Feature and Op-Ed articles

The StyleZeitgeist Guide to Kyoto: 2025 Edition

Features/Op-Ed, Travel

To say that Kyoto is a magical city is like saying that Francis Bacon is a great artist – neither words nor pictures can relate the firsthand experience. The feeling of peace that washes over you as you stroll the zen gardens or feel the wooden floors of Buddhist temples creak under your unshod feet. Even the hordes of tourists cannot spoil the experience if you are in the right mindset. There is no season when Kyoto is not full of visitors, or at least I have not experienced it. There are ways to avoid them somewhat by visiting the smaller temples, but no way to avoid them by visiting the bigger ones, but visit them you must, at least on your first trip. But you would also be missing out if you viewed Kyoto as just a temple destination; exploring its rich fabric of shops, restaurants, and a maze of architecture is a joy in itself. If you want to do it right, you’d probably need a week or so.

OP-ED: THE OTHER REASON WHY LUXURY FASHION SALES ARE TANKING

Features/Op-Ed, Retail

Luxury fashion sales are in the doldrums. It seems that no one, with the exception of several brands that cater to the truly rich, has been spared. Sales for mass market luxury brands – and it is time that we started talking about “mass market luxury fashion” as a market category – like Gucci and Burberry are dropping by double digits every quarter. Even Dior and Chanel have not been spared.

Op-Ed: Why There May Never Be Another McQueen

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Speak to fashion enthusiasts today, and they will tell you how impoverished today’s fashion has become, and how hard it is to envision a change. Inevitably they look back, more often than not to the ‘80s and the ‘90s, which many see as the golden age of fashion, the era when a generation of designers created clothes that did not serve as status symbols but had deep cultural roots. In this new, exciting milieu, the Camp greats like Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler coexisted with the seriousness of Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, the sober minimalism of Helmut Lang and Jil Sander was juxtaposed against the playfulness of Franco Moschino and John Galliano, and the Antwerp Six and Martin Margiela ushered in a post-bourgeois sensibility that was taken up by the second wave of Belgian designers and culminated in the brutalism of Rick Owens. The idea that fashion could be the provenance of intelligent, culturally educated people, and not that of Houston oil housewives and Thai princesses, came to a climax in the late ‘90s in London with the awe-inspiring work of Hussein Chalayan. And then there was Alexander McQueen, whose clothes-making skills equaled his aesthetic edge.

Op-Ed: Is the Era of Primacy of the Brand Over the Designer Coming to an End?

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

In 2004 Gucci was flying high. Tom Ford, its designer, and Domenico De Sole, its CEO, were on top of the world, having turned around a flailing brand in the mid-90s and making it one of the hottest tickets in the world of luxury fashion. The pair seemed untouchable; after fighting off a takeover attempt by Bernard Arnault, the founder of LVMH, and having found its perfect white knight in François-Henri Pinault, they formed a rival conglomerate. Who in their right mind would fire them? Pinault did, sending a very clear message across the industry that was in the throes of corporatization – no designer was as important as the brand, even the one who brought it back from the brink.

Paris S/S 2025 Women’s Fashion Week Report

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

The City of Light welcomed this edition of women’s fashion week with pouring rain; proof that god hates fashion. No matter; the influencers influenced, and I am convinced that a tsunami could not stop the fake dressing for the cameras — mother nature is no match for late capitalism. At Dries Van Noten without Dries Van Noten the change in the makeup of the audience was palpable. The editors were mostly relegated to the second row to make room for “content creators.” In front of me sat a girl who must have been in her early twenties. She was armed with an iPhone ensconced in some gizmo that allowed her to record the show on video in a semi-professional way. Preoccupied with filming, she did not look at the clothes once. And what did she miss? A definite change.

Op-Ed: It’s Time to Stop Calling For Young Designers at Top Fashion Jobs

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Over the last several years the generational-divide-as-culture-wars has penetrated fashion. The narrative goes that it’s the same handful of old people who keep juggling for top creative director positions and that those positions should go to younger designers who could bring fresh blood and new ideas, and rejuvenate the stale fashion establishment. That narrative is…

Boris Bidjan Saberi: Human Scale

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

“I am at a stage in my profession where I have expertise, like a tailor or a mechanic. I know something,” Boris Bidjan Saberi, the German fashion designer, said during a preview of his collection on a recent morning in June. It was a rare interview that, as someone who prefers to let his work speak for itself, Saberi agreed to. He paused a beat, “I mean, in the end, I don’t know anything,” laughter all around. “I love to work and get better and make things different. My whole life I have worked with my hands.”