Apologies for the hiatus, but we are back with a bang! On this episode we speak with Patrick Scallon, Paris-based communication consultant who was the head of communications at Maison Martin Margiela from 1993 to 2008 and at Dries Van Noten from 2008 to 2023. In the fashion world Patrick is a legend, having helped shape…
Earlier this month the streetwear brand Aimé Leon Dore released a collaboration with the storied Italian coffee equipment manufacturer La Marzocco. Besides the usual merch, the star of the tie-up was a limited edition espresso machine. Here is how the collab unfolded. First, the drop was touted by the streetwear media, which duly noted that its centerpiece, the co-branded Linea Micra espresso machine, costs a whopping $11,660. The egregious markup of the device that retails for $4,200 became a talking point. Then the drop happened, with the machine quickly “selling out,” the fact that spurred further coverage and online conversation.
Guy Bourdin’s 30 year collaboration with Vogue France began in 1955, where he was hired by editor and chief Edmonde Charles-Roux. In one of his first photos for the magazine, a model daintily holds the tips of her white chapeau, staring sweetly at the lens. Above her hangs five severed calf’s heads, their lifeless tongues extended, as curved hooks penetrate the tops of their heads. It is an arresting image, and it would not be Bourdin’s last. Before running the image, Charles-Roux instructed the art director to crop out the decapitations, leaving only the model’s softly elegant gaze. Perhaps 1955 was too early for such explicit visualizations of sex and death.
Superfine, an exhibition on Black dandyism which opens this Saturday at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, presents a history of Black style through the lense of dandyism, emphasizing the importance of sartorial style to Black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora and the ways Black designers have interpreted and reimaged this history. The exhibition aims to highlight the various styles one could employ in order to be identified as a dandy: from austere minimalism to hyper-colorful tailoring, from deconstructed denim to high tech sportswear, dispelling the stereotype of flamboyance being the only indicator of dandyism.
Today, Kering, the luxury conglomerate that owns Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta, among others, reported its first quarter earnings, and the picture of the luxury industry it paints is even more dire than many thought. Overall sales are down by 14%, Gucci’s sales for the first three months of 2025 are down by 25%, as Kering’s biggest brand flounders in the wake of a creative director reshuffling. At Yves Saint Laurent, its second biggest brand, sales are down 9%. Frustratingly, Kering does not break out Balenciaga’s earnings, as it lumps them into “Other Houses,” which include McQueen, Brioni, and a handful of jewelry brands they own. But Kering dropped a couple of hints in its earnings report.
That burst of angry, youthful energy unleashed on London streets in 1976 called punk indelibly changed the trajectory of nightclubbing forever. For about eighteen months, sartorial individuality reigned for those initial participants. Although Westwood and McLaren’s SEX and Seditionaires boutique provided expensive garments infused with the spikily subversiveness forever associated with punk, DIY styling rose like a rocket within those months with a slew of customization ideas utilized to express disaffection, nihilism and sexual deviation.
On this episode we speak with Robert Williams, Luxury Editor at the Business of Fashion. We start with Robert’s unique career journey as an American student in Paris (it wasn’t like Emily’s), before going on to discuss the challenges of maintaining independence in fashion journalism. We explore the evolving landscape of the fashion industry over…
Today we woke up to the news that the up and coming designer Duran Lantink was appointed as the creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier. This completes his recent victory lap that began with sweeping a handful of fashion prizes, including the Andam award and the LVMH prize.
And while it is commendable that a young designer gets a crack at spearheading one of the most important brands in the history of contemporary fashion, it’s also worth taking a fresh look at what he actually makes. The artifacts that can be called garments in his oeuvre are pretty forgettable – there is no innovation there in terms of the silhouette, nor is there a strong discerning aesthetic statement. Lantink’s true strength lies in making outlandish, sculpted outfits that look good on Instagram. The look from his last collection that was shared the most was not a garment at all, but a sculpted male bust, worn on a female model. Things like this are designed to go viral in that look-at-this-silly-thing way. They are fashion as memes.
Take a deep breath, and suspend your justified knee-jerk reaction at mentioning Trump before you read on, as I had to do in order to write this article.
There is much debate about the economic damage of Trump’s harsh tariff policies. Even though most tariffs have been suspended for 90 days, let’s go ahead with the scenario in which they go into effect. Many outcomes are still hazy, but one thing is clear, they will likely decrease consumption, especially in America. And in the world of overconsumption, isn’t that what so many of us who are concerned with sustainability want? The developed world, and the US especially, groans under the weight of cheap stuff that the current world economy, especially in Asia, overproduces, and that ends up in landfills. The cycle of planned obsolescence has sped up across the board, but especially in fashion, where we no longer talk about fast fashion from the likes of H&M, but about ultra-fast-fashion from the likes of the Chinese giant Shein.
On this episode we speak with Emily Segal, the founder of the brand strategy agency Nemesis, publishing house Deluge, and the author of the novel Mercury Retrograde. Emily came to fame in the 2010s as the co-founder of the collective K-Hole, which coined the term “normcore.” She went on to work with everyone from Prada…