a rainbow assortment of colors during the &Daughter Seasonal Sale . Mansur Gavriel’s 60% off summer sale  offers bags, shoes, and wallets in supple, summer-colored leather.  From Saturday, May 31 to Sunday, June 1, check out the no-holds-barred Vaquera sample sale  on Walker Street in NYC, including not only archival and deeply discounted pieces, but also vintage gems from the designer’s own collection.  Since production has slowed after the designers had a baby, Ijji’s hiatus sale  offers 50% off the slim (but incredible) pickings of remaining stock still on the website. 🌀 Em Seely-Katz is the creator of the fashion blog Esque, the News Editor of HALOSCOPE, and a writer, stylist, and anime-watcher about town. You can usually find them writing copy for niche perfume houses or making awful collages at @that.esque on Instagram.

" Our waitress was very clearly pilled out of her mind, our food took forever to arrive, it was perfect." I met my husband the old-fashioned way: online. He was living in Richmond, and I was, at the time, temporarily decamped about an hour away in the mountains of Charlottesville. We matched, hit it off, and he began the intensive process of sweeping me off my feet. He drove four-hour round-trips to take me on dates in the city, ate dinner with me every Sunday (which inspired our first dance song: Etta James’ “Sunday Kind of Love”), and flooded my townhome with bouquets — my maid of honor, Willow, described it in her speech as “...looking like a straight up funeral home. Every surface was covered with flowers, all addressed to her.”  Three months later, I moved to Richmond. Then, three years later, he popped the question. We were staying up at the Lazy Bear Lodge in Luray, Virginia — a cozy log cabin deep in the mountains — and he led me outside under the guise of “taking a video of the fire he built”. I cried, he cried, and then I pulled out the extensive wedding planning spreadsheet I had been working on for the past couple of months. Of course, I knew he was going to propose. Sure, he didn’t outright tell me —  but that isn’t the type of thing that usually comes as a surprise (especially when he texts you asking for the link to the ring you like). I also knew that, because Mitchell is a twin and because his twin had just gotten married in a big, traditional ceremony, I had the clearance to get what I wanted: a smaller, more intimate, and unconventional ceremony. Thus began our Vegas plans.  We knew we couldn’t have everyone  we wanted to celebrate with us in Vegas. So we started with a small “wedding party” in Richmond at a historic venue called Old City Bar. It was gorgeous: all wood interior; low, warm lighting; fabulous ostrich feather centerpieces made by my grandmother-in-law, Gayle. We also had a giant paper moon photo booth that was fully designed and fabricated by my father-in-law, Billy, who is a very talented working artist. It was one of the most beautiful and romantic nights of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever cried harder. The night before, my lovely family hosted a glamorous welcome dinner at Fogo de Chão . My mom and Nonie (maternal grandmother) are two of the most elegant, design-focused people in the world, so you know they delivered.   We had a gorgeously decorated private room, the tables laden with multiple seafood towers and endless delicious meats — and, to top it all off, at the end of the night, our friends surprised us with a brand new Ooni pizza oven  in the parking lot. What more could you want? Now, onto the main event (which actually occurred about five months after the “wedding party”). VEGAS: DAY ONE We took an early morning direct flight (thank you, Breeze!) and landed a little before noon. I had downloaded 16 episodes of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills  to watch on the flight and heard Camille Grammer say, “Well! NOW we’ve said it!” just as we hit rough turbulence. When I tell you chills   up my spine , I mean it. We stayed at the Conrad  in Resorts World, which, from the looks of it, is an accommodation geared towards Fear of God hypebeasts and cool girlfriends. Resorts World is the newest hotel on the Strip, and you can definitely tell: funky, sorta-sexual modern art sits right beside giant F1 racecars advertising the Grand Prix happening just a couple of days after our wedding. Jumping nightclub beats bounced through the palatial lobby. I’ve never felt more podunk in my life. But jokes aside, the lovely people at the Conrad treated us very well, and our giant suite was both glamorous and perfectly clean. Thanks guys! They also provided the comfiest hotel robes I have ever slipped onto my body. If you ever stay at the Conrad in Resorts World, don’t make the same mistake as I — buy the robe from the hotel. It is nearly impossible to find online. After much research, I discovered that they order the robes from a brand called Sobel Westex. However, the type of robe (a plush interior with a smooth outer shell) is not one that they sell to the general public, only to hotels. Believe me, I tried everything. I even found the distributor’s direct email address and sent him a message. No dice.  Later that night, we went to Fremont Street and saw old Vegas: the Golden Nugget, Heart Attack Grill’s “Over 350 eat for free” scale, exhausted girls wearing showgirl feathers, and even that giant praying mantis that spits fire and sings AI Johnny Cash Barbie songs. My parents, ever the party animals, stayed out late into the night. I, on the other hand, headed back to the room to take the most relaxing, luxuriating bath ever in the Conrad's giant tub. Maybe one more episode of Real Housewives  before bed… DAY TWO Early that morning, Mitchell and I picked up our marriage license. On the way there, we heard the “Vegas is like a bunch of islands” speech for the first time from our Uber driver —  a safety warning that we would hear many more times before our vacation was over. Apparently, Uber drivers really want you to know it’s unsafe to walk from place to place in Vegas, guys! I personally never had any trouble. I felt it was no different than any other big city; just be aware of your surroundings. We picked up our marriage license without incident — along with some little “Just Married in Vegas!” stickers — and headed back to the room, eyes swimming with the love we share. Then, that afternoon, the Bachelorette Party began. Now, I don’t drink, and I don’t really party, so the traditional “club and male strippers” bachelorette experience just wasn’t going to be in the cards for me. I decided instead to splash some cash around for me and Willow to have the full Gwyneth Paltrow-esque relaxation experience at Awana Spa . Reader, if you take one thing away from this wedding diary, let it be this: book yourself a treatment at Awana. My god.  It legitimately feels like you enter into another world: a giant stone room filled with multiple pools at different temperatures; the most comfortable heated loungers you’ve ever sat on; sauna; steam room; and eucalyptus room (which I actually didn’t love, but it was cool!) all attached to this incredibly tricked out locker room outfitted with hair and beauty products, hot tools, and Byredo bath soaps  — you’re never going to want to leave. I sure didn’t! The lovely ladies working the front desk at Awana kindly upgraded our services to include a 60-minute full-body massage. Do I even need to say it? Obviously incredible. There’s a reason why Vegas remains a premier destination for luxury. After the service, Willow and I spent five hours lounging around the different rooms, munching on the elegant snacks provided, and taking multiple showers. Then it was time for the main event of the day: Vanderpump à Paris . Former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump owns multiple restaurants in Vegas — most notably, in my opinion, her restaurant and bar in the Paris hotel. I dragged my entire family over there, most of whom had never even heard of Lisa Vanderpump — let alone Giggy, whose portrait we were sitting right beside (R.I.P.).  What can I say about Vanderpump a Paris? Glamorous, Elegant, Over-the-top…. expensive.  Our waitress was very clearly pilled out of her mind, our food took forever to arrive, it was perfect. DAY THREE: WEDDING DAY! You hear all the time about how frantic your wedding day is going to be — how hurried and rushed and stressful the whole affair is. I didn’t experience that. I felt incredibly peaceful the whole day, secure in my choice to marry Mitchell. I never had any doubts. Willow and I slowly spent the afternoon getting ready together in the suite. Afterward, Mitchell’s Grandpa, Jim, took photos of everyone in their Sunday best, and we headed to the chapel. THE LOOK The dress was designed by Lilya Korenman of Couture by LK Design . It was inspired by the gown Ginger Rogers wore in It Had to Be You.   This was, bar none, the best custom garment experience I have ever had. Lilya is an incredibly talented and very experienced designer. I would highly recommend reaching out to her atelier for your next event. Florals were courtesy of Michael’s Craft Store (lol!). A week or so before we flew out to Vegas, I dragged Mitchell to Michael’s and made him stand there as I agonized over which fake flowers to stuff in my suitcase. I knew I wanted red (it's my favorite color), and I was very inspired by the scale of the bouquet Chloë Sevigny  carried during her nuptials to Siniša Mačković — so I knew I wanted very long stems and a big ribbon. I think we pulled it together in the end. I wore matching shoes with my mother — little silver rhinestone peep-toe mules that we unfortunately did not get any photos of (no free feet!). It was an incredibly sentimental moment for the two of us. The ceremony was an intimate affair at Little Church of the West . My father and I walked down the same aisle that saw the likes of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Judy Garland, and Angelina Jolie. The pews were filled with our closest family members, my best friend, and his twin brother at our sides. There was palpable love in the room. Candlelight glittered in everyone’s tearful eyes. It was the exact kind of moment you dream of. After the ceremony, my Nonie booked us a private room at a restaurant called Bootleggers — the perfect little, old-school Italian restaurant to suit my “Stars of the Silver Screen” theme. We broke bread, we shared speeches, we laughed, we cried, we ate cannolis, and then we went home. DAY FOUR For our honeymoon, Mitchell rented a car and we drove out to Red Rock Canyon. We stayed at a very swanky hotel by the same name . If Resorts World is for Fear of God hypebeasts and cool girlfriends, Red Rocks is for mega-rich silver foxes and inappropriately young female companions. I felt like a glamorous high-roller walking under the massive crystal chandelier in their red velvet lobby. That afternoon, Mitchell treated us to another spa day. I’ll say this: Vegas knows how to do a spa. It’s an all-day, transformative experience, the likes of which I had never even known existed. I will try fruitlessly for the rest of my days to replicate it at home. Gorgeous hotel and spa aside, my biggest recommendation for those traveling to the Red Rock Resort and Casino in Las Vegas would be T-Bones Steakhouse. God damn, is it good! I had the poke; Mitchell had the Wagyu steak. The hostess sat us in front of this giant wall of fire, where we just giggled and held hands the entire night. Can’t recommend it enough! DAY FIVE Here’s where things get crazy… My lovely and sweet husband booked us a self-guided tour of Red Rock Canyon. If you’ve never been, you gotta go. It is truly breathtaking out there. It feels like you’re on the surface of Mars.  We took some photos together on the cliff face and then decided to go on one of the hiking trails through the canyon. There was a “children’s hike” marked right ahead of us, so we figured: Hey, easy enough,  and went down it. We walked for about twenty minutes, reached the end, and as we were about to turn around… SNAP! I slipped off a rock and landed on my ankle at a 90° angle. It was such a surprising sensation — sharp pain immediately followed by the chilling humiliation that I might need help getting back to the car…. from the children’s  hike… Through the sheer power of pride alone, I hobbled back to the car, where we took the scenic route back to the hotel. Mitchell called downstairs for an ice bucket — we’re still waiting on it to this day. DAY SIX I woke up at 1 AM crying, my ankle as big as a baseball bat. Mitchell, taking the vows of “in sickness and in health” incredibly seriously, rushed to the closest CVS to buy me some crutches and painkillers. He then, kudos to him, packed up all SIX of our bags and lugged them single-handedly out of the hotel and to the car, then to the airport shuttle, then through the airport, then from baggage claim to the Uber, then home. All while I slowly limped along behind him. Thanks, baby! It was just as nice as I hoped and dreamed it would be. 🌀 Kaitlin Owens  is the Archival Editor of HALOSCOPE and the Editor in Chief of DILETTANTE. For a closer look at her portfolio, please visit her site here .

What took the designer so long to embrace change? We all know the Tory Burch sandals — the large, ornate “T” logo smack in the middle of the foot of the preppy corporate women.  Of course, Tory Burch isn’t just for the corporate gal or the Southern mom, but that seemed to be the audience it has long been reaching best. Old Tory Burch was casual luxury that could be considered preppy style. Tory Burch fell into the category of brands common for people in the South to wear because of the notable logo and high price tag, like Lilly Pulitzer or the aptly named Simply Southern. It also presented itself as “corporate girl” to me. (Of course, I’m talking about a 2012 corporate girl and not today’s “office siren”  girl.)  After a career in designer public relations, Tory Burch started her brand in 2004, resulting in 20 years of her eponymous label. The Tory Burch brand has been a notable player in the industry and hasn’t fallen off the face of the fashion world — though it might’ve seemed that way for a period of time.  There’s no one specific reason why Tory Burch seemed to fall out of the fashion scene, but there are a couple of contributing factors. Oversaturation and lack of evolution might be the key determinants as to why we all forgot about Tory Burch for a bit. Fashion critic Luke Meagher said this  about Burch’s stagnant phase: “ While the brand certainly never went away, it did feel like it became just a cog in the American fashion machine alongside the other more commercially-focused brands, rather than experimenting and innovating.” The Tory Burch brand, in essence, was becoming too mass, offering démodé silhouettes and heavily logo-patterned garments. Similar to the popular Gucci logo belt, heavily logoed items began falling from favor as the 2010s gained momentum. The brand overall didn’t feel as desired as other labels that were continuing to evolve and focus on market appeal, like Michael Kors. In 2018, Kors unveiled a new collection to reestablish the brand as relevant and elevated, to shy away from the Michael Kors designs we frequently see at TJ Maxx. However, according to a November 2024 post  by databutmakeitfashion, a favorite account of mine, Tory Burch found increased popularity — 226%, in fact — through online posts and searches about the brand.  For many people, it seemed like Burch had been randomly awoken from the crypt. But Burch had long-measured plans for her brand, dating all the way back to the pandemic. In an interview for Wallpaper , Burch stated that the COVID-19 pandemic allowed her to pause and reexamine the brand codes she established 20 years prior. “It was a palate cleanser and a restart, to take a step back and think about the essence of where we were, and who I am,” Burch said. It’s a big risk to completely rebrand your already iconic label, but that risk definitely paid off. According to WWD, Tory Bruch took first place in social engagement  during 2025 Fall/Winter New York Fashion Week with an engagement score of 3.2 million, which was a 39% increase from last fall. Influencer marketing and social engagement, too, have played a massive role in re-inducting Tory Burch into the fashion world and promoting Tory Burch to a wider variety of consumers. In a quote to NYLON , influencer Alix Earle said, “Tory has undeniably evolved. I love that Tory Burch is making collections for the modern woman who wants to look cool, chic, and confident. The looks lately feel elevated, nodding to different women over different eras, like the coats we saw on this last runway, but yet the looks are still strong and a bit sexy, without being too revealing or try-hard.” Both on and offline, Burch is reaching new audiences that help claim the brand as an “it-girl” or “cool girl” brand. Emily Ratajkowski and Hailey Bieber have worn and promoted Tory Burch throughout the past couple of years. Ratajkowski and Bieber’s model off-duty styles are effortless, simplistic, and deeply contrasting. Ratajkowski pairs a fitted blazer with a wiry bralette or a white cotton dress with cherry-red shoes; Bieber’s style is similar, with fitted cardigans paired with baggy jeans or the addition of a leather jacket over linen pants to create an unusual edge.  Like many other luxury brands, creative directors do not just shift between decades or seasons — they shift between full styles, altering the brand’s DNA. Olivier Rousteing became the creative director of Balmain in 2011 and helped propel the brand back to popularity. Maria Grazia Chiuri became the creative director of Dior Paris and brought back the iconic saddle bag. Jamie Mizrahi debuted the first-ever Juicy Couture dress at the Met Gala in 2018 as Juicy’s creative director.  One of the first big steps in changing the Tory Burch brand was removing Tory Burch herself as CEO, passing the title to Pierre-Yves Russell, who happens to be Burch’s husband (Russell was previously the chairman and CEO of LVMH). With the CEO switch, Burch could go back to focusing heavily on creative direction and design rather than working on the business-heavy side of the brand. “People ask me if it was hard to give up the CEO title. It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Burch told the Washington Post . Another notable move in the Burch game plan was the addition of Brian Molloy — a notable fashion stylist whose work you can probably recognize via Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson’s effortlessly chic style — who now works at Tory Burch as a fashion editor, putting together looks for runway shows, photoshoots, and campaigns. “I don’t think it was a concerted effort on everyone’s part to be like, ‘Let’s scrap this and start fresh. I think it was like, ‘OK, what do we have to say here? What do we want to say?’” Molly stated to the New York Times . The SS21 Ready-to-Wear collection is what clued the rest of us in on what was going on with Tory Burch. The new collection was minimalist clothing meant for layering and living in — a far cry from the strappy sandals and office-approved pencil skirts of the 2000s. Comfortable cottons and wools manipulated in functional and versatile silhouettes, like a white cotton dress with an exaggerated collar and baggy yet fitted beige trousers, were modeled against a countryside setting. An article  from Business of Fashion described the collection as “shaking off the global-traveller glam that defined her brand’s ethos for over a decade” and going back to the basics: modern, elevated, and sophisticated, better fit for the minimalism of the 2020s than the excess of the 2000s. But don't worry — the shoes that were a staple of Burch’s brand are still around. L-R: Suki Waterhouse, Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid The true secret to this massive rebrand? Handing over the power. Tory Burch was able to take back her creative leadership to get back into the space of what she is most passionate about. “I’ve learned over the past five years that that’s really my passion: women and women’s bodies. How to really make women feel confident. That’s the biggest thing I think about is: How do you make women feel beautiful and confident, like they can tackle a lot of the hard issues that we’re all facing in the world?” said Burch to the Washington Post . Burch’s success is a case study in what it means to give higher creative control to designers, thinkers, and creative directors. Even in today’s diverse creative landscape, according to Vogue Business , only 8 out of the 33 creative directors in the Vogue Index are female. 1 Granary  lists the statistic of female creative directors in fashion at 12%. Not only did Burch take a big risk with her business with her as CEO, she put herself in the minority of being part of the 12% of female creative directors — and it paid off. One thing’s for sure: Tory Burch is back on my fashion radar – not just for her new elevated designs but for her dedication to herself as a creative. I think we can all take a thing or two out of Tory’s book.  🌀 Macy Berendsen is a writer based in Chicago. She can be found online at @macyberendsen .

With the rise of Ozempic and “stress-free” plastic surgery, a new kind of fashion status symbol has been unlocked: a perfect body. “The look of actual human bodies obviously changes very little through history. But the look of ideal bodies changes a great deal all the time,” a 1977 New York Times  piece observed . “In ordinary life, a common vehicle of expression for this changing physical ideal is the changing fashion in clothes.”  Fashion and bodies have always been in conversation. An hourglass shape reigned in the 1950s, led  by Christian Dior’s seminal “New Look” collection. In the ‘80s, “ shoulders  were the body part of choice, most often inflated to mega proportions.” (Think Claude Montana  silhouettes and Giorgio Armani  suits.) Heroin chic defined the mid-’90s, characterized by waif-like figures appearing in Calvin Klein  ads and Davide Sorrenti  photographs.  In recent years, designers have begun to highlight various body types (simultaneously, no less) in a wider embrace of diversity. The inaugural 2018 Savage X Fenty  runway show featured models with various body types. Industry titan Victoria’s Secret followed suit with their divisive 2024 show, deviating  from a long-standing practice of casting exclusively size-zero bodies.  As much as fashion is inspired by bodies, bodies have equally been  fashion in and of themselves. Take female breasts, which have oscillated in and out of focus from the cone-bra of FW94   Gaultier , to Shalom Harlow’s topless look  in Dior’s FW97 show, to Duran Lantink’s FW25 breast plates . On the Mugler bodysuit and its current significance in pop culture , creative director Casey Cadwallader shares , “[Bodysuits] have this duality in which they cover the entire body, from toe to fingertip and yet show all. Ultimately, the body is what makes the look.”  Even direct modifications of the body like tattoos  and piercings  — both of which have their own legacies in cultural identities  — were a huge part of punk  and other alternative aesthetics. Tracey Cannon, a London-based piercer, commented , “It also helps people belong and form identity. [When] I pierce people for the first time, they often say they feel part of the club now.” What is new, then, is the body’s distinct role as an accessory . Historically, bodies avoided acting as accessories in the traditional sense. For cultural communities, the body symbolizes standing and belonging. In mainstream media, it was measured for its compliance with conventional beauty standards. Today, body alterations blur the line between permanent procedures and personal style. The body is the trend and evolves as such. Look only to Kylie Jenner’s popularization of lip filler (and its subsequent dissolving ), the rise and fall of the BBL , or even the demand for Ozempic .  Modern body modifications allow for a specificity — and frequency — that more closely mirrors buying a popular accessory than an investment piece. Colored contact lenses have become widespread, popularized by Korean idols and the continued domination of K-Beauty . Freckle tattoos  have gained traction as a subtle and semi-permanent touch. Body botox  is on the rise, with one of its most popular injections simulating the “ 90-degree shoulders ” seen on Blackpink’s Jennie. In China, the “ elf ear ” trend involves pushing the ears forward from the face, through surgery or non-surgical alternatives  like clips.  The body’s crossover into the realm of accessory is attributable to both accessibility and desire. Consumers have a newfound ability to shape their bodies more precisely, quickly, and affordably than ever before. Nonsurgical  tweaks like fillers have attracted people previously deterred by the steep health and aesthetic risks. Combination procedures  like “mommy makeovers” reduce time in operating rooms and recovery. Out of 16 of the most popular American cosmetic procedures, only four  increased in price between 1998 and 2021. Four of the most popular nonsurgical procedures have actually decreased  in price over the last 22 years.  For many, this accessibility has brought newfound freedom, pushing modifications beyond a tool of conformity and into innovations that involve the body in personal style. The body is no longer a limitation to work around; it’s a controllable part of self-expression. “Having the privilege to revisit and recreate my childhood grin brings me a lot of joy,” writes  Jonti Ridley, who received tattooed freckles. “It kind of goes through waves, even with the seasons,” says  tattoo artist Shaughnessy Otsuji. When asked if anyone has requested tattooed-freckle removal, Brooklyn-based artists Keila and Krystal say , “No. In fact, people almost always want more.” The shift towards body-based accessories is perhaps most noticeable in East Asia, where a combination of rigid beauty standards  and widespread acceptance  of cosmetic surgery has paved the way for more exploration of how bodies can be used for short-term enhancements. “It’s like wearing makeup not just around the eyes, but also on the eyes,” one Korean woman says . “Contact lenses worn by the hottest stars are the most popular.”  “It is magic! I haven’t changed anything on my face and yet all my friends said I [looked] different the day I got it done,” one Xiaohongshu user wrote  about the “elf ear” procedure.  In places with such strict expectations of beauty, accessories are an opportunity for personalization within an accepted norm. It’s here that bodies find themselves: in a balancing act between individuality and conformity. Trends emerging from East Asia do not necessarily reflect a struggle unique to the region (or, as many might argue, a struggle at all). Instead, they are a microcosm of how bodies in the current cultural moment have the ability  to meet a genuine appetite for customization.  “With so many combinations of monograms, birthstones, zodiac signs, and trinkets, it’s nearly impossible to look exactly like everyone else. The only question left: Is there any frontier left uncharmed?” questions  ELLE.  Previous interactions between fashion and bodies still showed traces of clothing’s incipient role in the service of bodies. Bodies were judged against beauty standards (and modified accordingly), but fashion regulated such norms through constraints on which  bodies clothing would service — which bodies clothing trends look good on, feature, or, quite literally, fit.  As body modifications, permanent or not, become de-stigmatized, cheaper, and more readily available, the body’s role in fashion is based less on such binaries. Today, all bodies have the potential to fit in, to be customized, and to be accessorized.  The changing role of the body in fashion is not a good or bad thing. Fashion, bodies, and accessories will continue evolving, and the expanding intersection between all three simply indicates another turning point — one that sees bodies  increasingly in the service of fashion.  Whether bodies are used to follow trends or create new ones will be up to the trendsetters and fashionistas of the not-too-distant future. Either way, it’s a frontier worth watching — hopefully through matching contacts. 🌀 Chinon Norteman  is a writer, researcher, and strawberry shortcake enthusiast based in Hong Kong. Her interests include femininity, feminism, geopolitics, and their intersection.

A masterclass in intellectualizing your feelings. “Bootsy: a Bay-area slang [sic] that describes someone or something as uncool, awkward, or out of touch,” the show notes read. In the context of the Oakland, California native designer Taylor Thompson’s suiting specialty, the collection’s theme rings rather ironic. Home of tech-haven Silicon Valley, the show strikes political parallels to what's considered “Bootsy”, which could also mean “something bold, outrageous or eccentric,” drawing from the persona of funk legend Bootsy Collins. With the slang’s etymology made out from the French word bourgeois , I could not help but think of the current cultural pull of the tech bros, once depicted as dorky and sometimes socially inept nerds in pop culture, who now hold a cache of enormous political power and wealth behind their carefully curated public personas. Thompson’s vision of Bootsy is about intellectualizing feelings of insecurity and transforming them into authenticity. The show started strongly on the rooftop of Manhattan’s Nine Orchard Hotel, with a smart and suave pantsuit paired with a striking red and black pinstripe tie. Models strided confidently down the runway in oversized blazers draped in trains that swept the floor when uncovered, while other pieces floated about with crinkled lamé-like fabrics. One bespeckled model apprehensively looked around the audience, Muji notebook in hand. The show ended in an acid wash dress buttoned asymmetrically with precision—an unexpected but much-appreciated touch.  Aside from the political irony, the show exhibited its power through femininity and sensuality. With a muted, neutral palette of browns, greys, and whites, Thompson demonstrated the versatility of the classic suit with a Bay Area edge. At some parts, I questioned if the show exhibited “camp,” as the show notes suggested. The looks were undoubtedly contemporary and stylish, but fell short of the boldness to dare to have the models appear more than a little awkward on the runway—something that is essential for a campy show.  Rather, the collection felt like a vulnerable homage to Thompson’s hometown. Bringing the relaxed and easygoing nature of the Bay Area to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the collection featured oversized coats, blazers with draping trains, and tastefully bleached fabrics. Personality and punk met with formal and office-friendly attire, as if to say that being unapologetically yourself in an unfamiliar place, even if you do feel a little insecure about it, is the essence of what “Boosty” is about. “ [The show] was a lot of wanting to keep the Bay Area and Oakland native and storytelling about home to some degree and just highlighting the culture of the Bay Area,” Thompson told WWD.  In short, 5000 put together a show that celebrated individuality and inspired me to be comfortable within my own Bootsy-ness. 🌀 7.9 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 .

Longevity, sillage, and the fictions of perfume. You might have seen this crop up from time to time in perfume-related online spaces: What are the best ways to keep one’s perfume on for as long as is physically possible? The newest trend, funnily enough, is using makeup primer, preferably a really sticky one like the viral NYX Face Glue Primer. Fragrance experts advise that you apply a bit of the primer on your wrists and neck before applying perfume to the intended points. Claims of “everlasting smell” often adjoin these perfume “hacks”. You’ll smell incredible all night, through sweat-soaked clubs, through dinner with friends, through love affairs well into the quietest hours of the night.  It’s striking how this mentality of desiring ever-lasting perfume has occurred in recent months within the online discourse of perfumery; from Twitter groups to reels and TikToks, there appears a clamouring call for the pernicious desire to use perfumery in this way. This desire and pervasive argument is a re-formulation of the central concepts of the Clean Girl aesthetic into the olfactory realm of perfume. You must be constantly bettering yourself through the consumption of products. You must be rigidly organising your life and daily routine around the concepts of beauty. You must conform to these concepts of beauty as a veritable lightning rod casting electric rays outward to signal your moral superiority. You smell good, so therefore you must be good. And, above all else and without fail, you must not be human — at any cost.  Using primer as a base for your perfume fundamentally elides the nexus of skin-scent that creates the foundational crux of perfume’s transformative capability. Primer, as its name is taken from the material products of paint, (to which the whole semiotic web of makeup as paint and skin as canvas reveals a wealth of interpretation of how we view our own faces and bodies), smoothes out and neutralises a base product. With traditional painting materials, one applies a primer base coat to smooth out the textural fibrous quality of canvases, so that the additional top layers of paint have a surface to stick to, and also to cover the natural fibres, filling in the natural gaps of the material. Gesso, the most familiar priming product for painting, creates a surface through combinations of glue to which acrylic paints can more readily stick without the paint seeping into the natural woven material of the canvas sheet.  But, why would you want to do this with perfume?  Perfume’s transformative capability is nestled within this combination of one’s natural scent blending with the chemical complexity of the perfume’s construction. This is why some perfumes will smell incredible on one person and terrible on another. The perfume itself, in isolation, could smell divine and wondrous but sit uncomfortably on the skin. It is a personal communion. Your skin is as much the component of perfume’s beauty as the scent itself. Perfume can transform the muted smell of your skin, influenced by a whole array of physiological characteristics, into a site of true olfactory pleasure — the pleasure of memory, the pleasure of desire, the pleasure of sociality. Perfume releases these pleasures precisely through and by its contact with the human organ. Without the organic fabric of the skin to hold the scent in such a way, the essential cornerstone of beauty is lost in the vaporous air.  Mentioning the Clean Girl aesthetic hints at where this trend of everlasting perfume means culturally and politically. The concept of the Clean Girl or "minimalism" has often been attributed to the rise of conservatism and fascism throughout particularly the United States and my native England. The Clean Girl — hand in hand with culturally pertinent concepts of cleanliness as a representative of good moral fibre and hygiene — is utilised as a status emblem highlighting the originator’s belief in beauty as a moral value judgment. Clean Girls look effortlessly beautiful in their deluge of online presence. They wear "minimal" makeup, none of the frills or extravagance of the 2000s party girl, neutral colours, natural hair, perfect skin, and straight white-cut teeth. They are ubiquitous and uniform, an expression of a beauty climate that has, in recent years, prioritised and privileged "health" and "wellness" as signifiers of moral hygiene. Lifting that half-dark veil of this aesthetic reveals its falsity almost immediately — makeup found in the form of long-lasting tints, hair extensions, extensive to the point of fanatic skincare routines, veneers, and cosmetic surgery. There is typically nothing "natural" and "clean" about any of what this aesthetic pretends to align itself with.  Utilising hacks, such as the primer hack, to elongate a perfume’s efficacy and sillage is a reflection of this climate in olfactory terms. What the Clean Girl signifies is the idea that these women are essentially ready-made perfect. They are born hairless, teeth-glowing, eyes-bright. Think of the concept of the "everything shower," in which influencers online discuss their bathing routine with the language of taming some sort of feral beast or maintaining a mechanical engine. You must look beautiful, but without showing all of the work . Extravagant, avant-garde, or plentiful makeup immediately signals effort and work. But look at a contemporary Clean Girl, and they present a veritable optical illusion. Whilst current discourse found online attributes the Clean Girl and  minimalism as a "recession indicator," this argument is less convincing than that of rising conservative attitudes found in online spaces. One only needs to look back to the outlandish fashions of 2008 and 2009 to realise that minimalism and recession or austerity do not go hand-in-hand. But the difference between 2008 and 2025 is the political climate. 2008, in both the U.S. and in the U.K, was a signal towards a re-packaged liberalism with both Democrats and the Labour Party in control of the respective countries. Following the deluge of incalculable violence found through the dirge of the Iraq War in the early 2000s, both the U.S. and the UK seemed to tilt toward a liberalised framework for the political landscape. But the 2008 financial crash added salt to an already blackening wound. In the UK, following the crash, we had over ten years of Conservative rule that decimated public services to the point of an inertia fouler than any, house prices have skyrocketed, wages stagnated, and Brexit added further insult to injury. Take ten years of perma-austerity, anti-immigrant xenophobic rhetoric, and poor standards of living, and you get racist pogroms targeting immigrants and asylum seekers televised for all the country to see. We do not live in liberal times now. A large part of these online trends are reflective of political landscapes that abet, contribute, and are informed by economic policies.  Moving back to the quality of perfume with the political backdrop dancing in the distance, we can see the interlocking facets of particular qualities of the Clean Girl and the desire to treat perfume in this way. Consumption of perfume and its longevity has figured as a central concept in maintaining the illusion of perennial perfectness that dominates our understanding of conservative fictive womanhood. Smelling good as a symptom of good moral grounding is, not by a long stretch, a new phenomenon. In Victorian England, it was commonplace for bourgeois and higher-ranking households to covet precious smelling materials in their homes as a signal to guests of their wealth, status, and cleanliness, during a period where bathing habits differ drastically from ours today.  This lean-in, fostered through constantly trying to elongate fragrance through "hacks" such as this, reformulates this Victorian usage of scent for a contemporary context. Rather than using the quality of perfume to inspire intimacy, through the subtle exchanges between people found in burgeoning romances or budding friendships, this method instead intends to spread the scent far and wide. It is, for the most part, a symptom of expressing one’s status symbol through the power of scent. Here I am, late at night, still smelling as fresh as when I woke up. It is used as a signifier of one’s, not only good taste but physiological superiority. Instead of focusing on the direct personal intimacy afforded through the close smell of another one’s scent, this typology of stretching the sillage of a perfume to the end of its capacity removes intimacy for a sort of blanket statement about the wearer. It is a repackaged desire to walk through the world ready-made and perfect. This is not to say that the impulse to smell a certain way is always connected to an inherent conservative worldview and political drive, but this manifestation found so commonly in online discourse plants itself firmly in the well from where the Clean Girl sprang.  Perfume cements the fiction that we create about ourselves. This is perhaps why perfume finds such a bedfellow with the world of literature, with so many contemporary houses, from Anaïs Binguine’s Jardins D’Écrivains to Cherry Cheng’s Jouissance Parfums , delving into the literary world as a fount of inspiration for their olfactory creations. But, in its components, perfume amplifies the fictitious aura that we create about ourselves when stepping out into the world. We wear certain scents to amplify or signal certain elements of our personhood, our interests, our desires, and who we are as people. Think of how many scents are attached to benign stereotypes, from Baccarat Rouge and the "female manipulator" to the more obvious Dior Sauvage and its toxic masculinity connotations. Perfume, in this way, functions like an olfactory magnifying glass in the very way in which we view ourselves and how we wish to be perceived by another’s gaze.  But to purposefully elongate the longevity of a fragrance by utilising methods such as priming reveals an added layer to this matrix of desire. By not allowing the skin, and by obvious extension the body, the ability to interact with the material, we create a blank canvas devoid of mood or sensuality. We remove the sensual component of perfume’s transformative capability and instead install a fictive artificial essence onto our personhood. We privilege the object over the subjectivity of personhood. We dare not let the sticky mess of being alive interrupt our carefully orchestrated narratives of ourselves. We invite others to read us as perfectly formed creatures, who even through the toils and trials and trifles of the day wandering through smog and smoke, remain poised, voluptuous, and ready for consumption.  🌀 M.P.S is a writer, zine-maker, part-time urban researcher, full-time perfume over-thinker, maximalist fashion enjoyer,   and creature from East London. You can find her looking gorgeous on Instagram as @_femmedetta  or giving unsolicited opinions as  @cyberyamauba  on X.

Thoughts on the Met Gala, the concept of "effortlessness," and a sale at Eileen Fisher. Welcome to The HALO Report — HALOSCOPE’s new weekly digest, an of-the-moment mix of news items, opinion pieces, and sale announcements designed to keep you posted on the nitty-gritty of the fashion world and all of its tangents without having to keep a constant eye on your feed.  This week, the Met Gala happened (and it went…well?), the difference between dreaming of labor and delighting in effort, Fashion Brand Company drops its cutest collection yet, a new bombshell summer shoe has entered the villa, the summer kicks off with a sidewalk sale (AND pierogies), and more. The latest long-ish reads from the brightest minds in fashion. Emily Kirkpatrick’s “ Met Gala 2025: Live red carpet reaction ” via I <3 Mes s is truly the only coverage of the extravaganza worth checking out. Her incisive commentary, witty observations, and ruthless, rarely met standards set a bar for fashion analysis media that legacy publications could only dream of clearing.  “ The Best Men’s Makeup Seen at the 2025 Met Gala and Beyond ” by Lauren Valenti and Margaux Anbouba for Vogue  is notable mainly for the fact that as the years go by, more and more masculine folk seem to be adopting makeup as a means of highlighting or concealing their feted or unwanted features as has traditionally been a feminine pursuit. This year, graphic, cartoonish makeup didn’t dominate the masc mugs; instead, subtle eyeshadow and tightly-lined eyes dotted the dandyish red carpet.  Though it doesn’t focus on fashion, the latest issue of Eleonor Botoman’s Screenshot Reliquary , “ 68. Laborious Reliquary ,” is one of the most relevant pieces to come out this week for any industry. They write, poignantly: “Even if what we all choose to do is different, our fights for dignity and survival remain the same,” then highlight fiber artist Tabitha Arnold’s textile tribute to the 1934 strike by workers at the Coosa-Thatcher textile factory in Chattanooga. Screenshot Reliquary  may not be strictly tied to the style world, but its myriad ports of call are a great reminder of how fluid every sector of creativity can be if we keep our minds open to receiving inspiration. “ the effort is the point ” by Rabbit Fur Coat ’s Eleanor is a simple exhortation to reject a facile conception of “effortlessness” as the ultimate goal in style, referencing detailed tapestries and deliberate displays of artistry in exalting the ultimate display of love: trying. For a solid primer on sporting the controversial pants length, check out “ Are Capri Leggings Really Back? Here’s How to Wear the Controversial Length in 2025 ” by Talia Abbas for Vogue , replete with reference photos and shoppable styling ideas. What to keep in mind — and look forward to — in the past and coming weeks. The Met Gala came and went, as it always does, and commentators were largely impressed with the stylistic showings, an impressive statistic given the fact that the historical theme of Black Dandy fashion seemed an easy one for the Eurocentric constituents of the event to pervert. As expected, the best dressed list  included Zendaya (though many were underwhelmed by her simple, yet immaculately tailored, white suit), Colman Domingo, and other Met darlings, but Alton Mason stole the show in a sparkly, chest-baring suit referencing the anime Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure .   Underrated label Fashion Brand Company’s summer-ready Sailor Collection  will drop on Tuesday, May 13. I have rarely encountered quality as high as that of FBC’s garments in a comparable price range, and I have been lusting over the simple, smartly-cut navy sailor dress since it was teased months ago.  Black Crane is another under-the-radar brand that deserves its flowers, debuting its SS25 collection at Bona Drag  with good-weird bubble-wrap-like quilted fabrics and what seem to be the label’s first forays out of neutral territory and into the world of bright colors.  I am NOT a sexy shoe kind of guy, with foot problems that make me unable to do much more than hobble when saddled with a strappy sandal, plus a sense of pragmatism that rejects any footwear designed for decoration, but Gimaguas’ new summer wedges  are the first hype-y shoes I’ve seen that have made me genuinely gasp. Forget MNZ’s Olympias and The Row’s cursed jellies—these are a sun-drenched patio with an Aperol spritz in hand in footwear form.   Get first access to Toteme’s SS25 collection  with a ℅ Toteme account—this is what The Row thinks  it’s doing, especially accessories-wise, with abundant potential it-bags and suave slip-on sandals. Less about impulse buys — and more about tracking discounts on the pieces already on your wishlist.  One of Tangerine NYC’s famous sidewalk sales  is about to hit Brooklyn. Be there on Saturday, May 10th, from 12-5 for deep discounts on brands like Coming of Age and Emily Dawn Long, plus pierogies via Veselka (I’m heartbroken to miss those).  Save up to 40% off a selection of embroidered tops, summer-ready sundresses, and more in the Sea, New York seasonal sale .  Take an extra 20% off the already-on-sale underwear at Cuup , including plenty of brightly-colored sets perfect for layering under sheer dresses this summer.  If it’s casuals you need, Eileen Fisher offers an extra 25% of f its sale section, with especially good color picks this go-around.   Grenson discounts its leather goods , including tons of all-weather footwear, by 35% in its seasonal sale.  🌀 Em Seely-Katz is the creator of the fashion blog Esque, the News Editor of HALOSCOPE, and a writer, stylist, and anime-watcher about town. You can usually find them writing copy for niche perfume houses or making awful collages at @that.esque on Instagram.

The Australians call it a thong for a reason. In case you missed it, Gigi Hadid has partnered with the Havaianas flip-flop brand  for a series of shots that places the supermodel atop and across surfboards and sandy beaches for the ultimate retro-feeling vacation vibe.   Not since Rihanna’s 2011 Vita Coco collaboration has a celebrity-led campaign featuring some of the most seemingly everyday objects so successfully sold the beach life to out-of-season cosmopolitans. Smiling coyly towards the camera, the fresh-faced, combed-back-hair Hadid looks not dissimilar to a Mad Men-era model, with the nostalgic lighting and ‘60s prints to boot— or, rather, sandal.   “Whether it’s my shorts to go to volleyball practice, or jeans to go get a smoothie, it feels like me to put on Havaianas,” Hadid told ELLE . It’s easy to experience a spiritual eye-roll whenever a celebrity professes personal usage of a product they’re being paid to promote — remember when everyone thought Kendall Jenner was going to come out  but instead just told us she used Proactiv for her acne? — but in this case, I’m inclined to believe it.   For the urban flip-flop has been on the rise for a while now. The flip-flop market (it’s a thing!) was valued at over 4.7 billion USD for 2025, an increase of 1.2 billion from 2019. This is not a whirlwind, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, seemingly overnight affair with all the timings and trimmings of a TikTok-ignited, subsequent PR campaign-fanned phenomenon. Instead, the flip-flop renaissance has been a lot slower and, with that, considerably more authentic in its spread.   The Row, for example, debuted its The City Sandals in its SS23 collection, pairing them on the runway with black gloves and an elegant midi dress. The $860 sandals, shaped like everyday flip-flops, serve to neatly conclude the outfit, a classic offering reflecting The Row’s trademark minimalism. In this instance, the flip-flops act as a neutral compliment to the outfit, allowing the accessorising of the gloves to command the observer’s gaze. It’s a kind of shoe for the sake of not being barefoot, in the most comfortable, sparse format possible.   Other brands have since followed suit. The zeitgeist brand of our age, Miu Miu, included several pairs of kitten-heeled flip-flops in their SS25 runway collection — complete with chipped nail polish, for the ultimate messy-chic girl look — while Ferragamo’s take on the classic silhouette meets the ballet pump at its source and accessorises it with winding ribbons. Unlike The Row’s flip-flosp — which have since been snapped up by Kylie Jenner and Zoe Kravitz — these are quirky reimaginations of the millennia-old style of the shoe, neatly re-appropriated to reflect the aesthetics of the respective fashion house.   The flip-flop spectrum is widening, and from the Miu Miu mild heel to Hadid’s Havaianas, these are not shoes exclusive to a beach vacation. Instead, flip-flops are city shoes in their own right, as The Row so clearly christened them. Too minimal in shape to be a statement piece and too discreet in format to demand attention, this shoe from our childhood exposes as much of the foot as possible — I suppose the Australians call it a thong for a reason — for the ultimate laissez-faire  approach to urban dressing.   For wearing flip-flops in public is the no-bra look of the Tarantino persuasion. City strutting in a pair of flip-flops is a gorgeous exercise in repurposing vulnerability into strength; it says so much because it amounts to so little. More casual than a Birkenstock and more exposed than a Croc, having what is essentially your entire foot out in public — with nothing but a mere inch of plastic separating sole from ground — is rendered all the more sparklingly audacious with its redirection of purpose. Conducting an entire day wearing flip-flops is so utterly chic because of the level of confidence necessary to do so. And what makes it so deliciously fun is the notion of this symbol of nonconformity being something as innocent and innocuous as a flip-flop.   Flip-flops work so well on the beach because you want to feel the sand and the lapping ocean. Traditionally, when worn in an urban environment, it’s within the confines of your personal neighborhood for lazy weekend errand running, coupled with sweats and a messy bun of the 2011 honey-wake-up-Harry-Styles-is-downstairs  variety. When instead paired with a fabulous outfit for some serious city slicking, the shoe grants the look not only considerable irony but also a genuine sense of defiant belonging within the anonymity of a city; for the wearer, the dirty city is only as threatening as a white sand beach. For shoes that cost as little as two dollars at Target, they symbolise a lot of grit and gumption.   Wearing flip-flops is by no means a new trend but rather a return to ‘90s minimalism and ‘00s neo-bohemia. In the days before every celebrity had a personal stylist for everyday dressing, Jennifer Aniston looked her coolest when snapped out shopping with a fantastic blow-dry, gorgeous red cargos, and black flip-flops; Sienna Miller, the doyen of modern bohemian dressing, avoided looking like she put too much thought in her outfit when her fur jacket-and-skinny jeans-for-a-night-out combo concluded with a pair of flip-flops hitting the tarmac. It is so fabulously random, so free-spirited in vibe, making any plotted outfit look casually thrown on. And isn’t that kind of the point of city dressing?   But as usual, the coolest city fits are not worn by the famous, but the random girl you find yourself staring at a bit on public transport. A few weeks ago, when London woke up to glorious warm sunshine so unseasonal for early spring, I was transfixed by a woman’s maxi skirt exposing the flip-flops underneath when she crossed her legs and shoved her Balenciaga city bag in between her legs. In a society dominated by clean girl monotonous piety and the remnants of Brat summer-curated maximalism, this stranger felt so at home on the London Underground that she deemed it appropriate to wear the last frontier of casual shoes across it. Well, of course, the next day, when the sky remained just as perfectly blue, I frantically dug out my old Havaianas to wear myself. Hadid was right; it did feel like me  putting them on. Bad news for the people who make a fuss about hating feet. Statistically, fashionably, anecdotally: flip-flops are in for the summer. 🌀 Bea Isaacson is a culture and travel writer based in London.

From Colman Domingo to Tyler Mitchell. The 2025 Met Gala has officially wrapped, and the stars who flooded the red (or should we say blue? ) carpet are either tucked into bed or off to the mid-week after-parties. Meanwhile, we’re already in pajamas with a glass of wine in hand, ready to rehash the jaw-dropping fashion moments that had us pausing, zooming in, and gasping from the couch last night. For our best-dressed list, we’re spotlighting the guests who actually  followed the theme: “Tailored for You.” Most attendees leaned into tailoring, giving us a range of sharp, stylish takes on suiting — but let’s be clear, the basic black-and-white tux brigade didn’t make the cut. The Met Gala is about innovation and individuality, and frankly, the only suits that caught our eye were worn by powerful Black women channeling Harlem royalty. As for the men? We see suits on you every year.  This list is for the ones who got it . The ones who honored Black designers and tastemakers, who understood the assignment, and who paid thoughtful tribute to the Costume Institute’s new exhibit, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style . Our Top Ten of the Night Colman Domingo honoring Andre Leon Talley (and then reappearing in a fantastic suit) Diana Ross , who had her family tree embroidered on the train of her dress Gigi Hadid honoring Zelda Wynn Valdes, who dressed Josephine Baker in a similar look Doechii appearing in Louis Vuitton and puffing on a fake cigar like a business tycoon Pharell Williams wearing a pinstripe suit detailed with pearls Khaby Lame show-stopping in Fendi Monica L. Miller , one of the designers of the exhibit, had cowrie shells embroidered on her blazer — a shell with the historical significance of bringing protection within Black culture Zendaya embracing a simple suit, but with the tailoring so perfect and detailed we had to include it Sydney Sweeney highlighting flapper culture in a stunning Miu Miu dress Lizzo puffing on a faux cigarette holder with a look inspired by jazz history Our Honorable Mentions Jennie from Blackpink in Chanel couture inspired by the 1920s and ‘30s Angel Reese wearing a stunning Thom Browne skirt suit set (tailored to perfection) Tyler Mitchell in a white Grace Wales Bonner suit with a feather boa (now this is how men should wear a suit to the Met). 🌀 Sydney Yeager  is a fashion writer and content creator who explores luxury fashion and trends with the gaze of how it can be accessible to the everyday consumer. As much as she adores avant-garde fashion, elegant and feminine looks will always have her heart, this is seen in both her writing and on her Instagram @sydselegantfinds.