For science, obviously. From L-R: my regular face, my UV damage, and my subsurface redness, in all their glory. On a rainy, balmy, beautifully gray Saturday earlier this month, I nestled my face into a digital facial imaging process machine, or a VISIA. It looked about as Kronenbergian as it sounds: a Cross-polarized UV light swung a 360° axis around my head, photographing each visible inch of my face, from my widow’s peak to the tip of my chin. Every freckle, mole, wrinkle, rogue eyebrow hair, and melasma bouquet was accounted for, tallied, and systematized. There is something oddly serene in feeling a bright, white light tickle your cheekbones; in stepping out of your body and witnessing it objectively, without reaching for the balm of aesthetics or the relief-thrill of turning away from the mirror. This is my face. This is how it exists in the world. Now what? I received the scan at the boutique aesthetics studio OVME. The business of aesthetics is undoubtedly controversial, and I’d finally gotten to the age (26) where I was thinking more about the way I looked less from a youthful mode of self-hatred and more from a desire for health. I worked out, I took a glut of supplements, I ate whole foods, I slathered and plumped my skin in a 12-step, meticulously designed routine. And while my skin wasn’t perfect — nor was I very much interested in perfection as an aesthetic or spiritual pursuit — I was interested in making sure my skin health was robust, and that I was doing what I could to not destroy our bodies’ largest organ. When the scan was over, I’d been expecting vanity metrics — the summation of my face translated into raw data, designed for easy solutions: fill that pore, dissolve this wrinkle, temper that rosacea spatter. What I was not expecting was something no one, not even me, could’ve ever seen in a mirror. Since time immemorial, women’s beauty rituals have been treated as frivolous, excessive, or fundamentally unserious. (Therein lies the rub — what’s so wrong with a bit of frivolity?) “All we are really seeking is a reliable way to show ourselves love when so many people around us are telling us we're worthy of little more than contempt,” says Kristin Iversen in NYLON. Skincare, despite its scientific bedrock, has continued to live in a weird space between legitimate healthcare and snake oil: buy this algae serum. Peel the topmost layer of your skin off. Look 15 forever. And while none of this is particularly new criticism, the ascendancy of dark horses in the skincare business — like Primally Pure, whose recent SPF campaign came under fire for claims that their products were “100% poison-free” — has made the question of skincare’s health legitimacy even more pertinent. And while the merits of specific formulas, products, or branded campaigns can be endlessly debated, technological innovations in skincare are much harder to dismiss. “The future of aesthetics is no longer just about treating aging; it's about supporting healthy aging through regenerative medicine and evidence-based innovation,” says Iman Shamloul, PA-C. Imaging, diagnostics, and dermatology-backed formulations have risen considerably, like exome serums and Lancôme’s Cell BioPrint, which assesses skin-surface protein biomarkers to predict ingredient responsiveness. Being able to see how and why the skin, as a whole organ, changes, rather than simply waiting for a product to do its promised job (or reacting to what we can already see), is transformative. While this isn’t to say beauty = medicine, it is to say thus: as the skincare industry finds more footing in tried-and-true, quantifiable clinicality, rather than the subjective or decorative, other associated industries — like aesthetics — are following suit. With clean, freshly washed skin, the VISIA scan broke down my skin into seven categories: wrinkles & fine lines; texture; surface spots; emerging brown spots; red areas; visible pores; clogged pores; and UV damage, and balanced my results against the global aggregate of anyone who’s ever had a VISIA scan. It was the last category that revealed what I couldn’t see: that I was in the bottom eighth percentile of sun damage in my age group. As a Southern WASP who spent most of her childhood running on the beach, I’ve always had very fair skin poxed with freckles, darkening and deepening in the summertime. The scan captured subterranean freckles and dots, invisible to the naked eye, secretly covering my entire face like a Pollock. And while my first instinct was to brush this off (So what! I like my freckles!), I’d found out that the extent of that UV damage could, later on, aggravate my risk of sun cancer — disconcerting news, given I’ve had family members fight melanoma. “UV exposure accumulates over years, causing repeated DNA damage to skin cells. While the body is able to repair much of that damage, repeated sunburns and chronic UV exposure increase the likelihood of permanent DNA mutations over time, which can ultimately contribute to the development of skin cancers,” said Shamloul. And while this was just raw information, not a diagnosis, it showed me something I never would’ve known had I not received a scan. After all this data, I then got a purely pleasurable, analysis-free beauty experience: a Hydrafacial. Using gentle, oddly satisfying suction, the esthetician glided the Hydrafacial device — a mini-vacuum with a hydro-dermabrasion tip — across my skin, extracting impurities and exfoliating dead skin cells I’d never be able to remove with an at-home exfoliant. Then came a layer of nourishing serums to replenish my barrier. As someone who holds a lot of lymphatic fluid in their face, I could feel every ounce drain from under the skin, flowing down my neck and toward my traps. And while I appreciated getting my lymph moving, it wasn’t like I hated that I also looked a lot more glowy and sculpted by the end, either. I don't think a facial needs to cure anything to be worthwhile or generative, whatever that means to you. But I also don't think the things we do for aesthetic reasons are inherently unserious. If this were a morality play, I wouldn’t harangue you about how everyone deserves a facial (though I actually do think that, along with $10,000 and a good lip balm). What I would tell you, though, is that everyone deserves to have the kind of information a VISIA scan makes legible. If something relatively quick and harmless can illuminate something imperceptible — and if something like that can change how you think about your health — then beauty tech isn’t an indulgence, nor is it frivolous. It’s another way of understanding your body. OVME offers the VISIA scan free of charge, and I’ve urged the people in my life — both skincare devotees and agnostics — to consider one. Because while skincare will be thorny and complicated until quite possibly the end of time, your skin (and your health!) really doesn’t have to be, freckles and all. 🌀 Savannah Eden Bradley is a writer and fashion editor born in 1999. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the fashion magazine HALOSCOPE. Her first book, Ladies of the Canyon: Fashion and Fear in Los Angeles, is forthcoming from University of Texas Press. You can stalk her everywhere online @savbrads.

Where to sniff, shop, and see, from the Naxos Apothecary to the Angelika. If you listened to season one of the Smell That Movie podcast, then you know that two of my very favorite things are films and fragrances. While you can enjoy both from home, I think it's more fun to make them an active part of your practice. For me, enjoying film and fragrance out in the world in New York City — walking, viewing, smelling — is meditative, and it’s usually what I’m picturing if you ask me for my perfect day. So, if you find yourself in NYC, let me share with you the best ways to take yourself on a film-and-fragrance date. There are, of course, a lot of places to see movies in New York, and a lot of places to smell beautiful smells. Below are the areas I believe provide the best and most plentiful opportunities to do so. NOLITA Perhaps the best, most full-day film-and-fragrance day you can have in New York is in Nolita. Elizabeth Street and its surrounding area have become a hub for fragrance (I call it Little Perfume). Little Perfume is a hop and a skip away from the Angelika Theater or the Anthology Film Archives. After seeing a film at either theater, you can easily walk to fragrance boutiques: Stéle, Osswald, and Scent Bar; the heritage Italian house Santa Maria Novella; the Greek house the Naxos Apothecary; and the Korean house Elorea. For candles, diffusers, and bath products, visit Blueme. And there are always locations of many popular houses like Le Labo (original location), Aesop, D.S. & DURGA, Diptyque, Glossier, Boy Smells, and Commodity. If you head a touch west towards Soho, you’ll find the new US location of Penhaligon's, as well as Kilian and Amouage. You can truly spend all day smelling around Nolita. For Anthology Film Archives, I recommend checking showtimes, as they don’t screen as many films as other theaters. For the Angelika, if you’re a member, tickets are half off on Tuesdays, and you get free popcorn for your birthday month! UPTOWN The uptown version of this day centers around another jewel in the Angelika crown — Cinema 123. It has some arthouse charm with the added bonus of a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine. For smells, uptown you have the expansive fragrance collections of the New York department stores Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdale's. You also have the US location of the Brazilian brand Granado, the ultra-luxury Swiss brand Amaffi, the Dior store, and the heritage brand Krigler, which is located in the concourse of the Plaza Hotel. You can also walk a little farther north on the east side and hit Museum Mile; some of those gift shops carry fragrances, too. WEST VILLAGE In the West Village, you have two incredible repertory/independent theaters: IFC and Film Forum. For fragrance, you have a few of the usual suspects (Aesop, Diptyque, etc.), but you also have Naked Ghosts, Frédéric Malle, Bond No. 9, Ranger Station, and, further west towards the Meatpacking District, Parfums de Marley. LOWER EAST SIDE Back on the east side, and further downtown, you should smell around Aedes — a 30-year-old fragrance boutique on the Lower East Side, as well as Seoul-based brand Nonfiction’s first U.S. location. Then, you can head to the haven for cinephiles, the Metrograph Theater. The Metrograph also has a restaurant (The Commissary) for those looking for dinner and a show. BROOKLYN In Brooklyn, there is another Little Perfume forming in Williamsburg, near both Williamsburg Cinemas and the North Brooklyn Nitehawk location. Much like Nolita, there’s a Stéle, a Scent Bar, as well as the usual suspects (Glossier, Olfactory, Aesop, Le Labo, Diptyque, Byredo, Malin + Goetz, D.S. & Durga, etc.), but there’s also Japanese brand Linc Original Makers as well as Beautélier’s. A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FILM & FRAGRANCE EXPERIENCE If you want to go beyond simply smelling around a store, a 20-minute walk from the AMC Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem is MUSE. Modern Urban Sensory Experiences (MUSE) is an appointment-only perfume destination in a townhouse that specializes in curating a unique collection of niche, luxury, emerging, and global fragrances. Kimberly Waters truly creates an all-encompassing sensory journey (one I had the joy of attending back in 2022). Despite not being in a perfume hub, I wanted to include my personal favorite movie theater on this list: the Prospect Park Nitehawk. For a sensory experience before your movie, I recommend spending time in Prospect Park across the street. You can check online to see what’s currently in bloom and where. Or you can wander and get lost in the park’s lush flora; just don’t miss your movie. 🌀 You can listen to the second season of Smell That Movie next week, 9/4, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbean, or wherever else you get podcasts. 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.

If you’re looking for eyewear to ooze Kate Hudson's iconic Penny Lane, look nowhere but Velvet Canyon. The Noughties' in Black ($277) Velvet Canyon eyewear has something distinctive: a cool, effortless attitude that blends retro allure with a sustainable sensibility, the kind of aesthetic that feels like it already belongs in a film. Think Thelma & Louise, La Piscine, or Almost Famous — you know the vibe. No wonder, then, that these bohemian ‘70s road-trip lenses have captivated It Girls like supermodel Bella Hadid, model and author Emily Ratajkowski, musician Suki Waterhouse, boho-chic legend Sienna Miller, model Kate Moss, and actresses Laura Harrier and Daisy Edgar-Jones. There’s no denying that the label, founded in 2017 by sisters Bec Nolan and Cass Moase alongside photographer Ali Mitton, has cemented its status as one of the coolest eyewear names around. Ahead, HALOSCOPE sits down with Bec Nolan to trace their journey from Byron Bay, Australia to the global market, diving into how a shared sun-kissed vision, a love for nostalgia, and a distinctly ‘70s free spirit became the foundation for a new era of nonchalant, magnetic eyewear. Ana Beatriz Reitz: When and how was the moment you decided to launch a sunglasses label, and why specifically sunglasses? Bec Nolan: In 2017, I was working as a clothing designer, styling photoshoots and unable to source the sunglasses that I wanted to feature. So I designed our first collection based around that: those styles that I wanted to exist that I couldn't find anywhere. Specifically, ‘60s and ‘70s styles in really a beautiful, tonal color palette. ABR: I love the energy Velvet Canyon gives. Effortless, retro, with a sun-soaked edge that belongs to a girls' trip à la Thelma & Louise. How did you, your sister, and Ali land on this name, and what was the feeling you were specifically trying to capture with it? BN: We wanted the name to sound like a movie — maybe a sleazy ‘70s spy thriller with a femme fatale lead. We’ve made a few short films as campaigns and tend to approach our shoots in a cinematic way, which has influenced both our designs and brand voice. We like to have a little backstory or character associated with each design. ABR: What details do you obsess over that most customers might never notice? BN: I like to think that our customers do notice the details, and that is why they buy from us as opposed to one of the million other brands! We do keep things minimal, so each detail must be there because it is beautiful and adds to the overall experience. ABR: When did you first realize the brand was becoming a favorite among the "It Girl" set? Was there a specific moment, celebrity sighting, or street-style photo that made it click? BN: From the beginning, we were lucky to have been worn by some very influential people. 2020 was definitely when things really started to ramp up, and Kendall Jenner was wearing her Zou Bisou’s on repeat. ABR: What role have TikTok and Instagram actually played in shaping the brand's following — [is it the] algorithm, or something more organic than that? BN: Instagram was really important to us early on, and it’s how we managed to grow so quickly. It was back when it was still completely organic. And still fun. These days I’m just so fatigued with social media that we’ve taken a step back. I know it’s something I need to invest in more, but I kind of hate it, just how much time and life needs to go into the little screen. ABR: How do you feel about the "It Girl approved" label? Is it something you lean into or push back against? BN: The thing I love most when I see celebrities who are followed for their style wearing Velvet Canyon is knowing just how many options they have, how many items they must be sent, and yet they chose ours. ABR: Which unexpected person or moment wearing Velvet Canyon meant the most to you? BN: To be honest, I get just as excited when I see people in the street wearing our sunnies as I do when I see a celebrity has worn them. I remember being on vacation in Puglia in Italy and seeing a girl wearing them, and she looked SO good, and I was just so happy. ABR: You're headquartered across Byron Bay, L.A., and Paris, three cities with wildly different ideas of "cool." How much of the brand's appeal comes from refusing to pick one? BN: Our headquarters has actually just moved from Byron to Melbourne this week, and the founders are now based in Mexico and France — none of us can seem to stay in one place for too long. I do think we are influenced by our surroundings, but Velvet Canyon lives in its own world, in its own era. L-R: L'Homme in Havana Foncé ($329), The Siren in Black ($149), La Touriste in Chocolate ($263) ABR: Does staying "cool" get harder as you grow? Or is it an easy task for something that channels it so effortlessly? BN: I don't think being cool has ever been the goal, and I certainly don't think that is something one can — or should — chase. It's not that we are anti-trend — if something feels right for us and aligned, then we will incorporate it. But it needs to feel like something true to the Velvet Canyon story. There have been moments when I tried to include a style that felt like something people would respond to, even if I didn't personally love it, but ended up not doing well. It's a lesson for me to trust my instincts and not try to cater [to] everyone. ABR: Eyewear is a category that doesn't get the same sustainability scrutiny as, say, fast fashion garments. Do you think consumers are asking the right questions about their sunglasses? BN: Acetate eyewear [is] generally a lot lower impact naturally than clothing — acetate is a plant-based material; there is also plastic eyewear, which is usually cheap, but even designer brands sometimes make their frames from petroleum-based plastic. So I think the same scrutiny isn’t necessarily there just because the impact isn’t as extreme. People buying eyewear should certainly be checking that their frame is made from acetate if they are interested in [fewer] plastics. It’s tricky with lenses because there is glass, which is not practical as it can shatter, or different types of plastics. I think the most important thing is to buy high-quality eyewear that will last a long, long time. ABR: Was sustainability part of the founding thesis from day one, or something the brand grew into as the industry and the customer started demanding it? BN: Of course, yes, from the beginning it was important to us to make sure we had as low of a climate impact as possible. It’s been frustrating at times because we want to do things perfectly and sometimes our idea of how we want to do things doesn’t match with the current technology, we end up trialling materials that sound amazing but don’t quite hold up to the level of quality we expect and it’s about that balance of doing the best we can while making a product that is going to last. ABR: There's real fatigue around sustainability claims in fashion right now because people have been burned by greenwashing for far too long. How do you build trust around that without sounding like every other brand? BN: It does feel a little like people don’t really care anymore, and with the rise in popularity of online fast fashion, it can feel hopeless. But we just have to trust that our customer understands and values well-made pieces. ABR: What's something you had to learn the hard way as the brand started growing so quickly? BN: That growth isn’t necessarily consistent and can come in waves rather than a steady incline. ABR: Are there categories beyond sunglasses you're excited to explore? BN: Right now, I just want to keep things simple. More categories [mean] more work and likely expanding the team, and I’m waiting for the day when that sounds appealing to me again, but at the moment I’m enjoying having some free time to spend with my daughter and enjoy life outside of work. ABR: Where do you want Velvet Canyon to be in five years? BN: Everywhere. ABR: What's one thing about the brand's future you're excited to share that hasn't been made public yet? BN: We took a little design hiatus just to recalibrate and take our time with a new collection. We went from three seasons a year to no new styles at all in the past year. So we have a new collection launching in November, and I’m so excited for some fresh pieces! ABR: And what can we expect to see from the new collection? BN: A return to our roots, yet with a completely new energy. 🌀 Ana Beatriz Reitz Gameiro is a Brazilian freelance journalist covering fashion, entertainment, beauty, and culture. Her work has appeared in publications such as FASHIONISTA, V Magazine, Polyester, Remezcla, and NSS. She is also the voice behind The Devil Writes Fashion (previously For Fashion’s Sake), a weekly newsletter where fashion is dissected, celebrated, and occasionally roasted with humor, heart, and just a little bite.

The dopamine-driven aesthetics of the mid-2010s are back — and with them, a renewed taste for play. But, as aqua blue, body glitter, and hair feathers roll back onto the collective Pinterest board, can borrowing the era’s aesthetics revive the optimism that first created them? “Wake up, it’s 2016.” Natalie smiles into the camera in a pink tank top and skinny jeans. Major Label's “Lean On” blares as she performs some variation of a TikTok dance in front of L.A.'s palm-tree-flecked skyline. Washed in the purple tones of the Rio de Janeiro Instagram #filter, the video feels like a time capsule — perfectly designed to recreate the carefree iPhone 7 ambiance of the mid-2010’s. Though the scene around her is an imitation, it’s clear her excitement is not. Natalie is part of a growing cohort of young people using every power available to forcibly turn back the clock. Hervé Léger’s bodycon dresses backlogged on Vinted saves, chrome eyeshadow tutorials trending on Instagram, girl-centric pop music soundtracking TikTok’s dances — everything short of the dog filters’ unfurling tongue and Avicii himself have been dug out of old Snapchat memories, under the anthemic motto “2026 is the 2016.” It seems we’re all collectively closing our eyes and wishing ourselves backward. But can we really jar the zeitgeist of a bygone era and keep it shelf-stable long enough only to crack open on the coldest of cultural winters? And why, now, are we so eager to rummage through our prepper pantries? Looking back at the early 2010s, the era felt scored with an undeniable sense of forward momentum — so much so that it has since been flattened into the shorthand of "millennial optimism.” That optimism was not just felt, but seen. It lived in maximal cut-crease glam, in the sugary-saturation of Tumblr pink, in the layering of neon green over neon orange, and in the thousand variations of palm tree print sold from Primark to Paco Rabanne. On TV, Lena Dunham “found herself” in Bushwick warehouses and lost herself to season-long situationships, all while dressed in bright green jersey tops and lady-bird print dresses. At the same time, independent print magazines, like NYLON, ran articles with step-by-step instructions on “How To Change The World,” next to spreads of brightly clad, upbeat young warriors ready to leave their mark in tweed and Aztec print. And design houses — from Stella McCartney’s unicorns, to Gucci’s parrots and Dries Van Noten’s cheetah print — reached for motifs that implied terrain not yet mapped. In a time when the culture still believed the future was wide open, fashion dressed for its expansion. Back then, the future felt malleable and fashion engaged with it playfully. After 2016, the culture hardened. Politics became increasingly polarising and our clothes, like the world around them, turned black and white. Now, a decade on, the aesthetics that once defined the big and bold 2016 era — saturation, gloss, the word “swag,” and sing-along pop — are back. Gen Z, who feel cheated out of the Bushwick Warehouse Raves, BuzzFeed Office Jobs, and the VICE gonzo documentaries they were promised by millennials and their Obama-era optimism, are once again using dress as a deliberate tool to influence mood. So-called “dopamine dressing” — a trend of late 2025 to use dress to positively influence moods — arrived as a workaround: a way of engineering pleasure back into our lives when it stopped arriving on its own. Fashion creator Sammie Lena describes dopamine dressing as “wearing clothes that bring you the most joy and confidence.” Her list of clothes that induce this kind of euphoria includes but is not limited to: leopard print, polka dots, gingham, layering bold colours over metallics, and adding on as much big, chunky jewellery as your arms can carry. This logic hasn't faded into a fast fad. If anything, it’s intensified through to the new year into an outright call to arms. Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel in Bambi spots, Alaïa in tiger stripes and Prada in zebra — bold animal prints are again appearing everywhere from fur coats to ballet flats, dressing the collective psyche in the wild, the ungoverned, and the untamed. Off the runway, Addison Rae is wearing aqua blue latex dresses, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet are in head-to-toe Chrome Hearts orange, and Rachel Sennot’s I Love LA is studded in barely there, skin-tight neon. Fashion is once again in the mood to play, and to step foot onto the playground is to insist that fun is still to be had. Against a backdrop of hardened cultural division, fewer certainties, and narrower futures, this visual excess insists on novelty when none feels guaranteed. Our growing appetite for play goes beyond how we dress, and into our relationship with the broader world. Across feeds and For You Pages — “my year of whimsy,” “whimsy goals,” “how to add more whimsy into your life.” The word “whimsical” has become nothing short of a Gen Z buzzword, with countless videos and articles detailing how to rewire play into your life, whether it be cutting your pancakes in the shape of love hearts, sending postcards to friends, or bedazzling your BIC lighter with pink rhinestones. Embracing our collective sense of silliness is a way of refusing seriousness as the default emotional register. In the same tone, young people are consciously switching algorithms for analogue: CDs, mixtapes, DVDs, and magazines. Physical media that reinforces presence over convenience; choices, patience, and limits over easy-access, infinite-scroll, device-driven dopamine. Just before escaping London’s January greys for a South American holiday, a friend dug out her old family camcorder. We tested it in the living room before she left, waving at the lens, watching ourselves move across a small screen in big pixels. Lugging the heavy bulk from its dusty box, through easyJet’s carry-on prison, and across the mountains of the Colombian jungle — just to film a worse version of what an iPhone could — might seem like nothing more than nostalgia-driven escapism. But it felt like something deeper: a desire to be more present with our memories as we make them. Signaling a return to the same carefree style of capturing memories we had back in the mid 2010s, when the collective gaze still faced forwards. We can’t return to 2016, no matter how much glitter we pack onto our eyelids, but we don't need to. Dressing for a brighter future may be how we begin to believe it. Aesthetics don't just reflect how we feel; they train how we move through the world. Against the greyscale dopamine drought of recent years, the bright and playful optimism of the 2010s feels like a breath of fresh air. To reach for these aesthetics now is to borrow the same visual language – one that treats optimism not as a mood, but as a muscle. 🌀 Karla Lategan is a writer based in East London. Her work explores the intersection of fashion, culture and media. Originally from Australia, and with a background in sociology, she writes with a curiosity for people and the social forces that shape them.

The bag charm craze is coming for notebooks next. Photo sourced from Pinterest; all credit to original owner. For Gen Z, personalizing your everyday essentials is the shiniest new fashion trend. Purses covered with charms and ribbons, Phone cases with beaded wrist leashes, plastic figurines dangling from anything and everything with a loop attached. We thought we’d seen it all until the latest essential to get a makeover: the journal. Gone are the days of the “secret diary,” an inconspicuous notebook brandishing warnings not to read any further (OR ELSE!). Always carefully stowed away so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of an enemy, or worse, a crush. Now, the humble journal is a luxury accessory bound in patinaed leather, monogrammed with the owner’s initials in gold foil and decorated with sentimental charms. Owners flaunt them on social media, showing off how they’ve decorated their journals and even what is kept inside. The once-secret journal is now an open book confessional. The trend of sharing journals on social media can be traced back to the bullet journal of the mid-2010s, created by designer Ryder Carroll and popularized by millennial bloggers like Rachel Nguyen. But where the bullet journal lacks in decor (the most being a few stickers slapped on the front of a Moleskine or Leuchtturm), this new form of journaling doubles as both an organizational tool and a fashion statement. In 2023, Victoire Valmary began posting videos on TikTok to attract business and an international clientele for her family’s handmade leather-bound notebook company, Louise Carmen. The brand, established in 2016 by Fabien and Nathalie Valmary, came after a year-long family trip through Asia, which left Nathalie in need of a way to organize her many notebooks from her travels. The result was the first “Louise Carmen” made of leather that Nathalie picked up at a market in Thailand, and colorful elastic cords that fastened all her notebooks into place (in the vein of the Japanese Traveler’s Company notebooks). It would become the prototype for their now vast selection of journals offered by the Parisen brand, which has garnered a 148k following on TikTok. But with these journals starting at €122 EUR (around $139 USD), stationery enthusiasts have followed in Nathalie’s footsteps to create their own versions of the Louise Carmen. Philly-based jewelry designer and co-founder of Cult of Angels, Brooke Pizio, made her first journal as a birthday gift for her roommate, who was interested in the Louise Carmen notebooks. At the time, Pizio had leatherwork experience designing accessories like bags and leather cuffs with antique pendants, but had never made a journal. “From the very beginning, my search to find one for my roommate in a certain color was impossible, and I couldn’t really find one, so I think that I tapped into a market that I didn’t know really existed,” says Pizio. She’s now received an influx of commissions not for jewelry, but for stylized notebooks with elaborate cross-stitched designs, embroidery, and silver adornments. In recent months, she’s created journals for all purposes, from vow books for couples to commemorate their wedding day to a collection of pink suede journals for influencer Anastasia Karanikolaou, which stuck out in a “PR haul” video on Instagram alongside Rhode lip balms and Balenciaga tees. A chic, personalized notebook has become another bookish accessory that leans into the trend of literacy – or, at least the appearance of it. An influx of celebrities such as Dua Lipa, Reese Witherspoon, and Kaia Gerber promote titles both well-known and under-the-radar for their respective book clubs. Long-form social media platform Substack is flooded with discourse, whether informed or baseless, from young writers and music-industry moguls like Rosalía and Charli xcx, the latter of whom just scored Emerald Fennell’s buzzy (and heavily stylized) adaptation of the gothic classic Wuthering Heights. One can achieve a “smart” look simply by carrying a novel or a notebook as they would a clutch. For people creating these fashionable journals, like social media and marketing consultant and creator Hailei Wynter, who created hers in the fall of last year, the style is more than maintaining a writerly image; it is a functional form of personal expression. “I love making the things that I reach for every day beautiful so that I am more likely to use them every day,” says Wynter, “I want everything I pull out to be very customized and unique and different and feel very me.” However, fashioning these journals goes beyond external impressions. Whether using a Louise Carmen or something they’ve crafted by hand, creators are sharing how they’ve organized and decorated the interiors of their journals, too, in videos often dubbed “journal tours” or “journal ecosystem tours.” They reveal pockets filled with stickers and pens, photobooth strips clipped onto notebooks, then explain the purpose behind each notebook bound in the journal, and even flip through entries. “I like posting that content for other people to give recommendations because that's how I put my ecosystem together, just by watching a ton of people and seeing what would work best for me,” says Wynter, who posted her own journal ecosystem video as a “yearning for connection.” Even before joining this digital community of crafters, Wynter and some coworkers all gathered to share how they’ve organized their journals for the new year. It makes sense that, in a digital age when young people are feeling more isolated than ever, many are turning to analog interests to foster new relationships (even if those connections start on a social media platform). My own Louise Carmen is the product of my friendships. At the end of 2023, I had discovered Louise Carmen through TikTok, and then through my friend who had just come back to New York from Paris with a red, pocket-sized version. I had planned my first-ever solo trip for the spring of 2024 and knew that, even though I couldn’t afford the notebook, I would visit the store to window-shop. On the first morning of my trip, I woke up in Reykjavik to a Venmo payment. All of my friends, knowing how much I wanted this notebook, had pooled together money so I could afford one of my own. To this day, it’s the most meaningful gift I have ever received. Every time I look at it, I see the journal as a connection to all the friends who put it in my hands, and the charms that connect me to each place I went on my first solo trip. This specific type of journal is a fashion statement as much as it is a gateway towards connection. A stranger sees someone’s fabulous, meticulously designed journal, and it opens the door to deeper conversation, not just about the craftsmanship and design of the journal itself but also what’s inside — a person’s thoughts and observations, interests, and personality are all bound together in one place. People connect and build long-lasting connections that outlast any trend cycle or fashion fad. And it's longevity that draws people to the Louise Carmen notebooks and their subsequent iterations. Due to their customizable nature, they can shift both functionally and stylistically as a person’s life does over time. They are both timely and timeless. 🌀 Tess Growney is a writer based in Brooklyn with words in HALOSCOPE, Stereogum, Spin, and IRK Living. She’s interested in writing about the intersection of music and fashion history, planning dinner parties, and curating playlists. You can find her at @tessgrow or at any vintage store in NYC.

On the phenomenon of having a “favourite dead girl” — from Marilyn Monroe to Sylvia Plath — and what it means to let women live in peace. Dogs may be man’s best friend — but a girl’s are usually famous dead women. Whether it be Laura Palmer, Princess Diana, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Sharon Tate, Marilyn Monroe, Lux Lisbon, Ophelia, Juliet, Amy Winehouse, or Sylvia Plath (the list is truly endless), we all have one that haunts us. But what is it about these dead women that has such a hold on culture, and, more specifically, on girl culture? Historically, men have sexualised the dead bodies of women, most notably in the Victorian era. Pale, gaunt-looking women were the standard of beauty at the time, immortalised in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. Dead women were the ideal, preserved in their youth, forever beautiful and passive. Is it still about looks, purity, and youth now that it is girls who love them, or is it something deeper? Edgar Allan Poe famously said, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” I have been thinking a lot about this obsession with dead women, as the gallery I work in has been tirelessly prepping for their exhibition marking the 100th birthday of Marilyn Monroe. As portraits of her are plastered across gallery walls and social media, excitement and anticipation have been high among visitors, bringing one of the most well-known and adored dead women back to the forefront of popular culture. Marilyn Monroe is an example of a woman who was primarily loved and watched by men, and even in her death in 1962, she was subject to obsessive male behaviour. Notably, Playboy's founding father, Hugh Hefner, purchased the plot next to hers, and the plot above went from her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio to entrepreneur Richard Poncher, whose widow sold it to an anonymous bidder on eBay in 2009. Poncher reportedly had told his wife, “If you don’t put me upside down over Marilyn, I’ll haunt you for the rest of my life.” Monroe had no control over the men she would be lying in eternity with, and no way to fight against their sexual motivations. In death, she has still never been left alone. Despite the almost constant male attention, I have observed that it is primarily women and teenage girls who have shown the most interest and excitement in the gallery’s exhibition. Monroe’s legacy has become more than just her sex symbol status; she is now recognised as a talented comedic actress and businesswoman, fighting for women’s independence and agency in the film industry. The public hardly knew her, and yet the adoration and obsession with her are global and constant. Just under a year after Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath died — another woman wronged by men and adored by women post-death. Many girls' and young women’s first encounter with her was on Tumblr: seeing quotes from her poems and journals pasted over aesthetic images, poetry inspired by her, black-and-white pictures of her from when she was young, and, of course, many references to her death. What seems to come along with a love for her work is an immediate knowledge of and focus on her infamous suicide. Plath died from putting her head in a gas oven in her home in London in 1963. Plath’s struggles with mental health and her attempts at suicide throughout her life are very present in her work; her words are so deeply personal that it is impossible to disconnect an interest in her from her untimely end. In every generation since her death, girls relate to her words, whether through her poems, by seeing themselves in Esther from The Bell Jar, or by finding solace in the pages of her journals. Over the decade that I have known about Sylvia Plath, I have been in two minds about the obsession with her suicide. References to Plath’s death happen a lot in popular culture: we see people with DIY cardboard ovens over their heads on Halloween; the Gilmore Girls making jokes about it 20-odd years ago; Emma Roberts’ character in Adult World attempting suicide in the same way; girlbloggers posting “I am one bad day away from sticking my head in the oven”, and even a fake porn thumbnail with the title “young MILF gets stuck in the oven.” Although I understand that her death is undeniably connected with her body of work and, in turn, is an easy way to refer to her or honour her, the visuals and memes related to it often come across as mockery, and it seems that is entirely what Plath is reduced to: the woman who stuck her head in an oven. We rarely, if ever, see the same happen to male artists: Kurt Cobain, Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake, etc. The most recent visual reference to Plath’s suicide was in Lana Del Rey’s music video for “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter,” bringing Plath’s death to the forefront of popular culture once again. In the song, Rey coos about how wonderful her husband is, so much so that she wants to cook for him, an unusual and out-of-character desire for her oeuvre. The homemade music video compiles clips of Rey singing the song in her house; in one, she is seen from behind in a satin bronze skirt, seductively putting her head in the oven. This irked many fans. Rey often references Plath in her lyrics and poems; she clearly has an affinity for her work, as many women do, and it is unquestionable that this was also the case. This visual, however, comes across as erotic and at the same time romantic, considering the song’s lyrical content. This imagery, along with the lyric “I know you wish you had a man like him, it's such a bummer,” appears distasteful, considering Plath had a tumultuous relationship with her husband, Ted Hughes, which many relate to as a factor in her death. The discourse around Rey’s music video spanned a wide breadth of reactions, with some saying it is disrespectful to visually mimic someone's suicide, while others defended Rey, who has alluded to suicide attempts in the past and perhaps is using the imagery as a tool to communicate her healing. Despite Rey’s reasoning and intent, which we do not know, there is still a level of romanticisation which Plath’s family has continuously spoken out against. Plath’s daughter Freida Hughes wrote a poem titled “My Mother” where she said “Their Sylvia Suicide Doll, who will walk and talk and die at will, and die, and die and forever be dying,” emphasising how Plath will remain a dependable victim of her death if people continue to manipulate and aestheticise her image in that way, making her a visual symbol of tragedy as opposed to an important literary icon. Figures like Plath no longer exist in our current culture, at least beyond reference. We are in an age where artists are no longer just artists, but commodities; they are marketing opportunities, walking advertisements. We romanticize dead women like Plath because her suffering wasn't a commodity — she wasn't performing it; she was living it, and she wrote about it because that is all she could do. We don’t have a 21st-century Plath and we never will. Girls obsessing over and referencing Plath isn't necessarily a desire to be her, but instead an escape from artists today. Plath was confessional, raw, and honest about her struggles with mental illness; it's almost impossible to find anyone now who doesn't have a BetterHelp sponsorship or a discount code for anti-anxiety meds. In that way, Rey references Plath because she doesn't fit the narrative of contemporary celebrity culture. Rey leans on nostalgia and on artists of the past who had experiences similar to hers; she rarely relies on advertising. She is far from a modern-day Plath, but much like how we look to dead female artists for authenticity, Rey looks to them for inspiration. Monroe has also been an overriding symbol in Rey’s work both visually and lyrically. In her music video for the song “Candy Necklace,” Rey takes on the personas of doomed Hollywood starlets: Veronica Lake, Elizabeth Short (more commonly known as the Black Dahlia) and Marilyn Monroe. The video offers a behind-the-scenes look at filming a music video: hair and makeup being applied, camera equipment, lighting, set design, and Rey talking to the team. The song critiques the exploitative nature of media success, especially for female stars. In the video, Rey explains the concept to her team: “Why it was all supposed to be behind the scenes was because all these women who changed their names and changed their hair like me, it’s like they all fell into these different snake holes. So the whole point is like, ‘How do you learn from that and not fall into your own thing?’” The “snake holes,” I imagine, allude to the coping mechanisms that many stars develop to deal with the pressures of success — drug addiction, alcoholism, surgical procedures, suicide. In her scene as Marilyn Monroe, Rey is sitting in an Eames chair in a mid-century style room, dressed in a black turtleneck and trousers, a blonde wig, and a diamond necklace. She poses like Monroe in some clips and appears sad and contemplative in others, expressing the contrast between performance and reality. Rey, through this video and song, implies that being a woman in this industry inevitably leads to demise. The end of the video heavily alludes to the deaths of all of these women, visualised through the necklaces and diamonds falling into a pool of blood and a shot, Sunset Boulevard-style, of paparazzi photographing from above, capturing the dead body. We all cling to these women of the past because we crave what we no longer have in our culture. Sabrina Carpenter is branding herself as a 1950s starlet; Legally Blonde is coming out with a prequel series; Brutes by Dizz Tate was pitched as “The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project.” Is it still possible to pioneer originality, or are we only capable of selling a sense of nostalgia? People like Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath represent emblems of their crafts, and now all we see are others attempting to echo or reimagine their careers. It’s easier to sell yourself as an artist, especially in an age when virality is the quickest road to fame, if you echo the familiar. And although people love the nostalgia that these artists provide, constantly seeing these references played over and over again is becoming exhausting. When you have a favourite dead person, all you have is their art and an idea of them. You don't have to stay up to date with their brands or personas, or question if what they're doing is a publicity stunt. Dead people can’t enter a new “era”. It is all authentically them and the art that outlives them. They give us a different perspective, a fantasy, an escape. Perhaps our only escape from the algorithm. 🌀 Bella Blue Bloss is a writer and editor from London. She runs the Substack blog Fragmentary Girl, where she publishes essays on feminism, art, culture, literature, and fashion, exploring female representation in the visual arts and media. Bella is currently working on her first book, an essay anthology edited and written by herself and other up-and-coming feminist writers. You can find more of her work on her website and follow her on Instagram @bellabluebloss.

A time stamp in media culture that will be hard to outshine. As Joshua Citarella and Caroline Busta were setting up their latest project, placing Nick Land books amongst miscellaneous viral pharmaceuticals, nestled beside a True Anon tote bag and Red Scare shorts, the news broke that The Onion had purchased Infowars, and that Tim Heidecker would be their new creative director. The timing of this world-imploding announcement was not only the perfect cherry on top of their months of painstaking work, but a time stamp in media culture marking the complete magnetic pole reversal of a landscape where alt-media has planted itself firmly in and amongst legacy media, fertilized like a giant beanstalk, and now looms heavy over the mainstream. “If internet culture is, like, the apex of the project of globalization, we timestamped it at the very end, where now Infowars is done and Tim Heidecker is the host and was purchased by The Onion.” — Joshua Citarella, via New Models podcast ADULT SWIM DAYS Before there was Slushy Noobz and Emergency Intercom, there was Tim Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. Upon its conception in 2007, the reaction was often disgust — the surrealist, anti-humour comedy of the show had very polarizing effects. Shock-based gags, body fluids, and skits made to repulse audiences made it a good Christian American parents' nightmare, but a cool kid born in ‘94’s favorite thing to watch. If you’re unfamiliar with Tim’s sketch work, you’ll likely recognize him from the viral “it’s free real estate” meme. The resurgence of this meme in 2016 was being used left and right, mainly in the context of colonization — its Google searches peaked in November 2025, when Israel’s attacks on Palestine weighed heavily in the news cycle. The breakthrough of Tim and Eric’s fringe comedy sketch into mainstream culture was an intriguing foreshadowing of what was to come — a glimmer of what the future held for alternative artists and comedians. Cartoon Network’s channel, Adult Swim, hesitantly championed the duo's quirks and oddball absurdities. The lo-fi, highly saturated visuals — what the kids today might call “liminal”, and what kids back then called “random” — fit in nicely with the channel's other bizarre offerings like Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The show was wholly unique, however. “Awesome Show” fed off the deepest bowels of human discomfort, with fake advertising shot to look like early cable television, and surrealist sketches akin to VHS footage you might find in a New Mexican gas station bathroom. So, how did Tim manage to become — for all intents and purposes — the creative overlord of the most prolific conservative media corp today, when only 16 years ago he was acting as a child-clown salesman and breeder, defecating in bedpans and having co-stars dissect it, consuming his own vomit on camera (more than once), and suckling milk out of Eric Wareheim's chest? You might think it’s due to him getting older, growing up, or perhaps leaving behind his juvenile antics of the early aughts. But he was already 30 years old when “Awesome Show” premiered — already graduated from Temple University film school, where he met Wareheim. This is something else, something nobody has done before, but most of all, this is the consequence of funny men channeling the power of their masculinity into something productive, rewarding, and entertaining — the pig has grown wings and left the building. “Awesome Show” didn’t so much one-up the semen-drinking, pie-breeding, horse-masturbating gross-out comedies of the ’90s and early 2000s. It obliterated them. Excrement, ejaculate, tears, blood, sweat weren’t used as gags or stunts, but as the fundamental elements of the demented comic world the duo created.” — John Semly “There’s something about the cigarette juice skit that literally made me vomit." — Reddit comment THE ONION The Onion, an American digital media company that has been delivering knee-slapping satire since 1988, has catered to a generally leftist audience since its inception. Up until 2024, it had been owned by G/O Media, a large holding company that also houses Clickhole. The Onion is now owned by Global Tetrahedon, a Ben Collins-owned company which, as you may learn upon reading their site, is essentially a meme in and of itself. The United States’ most precious export is news, and wars are fought over media just like they are for oil — but instead of maiming civilians with AKs, the weapon of choice in our post-literate society tends to be visuals that, when met with the exhausted eyes of average Joes housed in food deserts, paint a mosaic of bombastic narratives lacking any nuance whatsoever. July 2 marked the first official Onion as InfoWars livestream, with over 2,880 people tuned in across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. The implications of this massive media overhaul are likely to make waves across the world — Heidecker and the team plan to donate proceeds of their merch sales to the families of Sandy Hook victims, a horrific mass-shooting event that Alex Jones famously denies ever happened. It’s reported that they already have $100K planned to donate, even though the takeover isn’t officially complete. In an exclusive quote provided to HALOSCOPE, Heidecker commented on the comedy being chronically underplatformed and underfunded: “A lot of what people watch now is shaped by algorithms and low-cost formats. If you give comedians real support, production, time, you start to get weirder, more interesting work. That’s what we want to unlock.” It’s hard to say how far the show will reach for sure–news outlets like New York Daily have covered the story, but often only refer to Tim as an “Alex Jones impersonator”. Regardless, an institution like The Onion taking the reins from a notorious far-right media conglomerate is a piece of history that should be taught to school children starting yesterday. As a pseudo-millennial, the notion of reviving Adult Swim on the internet is wonderfully exciting. As I reflect on Heidecker’s career, I feel a sense of involuntary paternal pride. This is an event I just know my old communications professor would have us study in a course called “Media and Mayhem” or something. Let us all rejoice, taking pause to acknowledge that male comedians can indeed still contribute to the greater good. 🌀 Lauren Lexa Brown is a writer, medical office assistant, and the editor-in-chief of Heart Note Press. She collects and studies media — both physical and digital — specifically focusing on visual culture, fragrance, psychology, and anthropology.

How Rama Duwaji’s footwear reveals that, for socialists, fashion is always a material concern. In the days after Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration, I read far more about Rama Duwaji’s fashion choices than any other element of the ceremony. Tabloids feigned outrage, noting that her boots, made by sustainable footwear brand Miista, retail for $630: the New York Post declared the look “gave more socialite than socialist” and “flew in the face of [Mamdani’s] ‘everyman’ image.” In typical fashion, the story was picked up by other outlets, even prompting a furious Instagram story from White House secretary Karoline Leavitt. Many rushed to Duwaji’s defence. Her stylist, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, emphasised that the boots were on loan, bemoaning the presumption of the opposite on her Substack. In Vogue, Anna Cafolla explained how borrowing archival pieces demonstrates Duwaji’s commitment to circular fashion while strategically disassociating her from price tags that might make her seem out of touch. For Forbes, Gemma Allen objected to a history of political wives’ fashion being treated as a morality test while, in Vanity Fair, José Criales-Unzueta wrote on the political considerations both Mamdani and Duwaji have to juggle in their clothing choices. Vanessa Friedman covered Duwaji’s fashion in more depth for the New York Times, arguing that regardless of the context or intention, her outfit at the inauguration offered an image of “aspiration and coded luxury.” I’m not sure that, compared to similar once-in-a-lifetime formal occasions, this would be so hard for ordinary people to relate to — consider the cost of even a low-budget wedding dress. While Friedman is right that it’s “not as if the general public can borrow a pair of designer boots,” this framing overstates the inaccessibility of luxury fashion. After all, for ordinary people the occasional indulgence from the lower-priced end of the designer market can be far more affordable than formerly accessible amenities – like education, medical care and homeownership – that the average earner has been priced out of. But how should a socialist dress? It’s a loaded question, especially for a woman. The idea of fashion as a specifically feminine fixation is self-perpetuating; growing up with the expectation of interest and finding our appearance under the harsh scrutiny of a patriarchal world, it can easily become a central concern in our daily lives. I often think of Rosemary Hill describing what happens between women and their clothes as “a kind of third rail of female experience.” Coded as a woman’s world, inaccurate as that might be throughout the industry itself, fashion is often considered frivolous and indulgent. It’s not only reactionaries who perceive fashion as a hypocritical indulgence for a socialist; leftists themselves frequently joke about the personal conflict between their politics and the allure of materialism. “Marx failed to consider…” begins a popular joke format. Of course, this sentiment is tongue-in-cheek, not exactly expressing a sincere fear that socialist politics cannot accommodate “how good life feels when you wear a brown suede jacket,” but it does gesture to widely held views of socialism as aesthetically bleak and austere. But there is no avoiding that others will read into what we choose to wear. Even if you believe that left-wing politics necessitate a rejection of luxury and frivolity, there are aesthetic choices that you will have to make that communicate such disinterest. Much is made of the scene in The Devil Wears Prada in which Meryl Streep explains why her assistant’s unfashionable sweater has everything to do with the fashionable world of the magazine she runs. It is perhaps a facile view of the many contexts any one garment can be understood in, but it does at least illustrate how influential some of these contexts are. Anti-fashion is itself a style, and the aesthetic history that has influenced the creation and design of clothing is never absent. Even if we have chosen a garment for solely practical reasons, it continues sartorial communication with the world regardless of our intention. Practical choices can become more calculated aesthetic messaging, too – just think of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s worn trainers, shared on her social media to illustrate the mileage she’d racked up door-knocking. What had been a practical choice became symbolic of her tireless efforts canvassing, framing herself as a politician winning by a “shoe-leather campaign”, the underdog connecting to would-be constituents in person. A shyness of high fashion is understandable for a socialist under scrutiny, given that more than a luxury industry, it is one that has often had a troubling relationship to fascism. Coco Chanel famously had Nazi ties, attempting to use the German occupation of France to seize control of her company from her Jewish business partners, while Hugo Boss was a committed Nazi whose company manufactured SS uniforms and Cristóbal Balenciaga designed for the family of Spanish dictator General Franco. Plenty of designers today dress the women (and men) associated with President Trump, even if perhaps they are wary of publicising it too much; brands that have designed custom looks for Ivanka Trump include Oscar de La Renta and Givenchy. As such, Karefa-Johnson’s thoughtful styling choices, rooted in vintage pieces and loans, work to distance Duwaji’s image from that of the wealthy, indulgent client of luxury goods conglomerates. Public figures occupy a difficult space regarding their fashion, particularly those, like Duwaji, who have not exactly sought to be in such a spotlight – their clothes are often read as advertisement and influence. Moreover, I wonder what we concede as socialists when our approach to fashion requires so many caveats. Why should we accept that luxuries, and even beauty in the abstract, are by default the realm of the wealthy few? In all this outrage, few have articulated what they believe is an appropriate alternative to good, expensive shoes. Of course, your average metropolitan fashion girlie is practised in the art of bagging designer items for a bargain, but these excuses mean little to right-wing tabloids. This leaves cheap shoes, poorly made from cheap materials by underpaid workers in sweatshops. Miista, the London-based brand whose Shelley shoes were the cause of all this controversy, has its own factory in northern Spain, where their shoes and garments are made by skilled artisans. The brand has emphasized their slow fashion approach and commitment to craft, even working with local schools to support the next generation of artisans. Meanwhile, as fast fashion accelerates at an unimaginable pace, garment workers suffer dangerous working conditions and poor pay across the globe. In 2013, over 1100 people, mostly garment workers, died in the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh. While industry conditions have ostensibly improved, a factory fire last year in Dhaka killed sixteen, recalling similar fires in Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia. In Leicester, UK, garment factories pay far below the minimum wage, often exploiting workers’ immigration status and limited English skills to do so, while in Southern California, the US Department of Labor found widespread violations among garment manufacturers. Perhaps even worse, while researching this piece, it was striking how much reporting on sweatshop labor is already out of date, given that the worst offenders in fast fashion are now significantly outdone by Shein and Temu. When we abstract fashion from the labor that it depends on, we lose sight of each and every garment as a material object. At the Tate Britain’s ‘Sargent and Fashion’ exhibition in 2024, I was struck by how little attention was drawn to the production and construction of garments, even as the very dresses John Singer Sargent had painted were displayed alongside his portraits. But in one corner, next to a portrait of socialite and suffragist Adele Meyer, a book lay open in a display case. The book was Makers of Our Clothes, a report by Meyer and trade unionist Clementina Black, investigating conditions of garment workers in London. The report was part of the efforts of the Anti-Sweating League in campaigning against the poor conditions in sweatshops, leading to the creation of the Trade Boards Act 1909, which introduced and enforced a minimum wage in the poorest paid trades. Selections from Tate Britain's Sargent and Fashion exhibition, which ran from February 22 to July 7, 2024. In a moment of sharp class tension, some socialites took a charitable interest in working conditions, especially those of working women. Still, such advocacy was not always welcomed by workers and trade unionists with open arms; during the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909, anarchist Emma Goldman’s response to support from socialites dubbed the “mink brigade” was famously chilly, insisting on the necessity for the labor movement’s independence from capitalist philanthropists. Beyond the centrality of garment-worker organising to labor history, socialists have defended the value and necessity of beauty in everyday life, particularly identifying the production of luxury goods as a place where artistry meets labor. In 1871, when Parisian citizens took control of the city and established the Paris Commune, the Commune’s Federation of Artists was formed, bringing together painters and sculptors with artisans working in the decorative arts. As Kristin Ross discusses in her book Communal Luxury, this inclusion “subvert[ed] the hierarchical relation between art and industry,” a bold stance demanding autonomy and dignity for all artistic workers. An interesting case study Ross presents is that of communard Napoléon Gaillard, who considered himself a “worker” and an “artist-shoemaker.” In exile after the commune’s brutal end, Gaillard wrote a philosophical treatise titled The Art of the Shoe, which Ross notes sought to argue that the opposition “between the useful and the beautiful” was transcended by shoemakers, who therefore “should be accorded the dignity and remuneration [they] deserved.” His vision, Ross explains, was “a shoe made at last ‘not for the foot as it is, but for the foot as it should be,’” instead of the “narrow, pointed, deforming instrument of torture” that was the modern shoe. Last year, fashion entrepreneur and artist Ramdane Touhami took inspiration from Gaillard, naming an artisanal leather shoe in his honour, with a lengthy dedication to “comrade Napoléon Gaillard” inscribed on the insoles. At the mayoral inauguration, Lucy Dacus sang “Bread and Roses”, a folk song that began as a poem by James Oppenheim. The song has long been associated with trade unionism and feminism, voicing demands that, along with “bread” (the meeting of the most basic physical needs), “roses” are also needed: “art and love and beauty.” The slogan which inspired the song also influenced the DSA logo; the song’s inclusion says a lot about the image Mamdani wishes to project and the commitments he wishes to make central to his tenure. As the right wing press and politicians no doubt continue to look to Mamdani & Duwaji’s lifestyle for points of attack (certain, as Ross says of the commune’s critics, “that sharing could only mean the sharing of misery,”) we can take a lot from those who have fought for a world “where everyone, instead, would have [their] share of the best.” It’s a concern that spans from the hand that makes a shoe to the foot that wears it. A refusal to see a more equal world as one of only scarcity but, as Dacus sang during the inauguration, one built on “the sharing of life’s glories.” 🌀 Emma Tranter is a writer and bookworker based in London. She writes about literature, fragrance and feminism at her Substack, Heart Notes, and is online everywhere @emmatranter_.

From Molecule 01 to Mark Fisher, Bee Beardsworth investigates our desire to bottle corporeal closeness and a yearning for a future that never materialised. The first time I smelled Marlou’s Doliphor, I had a visceral reaction. The hairs on my arms stood on end. I was transported. An ivory-walled room, dry with summer heat but saturated with lust, corporeal condensation sliding down the walls. Shards of sunlight danced on the ceiling, chipping away at the shadowy corners as linen curtains danced under the tugs of a voyeuristic breeze. Sheets drenched in feral human scent, the smell of dried sweat and intoxicated half-dreams, infatuated bodies ouroborously entangled around each other. The softly seductive smell of the back of a lover’s neck as I pressed my face into the slightly sweet, slightly saline, almost untouched crevice. I had never smelt a perfume so skin-like. It felt alluring yet unsettling, fleshy vulnerability and animalic allure distilled and bottled like some sort of Hannibal fantasy that perfectly overlapped with my own halcyon memories of a lustful bygone summer. It felt human, close, safe. I was obsessed. In a myriad of constantly shifting scent trends, our love of the so-called Skin Scents seems not only to endure but repeatedly return to the leader’s position. Marrying the chemical with the corporeal, skin scents tout one core promise: your skin but better. What exactly is it that we can’t get enough of? Or is it simply just skin deep? My love affair with skin scents started early on in my olfactory obsession. In the first throes of my twenties, a 5ml of Le Labo’s Another 13 slipped into my possession, hooking me with its strangely synthetic muskiness. All used up, I went to the Le Lebo counter with the gauche recklessness of a young woman trying to forge her definitive presentation and irresponsibly spent money on a 100ml bottle, printed with my name in the facsimile typewriter font that inevitably rubs off. Musing on that period, I realise what made me fall so in love with a scent as simple and subtle as Another 13. Underneath the sheen of artificial ambroxan lies something you can’t put your finger on, something that comes alive on your skin, like an unseen creature moving underneath a pile of discarded clothes. Although the molecules that we most often closely associate with skin scents stem back to the animalic notes of the perfume revolution circa late 19th century, the Skin Scent is — ironically — the product of a scent story that is decidedly synthetic. In 1973, IFF created a synthetic aroma-molecule with uniquely woody undertones called ISO E Super. For years, this was laced through perfumes to add a layer of fleshy ambery warmth, most notably Dior Fahrenheit and Creed’s Adventus. Claiming to be disillusioned with the predictability of the mainstream industry, perfumer Geza Schoen discovered the chameleonic quality of pure ISO E Super after developing a fascination with how it changed when it touched human skin. In 2006, Escentric Molecules bottled this fascination into their inaugural scent: Molecule 01. This was my next skin scent obsession. “We came out with something that was almost impossible to categorise because nobody had experienced anything like it before,” Geza Schoen tells me. “The idea of wearing a single aroma-molecule as a fragrance was almost unthinkable. We made the molecule itself the protagonist. That was a radical idea at the time.” Radical indeed, yet also bizarre. What does Molecule 01 actually smell like? Geza describes it as “woody, velvety and cocooning, but also strangely elusive.” I would argue that these descriptors are bordering on wishful thinking, especially to the untrained nose. Whilst Molecule 01 has a smell, the smell is almost nothing. But that’s the point. The millennium marked a point of transition — not only chronologically but also psychologically and socio-politically; the crossing of a threshold from a century marked by the most rapidly technological advancements humanity had ever seen to a new era that felt limitless and boundless. Everything had the potential to be modern, minimalist, and sexy — bitten by the Millennium Bug. Consumerism, music, the future… it was all steeped in the sheen of gleamingly slick accelerationism. Tapes turned to CDs, VHS to DVD, computers to laptops and film to digital. Identity moved into a new articulation; hyperindividualism bloomed in the fertile ground of early internet culture. Molecule 01 wasn’t a perfume that told you who to be. It was a perfume for the new age. A new age that seemed to have an endless horizon and increasingly formless self-expression, elevating who you already were in a way that, through being a nonconformist, was truly rebellious and revolutionary. From gym to office to club to bed, there was no need to slow down, to change, to disrupt the adhesion from one identity to another. Molecule was simple enough to be streamlined, yet still indicated a sense of superior taste and eclecticism. And because of how ISO E Super adapts uniquely to each skin type, there is only one prerequisite: there has to be a You first. Le Labo’s Another 13 and Juliette Has A Gun’s Not Another Perfume both followed in 2010. Despite the similarly chalant names (another perfume…), both scents took the simple seed Molecule had sown and grafted it into something that promised your skin but better with a little something else. Another 13 alchemises ambroxan and ambrette into something warm yet metallic with a strangely synthetic coolness that summons an olfactory imagining of an Under The Skin extraterrestrial humanoid. In JHAG’s Not Another Perfume, Cetalox takes centre stage. A synthetic note created by Firmenich, Cetalox sits somewhere between ISO E Super and Ambrox and was introduced in 1993 to imitate the musky, slightly creamy smell of one of the most expensive and rare perfume ingredients, Ambergris. On my skin it comes through like some sort of high-end eco-disinfectant with a hint of pear. And lest we forget the ultimate It Girl skinscent that had every Millennial worth their weight in American Apparel and Girls in a chokehold: Glossier You. Just over a year ago, Skin Scents started cropping up on my FYP. I initially chalked it down as another symptom of the Clean Girl hangover, but they weren’t all fresh linen and your skin but better. Whilst the true and tried aforementioned classics started trending, something new was emerging. Skin scents were getting weird, sexy and even a little dirty. With the explosion in popularity of niche perfumery that accompanied the rise of #PerfumeTok in the early 2020s, more subtle scents relying on clandestine whisperings of solo connection shared through screens soared into the limelight. Fugazzi’s Angel Dust is one such wunderkind. Despite the EPD being released in 2021 to lacklustre success, TikTok’s proclivity for platforming the personal lifted the scent from sitting in a bargain bin to flying off the shelves at Sephora. Suitably, the perfume is constructed to "celebrate the introvert,” claiming a gentle strength and silent attractiveness through the use of so-called “polite molecule” Cashmeran, which their copywriter personifies as notorious for intimacy and privacy. Perfect for the Big Tech-terrorised COVID Generation. Not to be a stereotypical party girl, but I do have to take it to a place of brat, briefly. Or more specifically the SWEAT Tour, a #collab between popstars du jour Charli xcx and Troye Sivan. Sweat and perfume are a match made in heaven, and in their 2024 press run, Charli and Troye named then-yet-to-be-released Luca from Tsu Lange Yor as their signature scent of that moment — a PR move no doubt spurred on by it being Troye’s brand, but nonetheless another layer of skin scent resurgence. Luca is an Ambrox and sandalwood-heavy skin scent with hints of fruit and earthiness, radiating with a warmth and texture like the baby hairs behind your ear. Described as “both grounding and animal,” it was made not for subtlety but for sweat, seduction and (hopefully) sex. “Luca came from wanting a scent that feels close and real, like a second skin,” Troye tells me. “As things get sweatier, those musky and amber notes pop more, making it feel personal and alive. It's built to last through the night and keep things interesting.” It’s no surprise it’s the brand's top seller. But there was one skin scent that truly started the 2020s renaissance: PHLUR’s Missing Person. An ode to heartbreak and longing, the scent of freshly washed skin is mixed with something echoing a clean, empty bed. At once undeniably familiar and deeply melancholic, the perfume logged over 200,000 backorders before it was officially released, owing to viral videos of the tearful reactions evoked by smelling the scent-soaked white boyfriend t-shirt vacuum-packed into the PR pack. The familiar, the comforting… is our obsession with skin scents really just that simple of a craving? After all, we can’t go a day without mentioning the loneliness epidemic. But to label the hundreds of thousands of people who love skin scents as simply lonely would require a level of assumption that is both lazy and unlikely. The gay man I met on the weekend has an amazing boyfriend, but he wears Another 13. I love wearing Missing Person to bed, whether alone or not. And before someone mentioned pheromones, the idea that human smell can detect pheromones is actually a total myth. There is something more abstract lingering underneath our skin scent obsession — something that I think has intensified in the last 20 years. Molecule 01 was an idea of the future: an olfactory utopia of simplicity, efficiency and hyperindividuality. So were its immediate successors. The recent resurgence in skin scents indicates a yearning, but not just for corporeal closeness. We yearn for a past that never materialised. The trend of skin scents came back at the same time Y2K propagated across social media, visually communicating the nostalgia a new generation of consumers has for an era they didn’t experience but that held the promises our current epoch doesn’t. As Mark Fisher posited, the slow cancellation of the future has not only deflated expectations of change but has situated us in a time where it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Accompany that with how “the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition,” and how “there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.” If we can’t imagine escaping capitalism, then how better to express a silent rebellion and desire for protest driven by a subliminal sense of despondency and nihilism layered with nostalgic melancholia than an overpriced perfume? It isn't that simple, either. Dousing myself almost daily in different skin scents for the past few weeks, I discovered my final prismatic reflection and favourite experiential element. A sticky, humid day in June saw the launch party for Discothèque’s Next To Me Or Nothing, an opalescent ISO E Super scent laced with sake, milk and jasmine. Drawing inspiration from gauzy dreams of jazzy ‘90s Kyoto, I smell the strange solidarity of bodies pressed close with strangers in a moment of strobe-light fractured hedonism, the feeling of collective effervescence as you lose yourself in others, a haze of ecstasy and indescribably human euphoria. A few days later, I unboxed a tester of Mabelle O’Rama's Lunar Dust. One spritz and my mind wandered from terra firma to ether, the cool, metallic quality leaving an otherworldly scent trail that shimmered like moonlight in a pond. Marlou’s Doliphor has haunted me in the most erotic way since I first tried it months ago. These perfumes speak to the esoteric and the unknowable that underpins everything that is human, the olfactive acting as a bridge to both the nostalgic and the fantastical. In the age of ever-deepening artificiality, to evoke the human is rebellion. It will always be deeper than skin deep. 🌀 Bee Beardsworth is a perfume princess, Professional Party Girl, semi-retired model and unretired writer known for her innovative approach to fashion, beauty and culture. From her viral videos on perfume to cult beauty writing for Dazed and Coveteur, Bee captivates audiences with her tongue-in-cheek humour, unorthodox insights and charismatic allure. For an ever-updated vantage point of her London life, completed uncurated carousels, and perfume videos such as The Smell of Sex, scroll to @beebeardsworth.

As our screen time climbs, so do the stifling standards to which we hold ourselves. Is it any wonder, then, that cosmetic interventions are more accessible and popular than ever? "Dependency Demographics" by Analisa Teachworth and Jonas Wendelin, at the Museen zu Berlin at Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2017) After six years spent living in quiet comfort among the greystone dwellings and crisp, often frigid air of Chicago, I recently decided to uproot myself in favor of greener, warmer pastures. Having grown up in a rigidly conservative, small Midwestern town, my sights had always been set on graduating to The Big City(™), where I could immerse myself in culture and surround myself with like-minded creatives. I’d already done the NYC thing in my early twenties, and now, I’d done my time in Chicago. Living in two of the country’s three largest cities before hitting my thirties: check. Los Angeles, then, in all of its verdant, sun-drenched glory, was beckoning—the last, and arguably most beautiful, of the Big 3 for me to conquer. So, I packed my bags, rented a minivan, and drove cross-country to my new home in Hollywood, aware of the stereotypes that plague it, but optimistic nonetheless. If I couldn’t avoid it altogether, I told myself I could at least deal with the rabid vapidity of influencer-slash-celebrity culture, so long as it remained on the periphery, and so long as the rolling, bougainvillea-draped hills and the glittering Pacific waves were there to soothe me. I’d love to claim these last seven months in La La Land have brought me nothing save serenity and a surplus of Vitamin D, but it would be dishonest. Los Angeles is fabulous, really, and provided it doesn’t crumble into the sea anytime soon, I could see myself living here for decades to come. But beneath the perpetually cerulean skies lies something… Toxic. And I’m not referring to the smog problem. Rather, I’ve found that, despite all my previous visits and preconceived notions, I was still woefully unprepared for full inundation into this Uncanny Valley-esque matrix. The regularity of unnatural, unnecessary aesthetic interference, the insouciance with which such procedures and products are met, has been startling to witness. After only a few months of exposure, the prevalence of “self-optimization” and “looks-maxxing” culture here triggered an “AM I F*CKING UGLY!?” meltdown that left me sobbing in the bathtub for hours. Tears streaking my porous, peachfuzzed cheeks, snot bubbling out of my prominent aquiline nose, I could feel my grip on reality slipping—it seemed as if no one, myself included, could remember what natural, unaltered faces and bodies look like. Initially, I was eager to blame my new surroundings, to use the city and its injectable-loving inhabitants as scapegoats. But of course, once I took the time to cool off and zoom out, I was able to reconcile this face-and-figure-obsessed phenomenon as neither new nor unique to Los Angeles. I recall reading and nodding fervently along to Jia Tolentino’s article “The Age of Instagram Face” in the New Yorker in 2019—my first year living in Chicago—and though the subject matter remains evergreen, it’s safe to say the aesthetic ante has been significantly upped since then. Obviously, this generation is infatuated with frivolous cosmetic procedures. One could venture that the obsession is a knee-jerk response to an increasingly hideous, ever-deteriorating world—I mean, look around. Earth is quite literally burning. Innumerable innocents are being slain as a result of wicked war-mongering and government-funded genocide. The planet’s most prominent political figureheads are flaunting their pedophilic preferences with impunity. Surely in such a grisly, nihilistic age, it's natural for people to turn inward. The world may be an ugly, brutal thing, but the self? That can be optimized, or so we're told—and sold. The platitude "control what you can control” comes to mind here. This pursuit of aesthetic perfection, however futile, could be serving as an individualistic defense mechanism, a deflection of sorts. If everyone is so beautiful—smoothed and symmetrical and softened beyond recognition—can the world really be so obtuse, so… ugly? More likely, though, it’s a distraction, one whose effectiveness relies on this very futility. If flawlessness is forever out of reach, the quest for it will be unending, and the instinct to look outside oneself will be dimmed, if not extinguished altogether. Perhaps I’m being too generous, and this philosophical outlook is a steaming pile of bullshit. Maybe the explanation for such a self-obsessed culture is as simple as this: in an increasingly technological age, we all spend too much time staring at and thinking about ourselves. Social media is a strange, omnipresent beast—one that rots our brains from overuse while tacitly suggesting we cease to be should we refuse to engage with it: if we don’t exist online, we don’t exist at all. Most platforms are hypervisual, forcing us to face our own reflections and others’ with ridiculous frequency, thus inviting unprecedented levels of appearance-based scrutiny. So-called “flaws” that would likely go unnoticed in the pre-iPhone era are now glaring, and anyone with login credentials can point them out—often cruelly—leaving hostile comments under the guise of relative anonymity. The converse, then, is also true: those the internet deems attractive are generously rewarded with praise and positive engagement galore. Increasingly, it feels as if beauty is less so in the eye of the beholder and more so in the hands of those doling out likes, comments, shares, and follows. Furthermore, it seems the very definition of beauty, something that is supposedly subjective by nature, is shrinking, being measured more by an absence of flaws than by an assortment of idiosyncratic features or a uniquely enchanting aura. As Tolentino so keenly observed in the aforementioned New Yorker essay, the dominant beauty ideal nowadays, colloquially referred to as “Instagram face” or “iPhone face,” cherry-picks the most desirable traits from various ethnicities—“an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern—” to create an ethnically ambiguous, alien visage, one which rarely exists in nature and is largely unattainable without injectable and/or surgical intervention. Innumerable celebrities and influencers—such as Bella Hadid, the Kardashian/Jenner clan, Emily Ratajkowski, etc.—are widely hawked as aspirational beauties because they boast such desirable attributes, though they weren’t born with them. It’s common knowledge that these women have spent exorbitant amounts of money and time under the knives of some of the world’s most renowned plastic surgeons—and yet, regular women are still expected—by men, by relentlessly demanding algorithms, and, most depressingly, by our own internalized biases—to adhere to such lofty criteria. That same logic, or lack thereof, also applies to body standards, which maintain that the slimmer the physique, the better. Not to rail on Miss Hadid, but her freakishly low BMI being dubbed aspirational and/or attainable for the average person is alarming, to say the least. Gone are the body-positive days of the twenty-teens, which, while often performative and annoying (I will die on the hill that “All About That Bass” is among the most obnoxious songs of all time), were still preferable to the current algorithmic onslaught of anorexic-slash-orthorexic influencers masquerading as “wellness coaches,” despite their only qualifications being ultra-sharp clavicular bones and prominent thigh gaps. The astronomical surge in GLP-1 usage for cosmetic weight loss is no coincidence. The number of ads I’m digitally force-fed daily—most of which star a svelte, athleisure-clad white woman encouraging me to shed ten pounds in two weeks via one drug or another—is as infuriating as it is harrowing. I mean, give me a break. It all hearkens back to the body standards of the early aughts—when I was coming of age—and when being rail-thin was all the rage. However, I’d argue it’s even more pernicious today, as we find more creative ways to market voluntary malnutrition as self-care. According to the American Medical Association, spending on semaglutides such as Ozempic and Wegovy rose more than 500 percent from 2018 to 2023, from $13.7 billion to $71.7 billion, with Ozempic-specific spending skyrocketing from $410 million to a startling $26.42 billion. Another report from CNBC states that GLP-1 prescriptions rose a staggering 300 percent from 2020 to 2023, totaling nearly nine million, while data analyzed by Trillian Health, reported on by CNN, shows that one-third of Ozempic patients do not have any history of Diabetes, the treatment of which was the drug’s intended purpose. It feels rudimentary to note that women and girls are, and always have been, held to higher beauty standards than our male counterparts. I mean, duh—Feminism 101. From the time we’re toddlers, taught to pedestalize princesses and frilly femininity, it’s implied, if not explicitly stated, that beauty is power, an invaluable form of currency, the only womanly weapon worth wielding, its pursuit paramount. Nowadays, this pursuit feels unprecedentedly urgent because as our screen time climbs, so do the stifling standards to which we hold ourselves. It’s all a vicious, dysmorphia-inducing cycle. Is it any wonder, then, that cosmetic interventions are more accessible and popular than ever? Though it’s strangely difficult to nail down precise statistics on the subject—most are suspiciously sourced directly from plastic surgeons’ offices—it’s apparent to anyone with eyes and/or internet access that there’s been an increased demand for such procedures. In fact, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons cites social media as a primary catalyst for the industry’s exponential growth: “‘First, the overall popularity of procedures is increasing,’ said Ramanadham. ‘Social media is making plastic surgery more acceptable and helping to get rid of some of the negative stigma traditionally associated with it. Additionally, the demographic is changing with younger patients looking into various procedures and thinking about plastic surgery, especially nonsurgical, as part of their overall wellness. Finally, we see a direct relationship between procedures that are trending on TikTok and what patients are coming to the office for.’" Considering approximately 55 percent of TikTok’s users are under the age of 30, well… I’ll let you do the bulk of the math here, while proffering another startling statistic: per the NOW Foundation: 45.5% of American adolescents report considering cosmetic surgery in recent years. All of that said, I empathize with the impulse to “alter one’s avatar,” as such interventions are so often and so cavalierly referred to. I truly do. To claim I’ve always been immune to such propaganda would be a bald-faced lie. Though it has long-since dissolved, I had an $800 vial of Restylane Kysse pumped into my lips in 2021, for no better reason than everyone around me was doing it, and “Maybe,” I thought, “this will finally be what takes me from an eight to a ten.” Spoiler alert: it didn’t. In fact, aside from the immediate post-injection swelling that left me slobbering on myself like an infant, it scarcely made a visible difference. Even my eagle-eyed mother couldn’t clock the change. Plumper pout or not, the visit did accomplish something, in that it made me painstakingly aware of other “imperfections” in need of remediation. If you’ve never had to examine your reflection beneath the blinding lights of a med spa while an impossibly smooth-skinned aesthetician points out everything they’d change about your face—asymmetry here, sagging there—consider yourself lucky. I didn’t even know what nasolabial folds were, or that they were considered an aesthetic affront, until they were so harshly highlighted to me. Since that fateful day, I’ve had a few lip-flips, plus one poorly injected bout of TMJ-related Botox that cost me $850 and left me with a bulging masseter. And though I’ve sworn to myself I’ll never pull the rhinoplastic trigger, I’ve caught myself googling “affordable nose job near me” more than once (typically in the throes of PMDD-induced fugue states). Critically, though, my participation in all of this does not equal endorsement. I do not think any of this is good, healthy, or wise. Without delving too deeply into my personal medical history, it makes sense that I’d be susceptible to such patriarchal ploys. As someone who has suffered from and undergone intensive treatment for an eating disorder, resorting to extreme measures to “fix” my corporeal form is, unfortunately, all too familiar. Really, I’m an aesthetician’s ideal victim—crippling dysmorphia plus unfettered perfectionism is one hell of a cocktail. I never thought I’d be glad of my relatively low income, but in hindsight, a lack of spare cash in my mid-twenties prevented me from making impulsive alterations I know I’d regret today. Before I trudge any further into contentious territory, allow me to offer a disclaimer: I do not consider women who have plastic surgery, use semaglutides, etc., to be The Anti-Feminist Enemy. As I said, I understand the impulse and the stakes—we live in a patriarchal society that insists upon women’s desirability. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. But still, the enthusiasm with which all of this is being peddled and the lack of critical thought surrounding it trouble me deeply. It’s heartbreaking that we as women are so eager to erase and mutilate ourselves for the sake of catering to whatever beauty standards happen to be trending—standards which, by and large, most of us had no say in creating. Let’s use cosmetic rhinoplasty as an example: have you ever heard of someone emptying their savings to enlarge their schnoz? While I’m sure there are a few exceptions, most nose jobs prioritize shrinking, slimming, and lifting, often with the intention of achieving a perky little ski-slope silhouette. Thus, when one decides to undergo such an operation, they’re implicitly agreeing that smaller noses are preferable, which, in turn, bolsters the unfair (but not untrue) notion that smaller noses hold more societal value—a belief that is not-so-inconspicuously rooted in racial and ethnic superiority. That’s not to say anyone who gets a nose job is racist by default—that’d be ludicrous—but the societal undercurrents and Eurocentric preferences that influence the decision certainly are. It’s also important to note that, when discussing beauty standards, the word “trending” does a lot of heavy lifting: like most fads, aesthetic ones are mercurial. One year, voluptuous Coke-bottle bodies and juicy BBLs are flooding your social media feed; the following year, it’ll be overrun with nonsense terms like “yoga boobs” or “leggings legs,” which begs the question: is the high cost—both monetarily and physically—of enduring such invasive, often irreversible procedures really worth the gratification rewarded for adherence to a fickle trend? As horrifying as it may sound, sometimes, the answer is yes—pretty privilege, like white privilege, male privilege, and class privilege, is real and prevalent. The social rewards bestowed upon hot people are easy to spot—e.g., an abundance of friends, followers, lovers, and freebies—but the economic advantages afforded them are less obvious. Several studies have indicated that conventionally attractive people are more likely to be hired, receive promotions, and earn more money than their less attractive peers. Margaret Qualley in The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat, 2024) Occasionally, pop culture hints at an iota of consciousness, rightly criticizing the dystopian nature of (gesturing broadly) all this. A prime example is the critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated horror film from 2024, The Substance, wherein Demi Moore stars as an aging celebrity who, desperate to cling to her stardom, begins abusing an illicit drug that births a younger, hotter version of herself, a more aesthetically pleasing alter ego (played by Margaret Qualley) through whom she can relive her glory days. Long story short, the experiment goes horribly awry, though I won’t spoil it by providing any further (hint: gorier) details. Summarily, the film is meant to spark a dialogue about the immense societal pressures and sexist standards that plague women today. It’s a fantastic movie, no doubt worthy of the accolades it received. However, the moral of the story seems to have been lost on the two lead actresses, evidenced by Qualley’s subsequent (alleged!) boob job and Moore’s subsequent (also alleged) GLP-1 use, which left her looking skeletal on the 2026 red carpet. So it seems Hollywood’s shining moment of self-effacement and the optimism it inspired was nothing more than a flash in the pan. While I’m sure many find that specific instance, as well as our beauty-obsessed culture more broadly, unnerving, people seem increasingly reticent to discuss it. Beneath every photo of one emaciated actress or another—depressingly, this list of names is ever-expanding—you’re guaranteed to find users expressing their concern, genuine or otherwise. You’re equally as likely to behold a barrage of defensive comments, imploring people to “stop commenting on women’s bodies!” As well-intended as the latter approach may be, it does more harm than good in the grand scheme of things—we all know problems won’t go away simply because we ignore them. Why is it, then, that such idle responses have gained momentum? Is it because people genuinely don’t see the issue with women whittling away to nothing, or forcibly altering themselves beyond recognition? That may be true for some, however difficult to comprehend. By and large, though, I think we have “choice feminism” to blame for this pervasive passivity. In the words of every gender studies professor who has ever lived: let’s unpack that. Choice feminism, occasionally referred to as post-feminism, has become a mega-hot topic over the last decade. Succinctly defined, it’s the belief that any choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because she chose to make it. This ideology can be attributed to the more marketable, mainstream variations of third-wave feminism spawned in the 90s and early 00s—think Spice Girls’ hot pink, glittery “girl power” motif, which prioritized individual empowerment and sexual liberation—as opposed to the more stringent, more urgent second-wave movement, which strove for basic legal and economic equality, reproductive rights, etc. Nowadays, American women can be anything—gatekeepy girlbosses, TikToking trad wives, Percacet-popping podcasters, cultish Pro-Ana vloggers, lobotomy-chicified bimbos—and all will be met with exclamations of “slay mamas!” and “yassss queen!”, no matter the detrimental effects such decisions may have on women or society’s perception of us, writ large. Don’t get me wrong, I believe women should have the right to make our own choices, period—but I also believe we reserve the right to criticize one another’s choices without being pigeonholed as “regressive” or “anti-woman.” In the past, for example, when I've expressed dissent re: plastic surgery, I've been pummeled with baseless accusations from other women; I’ve been called a “pick-me,” “not a girl’s girl,” “jealous,” “too woke,” “rad-fem,” “hater,” and, most ironically, “an ugly bitch.” Such reactive dismissals, usually uttered in the name of choice feminism, serve more to infantilize women than to liberate them, suggesting women are incapable of fielding criticism or engaging in thought-provoking discourse without becoming hyper-emotional, petty, or defensive. Mind you, it’s not like I’m out here spewing misogyny to invoke such vitriol, saying things like “all these chicks with filler face are busted bimbos.” Rather, I’ve been urging others to approach these matters with a healthy amount of skepticism. I don’t think it’s radical to suggest we, as women, could afford to love ourselves more, nor do I think self-love is something that can be bought. The latter sentiment really riles folks and is invariably rebutted by the insistence that women elect to undergo these procedures of their own accord, for their own benefit—but I’d like to push back on that, too. When we convince ourselves that the choices we make are for our own sake, we don’t have to think too deeply about whom or what those choices actually serve, and thus we feel less guilty about succumbing to patriarchal pressures. “I got my XYZ done for me!” is a quick, widely accepted retort that shuts down any room for analysis, but it’s a fool’s errand to believe that the choices we make exist in a vacuum. The insecurities which cosmetic procedures or semaglutides aim to ameliorate did not arise out of thin air—somewhere, somehow, we were made to feel unworthy, unpalatable. For example, let’s revisit my short-lived affair with lip filler. At the time, I’d strutted into the plastic surgeon’s obnoxiously ornate office with an eager, albeit anxious smile, having successfully deluded myself, claiming the nearly 1,000-dollar pursuit of suppler, juicier lips was no one’s idea save my own, despite the encouragement of a man I was seeing, who so selflessly volunteered to pay for it. Also lingering in the recesses of my mind was a snide comment a girl had made to me in junior high, something about my having “bird lips” and a big nose—two attributes I’d never felt insecure about until that moment. I’d also been told my boobs were too small, my arms too hairy, my thighs too bulky, my face too square, etc., all things which have been reiterated over the years via social media and pop culture, more generally. This isn’t a “woe is me” moment—I neither desire nor expect pity for sharing these things—but it is a relatable moment, because it’s safe to say every woman, everywhere, has had her appearance dissected and disparaged at some point. Having insecurities thrust upon us—directly or indirectly—is a universal experience. That said, I doubt any of us would be compelled to break and rebuild our noses or suck the fat from our cheeks if we lived alone on a desert island, which really calls the notion of “choice” into question. Not to go all Andrea Dworkin on you all—I recognize that she, like all of us, was an imperfect feminist—but she was spitting when she wrote, "Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does not make choices in freedom." My issue with choice feminism isn’t just that it's intellectually lazy—it’s more nefarious than that. As it is wont to do, capitalism sank its fangs into the feminist movement, draining what was once a serious political ideology of its potency until it became mild enough for mainstream consumption. Feminism, then, became less of a loud-mouthed, hairy-legged pariah and more of a bedazzled, Barbie-pink buzzword. At first glance, the popularization of progressive politics seems like a net positive. While it may be irksome to devout ideologues to see their beliefs reduced to cheap merchandise, at least more people are talking about it, right? To some degree, sure. However, while representation can lead to progress, it is not progress in and of itself. Shockingly, the selling of “smash the patriarchy” mugs at trendy retailers has not, in fact, resulted in a smashing of patriarchy. Starting political conversations is important, of course, but it’s a first step at best—and when paying lip service is the extent of one’s activism, one cannot expect a raucous upheaval of the status quo, which is precisely why reigning institutions insist upon its sufficiency. Likewise, the existing hegemony cannot, and will not, be toppled by a hyper-individualistic, neoliberal agenda, such as that which choice feminism fosters. Choice feminism does not simply pedestalize the individual—it eschews the collective entirely—asserting that any win a single woman experiences is a win for women everywhere. Sure, a syringe of Sculptra here and there might boost a woman’s confidence, but the ensuing dopamine rush she experiences should not be conflated with empowerment—a word that, like feminism itself, has been thrown around much too liberally, reclaimed and repurposed by the very institutions that prey upon and profit from our insecurities. Alas, one woman’s Instagram-approved glow-up is not the key to liberating marginalized communities. Who knew? As choice feminist rhetoric forsakes the collective, it also, by default, forsakes intersectionality—a crucial development in feminist theory coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who described it as “A prism for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other.” Meaning, when it comes to matters of gender inequality, one must also consider how factors such as race, class, sexuality, etc., interlock and contribute to oppression. I.e., there are levels to all this. The choice feminist camps claiming surgical makeovers and rapid weight loss are acts of empowerment do not only fail to understand the definition of empowerment, but—even if abiding by their own disjointed definitions of the word—they fail to consider the wide swaths of women who cannot afford such alterations, which, in addition to the hefty price tags they boast, require ample free time to pursue (especially when post-op recovery is involved). To say there is a gaping racial and class divide in the industry is a gross understatement, as 78% of plastic surgeries in the US are performed on caucasian women. That doesn’t necessarily mean more marginalized sects—queer women, women of color, women of lower socioeconomic status, etc.—are immune to the looks-maxxing marketing being shoved down their throats. Instead, it increases the likelihood of them seeking out dangerous, discounted procedures, often performed by underqualified or inexperienced aestheticians, or participating in medical tourism, which is shady at its best and deadly at its worst. Insofar as women are literally dying to appeal to society’s aesthetic demands, I’d say we’ve taken the adage “beauty is pain” much too seriously. If you’ve read this far and you’re still thinking along the lines of "chill, it’s not that deep," there’s probably little else I can say to change your mind, which is fine. Go off, I guess. But in a world chock full of uninspired AI slop, wherein fast fashion reigns supreme, and social media has reduced what was once personal style to neatly packaged, purchasable aesthetics or “cores” (e.g., ballet-core, cottage-core, coquette-core, etc.) that encourage widespread uniformity, uniqueness is scarce and, therefore, increasingly covetable. Frankly, uniformity in fashion is dreadfully dull—imagine how fucking boring the world would be if everyone’s faces suffered the same homogenous, hollow fate. Not to be a doomer, but at this rate, that path of soulless sameness is the one we’re careening down. If, on the other hand, you’re thinking, OK, so what is to be done about all of this? Truthfully, I don’t know. This is, after all, a frustrated, long-winded rumination, not a manifesto; and if there were a clear-cut path to women’s liberation, it’s safe to say someone much wiser than I would have discovered it by now. What I do know is that this iPhone-induced psychosis is not for the faint of heart. I’m struggling with all of this as an adult with a fully developed prefrontal cortex and years of therapy under my belt—I cannot fathom being an impressionable teen with internet access in this era of artifice and emaciation. I thought 2013 Tumblr was bad, but the thinspo blogs of yesteryear pale in comparison to what we’re seeing today; at least they called a spade a spade, a bone a bone, a Botox syringe a Botox syringe. The toll all of this is taking on the collective psyche is surely immeasurable, ensorcelling us to look at dying, plasticine women and cheerfully agree that they are healthy. And while I’m neither qualified nor equipped to prescribe a universal remedy, allow me to inject you with an invaluable piece of advice that has helped me more than anything: Girl, log off. 🌀 Gabrielle A.D. is an LA-based writer attempting to live as authentically and as lesbianly as possible. She can be found on Instagram @infinite__breast, where she occasionally shares more of her work, though she often deletes social media and goes off-the-grid for the sake of her tenuous sanity. She also highly recommends Bricking one’s phone (this is not a paid sponsorship) and going outside.

Featuring an exclusive essay by Bella Blue Bloss. You and your companions take a trip to the well and, like Alice, you tumble in and emerge into an alternate world. It feels both aged yet familiar, uncanny yet beautiful; the landscape hums with something mythical. Epona’s Spring/Summer Ready-to-Wear collection is exactly that: seven garments that transport you into the world of Epona. Founder Rhiannon Davies is a London-based designer who centres her work around her folksy roots from Somerset and Wales. With influences of equestrian heritage, Celtic folklore and the human form, Davies bestows a strong visual language that is uniquely personal, with a distinct contemporary edge. Titled The Chalice Collection, after the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, which appears to be straight out of a fantasy, with beautiful Victorian decorative ironwork and the healing qualities of the water. Davies' anecdote of the well being a “portal between temporalities” enriches this collection with a spiritual and historical framework. Pulling from these Victorian influences and the mystical qualities associated with the well reflects perfectly in the collection. With soft feminine silhouettes paired with coarse leather accessories, this collection is romantic yet structured and robust. Epona is created around an equestrian paradigm, inspired by her Celtic name Rhiannon and its mythological associations with horses, along with Epona, a counterpart to that name. Equestrianism is the theme that runs through this collection, marked by a horse's elegance, beauty, and embodiment of power, status, and freedom. In this collection, Davies upcycles materials, accessories, and trimmings from her previous collections, notably the repurposing of horse saddles in Look 3 and the gorgeous brown leather saddle bag, styled in Look 1. In Look 3, we witness a reimagining of the classic mini shift dress with an equestrian edge, Davies constructing the neckline and bodice with horse saddle leather to create a structured garment. The quality of the dress’ body material mimics the soft, leathery skin of a horse. The horse hoof shoe, a signature design in the Epona world, reappears in this collection. Constructed without a heel, the wearer quite literally steps into the shoes of a horse. With the resurgence of the Tabi shoe in popular fashion culture and other hoof-inspired shoes by Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, Epona takes this trend to another level. The Victorian era and Davies’ Goddess muse is visited in Look 6 with the “side saddle gown,” conjuring images of the wearer on horseback with the full skirt billowing in the wind. A contemporary twist on the Victorian gown, Davies reflects on the restraints of Victorian women who were expected to remain modest and feminine whilst riding horses. The full-length skirt is combined with a button-up, form-fitted cardigan, evoking a more modern look, accessorised with an oversized black leather clutch, which is embellished with an upcycled Victorian picture frame synthetic floral arrangement. The riding aesthetic is also mirrored in Look 4, reinterpreting contemporary riding uniforms by pairing black riding shorts with a nude pink, softly corseted bodysuit, and in Look 7, where the flared black trousers echo the shire horses' hooves. My personal favourite touch in the collection is the floral embellishments. Gorgeously constructed from synthetic hair, upcycled from Davies’ CSM graduate collection, and fixed with pearls, the flowers draw in both the feminine delicacy and strong allusions to a horse's mane. This carefully considered artistic ornamentation is also a nod to the Victorian era, the practice of making jewelry from loved ones' hair for lockets or chains to honor the dead or as a sentimental gift. The hair symbolised memory and emotional bonds; Emily Brontë famously owned a bracelet woven from her sister's hair. The hair flower motif unifies the collection across the first 3 looks. In Look 1, the soft nude fitted bodice of the dress continues down the body, and the draping from the hip cascades down where hair flowers catch the light with tiny encrusted beads and pearls. Followed through to Look 2, a white duchess satin dress echoes the Victorian riding attire. A leather belt sits on the hip following the line of the bodice above the fullness of the skirt. From the front, slung on the hip at the back, it reveals a large hair flower with an oversized central pearl. In Look 3, a hair flower with a long ribbon, mimicking the horse's tail, is embellished onto the saddle collar of the brown leather mini dress, a juxtaposition between the delicate and the robust. In curating this collection, Davies has defined the visual language of Epona. While the equestrian aesthetic has been consistent throughout her previous work, The Chalice Collection utilises it more as a brand symbol as opposed to a collection focus, giving the collection a strong sense of identity. The Victorian flair combined with folkloric elements makes for a magical experience when viewing the collection as a whole; it makes you feel as though you are in the world of Epona, not simply observing it. The details and accessories are so considered and create really unique visual symbols that repeat throughout; I hope to see some of these elements become emblematic of the brand. 🌀 CREDITS Designer/Brand — Epona Fashion Photographer — Dani Nolan Models — Carys Bonell, Josie Berr Bella Blue Bloss is a writer and editor from London. She runs the Substack blog Fragmentary Girl, where she publishes essays on feminism, art, culture, literature, and fashion, exploring female representation in the visual arts and media. Bella is currently working on her first book, an essay anthology edited and written by herself and other up-and-coming feminist writers. You can find more of her work on her website and follow her on Instagram @bellabluebloss.

On the runway, Whimsicraft — ephemeral design with a bric-a-brac, Boy Scout feel — has taken over. Now, it’s showing up everywhere else. When you see the phrase "coming of age," your imagination might drift towards themes of purity or rebellion: Lady Bird or "1979" by Smashing Pumpkins. For decades, conceptualizations of teenage experience have been squeezed like a natural wine bar on Galentine's — the well is dry. In an attempt to reconcile with the spiritually-beaten dead horse birthed by media, depicting alabaster young virgins learning tough life lessons via mentally ill men, a new phenomenon is now being wrung out by fashion designers, stylists, and artists at large. This coming of age is not the run-of-the-mill Lolita story we all know and (mostly) love, but rather stems from the specific, awkward process of identity formation and the construction of a personal worldview that occurs from early adulthood to middle age. Instead of feeling longing for our childhood, our nostalgia has only naturally shifted towards our early twenties. Our love for childhood whimsy is taking the form of a more mature fantasy story — one that suggests scarcity and a primal drive for survival, à la Moonrise Kingdom. This pertinent cultural shift is being embraced by an aging Gen Z, as it trickles down from trend-setting fashion houses like Prada and Loewe. Whimiscraft is huge on the runway this season, with ephemera all pointing to a bric-a-brac, Boy Scout feel. This harkening to wistful crafting stands in the way of the clean girl, reminding them it's okay to get a little mud on your dress. Lately, the Miu Miu show has ushered in mossy tones, muted stone grays, and hints of fur that suggest Dr. Zhivago. Most notably, actress supreme Gillian Anderson walked the show in what one might call a bejeweled paper-bag princess dress. Calvin Klein also featured a canvas dress that looks like it could be made of paper, further cementing our desire for analog materials rather than chrome and plastic. It still involves repurposing old industrial materials, but the materials we consider “old” and “industrial” look very different because history shapes our perception of the meanings behind words. In speaking about materials, the tangible is key here — what we experience with our five senses: how linen feels in our fingers, the noise of industrial projects, how our eyeballs absorb visual culture, the sets, the sound stages, the costumes, the physicality of actors interacting with their surroundings. It’s a post-literate world, where there is no reading between the lines, because there are no lines. As visuals of dystopia wherein we hand our agency over to computers seem to be almost mass-produced at this rate (from Hollywood, but also other cultural engines like universities and other institutions), a collective paranoia seems to have our desires defaulting to organic matter; deep down, we know that what waits in our “future” is essentially steampunk, minus the satirical digs at capitalism. This is because we will have swallowed the toughest pill of them all: that we would be nothing without the capitalist machine. Perhaps there is no way out but through — we are somewhere in the process of mourning the privilege we once had to question the ethics of AI, as depicted in Blade Runner and other classic sci-fi productions. Sheet metals, plastics, glass, and rubber are now our old materials. In garment production, natural materials like wool, cotton, bamboo, and silk are a luxury. They are the new. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” — Mark Fisher The first bouts of this phenomenon were seen in a sudden influx of paper crowns, the kind one would pull out of a Christmas cracker. Historically, they were first worn by peasants during Saturnalia, an ancient holiday when the lower class essentially cosplayed as the bourgeoisie, and vice versa. The servants were fed delectable grand feasts by their lords, just for one day. The paper crown craze borrows from that mythology, appropriating it in a personal style as a means of subverting power. I’m not saying that Adela on the cover of NYLON wearing a crown and nude tights is a profound act of protest, but it is a significant part of setting this trend. Enya Umanzor, a trend-setting elder and co-host of Emergency Intercom, also posted a selfie not too long ago in an adorable crown hat. More crowns are being created by artists like Maddy Dudu, who was the unfortunate victim of an all-too-common large-scale copycat production by corporations, via the distribution of her work on Pinterest. Key elements of runway Whimsicraft for 2026 include satchels, smocks, scarves, capes, jumpsuits, princess dresses, pajamas, and a general breadth of inspiration drawn from young adult fiction like Le Petit Prince and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to name a few. The Valentino Resort 2026 collection was presented with the models all lying on a salmon-pink, silk-sheet-clad bed. I must stress that this shoot is completely non-sexual — the models are seen lying in natural sleeping positions, and they look like they’re having the best nap of their lives. One image shows the model hugging a large pillow on her side for back support, while another shows her clutching her keys, still in hand. The whole production feels like a tranquil respite from the three H’s of entering your thirties: heartburn, high blood pressure, and hemorrhoids. The visuals also borrow cues from what the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (CARI) terms "soft colonial wanderlust." This is a boilerplate millennial art style — think the album cover of In The Airplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel; compasses atop yellowing, decaying maps; and monarch butterflies landing on grandfather clocks with Roman numeral faces. Shinyakozuka’s recent Spring 2026 collection showcased many pajama silhouettes and cozy socks that barely clung to models’ feet. Simone Rocha also embraced bedtime, with models in princess dresses clutching fluffy pillows. The large fashion houses aren’t the only players in this game — in fact, they are just catching up. Castenada, a Paris-based house, has recently rolled out its crafty, analog collection of garments that point to illustrations in short novels for teens. The plaid balaclava with petite horns would have Max from Where the Wild Things Are salivating. The company aims to encapsulate self-expression and to encourage playful imagination to thrive through clothing. I think it’s only a matter of time before they come out with a paper crown. “Elizabeth, you are a mess! You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you are dressed like a real princess.” — Robert Munsch, author of The Paper Bag Princess In an interesting turn, Whimsicraft is all about fashioning androgyny in a practical, utilitarian way instead of performatively. It calls to mind the people’s American Olympic princess Alyssa Liu removing her they/them pronouns from her Instagram bio. We’re optimistic towards the future; we’re grasping at meaningless determination; we’re taking elements of fantasy fairytales and grounding them in a more natural reality, like we’re Boy Scouts rebuilding millennia after the world has ended. It’s a survival challenge, but there is no imminent threat. There are no giant robots and flying cars; there are tents made of old landfill Shein clothes fastened by jute-woven rope. Looking back at this 2020 Vogue article on embracing technology in fashion feels like warping through a time machine — the once-novel practice of designers bringing tech to the runway now feels like such well-trodden news. Though I am fatigued — many are — of dissecting Gen Z’s proclivity for whimsy, it’s hard to ignore when it's incessantly reflected back to us on our iPhones. The whimsy in this iteration of Whimsicraft takes the shape of something more harrowing: we won’t be gluing paper stars onto recycled plastic bag tunics to signal counter-culture or incendiary values; we’ll be doing it because the opossum-fur loincloth we’ve been donning for three months is falling apart. There are simply fewer and fewer things to look at, not only in terms of widespread environmental destruction, but also in traditional ephemera we use daily, going to our 9-5’s, like printers, paper cutters, fax machines, pencils (pens, even), all becoming part of the singularity. While technology helps us solve countless problems, an underlying sense of worthlessness ensues — the whole world being “solved” fundamentally erodes the formation of identity and the potential for agency. Putting questions of class and labor aside, Gen Z is living in a time when we are challenged to balance our use of personal style to signal maturity and authenticity with individuality. Just recently, Maison Margiela showcased its Fall 2026 collection in a shipping container yard in Shanghai — models in extravagant organza gowns wove between towering Temu containers. The stark contrast between waste and recycling certainly served its purpose here, with outfits made of ceramics, cashmere, paper, leather, and other upcycled novelties. A 90-kilo porcelain dress was the showstopper, with onlookers reporting the sound of the glass chiming and clunking down the runway was both eerie and inspiring. The model struggling to walk (and breathe, probably) emphasized the haunting, Silent Hill nurse-esque spirit of the show. What’s really fascinating is the reception — on social media, commenters express how it feels apocalyptic, like the dresses are intergalactic, essentially a horrifying reflection of the “times we’re in.” The garments are certainly aligned with paper-bag chicness. One comment states, “It's giving futuristic royalty / anime / horror movie.” I would love to know what about it specifically feels futuristic, and why horror. If the models weren’t anonymous, would these sentiments change? “Reality has turned a bit too sharp around the edges, and with the world growing less hospitable by the hour, who isn’t tempted to bury their head under a pillow and call it a catnap?” —Vogue critic Tiziana Cardini on Valentino Resort 2026 Though it may not appear so, paper bag princess chic stands apart from any notion of “trad”. When we think of “natural” materials and minimal frills, cottagecore or its various offshoots might come to mind. Tradwife style upholds a subservient form of femininity, while the femininity we see here is reminiscent of playing dress-up as a child — it’s pretend, unassigned. The power hierarchies signaled by the costumes are muddled; the garments call back to cultural scripts like gender and class, but it’s more like we’re cosplaying as a society that upholds those norms. Just like the festival of Saturnalia, the mythology behind clothing pieces is deceiving. So ladies, get out your burlap sacks and strap yourself in. Part of maturing in this era is biting the bullet and accepting that a lot of things suck and that there is not much we can do about them, so we should focus on taking care of ourselves. Chin up, princess, your paper crown is falling.🌀 Lauren is a writer and archivist based in Canada. She is the editor-in-chief of Heart Note Press, the perfume magazine.