Tag: style points

Could New York Indie Retail Make a Comeback?

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

So much for that old stereotype about New Yorkers only wearing black. Laura Baker tells me that her fashion buyer friends from other cities have been marveling that “New York is like a bag of Skittles. People are wearing color here.” Baker adds, “That’s what we like. We bought a lot of color.”

“We” refers to the retail destination ESSX, soft opening on Thursday. When I visited last week, Baker, the store’s co-founder and retail director, and her team were putting the finishing touches on the 7,000-square-foot Leong and Leong-designed interior. “Everyone kept saying, ‘We can’t wait to see it.’” she tells me of the still-slightly-raw space. “And we kept saying, ‘Well, us too.’ Two weeks ago, our project manager, Dara, was like, ‘It’s going to open. It’s going to open.’ I’m like, ‘Are you sure?’ There’s plaster, wires, everything, but nope, it’s here. It’s all happening.”

A look at the store’s interior.
Courtesy of Trey Crews

On the Lower East Side’s bustling Essex Street, the store looks out onto a liquor store and a vape shop. A sign for “New York Hardcore Tattoos” can be seen from the corner. Inside, conversely, is a calm, spaceship-like space, a UFO in the concrete jungle, dotted with ottomans from Darren Romanelli that are made from upcycled jeans and T-shirts. Baker says the team wanted the store to reflect “what we want to buy, what the kids in the neighborhood are wearing, versus—there’s nothing wrong with them, but big brand names that are highly promoted. We wanted to bring back a real discoverability aspect.”

We want to see New York win.”

Together, we reminisce about the lost days of New York independent retail: befriending that sales associate at Barneys who would clue you in to the right up-and-coming labels, or stumbling across a new designer in Opening Ceremony in a buzzed post-brunch haze. Further back in time is Charivari, where Marc Jacobs once cut his teeth as a stock boy. Those kinds of places have become thin on the ground, thanks to the pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the dominance of e-commerce. But if anyone can make brick-and-mortar great again, it’s the team behind ESSX: Baker and co-founders Yoel Zagelbaum and Abe Pines, along with style director Lauren Ferreira, who has worked at Kith and as a wardrobe assistant to Drake.

Charivari Boutique owner Selma Weiser with her son Jon and daughter Barbara.
New York Daily News Archive

When Baker told people about the new project, she says, she heard a lot of sentiments like, “‘I can’t believe you’re opening retail. It’s so scary. You’re in for it. Say goodbye to the rest of your life. Or ‘If it’s not experiential, then it’s not worth doing.’ Or ‘How are you redefining retail?’ And the thing is, what does that even mean? I see headlines all the time about experiential retail. Do you want a circus tent in here? Do you want acrobats coming from the ceiling?”

Ultimately, she says, “I think experiential is person to person. People have forgotten how to interface and have a conversation.” She wants a trip to the store to feel “more like a hangout: ‘Hey, let’s get to know the brand.’ If they find something amazing, I mean, we hope they walk away with something, but it really is about learning.”

A look from London label Ahluwalia.
John Phillips/BFC

So, to recap: no circus tents or VR wizardry are in evidence, but what ESSX will offer is fashion, and lots of it. Younger customers “have money, they have resources, they’re hyper-intelligent, they have the internet at their fingertips, they geek out on stuff,” she says. Baker has been working with emerging brands for 15 years through her agency PBLC TRDE, and she eagerly enumerates the store’s eclectic buy. ESSX will be the only store in New York to carry Berlin designer Ottolinger; other labels on tap include “hometown hero” Winnie, Ahulwalia, 4S Designs, Wales Bonner, and Drake favorite Glass Cypress, alongside heavy hitters Comme des Garçons and Jil Sander. The offerings skew look-at-me; Baker disdains the current moment of minimalism and quiet luxury. “We hope our customer spends their money at Uniqlo on the basics, versus getting those here,” she says. “We have a very niche audience, but we are confident that they are going to support the store and everything that’s in here, and also, tell their friends.” There’s a particular emphasis on repping local talent because, Baker believes, “New York stores just don’t support New York brands.” (Those who can’t make the trip to NYC, never fear; there will also be an e-commerce arm to the business.)

A look from Wales Bonner.
Victor Virgile

Vintage is sprinkled throughout; Baker goes through a rack picking out a Deee-Lite T-shirt, then a Madonna shirt that references HBO, “so it’s real vintage.” A ring of all-black band tees, sporting names like Metallica and Destiny’s Child, anchors the space. They came from a mysterious figure only identified as Mr X, who she describes as “a very legit vintage dealer. He works with a huge celebrity clientele, so he’s constantly buying and trading with different celebrity collectors. He’ll go right into their closets. People,” including celebrity stylists, “have been seeing it on our personal Instagrams and some are spoken for already.”

Taking me through a “secret passage” to the mirrored VIP section, Baker gestures to Ferreira, who’s wearing a brightly colored Saint Laurent soccer jersey. It was her idea to create this style studio, if, say, a celebrity is in town and looking for a personal shopping session. Also in the works: a rental studio that will cater to stylists and editors.

A campaign image that features the store’s starting front-of-house team.
Courtesy of Trey Crews

The store décor is meant to reflect the neighborhood around it. ESSX is working with NewCo, the design and creative agency founded by Rob Cristofaro, who also founded LES staple Alife. “They were the first ones to work with [A$AP] Rocky, the first ones to work with Drake. That was a community playground for so many people, but also the birth of their brand and the birth of real sneaker culture. So it was important to work with someone who really had ties to the community,” Baker says. Local florist Joy Flowers will provide arrangements for the space, while 78-year-old artist and neighborhood standby Clayton Patterson, who has documented the Lower East Side since the ’70s, will get a retrospective in the store timed to New York Fashion Week. A partnership with the Henry Street settlement will see the store train local youth in all things fashion and retail under one of its team leaders. “Because we’re all from here, we want to give back to the community,” Baker explains. “We want to see New York win.”

Just as stores like Fiorucci and Dapper Dan once served as bustling community spaces, ESSX has designs on becoming a hub for creative types. For the store’s official opening in September during fashion week, “all these designers are coming in, from Spain, Japan, Korea…and that’s where the magic happens. That’s when people start collaborating and and making deals. I’m not saying the store’s going to do all that,” she adds. “But hopefully we’re a step in the right direction.”

ELLE Fashion Features Director

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code, which was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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July 17, 2023
Mary Quant Liberated More Than Just Our Legs

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

“Is this just another fad?” asked one Mary Quant ad, in a self-aware nod to the way the brand was often dismissed as a passing trend. But if you’ve ever worn a miniskirt, thrown on a pair of hot pants, or even applied waterproof mascara, you know Quant was anything but. When the designer, who died today at 93, burst onto the scene in the mid-1950s, fashion was still stuffy, starchy, and decidedly grown-up. By the time she and her cohorts were done with it, style had loosened up—along with the culture around it. (“Good taste is death, vulgarity is life,” she once said.) Quant’s era played host to a seismic fashion shift; no wonder they called it the Youthquake. The grand dame was dead, and the freewheeling young woman was fashion’s new muse.

Model Jenny Gassity wears Quant’s silver stockings in 1966.
Mirrorpix//Getty Images

Quant’s Chelsea boutique, Bazaar, which opened in 1955, was one of the most influential stores of its time, and a beacon of colorful optimism in still-bleak postwar London. Onlookers were shocked by the hemlines, but customers were on board. The store catered to the so-called “Chelsea Set,” and notables like the Rolling Stones and Brigitte Bardot were known to pop in.

A model wearing Quant’s designs in 1971.
ullstein bild

Quant’s rise intersected perfectly with the growing movement for women’s liberation. While her designs bared plenty of leg, they didn’t feel as objectifying as their more covered-up ’50s counterparts. They had a colorful, youthful quality that was inspired by playclothes, complete with Peter Pan collars and A-line shapes. The newfangled stretch fabrics she favored freed the wearer from constriction; pockets added convenience. Her looks were often accessorized with colorful tights and flat shoes. Quant said she wanted to create designs that women could “run to the bus in.”

Most importantly, they were affordable, democratizing fashion for a generation fed up with the trappings of their mother’s wardrobes. Her customers were increasingly entering the workforce (and nightlife), in droves, and wanted to look as youthful as they felt. Quant dressed icons of the decade like Twiggy, Pattie Boyd, and Jean Shrimpton, and designed looks for Audrey Hepburn, a past Bazaar customer, in Two for The Road, and Charlotte Rampling in Georgy Girl.

Quant getting her hair styled in her signature cut by Vidal Sassoon in 1964.
Mirrorpix

Quant helped popularize the miniskirt (which she named after that other ’60s sensation, the Mini Cooper) and she was her own best model. “I wore them very short and the customers would say, ‘shorter, shorter,’” she once remembered. In the late 1960s, she introduced the even more daring hot pant. The ultra-abbreviated style, she said, “sold faster than (they) could make them.”

Quant with models in her shoe designs in 1967.
Hulton Deutsch

Quant also made her mark on the makeup world. Her cosmetics line, with its daisy logo and colorful crayon formulations, shared the same sunny, childlike outlook as her fashion. And she brought the world a truly innovative invention: waterproof mascara.

Model Jackie Bowyer in Quant’s designs in 1963.
Central Press

We may not be donning PVC shifts and go-go boots much anymore, but the free-spirited mod trend continues to dominate the runways season after season. Quant’s influence lives on, and her vision of female freedom still feels as fresh as it did back in 1955.

ELLE Fashion Features Director

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code, which was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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April 13, 2023
Ding-Dong, the -Cores Are Dead

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

“The primacy of clothes.” That was Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ stated starting point for their fall 2023 menswear collection back in January. And it’s a sentiment that designers have been going back to recently, tired of chasing the concentric trend cycles of TikTok trend forecasters, the tyranny of “-cores,” and the transient dopamine hit of viral moments. With the exit of maximalist maestro Alessandro Michele, an overall mood of minimalism in fashion, and a renewed interest in investing in classics, there was a level of restraint running through this season. These were not short-term infatuations. They were clothes to fall in love with.

And there was a sense of time longer than a TikTok nanosecond—an affinity for the meandering run times of classic cinema, the attention span of a former world, the patience it takes for a designer to build a legacy, and the time-consuming craft that’s required to create pieces that can be worn forever.

Prada fall 2023.
Courtesy of the designer.

Miuccia Prada famously helped pioneer the idea of “ugly chic,” but this season was a meditation on beauty. And on uniforms, which have been a point of fascination for the duo. She and Simons referred to them as “sartorial representations of care and responsibility,” a sign of steadiness in a shifting world. Uniforms, in a way, are about time: the investment of skills and the persistence of labor. Utilitarian pieces like military jackets and duffel coats were juxtaposed with inordinately pretty and social event-worthy items (bridal gown-inspired 3D embellished floral skirts, candy-colored pumps.) It felt like their way of closing the gap between two diametrically opposed slices of fashion: quotidian fare and occasion dressing. Why is beauty restricted to certain socially-sanctioned moments? Why can’t we treat the everyday as an event, too?

Dior fall 2023.
Courtesy of the designer.

At Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri looked to the 1950s, which don’t get as much of an airing in a fashion industry currently besotted with the ’90s and aughts. Drawing from the life and style of Catherine Dior (the house founder’s sister, a flower farmer and French Resistance fighter) and the singers Edith Piaf and Juliette Gréco, she crafted beatnik-existentialist uniforms that nodded at the undersung radicalism of the period. For Chiuri, clothing can absolutely be as intellectual as a Left Bank café society habitué. She called it “the tactile embodiment of a form of thinking, a means of approaching, of tuning into the world.”

Bottega Veneta fall 2023.
Swan Gallet

Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy followed up last season’s “Kate Moss in (luxe leather masquerading as denim) jeans and a flannel shirt” moment with sharp trenches, shirting and suits. While it had its maximalist moments, the collection demonstrated his power when it comes to low-key luxury. In his hands, even a simple white tank and jeans combo looked newly irresistible.

Bally fall 2023.
Courtesy of the designers.

Two young designers making much-anticipated sophomore efforts—Bally’s Rhuigi Villaseñor and Ferragamo’s Maximilian Davis—showed they could play in the big leagues with their fall collections. Called “The Persistence of Time,” Villaseñor’s collection was inspired by Hollywood, and it felt imbued with cinema’s heritage and history, whether it was the après-skiwear of Old Hollywood icons or the vestiges of red carpets past. Clearly, Villaseñor was one of many designers rethinking their own personal tempo. To quote from his show notes, “his approach eschews the fleeting moment for the full movie.”

Backstage at Ferragamo fall 2023.
Courtesy of Ferragamo.

Davis also looked to the silver screen, and the past. He went back to the rich text that is the house’s cinematic heritage, particularly in the 1950s, the era that saw Salvatore Ferragamo outfitting Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren. “I was interested in using their glamour and beauty, and their way of dressing, as a reference, but looking at how we could make it feel modern,” the designer said in his show notes. He wanted to focus on “the more romantic side” of the decade, with elements like off-the-shoulder necklines and full skirts. But Davis’ midcentury starlet had an edge to her, too, one that came out in candy-wrapper surfaces and pops of fire hydrant red and highlighter yellow.

The Row winter 2023.
Courtesy of the designer.

And at The Row, always a bastion of Carolyn Bessette-style reserve, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen turned out grand gestures, like exaggeratedly oversized, knotted capes, or dresses with dramatic opera gloves. Despite their heightened quality, the clothes felt like they existed in real life, not on a runway—particularly in the case of a bright red coat clutched to the chest along with gloves and a minibag, the way the designers themselves might in one of their own endlessly-referenced street style photos. Another bright spot: seeing Maggie Rizer pop up on the runway. Along with welcome returns elsewhere this season from Amber Valletta and Jessica Stam, it was a reminder that fashion is at its best when it’s timeless.

ELLE Fashion Features Director

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s Fashion Features Director and the author of the book Dress Code,<https://bookshop.org/p/books/dress-code-unlocking-fashion-from-the-new-look-to-millennial-pink-veronique-hyland/17540227?ean=9780063050839> which was selected as one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year. Her writing has previously appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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March 3, 2023
It’s Time for Influencers to Be Real

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

When Julia Fox recently posted her apartment tour on TikTok, what was most surprising to everyone was how not aspirational it was. The fashion world darling, who’d previously been seen double-fisting Birkin bags, was suddenly talking about her humble-by-celebrity- standards digs and persistent mouse problem. And for the most part, people loved it.

Fox is one of very few influencers to be lauded for her down-to-earth behavior recently. With “Lashgate” and elaborate influencer trips in the news, her cohort tends to make headlines for being the opposite of relatable. Pop culture is increasingly suffused with an “eat the rich” mentality (look at The White Lotus, Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, or The Menu, for example). Amid economic turmoil, inflation, and layoffs, the idea of the influencer-as-aspirational goddess is plummeting down to earth.

Elaborate haul videos, ostentatious unboxings, and an endless crawl of consumption, once synonymous with influencer culture, have become déclassé. Many in the fashion space had dialed things back in the name of sustainability. Now, even more are doing so in the name of relatability. Hence the burgeoning “de-influencing” trend, in which people tell you what products they don’t like. Even the so-called “corporate girlie” genre of TikTokers, who would chronicle their latte- and nap room-filled existence as tech employees, have been pivoting to posting about labor rights, according to a recent NBC News story.

Julia Fox recently treated her 1.7 million TikTok followers to a bare-bones apartment tour.
Andreas Rentz

Ever since fashion bloggers made it to the front row at a D&G show in 2009, there have been predictions about the end of influencers, their privileged bubble deflating with a decisive pop. But as austerity reigns, it seems that what’s coming isn’t the end, but an evolution that will cull those who don’t adapt accordingly. The challenge, of course, is for the influencer, whose job is predicated on aspiration, to square the circle of being relatable—just not so relatable that she becomes that dreaded thing: boring.

Mandy Lee has made a habit of posting “mended hauls,” as opposed to showing off brand-new wardrobe acquisitions.
Daniel Zuchnik

Stephanie McNeal, a senior culture and features reporter at BuzzFeed News who covers influencers, has a book on the topic, Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers, coming out in June. One of the women she profiles in its pages, she says, has found that “as soon as she shows any part of her life that isn’t super relatable, her followers turn on her.” Part of the problem, McNeal says, is that “people still refuse to believe that being an influencer is work. There are people who are doing the exact same thing for companies,” namely content creation, “and that’s considered a real job. But if you’re doing it for yourself, it’s not considered worthy of the same level of respect.”

Since about 80 percent of influencers are women, she believes sexism plays a significant part. “If this multi-billion-dollar industry had been created by men, the reception would be different…It’s not just the fact that these are women doing it, but that they’re engaged in traditionally female pursuits, whether that’s makeup, or beauty, or fashion, or parenthood…things that are considered not work.”

Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers

Swipe Up for More!: Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers

Credit: Bookshop.org

Says Kirbie Johnson, a beauty reporter and co-host of the beauty podcast Gloss Angeles, “Young women are always going to be exploited, but also discussed in a negative light. So, I think people are lashing out in hopes that influencers will die out, but that’s not going to happen.” McNeal adds that they can be an easy target. “When we do experience these times of economic downturn, I think people will probably turn on influencers first, because they’re really accessible and easy to throw tomatoes at, as opposed to yelling at, I don’t know, J.P. Morgan.”

Johnson thinks the platforms themselves are also driving this shift. TikTok initially drew people because it promised that “anybody could be an influencer,” she says. She points to a 50-something woman who went viral for posting about a Peter Thomas Roth de-puffing under-eye serum. “This woman was not a content creator; this was not her full-time job. She just wanted to share the gospel of this product, and sold it out. And I mean, sold it out to the point that PR didn’t even have it available for editors who wanted to try it for themselves.”

Back then, TikTok felt refreshingly ordinary; these days, of course, the platform is minting its own megastars, who come complete with their own #spon. This new normal has created a weird disconnect where some people are influencing—hard—while others are committed to de-influencing. Johnson says that when she goes on her FYP, “I feel like everything I see is someone trying to sell me something or tell me something sucks.” The takedowns help drive eyeballs, of course, but as a beauty professional, she doesn’t always find them to be helpful. “Everyone wants to hate the Dyson Airwrap because of how expensive it is. They want to poke holes in everything that could be wrong with it, and how there’s a better product that’s a fourth of the price. And as a beauty expert, I have yet to find a product that is as technologically advanced that doesn’t destroy my hair.”

McNeal predicts we’ll see more people “not trying to be everything for everyone. There are a lot of influencers who have started to say, ‘Look, I don’t want to have a million followers. I’m not trying to make Reels every day to go viral. I’m kind of good.’ And these are people, in general, who have been in the game for a really long time. They might have 100,000 followers, but they have very loyal followers, people who are like, ‘I’ve been following this person for 15 years, and when she posts a jacket, I’m going to buy it, because I really trust her.’”

Johnson cites Emma Chamberlain as one of the influencers with staying power.
Jacopo Raule

“If you’re not a fan of influencers, you’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with it, because they’re not going away,” says Johnson. She does think certain figures will weather the turbulence better than others however—like Emma Chamberlain, who she says balances “aspirational and authentic and relatable really well. She hasn’t changed the brand of person that she is, but the opportunity that she’s been presented is aspirational, and people love that. That’s why they root for her.”

The Great Depression brought us escapist entertainment—with Carole Lombard and Kay Francis playing heiresses going on cruises and swanning around in silk gowns—which might be a sign that people don’t actually respond to unvarnished reality quite as well as they claim to, even in challenging times. Johnson makes an analogy to the scripted entertainment that came out during the height of the pandemic about COVID-era life and social distancing. “Nobody wants to watch that. I need something to take my mind off the fact that we can’t see our family and friends,” she says. “There are people on the platform that are very honest: ‘This is my life. This is not the most aspirational life to be living, but I’m doing it and I’m working hard.’ People do watch that, and they actually root for the person that’s trying to better their lives.”

But, she says, “it has to toe the line between being authentic and aspirational. You can’t just be like, ‘I woke up in my $5 million mansion, and then my nanny took my children. And then I spent three hours going to Pilates.’”

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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February 9, 2023
Tennessy Thoreson Asks, ‘Why Be Boring When You Can Be Extra?’

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

Tennessy Thoreson has been keeping a pretty big secret for a year now. The recent fashion school grad was named the latest “Amigo” of AZ Factory, the brand founded by the late Alber Elbaz—previous talents tapped for the honor include Thebe Magugu and Ester Manas—and given the opportunity to hold his first major show during haute couture week in Paris. He just had to keep it quiet until fairly recently, a challenge that surely couldn’t have been easy for the bubbly young designer.

Even in comparison to the other up-and-comers who’ve been named Amigos, Thoreson is unusually green: the show took place only a year and a half after his graduation. In the meantime, Thoreson interned at Chloé and now works at Paco Rabanne, while also designing costumes for drag friends and contributing looks for the French edition of Drag Race.

“I didn’t waste any time,” jokes the green-haired 25-year-old. Indeed, a full-fledged Paris atelier is bustling behind him, including a photographer whose regular flashes punctuate our conversation. So, you might ask, how did he make the accelerated journey from college corridors to a couture runway? Does he possess some sort of superpower?

A look from Thoreson’s Geneva show.
Courtesy of the designer.

In a way, yes. The moment came about after Thoreson met Richemont executive Mauro Grimaldi after his graduate fashion show at the Geneva University of Art and Design. That award-winning collection showcased his love of superheroes. Growing up with a Marvel-obsessed father, Thoreson loved watching Spider-Man weave his web, but his favorite characters were always the heroines, “the badass girls who had superpowers, where nothing can could get in their way.” As a kid, he found the idea comforting. “Sometimes you face weakness or you feel defenseless. I was dreaming of having these superpowers, so if someone wanted to mess with me, I could face it.”

Drag Race France winner Paloma in a look from the AZ Factory collection.
Courtesy of the designer.

Another major influence on his work has been drag culture. Thoreson got into drag during the COVID lockdown as “a way to express myself, because I was feeling so restrained. Every time I did a makeup [look], I’d post it on Instagram to get people’s reaction.” He also used it, he says, as a way to “escape the male gaze.” Thoreson ended up connecting with drag queens on the platform and, after moving to Paris, in person, and found that many in the community had strained relationships with their families as a result of coming out as queer or doing drag, which, he notes, can be “another coming-out, sometimes.” Creating their own found families often became a necessity. With his designs, he says, “I create sisterhoods, which is very important in the drag community.”

One of Thoreson’s sketches for the collection.
Courtesy of the designer.

While Thoreson never got to meet the late Alber Elbaz, he attended “Love Brings Love,” the exhibit on the designer at the Palais Galliera. “I could see that all the designers really had affection [for him],” he says. “In this fashion atmosphere, which is brutal most of the time,” Elbaz found a way to bring “subjectivity and sensitivity, which really resonates with me.” His legacy is one of “inclusivity, positivity, power, and joy.”

A look from Thoreson’s collection for AZ Factory.
Courtesy of the designer.

Those words could also describe Thoreson’s show for the brand. “I didn’t want just to do a basic runway, which is super boring,” he tells me. Instead, the cabaret-style show last night at the Paradiso Club, titled “Super Heroines,” was a colorful, theatrical celebration of self-expression, complete with singing, fire-eating, snatched neon catsuits, and faux fur-trimmed picture hats. The 12 models were each given superpowers to act out. The goal, he says, was “to show you can be as big as you want. Everything is allowed.” After all, both superheroes and drag queens are larger than life.

Tennessy Thoreson.
Courtesy of the designer.

Thoreson’s participation during couture week is part of an ongoing trend of younger, more avant-garde-oriented talents finding their way to the form (see: Area, Pyer Moss, Charles de Vilmorin. ) “I understand that [couture] could sound not relevant, but for me, it’s also the moment to be surprised and to surprise people,” and to emphasize craftsmanship, he says, noting that all the pieces were hand-created by seamstresses. “When I was a student, I was doing everything by hand by myself. I know a lot of students hate sewing, but I really loved it.”

In this time of austerity, scaling back, and “stealth wealth,” Thoreson is sticking with maximalism. “Why be boring when you can be extra?” he says. “That’s my motto, because for me, as a drag queen, we need to be extra, we need to [put on] a show. Even if you are wearing something simple, you have to give something.”

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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January 24, 2023
The Personal Stylist in Your Inbox

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

“I had a friend who was going back to work, who’d had a baby and was let go during the pandemic. And she literally said to me, ‘Will you just send me five links and I’ll buy those things?’”

That was the genesis of Five Things You Should Buy, a Substack newsletter from veteran market editor Becky Malinsky. The simplicity of the concept is right there in the title, whether Malinsky is clueing her audience in to the best car coats or loafers. The Wall Street Journal alum wants to help readers “not spend their entire day looking for black jeans.” The project also serves a purpose for her. Now that she’s operating a personal styling business for executive women, it’s a way for her to “stay on a schedule, keep my ear to the ground, and know what’s happening—and still create the sense of service for people who can’t afford my services.” Malinsky calls the undertaking “scrappy”: she uses herself as a model, in casual snapshots taken at her apartment. “I’m able to give real-world, real-life references: I wore it to an activity with my kid, or out to a fancy dinner,” she says.

Fashion newsletters exploded during the pandemic. So did shopping podcasts. But the latest iteration seems to be missives built around commerce, aiming to cull the black hole of Google results and Instagram ads out there into a curated list with an editorial point of view. (Some standouts of the genre: Laurel Pantin’s Earl Earl, Kitty Guo’s Worn In, Worn Out, and Jess Nell Graves’ The Love List.)

The promise of these publications is a personal stylist at your fingertips. It’s something that, in this strange, liminal time when we’re all renegotiating our relationship to fashion and figuring out how to get dressed again, seems sorely needed: a decoder ring for style. One of the biggest hits for Malinsky was an issue called What to Wear to Dinner, which she says is “one of the biggest questions I am getting from friends, from people writing back to the newsletter, from clients: What do I wear now to dress up if I’m not wearing a cocktail dress or my sweatpants?”

Even an expert like Hillary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who What Wear, admits to some hand-wringing around what to wear now. “After having two kids in two years and then a long fitness journey during the pandemic, I woke up one morning and realized that I wasn’t exactly sure what my personal style was anymore. I didn’t even know what size I was, really,” she says. “My Before Times clothes didn’t make as much sense with my current life and responsibilities.” She made figuring out this new phase a public project, via her newsletter Hi Everyone. One of her most popular franchises involves test drives of tricky items (jeans, bodysuits, trousers), using herself as a guinea pig. For the great pants try-on, she ordered and culled through 36 pairs, admitting, “Our house ended up looking a bit like a shipping depot.”

There’s a big sister feeling to the newsletter, as Kerr invites you to make sense of it all along with her—and puts herself in front of the lens. “As someone who did not see my body type represented in the media when I was growing up, I kept thinking it would be nice to show, on my own real body, what these things look like,” Kerr explains. “And along the way, figure out what exactly I wanted to wear now.” Every time she does a try-on, “Folks go crazy for it. I have the most insane responses,” she says. Readers even DM her for styling intel. “I’ve helped pick out shoes for someone’s wedding and turned someone on to a great blazer that they wore to a job interview—and they got the job.”

Writer Caroline Reilly calls herself the Jill Zarin of her friend group, constantly cheering on their purchases. She sees her newsletter Material Girl as an extension of that role. “I want to feel like that girl you run into in the bathroom at the restaurant who’s like, ‘Here’s all the details to my outfit. Here’s how much I paid for it. Here’s the size I’m wearing. Do you want to try it on?’” she says. She considers herself to be the opposite of “gatekeeping girls who are like, ‘I don’t want to tell people where I got this because it’ll sell out.’ I don’t care if anything sells out. I buy two of everything anyway.”

Everything Reilly features, from clothes to beauty products, is something she owns and has worn. Paid subscribers have the option to take things a step further and ask for one-on-one shopping advice. And Reilly, who has endometriosis, makes a point of guiding readers to “clothing that doesn’t instigate pain flares, or that I can work comfortably in when my pain is bad. I find that even for people who don’t have endo or chronic pain, those items seem to land really well.” That content is never paywalled, “just on principle. I think that’s something that should be available for everybody.”

Laura Reilly’s newsletter Magasin delivers fashion news and intel on under-the-radar labels along with shopping links. She sees her message as “more dialogue-y than prescriptive…I like to know what’s going on and be able to form my own opinion.” Her reader “isn’t starting from square one, and isn’t really looking for someone to tell them what to buy or how to dress,” she says. “It’s nice because I can speak to the audience at a little bit more of an advanced level than, say, let me introduce you to Martine Rose.” Rather than your friend who’s guiding you through the purchase of new work clothes, Reilly might be the one who’s (solicitedly) spamming you with the best SSENSE links.

Street style star Caroline Issa wears the new breed of dressed-up work attire.
Tyler Joe

Magasin grew out of shopping prompts Reilly put up on Instagram, (e.g. “What are you looking for on eBay right now?”), and she sees it as a way to share the cornucopia of fashion offerings right now. “During the pandemic, there wasn’t a ton of great fashion coming out; everyone was returning to vintage and archive,” she says. “But now that things have opened back up, there’s so much good stuff. It’s something that we want to be able to talk about and share and exchange excitement around. We can be supporting the actual products that are coming out of this artistic boom.” Crowdsourcing is an important part of the process: in the fall, she started a collaborative Google Sheet “and dumped a lot of information that I was given by readers in terms what theyvre shopping for, what they’ve bought, what they’re predicting as fall trends.”

Magasin has grown to the point where it’s become a full-time endeavor for Reilly, and she hired someone to help out with the enterprise a few months ago, in advance of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday rush. She also put on her first event: a closet sale that was entirely promoted through the newsletter and drew a crowd. A recent issue featured people like model Kelly Mittendorf and Peter Do co-founder Jessica Wu spilling the details of their shopping carts. (She looks for those who have “a discerning, chiseled eye.”)

How does she decide who to spotlight? Reilly’s motto for Magasin could probably apply to all of these newsletters: “If I’m interested, my readers probably are.”

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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December 19, 2022
Uniformed Is About to Be Your New Everyday Uniform

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

After producing her beloved, ’90s-inspired namesake line for a decade, Jennifer Chun was getting a little burned out. The process had become “so routine that I wasn’t thinking outside the box anymore,” she recalls. “I would produce two seasons and then ship it. It was almost like I was becoming a little bit of a robot in the process.” Her husband and business partner was the one who suggested she rethink things, take a break, and “not do this until you want to again.”

She did stints in costume design and worked for a few sustainability-focused brands, something that “opened my eyes to a whole different process and customer.” But it wasn’t until lockdown hit that she started to dream about creating a new line of her own. Chun was watching K-dramas during the pandemic, after having grown up on the genre (she remembers renting them on VHS tapes at Korean grocery stores back in the day.) “I realized that even being Korean American and having grown up in the Midwest most of my life, my cultural roots are pretty deep. It might be because you’re so insulated; in the Midwest, you’re one of the few Asian families,” she says.

Irises, a symbol of hope, are a recurring motif.
Peter Ash Lee/Courtesy of the designer.

After reading an article about a natural dyer in Seoul (South Korea has a longstanding tradition of the craft), Chun and her mother, who was isolated in L.A. due to Covid restrictions, began corresponding with her. When Chun finally made a trip to Seoul, the dyer let her assist and learn about the process. That experience led her to create a line, Uniformed, where she works with Korean artisans and uses repurposed and deadstock materials and natural dyes. While she’d mainly worked in wovens before, Chun liked the idea of incorporating knitwear “because none of the yarns are wasted. You don’t have all this leftover fabric being thrown away. You’re using exactly what you need.”

The blazer has been a breakout hit for Chun.
Peter Ash Lee/Courtesy of the designer.

One standout of her debut collection is a blazer inspired by the school uniforms in K-dramas and developed with a suiting patternmaker in Manhattan’s Garment District. Its sleeves are lined with brightly striped saekdong fabric, woven by artisans in Busan. (It’s the same fabric that lines the sleeves of a hanbok, the traditional Korean garment.) On the left side of the blazer, where a school name tag would normally be pinned, “Uniformed” is embroidered in Korean on a piece of ribbon. The piece has been a sellout item, with DMs about it pouring in before Chun even opened her online shop.

A matching knit set and clutch with iris patterns were inspired by a vintage shirt of her grandmother’s, which recalls the pattern on plastic gambling cards called hwatu cards. In Korea, irises are a symbol of hope, which was also the theme of this pandemic-born collection. The preppy side of the line comes out in a rugby sweater, modeled after one Chun borrowed from her dad in the ’90s, but unexpectedly made from merino wool, and in box-pleated miniskirts.

Chun’s heritage is embedded in every piece. Her wrap skirts drew on the custom of pojagi, or patchworking leftover fabric scraps together as a way to wrap gifts or food containers. Dam yo (blanket) scarves, which are stuffed with repurposed and upcycled down fabric, were based on the traditional Korean blankets she grew up using. And she made a point of working with an all-Asian team on the lookbook, which was shot by Peter Ash Lee. When she showed the resulting images to the dyer, she told Chun, “‘You respected Korea and you made it look true to our cultural heritage.’ And that was the biggest compliment, because that’s what I really wanted to do.”

The Dam Yo scarf.
Peter Ash Lee/Courtesy of the designer.

Everything was made in small batches to eliminate waste, something that has become a selling point for the brand. When Chun told a friend that she would only make a limited amount of items based on how much fabric and yarn she had left, she suggested, “‘Why don’t you label that in your clothing?’ So it’s exciting, because people will see, ‘I got the second one made out of 10, because the first one was the sample.’”

Chun’s take on the rugby sweater.
Peter Ash Lee/Courtesy of the designer.

As with many sustainable brands, there isn’t a plan for wild, full-throttle growth. But Chun plans to expand, judiciously, into accessories and homeware, and work with more artisans across Asia. “And if somebody has leftover fabric or yarn,” she says brightly, “then I’ll use it.”

One of the highlights of the process: Chun finally got to make a trip to Korea with her mother, who gathered a group of childhood friends who’d heard about what they were doing. “It was the most beautiful thing. They all pulled together and brought their used hanboks,” she says. The women shared the memories behind the garments before offering them to Chun to repurpose for her designs. “It was almost to the point where I was like, ‘I don’t want to cut up any of this!’ But they don’t feel that way. They all want to be a part of it.”

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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December 13, 2022
The Unbearable Lightness of Daphne Sullivan

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

She has a seemingly endless, trousseau-like wardrobe; an affinity for matching sets that is unrivaled even by 1989-era Taylor Swift, an aperitivo permanently welded to her hand, and a travel adapter on her Dyson AirWrap. Daphne Sullivan, the object of everyone’s collective obsession on The White Lotus, seems to have the fashion community in a death grip. After the last episode, Tyler McCall tweeted: “I’m sorry…I have to live my truth…even though I know we’re meant to find her a bit basic I LOVE Daphne’s wardrobe on WHITE LOTUS…”

Even the contents of her medicine cabinet (and we’re not talking about the Vintner’s Daughter) are dissected online: When writer Kelsey McKinney asked her followers what antidepressant cocktail they thought Daphne was on, one responded: “I think it’s called money.”

Daphne’s Pucci bikini garnered particular praise.
//HBO

Money is definitely a part of the appeal, but it goes beyond that. Daphne, played by Meghann Fahy, represents a fantasy not just of wealth, but of blithe ignorance (she doesn’t remember if she voted.) That is perfectly encapsulated in the Barbie getups costume designer Alex Bovaird puts her in: a matching Prada set with a prominent triangle logo; a mod-tastic Pucci bikini; another set, this one gilded, from Dolce & Gabbana. (You can just imagine her swanning into a department store asking for “all your Italian stuff!”)

A matching Prada set worn on a day trip with Harper (Aubrey Plaza).
Fabio Lovino/HBO

While her clothes bear designer labels, they’re awkward translations of what’s in currently in fashion. And yet, we can’t look away. Especially post-pandemic, Daphne and her wardrobe appeal to the part of our lizard brain that just wants to throw on a Farm Rio dress and bask in the sun. No thoughts, just crop tops!

Colorful, maximalist dresses are a Daphne staple.
//HBO

The character’s insouciance is part of her appeal; the only thing not stuffed into her designer luggage appears to be existential angst. Nothing seems to perturb her, whether it’s the specter of her husband cheating on her or her dining companions getting embarrassingly drunk. She and her husband, Cameron (Theo James), in their uncomplicated happiness, remind me of a 2022 version of Gerald and Sara Murphy, the Lost Generation expats and F. Scott Fitzgerald pals whose lives were chronicled in Living Well Is the Best Revenge (an apt motto for the couple). Or perhaps, depending on what befalls them in Sunday’s finale, Daisy and Tom Buchanan. Everyone on the show exudes privilege, but they do it with the least self-consciousness. Whatever else you want to say about their wardrobes, they aren’t hiding their sartorial light under a bushel. They don’t expend all their energy on trying to throttle back and appear tasteful. They want to look rich.

The show’s costume designer has cited Audrey Hepburn (seen here in Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck) as an influence.
Bettmann

The mythical idea of “resort” in fashion has become less about a physical trip to an actual resort (White Lotus or otherwise) and more about escapism. Resort collections often contain more watered-down versions of the harder-edged runway trends, sanding away the more avant-garde aspects of a designer’s work—which makes them perfect choices for Daphne. But they also have an element of costume to them that’s made for look-at-my vacation-Boomerang-level peacocking (you just know Daphne still posts Boomerangs.)

Brigitte Bardot, vacationing in Capri in the ’60s.
Keystone-France

When Americans visit Italy, “they bring their A-game,” Bovaird told Variety. The show plays with the trope of tourists soaking up the Old World, a tradition that dates back to the winsome heroines of A Room With a View and Daisy Miller. He pulls from midcentury references that fit the show’s cinematic allusions (Fellini, Antonioni, The Godfather.) And while it may occasionally be cringeworthy to watch people try this hard, it’s always entertaining.

With fashion’s maximalist tides ebbing and a pre-recession austerity casting a pall over style in general, the show’s splashy looks are as refreshing as a beachside spritz. Daphne is the kind of person I’d probably hate in real life. But I have to admit, she kind of makes me want that Prada set.

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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December 7, 2022
Alessandro Michele Made Eccentric Maximalism Cool

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Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

Putting aside the burgeoning 2010s twee revival, the word “quirky” gets a bad rap in fashion. But when Alessandro Michele, then largely unknown, came onto the scene seven years ago, he made eccentricity feel cool again after years dominated by tastefully minimalist “stealth wealth.”

With its intricate mixed prints, oversized glasses, and Royal Tenenbaums-style luxe-leisure, his first women’s collection for Gucci shook up fashion. Michele’s show notes for that particular runway quoted the philosopher Giorgio Agamben: “Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands.” It would turn out to be a telling playbook for the way Michele’s designs felt both of-the-moment and nostalgic. He anticipated fashion’s love of secondhand bricolage—well before resale sites had completely revved up our collective recycling and re-mixing of seasons past—while also pushing his ideas forward. Suddenly, everyone, even people who only wore black, wanted to look like eccentric contessas, striding along in his backless fur-lined loafers.

Michele’s debut women’s collection for the brand, for fall 2015.
Daniele Venturelli

Oversized glasses and academic references asides, Michele’s collections weren’t just bookish and philosophical. Though his runways featured models dressed like kooky wallflowers, they were overseen by a showman. He incorporated catwalk theatrics (a show entirely made up of twin models, a rotating carousel-like stage), unexpected casting (Macaulay Culkin, Phoebe Bridgers), collaborations with everyone from athleticwear giant Adidas to the Instagram-famous artist Unskilled Worker, and the occasional charmingly unhinged touch, like models carrying dragons and severed heads down the runway. Instagram had begun to dominate fashion, and Michele innately understood the platform’s appetite for memes, viral moments, and, most importantly, eye-catching clothes that leapt off a phone screen. His style felt less informed by an archive or mood board than by the unexpected pairings that popped up on the app as it became a showcase for “personal style.” That might mean sequins with tapestry florals, or lace with track pants.

Michele with Salma Hayek and Jared Leto.
Mike Marsland

On the red carpet, his unconventional designs shone amid a sea of safe, stylist-enabled choices. His front rows were a red carpet all their own. Where else but a Gucci show could a pregnant Rihanna swan around in lavender fur, while Diane Keaton peacocks in a full logo look? And the designer himself became a celebrity of sorts, instantly recognizable with his flowing hair and palling around with Harry Styles and Dakota Johnson at the Met Gala, dressed just as fancifully as they were.

With Harry Styles at the camp-themed Met Gala in 2019.
Bauzen

And perhaps above all, Michele embraced gender fluidity—he began with a menswear show that put male models in lace tops and pussybow blouses, showcasing his work on muses like Styles and A$AP Rocky and bringing fluid fashion into the luxury conversation.

The famous severed-head moment from fall 2019.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE

The thing is, pendulums always swing back, and even maximalism has a saturation point. Right before the holiday weekend, in the style of a celebrity news dump, came the announcement that Michele would be departing Gucci. As fashion moves into a possible recession and all greige everything returns, Michele is leaving his post having helped create one of style’s most exuberant eras. We’ll be eagerly awaiting what’s next from him—after all, he’s shown time and time again that he has a finger on the pulse of the future.

Véronique Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director and the author of the book Dress Code. Her work has previously appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, W, New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and Condé Nast Traveler.

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November 28, 2022