This London Fashion Week, a hailstorm hit so hard, that they really gave him a name: Dennis, just like the menace or the basketball player hanging in North Korea. There were deep puddles of water outside Buckingham Palace and deep crowds outside tiny fashion show doors. We wore kitten heels and flowery skirts and carefully relaxed layers because of the optics, which basically means because of Tyler Joe.
I shivered a lot and hoped the proper people would check out me. They did and I was still cold, but the chill turned into a burst of excitement. Maybe I belonged to more than my doubts. Maybe my appearance was finally what I was feeling, but not really, because everything I felt was freezing.
Victoria Beckham has been there, and now she’s someone so famous, she adds to the canon of her own iconography every time she leaves the house. Her latest outfits will allow her to do it with a little more cocooning, thanks to oversized tops and leather boots so high, they are more like pants. Grab ’em, buckle up, snuggle up and brave a world that says they want peace and love, but really want to know why you’re still allowed to be part of a loving family, even though you are. both powerful and feminine. (These are the boots, obviously. Hello.) Frankly, in those deceptively serene looks, he does not stand a chance.
There was magic in Emilia Wickstead, but I wasn’t sure how to handle it. These are the kind of adult clothing that is best explained by witchcraft and childhood memory pieces, instead of the painstaking attention to detail and commitment to craftsmanship that creates this type of exquisite display. Sort of a job promotion or a 7 minute mile, these are clothes that cause you to exerting for them.
When I was 24, I visited Paris for my first Fashion Week, and this architect tried to hit me. “Do you’re employed in fashion?” “I believe she was the love of my life… and that I wasn’t the love of hers.”
Even if your soul is cold, there is a real warmth to be had in MM6’s new collaboration with The North Face. The outerwear has recycled down filling and a zipper for sharing that allows you to secure the different garments together. Mix, match, build a very expensive blanket fort, and remember a simpler time when Sean Combs and your preppy lacrosse camp crush wore the exact same winter coat.
There is nothing more British than Naomi Campbell opening a fashion show in London and nothing more American than Halima Aden, a Minnesota native and American immigrant, who storms a Tommy Hilfiger catwalk in a star hijab and scratches. We got to cheer the two on at Sunday’s TOMMY NOW show, which also featured rock royals like Georgia May Jagger and Parris Goebel, choreographer Rihanna and Justin Bieber who just signed his own modeling contract with IMG. . A multi-hustle maven? It’s the real American way.
Fashion Week is stressful, so J.W. Anderson gave us an ASMR. As models like Kaia Gerber and Mona Tougaard wore shimmering shaggy pieces, you could hear the static breath of clothes, which came back to life whenever the girls moved or even breathed. Were those plastic auras surrounding our synthetic lives or poisoned sea anemones waiting to graze your skin? I couldn’t tell; I was too busy wishing for a warmer sweater. (J.W. actually makes some coupons for UNIQLO, in case you are looking.)
Lady Clara Paget is a noblewoman, but during this pic it’s like she wants to make a Kidz Bop music video for the all-female Ghostbusters, and – to quote our dear R. Eric Thomas – that is what I’m here for.
It’s pretty hard to see how these women wear the pants over three generations. They’ve got some shit to do and they don’t really care if you’re paying attention, but they know you are, because they’re so pretty. I’ll never be able to emulate that kind of chiseled bone structure or its inherent supreme confidence, but I’ll totally settle for loose pants instead.
Finally, between shows, I stuck into a café-slash-thrift store. I went inside because of the hailstorm and lingered for 45 minutes because of the scene: teenagers and college students rummaging through boxes and trash cans, picking up vintage Moschino jackets and random college sweaters, soft flannel for college radio, and stiff embroidered denim. It wasn’t a runway story told through clothing, or a tribe stitched together through a rare but shared experience – just kids buying what they wanted to be, depending on what they could find in a giant piece of things someone else was using to carry.
As for me, I wanted to prevent being cold and wet, so I bought an enormous sweater … and pretended it had been J.W. Anderson, at least when I walked out the door.
