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D.S. and Durga’s high points, reviewed. If Paris is the beating heart of perfume, New York, New York is (at least) the faulty cataracts. Not everything that comes out of the Big Apple is good, but it has always foreseen something new. And indeed, for better or worse, its current culture of perfume production often dictates the latest innovations in the field. There are many perfumers who have managed to catch the current wave of viral, internet-savvy, slightly off-kilter narrative perfumery, but none seem as particularly committed to capturing the spirit and ethos of their home as Brooklyn-based D.S. and Durga. Formed from the partnership between husband-and-wife power couple David and Kavi Moltz, their perfume manages to combine the many-but-one unified minimalist brand philosophy of overpriced art school mainstays Byredo with a more down-to-earth, narrative approach to creating perfume often found in smaller indie houses. When D.S. and Durga’s perfume falls short, it does so because of an obligation to its growing mainstream audience; but when it hits, it really bangs. Perhaps my favorite fragrance I’ve yet to smell by the house — Mississippi Medicine — has flown decisively under the radar of TikTok influencers, and even somewhat blurs beneath the branding of D.S. and Durga themselves. Billed as a somehow “badass” masculine scent, what I actually smell is far more genderless, gentle, and evocative than they or anyone else would have you believe. Intensely smoky, it opens with nuances of dry, church-like frankincense, fresh-cut cedarwood, and a boiled sort of vegetable accord. It quickly dries down into a more meditative incense, and clings to the skin with surprisingly tame projection. There are a number of diversions taken here from the wider genre of perfume that smells like smoke. First: the inclusion of aldehydes is, in my eyes, genius. It adds a waxy, buttery, and sparkly element to the frankincense, one also seen in Comme des Garçons’ bestselling Avignon. Second: while the smoke does at first lay on loud and harsh, it quickly settles into a more historic wood. People online have likened it to a haunted church, but to me, this smells of the familiar, worn-down buildings that populate the American South. David Moltz writes that the central notes of cedar, frankincense, and cypress root were inspired by the ritual materials of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: an esoteric realm of Native American spirituality archived across the deep South — focused on cosmology, social organization, and warfare. Moltz refers to it as a “death cult,” as it was often historically termed, but what I see represented in Mississippi Medicine is more the mystical spirit of its axis mundi made of cedar: the moment when the pale between worlds grows thin, and the materials of the land become endowed with an electric magic. Less sinister — and more like home. Crossing the Mason-Dixon line (where we will firmly remain for the rest of these reviews), the tame floral Rose Atlantic conjures up preppy fantasies of summers spent sailing in New England, or of drinking rosewater cocktails on a boat overlooking the Long Island Sound. The composition here is the intersection of a marine accord (that will be further explored in more of Moltz’ work) and a lactonic, sort of musky rose. I will be the first to admit that rose soliflores do not often catch my eye. While I do think most people’s criticisms of the queen of flowers — too old, too stuffy — are downright offensive, I think that rose is best suited to take a supporting role to other, more inventive accords or counterpoints. Here is one such example: while there is rose as it would smell in nature within Rose Atlantic, it wears on skin far more Atlantic than rose. The salt does not flesh out the rose, but rather, challenges it. Here is perhaps what I find most enchanting about the world both David and Kavi Moltz have created through the D.S. and Durga brand: via these oppositions just slightly left of comfortable to the average nose — brine and rose petals, for example — the mind is lead towards recalling not the singular source of a smell, but stories, scenes, and memories. David Moltz recalls in what he calls “liner notes” to Rose Atlantic a specific memory of his own: “It’s hot but the sea breeze brings in cool salted air by the late afternoon. The cloudless sky looks east over the Atlantic. Seagulls hang high over cutters, Sloops, and Scoonahs (real spelling Schooner). The borders of the beachhead are covered in bushes of single-petaled rosa rugosa.” At the risk of veering too heavily into literary analysis, I want to gently imply that the style of Moltz’ writing also implies a certain philosophy towards how he creates perfume. There are only a few real sentences here. Vernacular language is important: short bursts of “if you know, you know” — the establishment of place not via explicatory description, but personal recollection. You get a sense he is only half-writing to you; that D.S. and Durga makes perfume for themselves, first and foremost. Rose Atlantic is one such exercise. A gatekept recollection of childhood happiness, perhaps — but a compelling take on the marine genre via the lens of a watery rose, absolutely. Perhaps even more so tied to the poetics of beachside memory is the aptly named Rockaway Beach. Once a summer exclusive, it seems to be slowly creeping into the permanent collection, at least for now. This is another key facet to Moltz’ perfume practice that helps recall a more indie, need-to-know sentiment: perfumes come in and out of production, fleeting and oftentimes inaccessible. There are indeed a number of ‘Studio Juices’ as Moltz calls them (Lilac City, First Light 5 Boroughs) I am dying to smell — but part of their allure, to me, is nested within their exclusivity. However, I was luckily able to get my hands on Rockaway Beach, and what I smell places it firmly within a niche genre of perfume I’d call l’eau de crème solaire: perfume that smells like sunscreen. This, I think, is inherently tied to memory. There is not truly a reason to make a cosmetic product that intentionally recalls the scent of another cosmetic product if not for some semi-universal grasp toward memories of that secondary product’s usage. Think of it as the difference between something like Guerlain’s Terracotta, a perfume that recalls the central coconut-vanilla-frangipani accord of the pasty white gel, but does not directly imitate it, and Comme Des Garçons’ collaboration with Californian fashion house ERL, bluntly named sunscreen. There is much to be said about fragrance as pantomime — perfume recalling back into itself on a set of trick mirrors, beauty products abstracted into simulacra of hairspray, lipstick (…for brevity’s sake, I will stop there.) This is all to say: it does not surprise me that Rockaway Beach, with notes of suntan lotion, skin, and salt — recalls a very specific moment, real or imagined. That specific moment is this: Queens during the summer. Teenage abandon, sweat, loud music, and the smell of your skin after a swim so long your fingers turn to prunes. What I smell is primarily the marine accord from Rose Atlantic isolated, draped in plastic menagerie, and moved across the peninsula from the genteel harbor to the wide-open shore. The predominant accord is salty, almost tart, but in time it dries down to a somewhat impressive wear-time of salty skin and chemical musk. I see it almost as a spiritual sister to Seattle-based perfumer Filigree & Shadow’s Björk-inspired notget — they both set themselves apart from other “beachtime” perfumes by the inclusion of unsightly smells of the sea: the complicated, fishy, and oftentimes odorous accords that recall poignant memories of real summer, and not the projected fantasy of an ideal one. Wear this to the beach right now, or as a Proustian exercise in sentimentality during the long months of January. Here is a perfume that does not recall memory, but rather, entices the imagination. Bistro Waters, a newer release from the house, riffs off the ancient eau de cologne structure played out in other releases like the dashing Italian Citrus and the greatly over-exaggerated Greatest Cologne of All Time. Where Italian Citrus leans candy and TGCoAT aromatic, Bistro Waters puts a vegetable veil over an orange, and settles it upon a bed of edible moss. This might be termed a gastro-gourmand — a perfume that does not recall dessert, but dinner. The image Moltz paints is of a bustling New York restaurant, a fresh plate of vegetables, perhaps a pasta, brought out in haste. What sticks out to me the most is a green pepper accord, somewhat similar to Diptyque’s Italian aperitif Venise, bisected with basil, spices, and an aqueous citrus drink. So-spicy, savory, and worth putting down your credit card to book an annoyingly exclusive Manhattan reservation for. When D.S. and Durga’s ‘fumes (as Moltz likes to call them) do leave their hometown of New York, I get the sense they always travel as tourists. Jazmin Yuactan is their white floral, and, par for the course, they do it a little differently than you would expect. A watery, fresh, candied jasmine, Jazmin recalls the Yucatan region of Mexico not just by name. There is some infuriating and addicting accord that between snake plants and cloves evokes the smell of corn tortillas. I have talked with multiple friends about this, just to make sure we all weren’t imagining it, and most seem to at least somewhat understand. There is something dry and powdery here, almost doughy. It doesn’t show up in the notes, but I feel as if somehow the sweeter thralls of orange blossom are at play. This might be the least indolic version of its eponymous flower I have ever smelled in my life. There is nothing at all about how jasmine is rendered here that feels thick or heady. It is instead more of a steamed bloom related in my mind to Jo Malone’s Orange Blossom cologne. Almost honeysuckle, citrus, sort of humid, and kind of confectionary, Jazmin Yucatan is a curious thing indeed. Before I go — I want to devote time to talking about the house's most earnest and unknown set of current releases. Their “gold label” premium line of small-batch perfumes made with higher quality and less readily available ingredients are named after the familiar aliases of the two founders themselves. I am inherently drawn to familial pairing and romance alike in perfume, and find the idea of releasing a self-titled line of perfume to be the pinnacle of the houses’ interest in both self-referential affect and the poetics of the LP. The first of the two, D.S. is designed to conjure the traditional methods of Indian perfumery. Styled after the attar – a means of co-distilling botanical ingredients in sandalwood essence – D.S. skims through the genres of oud, leather, and wood, and arrives authentically at the intersection of identity and aroma. I think of D.S. in concert with one of David and Kavi’s first-ever collaborations, My Indian Childhood, and furthermore, of Japanese perfumer Satori Osawa’s intentionally difficult answers to traditional imperial traditions of “oriental” perfumes. Intentionally composed challenges to decisively orientalist standards of scent is an extremely promising avenue for contemporary fragrance, and one I would like to see explored far more frequently. D.S. does not necessarily accomplish this, but rather by gesturing like MIC to specific interactions and intersections with Indian perfumery proper, does do interesting work of bridging the gap between niche American perfume and historic practices of scent creation. Part of me wishes D.S. was a little weirder, a little more challenging — but, on the other hand, I do very much respect exercising one’s perfume chops by imitating ancient techniques. D.S. is primarily the intersection of saffron, agarwood, and sandalwood, but I do often feel that a dry, tart oud presents itself most fervently. References in liner notes to gardenia and ylang-ylang could be dialed up a bit, and claims to top-shelf Sri Lankan Holyfield Sandalwood oil might be given a bit more space to breathe. True oud connoisseurs would clearly never look to D.S. and Durga to supply their pungent dreams, so I wonder if the purpose of “introduction to critically re-imagined post-colonial neo-oriental perfumery” might be too tall of a bill to foot. True to form, maybe he just wanted to use the ingredients at his disposal. Its floral counterpart, Durga, has been kept squarely in the back of all sales shelves I have seen it placed on — and if this article accomplishes nothing, I should hope its purpose would be to free this milky-narcotic white floral masterpiece from obscurity and place it among widely-circulated names like Frederic Malle’s Carnal Flower and Hiram Green’s Moon Bloom. Opening with an instantly attention-grabbing blast of herbal chrysanthemum, Durga’s conceit is the juiciness of fresh melon set against bubblegum tuberose. A fine-quality orris is used deftly here to support the smooth and buttery aspects of the central white flower. Where D.S. stumbles in revealing the true nature of its high-quality ingredients (and justifying its incredibly high price point at $380 for 50ml) there is no question in my mind (or my nose) that Durga contains an overabundance of high-quality tuberose absolute. The smell is unmistakable and almost obscene. Most clearly referenced in Carnal Flower, there is a reason, of course, that Malle purports in thick French that “the woman who wears [it] is saying come, kiss me!” Of course, Durga is not merely another tuberose-melon-eucalyptus Carnal Flower clone. What sets it apart is the crucial presence of chrysanthemum. It replaces eucalyptus in this now-notorious combination, lending a somewhat musty, prickly, and off-putting accord to this generally enchanting lineup. I can hear the tiniest, faintest echoes of Serge Lutens haunting funerary masterpiece De Profundis in what chrysanthemum accomplishes and unsettles here. It clings to the skin for a full day, and in the meantime, gives you tendrils of titular tuberose to last in your memory for weeks. If I had all the money in the world, Durga would be my signature perfume from the house. Alas, we all have luckyscent carts to fill and less importantly bills to pay, so I will settle for my treasured sample sale bottle of Mississippi Medicine, and look forward to my next trip to the city that never sleeps. 🌀

A starfish is not a way to solve things. In the 2010s, I remember thinking Tiffany & Co. was the epitome of class. As a teenager who was yet to be awakened to the specter haunting Europe, I envied the girls who got Tiffany’s Key pendants for Christmas and fantasized about the day a dreamy prince with soulful eyes would bring out a little teal box containing a diamond ring. I did not picture a jellyfish brooch with tentacles of 18K yellow gold, baguette sapphires, or a body made of moonstones, tanzanites, and 3 carats worth of diamonds. The 2023 Blue Book showcases Tiffany & Co.’s latest high jewelry collection, Out of the Blue. Inspired by the sea — in an effort to honor whimsy designer Jean Schlumberger — the collection “both perpetuates and reinvents the aquatic worlds that [Schlumberger] dreamt up.” But these Out of the Blue pieces seem to have less whimsy — and seem to be more out-of-touch, even in comparison to prior collections. The Blue Book is a sacred text in the world of high jewelry, published every year since 1845. It began as a way to highlight some of the world’s most precious and rare stones, including diamonds attained from French and Spanish aristocracy. Miraculously, the book’s launch coincided with the first appearance of these incredible pieces on display in the United States (and earned Tiffany founder Charles Lewis Tiffany the nickname “The King of Diamonds,” as deemed by The New York Times). Some lavish pieces went on display at the Paris Expositions of the late 19th century and were awarded gold medals for their opulence. Blue Books from the Gilded Age featured pieces inspired by these historic items, and even 20th and 21st-century versions appeared as well — including a 2013 diamond brooch that pays homage to one originally created for Marie Antoinette (Tiffany purchased the original on May 12, 1997). Looking at the Tiffany & Co. website and social media channels, it feels like the brand is having some sort of identity crisis, bordering on ego death. You can almost feel for them: how hard is it, really, trying to evolve into the 21st century while staying in touch with the roots of a Gilded Age social strata? Out of the Blue collection looks random, like its title, and it’s not the only move by the brand that appears disjointed. Schlumberger famously said he designed to make women look precious, rather than expensive, and his pieces were meant for the icons of his time (see: Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn). In this same vein, it makes sense that the brand would be Beyoncé’s official jeweler for the RENAISSANCE World Tour. But the pieces showcased by Beyoncé have barely anything in common with the Blue Book 2023: Out of the Blue collection. The sea creatures of Out of the Blue look like they would be wearing the person, not the other way around, devoid of kitsch, enveloped by their own whimsy. By contrast: Beyoncé’s Tiffany’s standard jewels are loud and ostentatious, but they make her look modern above all else, establishing her as an icon in the industry firmament. They enhance her. I fear if she opted for the starfish or the three-dimensional shell that hides a sapphire, would we even know where to look? And then there’s the Nike collaboration! Flop of the year. One would think this was an attempt to appeal to the sneaker collectors of the world — a younger, hipper crowd more into street style than Gossip Girl-reminiscent key necklaces. But then who is the Out of the Blue collection for? A Marie Antoinnete-esque royal foreign to today’s zeitgeist? You can either broaden your audience, or design for icons and royals, but you cannot have it both ways, baby. 🌀

I’m still looking for a way to refresh my skin that doesn’t involve masochism. The first two things you have to know about icing your face are ONE: it has short-term, beautiful results, and TWO: it hurts. Not one of the TikToks or beauty content creators warned me about this part. This trend consists of getting a bowl of water, adding ice, and dunking your face for a minute or two. I had seen people do it and imagined it would be uncomfortable, but when I actually tried it, it was… humbling. My skin is quite sensitive, and I (somewhat misguidedly) felt safe because the only ingredient needed was water. I woke up every morning, and after showering, would go set a bowl with ice water — mentally preparing myself to do it. It obviously woke me up in the morning, and really decreased my puffiness; however, I gave up after the first couple of days and opted for sticking my jade roller in the ice water and massaging my face with it. This added step to your routine is meant to tighten the skin, improve circulation, reduce the appearance of pores, and give a natural glow. It’s hard to get in that mindset when instead of a Goop-esque relaxation moment, the whole experience is like jumping into the Hudson in February. The use of ice water for skin care purposes is a Korean practice, and it started gaining attention on TikTok — especially last year when Bella Hadid uploaded a video dunking her face in a bowl of ice cubes. It’s remained a popular concept in beauty and wellness alike (it even works for stress and anxiety!), as it has the same effects as a cold shower. According to experts, doing this can lower your heart rate and slow your racing mind down. Because of the ludicrous amount of pain involved, it naturally became a TikTok couples' challenge (but that’s a different story). Still — people swear by it, making it a permanent step of their skincare regimen and recommending it to keep the skin firm and glowy. Is ‘70s-style shock therapy worth the effort? Or is it another thing that — even though we could be influenced to try — won’t really have any beneficial effects? After trying it for a week (even though I committed poorly to the freezing water and used way fewer ice cubes after the first time!), I will say that it does make you feel ready for the day and can slog off any last-night-bad vibes. And I have to confess something: I feel like my skin really liked it, even despite the holy terror the process involves. The rest of my skincare products, especially my moisturizer, went on super smoothly, and my redness was noticeably lower throughout the day. Still, the best and most beneficial effect for me was right after — I truly felt I was less groggy and much more fresh. But I’m still looking for a way to refresh my skin that doesn’t involve masochism. 🌀

How Pandemicouture has (quite tragically) sustained itself. It’s Friday night. You’re reaching for an overpriced gin and tonic you purchased at a club on Christopher Street. Your abdomen smashes against the edge of the bar, a crowd of sweaty bodies dancing against each other. The bright lights ricochet against the mirrorball, splashing rainbow-colored rays onto the walls. Sweat trickles off your neck and onto the sticky floor, but you don’t really notice because Bad Bunny is playing and you’re a little tipsy and you wonder if you’ve actually ever been this happy Just when you’re thinking this night can’t get any better, you spot your crush. They look as dreamy as ever. You make eye contact and weave your way towards them, waving, licking your lips. When you finally reach them, they look confused, but then laugh with recognition: “Oh my god, hey! I didn’t recognize you under that bucket hat. Isn’t it too hot in here for that?” Now aware of the floor and the bodies and the sweat, cringing, this is the moment when you realize you should’ve left the $250 fuzzy Jacquemus bucket hat at home. Bucket hat? Not even once. There are certain trends that hold a chokehold on society and slip surreptitiously into places where they aren’t welcome. The bucket hat in a nightclub is one of them. Few items of clothing are as divisive as it. Madeline, a 28-year-old social worker based in Michigan, believes the entire menagerie, bucket or not, should be burned: “I hate all hats,” she tells me when I ask her to elaborate on her strong anti-bucket hat feelings. “I won’t wear any hats and I think most hats are ugly on other people, too, but bucket hats especially.” She doesn’t feel this way about any other clothing items or big trends. Bucket hats were so overexposed in 2020 that by 2021 they started popping up in merch collections of some of the most popular cultural voices of the year. Olivia Rodrigo released a lilac bucket hat that read “It’s Brutal Out Here” as part of her SOUR album merch, and Sally Rooney had yellow bucket hats with the title of her 2021 release, the novel Beautiful World, Where Are You. And maybe it’s something about the mercantilization of a fashion item that was subversive in its irony when Rhianna wore it in 2018, but the bucket hat simply cannot have the same effect it once did. Especially not in a nightclub — which I have spotted multiple times over the last year on nights out in New York. While the bucket hat evokes negative feelings from some, others are proud wearers and defenders. Alexis is a 26-year-old Advertising Sales Manager based in the greater L.A. area. She first bit into the bucket hat trend when visiting Hawaii in 2021: “I remember I got all dressed up — I had my Birkenstocks, but they were like water Birkenstocks my high-waisted jean shorts; a crop-top tank-top, and I had my bucket hat ready to go.” After that, she embraced the “bucket hat lifestyle” and looked for more ways to incorporate the trend into her “everyday, more laid-back style.” This happens in two specific instances: she wears them for sun protection or to attend baseball games, even when the games are at night (She’s a big baseball fan and has now added two L.A. Angels bucket hats to her collection). I mention to Alexis that I have spotted kids wearing these head accessories to clubs. “That’s bold! I mean, kudos to them for being confident, but I personally don’t think a nightclub is the setting to wear a bucket hat unless there’s, like, a theme.” Jordan is a 28-year-old social media manager based in North Carolina, and another proud bucket hat wearer-devotee. To her, bucket hats offer honest, humble value: a cute accessory that can help dress up an outfit. She owns one in snakeskin print and is a big fan. Jordan tells me: “I don’t wear a ton of bucket hats anymore. I definitely wore more of them when they were like a little bit more trendy.” Now, she pulls out her snakeprint number with intent. “[I wear it] on days when I’m trying to dress a little bit more cute, or that I know I’m going to be taking pictures.” Similarly, for Lina, a 27-year-old writer in the New York City metro area, a sunny yellow bucket hat was the perfect accessory for Pride. She thinks bucket hats are perfect for the summer because they are “joyful” and “fun.” And who wouldn't agree that nothing says "fun" quite like a jaunty $550 Loewe fisherman’s cap? The popularity of the bucket hat seems to be a symptom — or perhaps a trusty pathogen — of a larger phenomenon. Tie-dye sweats, Y2K baby tees, and yes, bucket hats — all overly popular items from early 2020, right before the pandemic broke out in the Western hemisphere — remain in our closets and on the streets despite the fact that the fashion industry is moving at unprecedented hyperspeed. A century ago, the world had overcome the pandemic of the Spanish flu. It was the time of Vionnet, Prohibition, and Bernice Bobs Her Hair. And, at least in the stories that we tell each other about that time, wardrobes did the inverse of our modern proclivities: outfits became more daring, showing more skin, adding a twinge of sparkle. It’s an era that places like New York still glamorize, with an onslaught of speakeasy-inspired venues popping up every year. And while occassionwear has been booming, it’s as if we can’t fully let go of the moments before everything changed. No sparkle — just sobriety. Other than bucket hats, Alexis also owns two pairs of tie-dye sweatpants. “I don’t know if, for me, I’d be comfortable in a rainbow tie-dye. It has to be a little bit more subtle. So I started with a tan and white [...] my other sweatpants that I just purchased at a warehouse deal, probably like two weeks ago, are blue and green tie-dye.” Alexis describes this style as coastal-beachy, which works for her SoCal lifestyle. She’s also not someone who buys into a trend right away, but rather waits around to see if there’s one she really likes and then eventually makes a purchase that will work with the rest of her wardrobe. She got her first pair in 2021, and she got them in a neutral tan. She wore sweatpants before this, but her older pairs were solid bright pink and she wanted something more wearable and trendy. To her, clothing choices are diegetic to comfort — quite literally all about what makes you feel good: “If you like it, flaunt it.” With comfort the reigning undercurrent of Pandemicouture — and the continued rise of athleisure — you start to wonder if repose, rather than beauty, is now the thing driving what we wear. While I believe there’s a time and a place to wear certain things (and maybe the time for fuzzy bucket hats really was the winter of 2021), I do want to encourage you, ever-stylish partygoer, to consider specifically what draws you to a specific trend. Does it remind you of the possibility of a better time? Are you wearing something because TikTok told you that you should? Or are you trying to unfreeze yourself from the overwhelming overflow of microtrends by pulling something seemingly outrageous from your closet? Just make sure that the next time you bump into your crush under the disco lights, your gorgeous face is not hiding under all that fabric. 🌀

The girlbloggers are not here to get you to think. But they are here to get you to understand. There are ways to spot her before you even know who she is. She is defined by objects: a Diet Coke on the bedside table, littered with wrappers and crystals in equal measure; bunnies, fawns, soft birds; pink ballet slippers; Ottessa Moshfegh books; and an overwhelming sense of despair. She posts photos of anemic Victoria’s Secret models, broken rosaries, wet flowers, cigarettes. Lines of white text slapped over these pictures bind them together, an illuminated manuscript: I thank God for the beauty he gave me; The feminine urge to open Pinterest; I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman. These girls — the girlbloggers — are not novel if you, like me, grew up on Tumblr. 2014 Soft Grunge got us to this point. The American Apparel kids standing against the wall got us to this point. Vogue Beauty Secrets got us to this point. When you see the girlbloggers slither into your feed, they are weaving little spells, telling us why they’re here: I am actually insane and delusional. Not really, but they believe it — because the opposite coda has deeply infected the way women interact online. Safe spaces are antiseptic girlboss incubators (see: The Wing’s rise and fall, The Everygirl® complex, Instagram pages called “Her Incredible Mindset,” etc.). The capital G-P Girl Power cottage industry makes it gauche to be anything other than Strong. And the cool spaces that did exist, that allowed young women to fully express themselves — like Rookie Magazine, the original Twitter, and even Tumblr’s old temperature — are long, long gone. It is easy to think you’re an insane and delusional woman if nobody else is talking about it. So what do you do? You adopt a fake online identity — dainty, girlblogger-approved usernames like cherryfawn and lolitagirl333 abound — and start your 95 Theses. They call me crazy but they can’t call me ugly. The feminine urge to not be like my mother. I’m just a girl going crazy in her bedroom. Me after brutally bodyshaming myself. Girlblogging while I sip on my girlcoffee in my girlbedroom. In more ways than one, the girlblogger is a new divarication of the turtlenecked campus poet or the long-haired Joan Baez, attempting to make a public, profound sense of her sadness. Over the past decade, as literary magazines closed and coffee shops started charging for open mic night, a social media shift was inevitable — the romantics always find a way to keep yowling. Which begs the question: is the girlblogger primordial? The sources are clear: Sylvia Plath and her fig tree; Anaïs Nin’s brutal-beautiful letters to Henry Miller; the complicated, bittersweet poems of Rita Dove and Anne Sexton. If you want to go back even further, there are other progenitors of female pain: George Sand, Artemisia Gentlischi, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The sad girl in her bedroom is not doing anything new by typing Why can’t I be everything I imagined? over a beautiful picture; she is begetting what so many female artists have done before her. Making art about female suffering, making sense of yourself as a young woman and as a human being, is a cosmic urge, something that demands to be marshaled. The only difference between a girlblogger and a Charlotte Perkins Gilman is that the former is doing so anonymously, publicly, and without the vestiges of an art school or literary education. That can be, in itself, a little radical. Girlblogging is also a subliminal response to the ways we’ve squared beauty, holding onto the worst parts of third-wave feminism (like Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth) and leaving the rest to the vultures. Women, especially young women, are being told diametric maxims: Wearing makeup is an act of capitalist violence. You must wear lip gloss to reclaim your sexual identity. You are a bad feminist if you shop at Sephora. If you don’t shop at Sephora, you’re not supporting female entrepreneurs. And so on. But the key underpinning in all of this is the age-old curse: whether you’re barefaced with dirt under your fingernails or lacquered in Sherwin-Williams foundation, you must try all you can to not be accused of vanity, lest you want your entire being questioned. For women, being accused of vanity is like being accused of murder — no recourse, no return — and some women themselves mistakenly indulge in this myth. The Liz Lemons scoff at the pretty girls; the woman in the miniskirt will not get the promotion. Girlbloggers are devoted cataloguers of beauty. They empathize with the protagonist of Moshfegh’s 2018 novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation for her beauty, intelligence, and malaise; they digitally scrapbook film stills from Black Swan and Marie Antoinette; they are practically self-taught art history majors, spreading text across Herbert James Draper and Charles François Jalabert paintings. Whether they can see the beauty in themselves is a whole other beast, one that comprises a lot of female turmoil — but they certainly can see the beauty in all other things. In a cultural environment in which beauty is a dirty word, that can also be radical. Criticism of the girlblogger abounds: Why do these girls, both adults and teenagers, relate so much to films like Lolita and Girl, Interrupted? Shouldn’t they be embarrassed about that? Is it all ironic? Are they fetishizing mental illness? Not necessarily good questions. That is the power of self-recognition through the other: in women’s inner lives, there are things so deep-down and abstruse that they can hardly be articulated. A wink of pain; a hazy night in a church basement. To see a woman be a problem on screen, in text, in an anonymous image — smoking, sleeping ‘til noon, weeping in the corner — it is not empowering, but it is a comfort. A silent validation that your pain is not rare, that there are millions of other fig trees in the grove. That can be either a sorrow or a salve, depending on your view. I came across a post on Pinterest, the obvious work of a girlblogger: the image of a woman’s neck, thin and bony, cast in dark shadow, an anonymous screed plastered across her chest. Men will never understand the female insanity equivalent. The self-destructive need to succeed. The borderline delusion of constantly striving for the unattainable. The deadly white swan, black swan phenomenon. These are not new ideas, but they did give me pause, because I had never seen them written so plainly and economically. Unlike their predecessors, the girlbloggers are not here to get you to think. But they are here to get you to understand. 🌀 Savannah Eden Bradley is a 22-year-old writer, fashion editor, gallerina, Gnostic scholar, reformed it girl, and future beautiful ghost from the Carolina coast. She is the Editor-in-Chief of HALOSCOPE. You can stalk her everywhere online @savbrads.

McGrath’s eponymous makeup brand, Pat McGrath Labs, launched worldwide in 2015 and is now at a billion-dollar valuation after just 3 years. Pat McGrath’s rise to undisputed beauty pioneer is so revealing of her true talent and passion for her craft. From creating runway looks all throughout the 1990s — to launching her prestigious and connoisseurs-only beauty brand Pat McGrath Labs — here is a rough timeline of her journey so far. 1993 Soul II Soul singer Caron Wheeler calls teen McGrath and asks her to do her makeup on tour in Japan. She then met Amber Valletta in 1993, who then spoke to Steven Meisel about McGrath’s talent. The photographer requested McGrath to create the beauty looks for a couture project alongside him. 1995 In the early nineties, McGrath started working with i-D magazine's fashion director Edward Enninful, which led to her becoming the magazine’s Beauty Director. In 2017, Enninnful would again team up with McGrath, naming her the Beauty Editor-at-Large for British Vogue. 1999 This was the year McGrath developed a line of cosmetics for Giorgio Armani. (By the mid-2000s, she was working with global celebrities like Madonna and Oprah, and adored by her muses — such as Naomi Campbell, and, most recently, Paloma Elsesser.) 2000 — 2010 Since then, McGrath has worked with brands like Prada, Miu Miu, and top models on the runway, creating makeup looks for almost 100 runway shows every year throughout the 2000s. She is regarded as the most prolific runway MUA of all time. Today she has done over 3,000 shows. Her fearless way of approaching beauty has created staples we still see today. 2004 That year, she became Global Cosmetics Creative Design Director for Procter & Gamble — working on brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Covergirl, and Max Factor. 2015 McGrath’s eponymous makeup brand — Pat McGrath Labs — launched worldwide in 2015, and is now at a billion-dollar valuation after just three years. 2021 In 2021, McGrath became the first makeup artist to be named a Dame of the British Empire, for her services to the Fashion and Beauty Industry — and for her efforts to enhance diversity across the fashion landscape. Understanding McGrath's influence comes with acknowledging that she has set the foundation for the majority of makeup trends we know and love today. Everything from dewy skin, to bold and vibrant eyeshadow, to using our hands as makeup tools (!), can be traced back to McGrath’s work. Her perpetual innovation has even made Anna Wintour recognize her as the most influential makeup artist in the world. Her name is Legend, and her nickname is literally Mother. I for one, admire her raw creativity (and passion for makeup and detail). Her looks are both transformative and feminine, and she’s constantly finding new ways of accentuating beauty or featuring a new product with an incomparable technique. It is truly a joy to watch an artist grow and continue to blow new generations away with her work, even after all these years. 🌀

The collection is very feminine — and subversive when compared to the expectations that audiences might have had for the new Bode girl. The Bode Spring/Summer 2024 menswear collection leans traditional in silhouette and continues to surprise with the recent debut of their womenswear. The collection is referential of very feminine wear — subversive when compared to the expectations that audiences might have had for the new Bode girl. Figure-hugging knitwear; see-through tops; pinwheel bras; whimsical bows; and a white gown reminiscent of a wedding dress all largely identify the Bode girl as sexy — almost antithetical to designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s antique New England aesthetics and textiles that have made the brand infamous. The brand’s emphasis on the preservation of memories is seen throughout its use of deadstock textiles, fabrics, and traditional tailoring. Consistent with these more tactile references, Bode evokes a strong sense of sentimentality for the past through whimsical buttons and lace appliqué, reminiscent of a 20th-century New Hampshire farmstead. The actual clothes worn during that time period, however, were of immediate practicality, with little use found beyond comfort. Alongside this appreciation for vintage-inspired craftsmanship, the designer has seemingly rejected some dated values of the past when it comes to the inspiration behind her garments. If womenswear of its past references was so restrictive and docile, then why wouldn’t the brand create a new line for women to feel liberated? Why not provide something to call their own? Bode’s decision to release a womenswear line reshaped traditionally gendered clothing pieces — weaving connections between family history and modern dress. Emily cites the women in her family as her muses, instilling in the young designer that vintage pieces hold importance beyond their immediate impression. What was once a lace tablecloth can be made into a skirt, each drape a memory of past dinner parties, yet encouraging of a new life to be cherished in its revival. Aujla’s connection with her materials transcends design and reaches consumers in a way that has rarely been seen for such a newly emerging brand. Alongside this dedication from customers came anticipation for what Bode might be able to do with womenswear. Of course, women had been wearing Bode men's pieces for years; the signature blazers and more structured outerwear provided a traditionally masculine edge when worn over a dress. During Paris Fashion Week 2023, Bode surprised audiences with the debut of their women's line during a menswear time slot. Not only was Aujla tasked with rising to the expectations of observant menswear devotees, but she decided to dismantle gender structures in fashion altogether — and would have to face what this meant for upholding the brand’s reputation as a rather ambiguously unisex line. Anticipation grew in advance, with writer and Opulent Tips mastermind Rachel Tashjian Wise appreciating the brand’s unique New England aesthetics, a brief respite from the ultra-Euro menswear week. Despite some fans proving their dedication to the brand’s 20th-century inspirations, some remained wary of change and questioned the intent behind the debut: Perhaps people had become too used to the brand’s consistency, something Emily Adams Bode Aujla warned against — going as far as stating in a Harper’s Bazaar interview that “I wanted to show people that the womenswear that I would design is not the way that most people would think Bode womenswear would be.” Aujla’s consciousness surrounding the perception of her brand resulted in an ironically subversive womenswear launch. The designer has audiences surprised that a dress might be — gasp! — sexy, or that a top might flatter a woman’s body and be adorned with sequins. After all, why would a Bode womenswear collection be… feminine? With the arrival of the Spring 2024 menswear collection, though, fans of the brand had time to adjust their expectations for what a “Bode girl” might look like. In contrast to the way that menswear looks on women’s bodies, Bode’s womenswear accentuates and reveals, rather than conceals. The collection has a bejeweled peacoat that ties tightly with satin ribbons. Bikini-bottomed underwear not only serves their intended purpose, but they adhere to the body in a flattering, complementary way. Knee-length knitwear and see-through blouses have necklines so deep that the décolletage and chest are put on full display. The collection contains an ornately beaded top in a rich, red color; alongside the top, a matching bag far too small to be of much practicality, suggesting a use of decoration and accessory rather than to provide access to items that a woman might need on the go. A dress tantamount to a wedding gown closes out the show; the model balances a gauzy skirt, feathered boa, and a bow the size of her head; all elements of definite femininity, with no room for blurred abjection. There’s a reason Aujla’s traditional, vintage New England textiles and design have not remained in the past. It’s a subconscious underpinning of Aujla’s work: women in rural, working-class areas — who often were once mere counterparts to their husbands — wore pieces of practicality and servitude, covered and unnoticed. Bode’s womenswear takes these references, reshapes them, and creates them anew by placing them in the modern world. While some designers shock their audiences with men wearing skirts and women wearing tuxes, Bode is a brand that subverts its narrative by simply delivering what is expected. A brand that has been widely known for its ambiguity and gender-defying designs has created a womenswear line that consists of pieces typically worn by those who identify as women — a concept that I continue to find humorous and intriguing at the same time. Maybe Aujla’s vision for the modern Bode girl is reflective of the inspiration she finds in 20th-century womenswear and the women of her family, liberating both generations and paying homage all at the same time. 🌀

What Tom Ford’s most popular perfume tells us about the reasons men want women to want themselves to smell good — and why we should demand better for ourselves. There is something to be said for smelling like something you eat. Hélène Cixous writes in Stigmata: Escaping Texts that “...eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love.” To be wanted, so completely and rapturously, that your beloved consumes you whole. In fact, romantic cannibalism has sort of been having a moment lately. Between breakout dream-pop star Ethel Cain’s self-titled character, tragically consumed by the wretched man she adores, to memes about biting your boyfriend making the rounds on all corners of the internet — it seems worth investigating, in this particular cultural moment, why people (women, mostly) want to smell like food. There is much to be said on this subject, and much of it has already upset people. There are innocent fantasies of girlhood and unsexed affinities towards baked goods tied into what might be called the more sinister gourmand-industrial complex, and it is by no means my intention to disturb these wholesome scent preferences. That said, the ways in which sweet candy perfumes intersect with gendered politics of desirability and class are no clearer articulated than in Tom Ford’s 2018 viral cherry organza Lost Cherry. I would love to hear an earnest argument for how a perfume quite literally named after a vulgar euphemism for a woman’s lapsed virginity is not related to misogyny. It is an obvious enough influence to have eventually become retroactively opaque in the pursuit of commodity fetish. Beauty products are made to make women more desirable to men – of course, they bear coded signs of that very desirability. I also don’t mean to suggest I am somehow above this fact of life. I use Too Faced's Better than Sex mascara because I want all-day lift, but I hear the ghost of Andrea Dworkin screaming at me in Yiddish the entire time. Suggestive beauty product naming accomplishes what the toy company Mattel cracking jokes about their profit-based value system in the Barbie movie accomplishes for Mattel profits tied to the sale of tickets for the very same movie: postmodernity is defined by critique of the product embedded into the product itself. It gives you something to think about, a connection to briefly make. Wielding the power of this sexy perfume is like the excitement of losing your virginity. But then you stop there. You don’t think about it any further. Zizek has been saying this for decades. Products no longer sell you a product, and they no longer even sell you just an idea. Products sell you an entire mindset, a politic, a worldview, and they do it in ways often in seemingly direct conflict with their values in order to earn your trust. Why would Victoria’s Secret, a lingerie company, suddenly become interested in a bare-faced simple beauty campaign. Why would Dove, a company producing deodorant and soap marketed to help people smell better, care about your self-esteem? Thankfully Tom Ford Fragrances does not try and pretend it is a feminist beauty product company – but many people who consume it still somehow mentally place it on the neck of an “empowered woman,” whatever that means in the scheme of advertising. Tom Ford himself as a designer and businessman is hardly known for his demure marketing. At its best, the worldbuilding of Tom Ford as a house has stood for the provocative in service of understanding ourselves more honestly. Like the surprisingly modern character of Samantha from Sex and the City, you get the sense that they both are tired of not saying the quiet parts out loud. That sex is a force as constant as the sun, and even the most repressed souls yearn, desire, like all humans do: in inconvenient and obscene and incorrect ways. But quite frankly, there is a difference between revealing and challenging the coded interchanges of heterosexuality, and reproducing them wholesale. Where I think this vision falls apart is when it leaves the tight control of a single room of creatives, and more or less integrates wholly into the pre-existing market for beauty products. If Tom Ford fragrances can’t even clear an f-bomb past certain production circuits, I fear for its ability to make serious waves in the cultural politics of suggestive beauty naming, or whatever loose assembly of legacy platitudes people suggest Lost Cherry might serve to provoke. This is all to say, I have seen women do better for themselves — and I want more for us. There are two important questions at play here. Firstly: is Lost Cherry a good perfume in its own right? And secondly, does what it represents for the culture surrounding perfume consumption bode well for the general state of creativity in fragrance? Luckily enough, the answer to both of these questions can be summarized in a single word: no. Lost Cherry opens with a blast of bitter almonds. I’ve noticed a trend among many Tom Fords (including the equally popular masc counterpart Tobacco Vanille): the opening spray is very provocative, and the dry-down is extremely conventional. In the case of LC, the initial sour profile of the cherry note fused with the bitterness of almonds recalls cyanide, and in one case, the purported smell of decaying corpses. Into the drydown, however, the nutty profile becomes sweeter and the cherry becomes candied. There is very little evolution beyond the first fifteen minutes — once it settles, it does so for a couple of hours of diffusive aspartame fruit showboating, and then it is gone. I can understand why people call this perfume addicting. Usually, the formula for creating this effect is the combination of something widely palatable with the traces of something extremely offensive at high doses. This was the secret to most perfume in the 20th century. Jasmine was entrancing — narcotic, even — because of the traces of urine-like indoles found within the composition. Rose became sensual with the addition of civet, the perineal gland secretion of a small mammal related to the common genet. Lost Cherry uses the rich, juicy profile of a cherry accord to hide notes of alcohol and decay on the wrists of impressionable young women. This is not, inherently, my issue with the perfume. Rather, I find Lost Cherry does far too much to achieve far too little. The notes blend together, the careful deceits fall flat: there is a reason this perfume is perhaps the belle of the dupe economy. If its formula weren’t so generic, it wouldn’t be so easy and popular to duplicate. The second reason so few fans of this scent own a full bottle is, of course, the high price point. A 50ml bottle currently retails for $395. This brings me to my second concern: Tom Ford is not entirely responsible for the inflation of the luxury fashion markets at large, but its most popular offering does absolutely embody the particularly nefarious intersection between completely unreasonable status-based prices, products lacking in conceptual substance, and second-hand male voyeurism. Of course, when you deal in products made and sold under the luxury market, oftentimes prices are less a reflection of the material costs of production and more a material representation of a brand’s prestige and identity. You aren’t paying for the perfume inside Lost Cherry’s bright red bottle, you’re paying for the bottle itself as an idea. You’re paying for an individual enumeration of Tom Ford Beauty, now itself an individual enumeration of the loose collection of ideas festering within the digitized remains of a woman selling cleansing oil in mid-century New York City formerly known as The Estée Lauder Companies. I do not labor under expectations that Tom Ford will lower its prices. I do, however, wish we would stop doing their marketing for them. Lost Cherry as an idea is virtually inescapable on the internet: it is recommended, mood-boarded, and, as referenced before, most often-evangelized through the recommendation of fakes. It is the idea, and you, dear reader, can only ever reach for pale imitations. You wish you could smell like this, but of course, you shouldn’t. There are several far more sophisticated cherry-based perfumes made by independent and niche perfumers. There is nothing that Lost Cherry does that Strangers Parfumerie’s Cherry Amaretto (retailing for $ 90 USD) does not do better. And much of Lost Cherry’s allure — the seductive, red-lipped ingénue, essentially lied from an amalgamation of vamp Pinterest boards — is best enacted as a self-aware subverted performance and not a marketing strategy. I love Lana del Rey as much as the next Tumblr-expat, but I also think what makes her music so electric is her self-aware vulnerability. She’s thinking and acting against her own best interests; she’s playing out self-destructive spirals, but fuck it, she loves him. You may think I’m asking too much of a cosmetic product, but the culture of self-described “empowerment” surrounding Lost Cherry and other fruity-sweet ultra-femme contemporaries does none of this. It is not performative, it merely performs. Something like Mugler’s Angel, widely considered the first gourmand perfume, was so glorious precisely because it was so vulgar and controversial. Some men drooled for it, but just as many loathed it. It was regarded as both chic and trashy, sexually ambiguous, alluring, and ostentatious. In my humble opinion, there are two ways to interrupt the very real modern cultural tradition of men wanting women to smell like food so they can better be consumed: either cut your dessert with something sophisticated and off-putting or dial the saccharine indulgence up to eleven. Part of me wants Lost Cherry to tone it down, and another wishes it would have gone all the way. Where it presently stands, however, feels halfway between pruning oneself for male fantasy, and searching for something perfectly mediocre in your own right. My wish may be unreasonable, but I one day hope to see women justify spending entirely too much on sweet perfume for its own sake. Maybe this is how you feel about your decision to wear Lost Cherry, and that is perfectly fine. Wear it to your heart's content. I just hope that one day, we can decide on figureheads for the neo-gourmand fourth-wave feminist revolution that smell a little less like plastic on accident, and a little more like plastic on purpose. 🌀

Concert outfits aren't built to last. Ahead of her 42nd birthday, Beyoncé asked her fans through Instagram to wear their “most fabulous silver fashions to the shows 8.23 - 9.22. We'll surround ourselves in a shimmering human disco ball each night.” Taylor Swift announced the upcoming release of the concert film of The Eras Tour with AMC Theaters, including in her caption that “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged 🫶 1, 2, 3 LGB!!!! (iykyk).” Harry Styles’ fans dropped colorful feathers all over the world for two years during LOVE On Tour, a tradition started because the British singer wore an assortment of feather boas at the Grammys in 2021. Concert fashion (which has been a thing since tours have been a thing) is a way to mark yourself as part of a tribe. But how does playing dress-up for tours relate to personal style? And what is it about the ritual of dressing up to go to a live music show that makes us take chances that we wouldn’t in our day-to-day lives? Margot, a 29-year-old marketing executive based outside of New York City, has seen Taylor Swift at The Eras Tour four times. The first Eras show she went to was in a city she had to fly to, so she needed an outfit she could easily take in a carry-on bag: “It was a Midnights-inspired outfit that wasn’t too overdone. I bedazzled a pair of shorts and wore a star mesh shirt.” But for the shows that were within driving distance from where she lives, she had more flexibility: “[for] one of them my boyfriend and I did “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince.” We got crowns, I made us sashes, and mine was in the Miss Americana movie font and his was in the reputation font.” Making the sashes was a complex process, and Margot was worried her outfits wouldn’t be ready in time: “Like, I’m stressing myself out for nothing, but it’s really fun.” For the third show, she went with her mom and her sister, and they dressed up as the line from “Death By A Thousand Cuts”: “I ask the traffic lights if it will be alright / They say I don’t know.” They wore stoplight t-shirts with a word for each color: “One of them had a bedazzled I [on the red circle], the one in the middle had a bedazzled DON’T [on the yellow], and then the one in the end had a bedazzled KNOW [on the green]. Taylor Nation did respond to my photo — they responded to me on Instagram, so I was very excited.” A huge factor that encourages fans to dress up for tours as big as the Eras tour is the possibility of being noticed. When Taylor Nation (Swift’s management team, and the fan club to end all fan clubs) shares your Instagram story, it’s like getting a gold star from Taylor herself. Margot went to one more show — “...cause I’m crazy,” she says with a cheeky tone. “[For] this one I had bought this jacket that felt very “Getaway Car” vibes. She pauses. “Are you a Swiftie?” she asks me, just to make sure we’re on the same page. Margot doesn’t just go to Taylor Swift concerts. “I just went to the Jonas Brothers concerts, which is why I have no voice,” she says, the raspiness of her voice crackling through my speakerphone. She does recognize that people don’t put the same effort into dressing up for acts smaller than Swift: “I feel like being a Taylor Swift fan forces you in a way to be on a different level of commitment for concerts.” Even if you never wear the pieces again: “The stoplight t-shirts I’m probably never gonna wear again, but the mesh shirts are really cute if I ever do go out, and same with the blazer. I don’t think any of these I would wear to work ever, but some of the pieces I’ll probably never wear again like the bedazzled shorts.” Part of the problem with the bedazzled shorts is that, since they were also a DIY, they ended up being a bit scratchy and not comfortable or practical at all. Yet the sentimental value remains: “I will keep everything.” And while she doesn’t think dressing up for concerts has taught her anything specific about her personal style, she has expanded her understanding of what dressing up can look like: “I wouldn’t consider how I dress for concerts something that I can carry over into my everyday life — just ‘cause I’m not like a crazy adventurous dresser, if you will. But I will say over the years of being a Taylor Swift fan, I commit more and more to my outfit for every tour. It doesn’t influence my everyday life, but it does influence the concert attire version of myself.” Fans prepare for their concert months in advance. For example, Kate is 28 years old and is a healthcare worker based in Ontario, Canada, who is going to the May 9th Eras Tour show in Paris, and she’s making her own outfit for the show. “I’m doing crochet granny squares based off of all of the different eras, so there will be at least two, I think, for each era, so a [corresponding] color and a symbol that I’m crocheting into a dress.” The aesthetic of the dress is somewhat inspired by the Eras Tour poster. “I got on the side of TikTok where everyone is making their own thing. I’ve seen a girl who had like a skirt and each era was a different color and with the lyrics and stuff, and I’ve seen people do a whole bunch of different things, and I was like, I kind of want to make something!” Crocheting clothing for herself and her loved ones is a new thing for her. It’s a new hobby she picked up while on maternity leave, and she made a scarf and hat for herself, and a blanket for her son. She describes the way she dresses on a day-to-day basis as “very casual, bordering on Adam Sandler.” We spoke in mid-August, and at that point, Kate had started the process by easing herself into making the granny squares and figuring out how to best represent each era. She expects the whole process will take her “at least until Christmas,” but her goal is to have it done by March. Gina is 25 years old and is a retail sales associate and design consultant-in-training based in a small town two hours south of Toronto, Canada, where there are a lot of great, small boutiques. She saw Harry Styles last year and put together an ensemble she was very excited about. She used the concert as an excuse to buy a cool pair of pants: “[They were] made from deadstock fabric, I think it actually used to be like a tablecloth or something. They’re a white base and they have pink and green tulips, and yellow tulips, and, I’m just looking at them now, and red splotches all over them, so they ended up being just like such a specific piece that was just very joyful.” She wore them with a white bra top, with a linen shirt over top, and glued sparkly gems on her face for a finishing touch. While Gina does love to dress up for events and occasions, the Harry Styles concert outfit stands out from the rest: “I’ll get cute for an event, for sure, but I definitely didn’t get as excited or put as much importance on my outfit as I did for Harry Styles — and, even then, I spent all summer thinking about what I was gonna wear [...] I think it was the grandeur of finally getting to see him in person and wanting to make it really special, and also knowing that the majority of the audience at Harry Styles was going to be femme, queer presenting, and full of cis women, and everybody was going to be so excited about it and going all out for it. You kind of felt like you had to contribute, in a way.” And even so, she felt like others around her spent even more time and money on their Harry Styles outfit: “I’m not one to drop a ton of money on just anything, but I definitely did [...] the pants were $70 and everything else was kind of thrown together. But I didn’t put as much thought into my outfit I think as other people did.” The pants don’t seem like a far-out departure from the rest of her closet: “I’ve been trying to figure out what terms to use for my style for so long now. I tend to go for a base of classics, but I do like to employ a little bit of whimsy in what I wear. I’m a really big floral print and big earring girl, I love dresses, I love skirts, and I love playing around with proportions whenever I can.” However, she hasn’t been able to wear the tulip pants again, despite the fact that she bought them with hopes of getting good use out of them, and she doesn’t really know why: “I’m definitely guilty of Oh, I’ll wear that! and then I can only think of that. I think it’s also [that] I live in a small town currently, and loud clothing definitely draws looks. I don’t regret spending the money on them, but I definitely bought them thinking that I would wear them again and I just haven’t. They’re a really big proportion and the fabric is kind of stiff, so they’re just like… a little hard to style on a random Tuesday, but I’m hoping that that will change.” But where do these pieces go? Why are they thrown to the annals of our closets? In a world where every piece of fashion seems to get sucked up by the Shein machine, what are the ethics of one-time wear? That’s the thing: whether it’s imitating what the people we go see wear on stage, or finding our own sartorial expressions of obsession, concerts create an environment where people feel confident enough to wear what they want. A pure form of self-expression that the tyranny of casual or business-casual dress codes won’t allow for day-to-day life. But what would happen if we stopped following the rules in the name of authentic self-expression — or capitulated to the expectations of celebrities? 🌀