It feels like just yesterday that my flatmate and I were contemplating whether to order “Team Conrad” T-Shirts, but a year has already passed, and TikTok edits of Belly and Conrad still make me cry from excitement. The thing is, I like things that are a little bit stupid and a lot of fun. I like television that asks nothing of me and gives me everything back.

What made TSITP so cool was that it was “uncool,” which is why it was a great young adult (aka YA) show. I went to bed thinking about Belly, and I woke up thinking about Belly. I got a top because Belly wore it on the show, as if she were some popular girl at school. I started loving Taylor Swift. It was clear I was an addict, square-eyed with “cheugy” media and daring plotlines burned into my brain.

It was my gateway to shamelessly loving newer YA shows, and a warm-up for what 2026 had in store: temptations everywhere. It’s been one long “teen season” ever since—Euphoria, Off Campus, Elle, and now The Shards and Sterling Point, the latter which I binged in two days. Btw if you haven’t already, you should read Doug’s interview with the show’s star Bo Bragason.

But talking about teen shows in 2026 is like playing with fire. When one Instagram page posted that “Amazon Prime is lowkey kind of the new CW,” the comment section went ballistic. Everyone was suddenly prepared to die on the hill of early-aughts TV, defending Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars and their cute little y2k outfits. People don’t talk about teen shows like disposable entertainment because teen drama is unusually personal.

Obviously, there are tiers to teen television. You can’t put Riverdale in the same category as The Summer I Turned Pretty. You can’t put The Summer I Turned Pretty in the same category as The O.C. It’s not a democracy. There’s a difference between bad bad and good bad and something that’s actually good.

A friend told me that great YA shows don’t get made anymore because all young adults now do is sit on their phones. That’s probably why Elle, The Shards, and Sterling Point—shows where the internet is not really part of the plot—have us hooked. This makes it even more ironic that our phones have become an important part of the teen television machine. Shows don’t really end when the episodes end anymore; they just move onto the internet as edits and memes, which is probably why we’re left with just eight episodes per season.

It takes only half a brain to understand that adult life sucks, and that’s why these brainless shows rock. Ironically, what I remember most from being a teenager is that being a teenager also sucked. But that’s what’s so great with fiction! I get it all without actually having to live through it. I like knowing that everyone will be beautiful, something will go wrong, and by the end of the episode I will have been taken care of. A YA show tucks me in because I don’t need prestige television, as long as I know who the main character will kiss.

Last weekend, my dad called me telling me he was excited to start watching the newest season of My Life With the Walter Boys, so clearly nothing really changes as you age. I asked team i-D what some of their favorite YA shows are. Please tell me what yours is so I can fuel my addiction!

Flora Medina (Associate Editor):

“Not my fav of all time, but my roommate now refers to Amazon Prime’s We Were Liars as ‘our show.’ As with any show following a blonde white family from the American Northeast elite, I was very reluctant to indulge but I must admit I was hooked. Like a car crash, I watched with a morbid curiosity and was, surprisingly, surprised by the ending!”

Ch’lita Collins (Fashion Editor):

“I remember watching My So-Called Life in 380p on Youtube, curled up in my teenage bed (sheets by Laura Ashley), and closely studying how to perform the act of being a teenager. My hair was to be in a bob, costume to be thrifted, boyfriend to look like Jordan Catalano.”

Steff Yotka (Global Editorial Director):

“I guess Friday Night Lights is technically a YA show—but it is a proper S H O W. I am still invested in the affairs of the Dillon Panthers, in Kyle Chandler, in Connie Britton, in Jessie Plemons. It’s just peak TV.”

Douglas Greenwood (Entertainment Editor):

“The only YA show that I’ve managed to stick with is Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are, which aired on HBO during the height of the pandemic. It’s about a group of American teenagers living on a military base in Italy and deals with gender and sexuality in a way few shows have the sensitivity to now. There are whole episodes which just feel like house parties with very little plot progression. I treated it like one, big, 8-hour movie, with the same blissful and touching payoff as his softest films. He wanted to make a second season, but I don’t think many people watched it. I’d love to read the scripts anyway.”

Alex Kessler (Deputy Editor):

“As Told by Ginger basically raised me. It was animated, but Courtney Gripling, its fabulously wealthy popular girl, was extremely real to me—goals, even. She was obsessed with Ginger precisely because Ginger wasn’t like her, approaching normal teenage life with the curiosity of a visiting aristocrat. Ugh, I loved her. Courtney taught me that the hot It Girl didn’t have to be the villain, and so my politics were formed early.”

Nicolaia Rips (Senior Editor):

“Pretty Little Liars. Thinking about the title sequence alone sends shivers up my spine.”

Ernesto Macias (Global Entertainment Director):

“Every generation needs an absurd-yet-harsh comedy series about being 20-something, messy, and cute in Brooklyn, and Adults, executive produced by Nick Kroll, is it. The ensemble cast led by Owen Thiele and Jack Innanen is hilarious and hot! Not to mention the writing is tight and timely. FYI, Season 2 will feature a cameo by Sozia Mamet. Do you need more reasons to tune in?”

I’ve realized that I actually prefer summer at arm’s length—preferably projected onto a movie screen. A cinema is actually a pretty nice place to be when it’s hot like this, and plenty of us have been hanging out there. Just look at the unhinged box office numbers for movies like The Odyssey (a great film, which is turning out to be a controversial opinion over here at i-D towers) and the new Spider-Man (which is good, but skippable for the non-completists—like Marvel lore connective tissue).

We’ve largely decided that the summer movie season ends this weekend, with the release of David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street. I haven’t seen it yet (I had to skip the press screening to be a good friend to someone so don’t fkn @ me) but for so long it was being framed as a surefire flop. It’s a movie about a suburban family inadvertently time traveling back to the dinosaur ages, I think, headed up by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, all of which sounds fun to me.

But it has no bankable box office stars (Hathaway: for every The Odyssey, there’s a Mother Mary), and is based on an original concept from a director whose last movie was a tin-foil hat LA black comedy called Under the Silver Lake that tanked at the box office (I loved it btw). From what I hear, The End of Oak Street is actually a blast—an “old fashioned” summer movie we used to enjoy before we had to pretend to give a fuck about Star Wars spin-offs. If you see it, let me know what you think, and I’ll reply with my thoughts too.

What else have you enjoyed this summer? I liked The Invite, Olivia Wilde’s risqué riff on the romcom. I was big on Backrooms, the better horror breakout for me (sorry Obsession!), and Blue Heron, Sophy Romvari’s stark and sad debut, which only reached UK theaters in June. Over the next couple of weeks, Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is rolling out around the globe. That’s a summer movie with a weird, queer bent to it; a slasher that’s also about having really good gay sex.

The “ultimate summer movie” can sort of mean anything, but I figure it’s about where it takes you: summers are warm, obviously, but also the location of so much nostalgia. So as we wave goodbye to another summer, it feels like a nice time to look back on the films that capture it perfectly, from ’70s classics to indie cult favorites.

Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986)

I talk about this beloved classic so much that it’s practically becoming a problem. But it fits here because it aligns almost exactly with my experience of being a preteen kid in a small town finding shit to do during the hot and lazy summer holidays. There is one shot in this film (see above) that I think is maybe my favorite shot from a summer movie ever: the haze of a just-before-sunset sky, the dander and flies in the air, and the stark figures of four friends on a pilgrimage of their own making.

Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsey, 2002)

While everyone’s gagging over Samantha Morton in The Odyssey, they should make time for Morvern Callar if they haven’t seen it. A movie about a supermarket cashier (Morton) who comes home to find her boyfriend has died by suicide—only for her to dispose of his body and sell his novel manuscript with her name on it. It’s a film about running away from your problems, and the possibilities that come when you’re freed from a situation that stilts you. Soon after, she leaves her perpetually overcast Scottish port town for Almeria, Spain, and the film develops this Fanta Orange, cheap holiday hue. It’s a masterpiece; in my opinion, Lynne Ramsey’s best.

Kids (Larry Clark, 1995)

This movie has such a gnarly premise, but it sticks in my brain as a summer film because of how sticky and bright it makes New York’s summer look. A gang of skater boys mope around the city’s parks and sidewalks, looking for something to do, all while Chloë Sevigny tries to track down, and stop, their overly promiscuous weirdo leader.

Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

Everyone credits Linklater’s Before trilogy as some of the ultimate movies about summer, but I hold that same fondness for Boyhood. Shot for a few days each summer over 10 years, I remember feeling that weird sense of nostalgia (!!) for the years I was watching on screen, only in a totally brand-new film. I love the journey of it, the sense of small-town, suburban life that bursts into a beautiful trip to a scenic, rugged, sandy state park. It’s a film about becoming someone, and how formative those long, endless summers are when you’re a kid.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)

A sweet and modest slapstick comedy that introduced Jacques Tati’s beloved character to the world, it captures the singular experience of a beachside holiday hotel. You can still stay at the hotel this film was shot at, if you want the full experience: It’s in Saint-Nazaire, and now owned by a Best Western lol.

A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino, 2015)

Pool water is the failsafe ingredient in a summer movie, and Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash has a lot of it. His weird psychodrama, about a silent rockstar and her filmmaker husband at war with their interloping house guests, is as picture perfect as the Hockney painting that gave it its name.

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

Without Jaws, we wouldn’t have the summer blockbuster. This movie literally birthed that concept, when it hit cinemas in June 1975 and audiences in their millions queued around the block to see it. It might be about how splashing about in the sea can lead to you getting your limbs severed by a gigantic great white shark, but it’s also the movie that made me want to experience New England in the summer! Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)

Before he started making cold, steely dramas in his home country, Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski made a bucolic lesbian romance starring a young Emily Blunt. Set in Yorkshire, it follows the relationship between a posh, preened woman (Blunt) and a working-class girl (Natalie Press) as they fall in love.

• Not to be a simp for movie marketing but the trailer for the restoration of Ken Russell’s The Devils is maybe the best I’ve seen all year.

• I’m here in Edinburgh for the film festival, catching a few new and exciting projects. We premiered some photographs from Pretty Babies, the Ashley Benson-starring directorial debut of Tyler-Marie Evans, about two teenagers running away from home to Hollywood in the hopes of becoming stars. Also excited for: The State of Us (last hurrah terminal cancer buddy comedy), Mission (George MacKay reuniting with the director of his best performance in For Those in Peril), Northbound (Julia Fox!), and the first UK screenings of I Want Your Sex, and the Cannes hits Hope and Goodbye Cruel World. You can still get tickets here.

Being the “main character” has become a big TikTokified concept about taking a bold stance on life. #LiveLaughLove. As the main character, there is a strength, a confidence (or narcissism), a can-do quality. But also, indies notwithstanding, the main character is often the most relatable character, the most generalized, palatable, and subsequently the most milquetoast (and they dress like it too). You know who’s actually uncompromising in their personal style and life ethos? A zany best friend. A troubled bartender in a Jaws-type movie. A femme fatale in a devastating hat that falls with sinister ease just so over one eye. A cherished character actor! A Catherine O’Hara over a Jennifer Lawrence. A Carol fucking Kane!! Often, they are so uncompromising that a movie wouldn’t be made about them because they already know who they are!

Something I’ve enjoyed for a while now is wonderful girl and friend to me, writer Ali Royals daily outfit prompts. She has a good time with it: “Outfit prompt is Charlie bit my finger” or “Outfit prompt is Roku City.” Her clothes remain her clothes. These are not the prompts of an influencer who has more things in their closet than days in the year, but the reframe is what’s fun. The little secret with yourself that a striped shirt might reference the Hamburgler or an HVAC system.

One of the big issues of fashion (which remains a very little issue in the grand scheme of Things) is that there is currently an overreliance on clothing to signify personality. It is the beauty of fashion, the art of fashion, that it is so self-descriptive. But to feel authentic, there must be a self to describe.

• Alex Vadukul’s profile of Noah Blau, the man behind the best show on the internet!

• Alyssa Vignan on Sex Happens on BELLY BUTTON RINGS!!!! Profound and sexy. Awooga.

• New York mag’s entire Mamdanistan issue

• Getting into the wonders of Wedgewood China.

• Cake Zine’s free summer reading series at Little Island (I will be reading a piece about FOOD!)

For the past few seasons, every fashion show has turned into girlhood-spotting. But at Nicklas Skovgaard, it was all clear that we’ve descended into “lady-fication,” a glamorous space that greets the material girl by hand. Models, aka “The Skovgaardettes,” spilled out of sleek convertibles, candy-wrapped in a palette of hot pink, pastel yellow, and turquoise. In thick headbands à la Barbra Streisand, Grease’s Pink Ladies had resurrected and opted for gingham.

At Caro Editions, similar vintage cars were parked alongside a Stardoll-worthy cast of models. The scene was all high-waisted, knee-length pants, shoulder pads, and capes. It felt like the sartorial equivalent of sunglasses at night. Erin Wasson lit a cigarette as she sauntered down the runway, because apparently in Copenhagen, smoke-filled lungs provide a nice contrast to your colorful outfit.

It’s a form of femininity so overt it almost punches you in the face, and it continued at the Swedish School of Textiles, where Sally Bjerre Gaarde closed the show with her reinterpreted take on Chanel tweed. For SSON, oversized earrings and layered pearl necklaces complimented the T-shirt equivalent of an ’80s power dress. Even Henrik Vibskov’s show, “Keep The Moisture Rising,” was inspired by a tube of cream, and somehow a fashion show about a literal cream both screams and sings material girl.

Copenhagen knows how to dress a woman who has a life. She has an artistic life at Stine Goya, a social life at Studio Constance, and a nightlife at Alectra Rothschild/Masculina. It’s a perfectly impractical wardrobe that you’d go home and change for, because, for some, it’s fun to go home four times a day and change your outfit. This was pretty obvious at my hotel, 25 hours hotel Indre By, which seemed to be doubling as a fitting room for half of Copenhagen during the week.

The women at Solitude Studios simply wanted to have a good night. The floor was covered in scribbled numbers straight out of a bathroom stall, prompting us to “call for fun.” Sadly, when I tried calling one of the numbers, I was reprimanded by an older Danish man yelling at the other end of the line. Copenhagen is probably the last place I would expect to see the return of the freakum dress. With plunging-neck rompers and peach lace bralettes, each look felt like a chaser to the one before. At the Swedish School of Textiles, Signe Sjöström and Charity Egbudiwe even sent clutch handbags—the 2010s club-staple—down the runway b2b. Isn’t this what being a woman is all about? Carrying a handbag into which nothing can possibly fit?

CPHFW presented the post-girl, not in the sense that girlhood has died and we’re all women, but that it has evolved, maybe even received a diploma along the way. Collina Strada fittingly arrived in the land of mermaids and crochet, and Paolina Russo’s skating models were wearing necklaces out of skateboard wheels. Along with students at the Royal Danish Academy—such as Ella Sofia Mannov, who even covered a model in CDs—they captured the childish fun which we all try to carry long into adulthood.

Institution, the recipient of the 2026 Zalando Visionary Award, proved that CPHFW has grown up. It seems fitting that the collection was named “YAD” (Azerbaijani for “foreign” or “strange”), as the collection conveyed a sense of maturity that comes with the permission to let yourself become stranger as you age. Anne Sofie Madsen seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion by playing around with organza, layering it with Nike pieces in a way that came across as equally quirky and practical. Overall, CPHFW felt connected to getting older, discovering that being an adult is mostly about having somewhere to go and something to wear when you get there.

In true Danish drinking spirit, I asked some Danes (and guest-Danes) what their women would order at the bar. Drink responsibly, please!

Nicklas Skovgaard says…

“A Skovgaardette muse always orders an Iced White Russian. First of all, why wouldn’t she? It’s basically a milkshake with a criminal record. Cold, creamy, slightly trashy and somehow still glamorous. She could order a Martini, but that would be trying too hard, no?”

Paolina Russo says…

“She doesn’t drink, she goes to 7-11 for a Slurpee (blue raspberry + green apple) because she wants a hotdog too.”

Collina Strada says…

“Sparkling water. 6 drops of bitters and 3 limes. Hydration always. French fries with Dijon mustard if they have it. Very dirty martini extra olives.”

Anne Sofie Madsen says…

“The bartender’s favorite—it saves everyone time.”

Over 100 unrelenting minutes, these characters are subject to some of the most brutal violence I’ve ever seen on stage, evidenced by the trigger warnings: “prolonged nudity, torture, mutilation, murder, sex, incest, violence including sexual violence, forced eating, suicide including hanging, drug abuse and drugging, gender reassignment surgery as well as homophobic and misogynistic language, needles and blood.”

Frecknall’s take on the play premiered last week, and divided Britain’s uptight right-wing press: the Daily Mail refused to give it a rating, calling it “unrelenting and random”, while the Daily Telegraph, in a five star review, claimed that “it grips completely”. The common point being made about Kane’s work today, one you can feel within the theater as you watch it, is similar to the one that plagued it when she was still alive: Is there value in the violence?

SARAH KANE’S OTHER WORK

• Blasted (1995), her debut play about a hotel encounter between an older male journalist and a naive young woman that descends into violent madness.

• Skin (1995), a short film that subverts the power dynamic between a skinhead and Black woman in London.

• Phaedra’s Love (1996), a sex-filled “comedy” take on the Roman classic Phaedra.

• Crave (1998), a poetic, non-linear play that departs from Kane’s other work, presented under a pseudonym and inspiring the Bjork song, “An Echo, A Stain.”

• 4.48 Psychosis (2000), a plotless and largely character-less play about clinical depression, staged for the first time after Kane died.

As you sit watching a man get his hands, tongue, and feet chopped off, or another being force fed until he pisses himself, or another having drugs injected into his eyes, you might question whether the creator of such scenarios has the ability to feel hope, or experience love. During the performance I saw, several people groaned or laughed out of discomfort at the persistent pain on stage. One man fainted.

Watching it I couldn’t help but think that its maker must have known empathy, and what it felt like to be in love in order to appreciate its rarity and value. In fact, Kane was apparently in love when she wrote it. As she said in one of her rare interviews, on this occasion with the academic Aleks Sierz: “I don’t find my plays depressing or lacking in hope… To create something beautiful about despair is for me the most life-affirming thing a person can do.”

There’s very little to read about Kane beyond how people reacted to her work, and the scant interviews she did. What she made was dubbed “in-yer-face” theater in the ’90s, because of its confrontational and often staunchly political nature. Blasted and Cleansed made up two parts of an incomplete War trilogy. The violence on stage in her work might present itself in a heightened if familiar domestic setting—her stage directions are either non-existent or dauntingly specific—but it spoke about the atrocities committed at the time in places such as Bosnia. If you view her work through the prism of empathy for the victims, rather than reveling in the violence you’re watching, it transforms it entirely.

You get the sense of that sadness she had when you see her work in the flesh, if the director knows what to do with it. Rebecca Frecknall does—she’s the reigning auteur of London theatre, known for transforming classic texts like Cabaret and A Streetcar Named Desire into something kinetic, absorbing, and contemporary. Her skills attract stars—those aforementioned productions featured Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal respectively.

But the largely un-famous cast of her Cleansed make the important task of audience projection much more straightforward. Rather than being a spectator, her version of it—dankly lit, scored with distorted sound, cast falling through window frames and through a field of daffodils in the stage’s foreground—finds a way to make the obscene violence feel like something we’ve experienced too. Not literally, of course, but there are cataclysmic pangs of emotional pain.

I’ve met Frecknall a few times before—I spent nearly a year profiling her for the New York Times—and found her pragmatic as an artist but really emotionally literate. Her love for Pina Bausch is present in the way she stages sex scenes and these characters’ screams of agony, each one perfectly choreographed. Carl, the main subject of Tinker’s mutilations, is played by a trained ballet dancer, Luke Cinque-White. It’s a fitting collision of two artist’s worlds: Frecknall using her position as one of her industry’s most appreciated auteurs to perfectly articulate someone famously misunderstood.

The difference between when Cleansed first premiered and today is our access and exposure to violence, which has affected how we react to it. I realized that people were responding to the suggestion of chewed up flesh the same way they would a Saw movie. The same algorithm that feeds us memes also presents us with videos of beheadings, knife violence, bombings, and people falling from buildings. The trauma that shaped the extremity of Sarah Kane’s plays is now around us, easy to see. Cleansed, as opposed to the quick-swipe apathy of a seconds-long clip, firmly puts us in the position of those living through it. The barbarism isn’t ridiculous, it’s real.

Stuart Thompson is one of those British actors who I’ve seen on stage a bunch of times. I’d argue he’s also one of the best. He sort of reminds me of Ben Whishaw. In Cleansed, he plays Robin, a largely illiterate, suicidal person who, after being introduced to us completely naked, spends the rest of the play wearing a dress and tights. He kills it, obviously.

I asked him: “What’s the last thing you did to look after yourself?”

He says:

“I went to the community sauna for a hot sit and a cold plunge with my best mate. She let me wear her chic little sauna hat and we gossiped ravenously while everyone pretended to not listen in.”

• Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is out this weekend, and is a beautiful paean to finding yourself through sex and slasher movies. I love it. My review from Cannes is here, and my interview with them will be live next week.

• The next play at the Almeida? Golden Boy, the American classic about a violinist-turned-boxer starring Josh O’Connor. It’s sold out, obv, but more tickets are apparently coming in September

• I’ll be in Edinburgh for the festival(s) next week, both film and the Fringe. There’s a rare chance to see Ivo van Hove’s take on Angels in America, which I loved. Personally, I’ll be sitting through a queer riff on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, purely because it stars Suri Noelle (aka Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ kid). Anything else I should see? Tell me!

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That line? “Why you so hate to see women endure?”

It’s sung on the bridge of “hate that i made you love me”—one that makes a worthy point about a man’s insecurity, but it’s stitched together in a manner that defies the rules of syntax. The line lacks a syllable, and so Grande—alongside her Swedish co-writers ILYA and Max Martin—shoehorn one in to make it flow better. But there was a way of writing that line that made sense and hit the syllable quota: “Why do you hate to see women endure?”

So why do we have that lyric in its jumbled form instead? Well, it’s something of a pop trademark for writer Max Martin. He’s considered the God of contemporary pop music, writing for everyone from ’90s Britney to Robyn to Taylor Swift. He’s a hit machine, always has been, today living largely out of the spotlight, spotted less than a sasquatch in the wild. Grande herself has called him “a legend and an icon.”

The pair first started working together in 2014, on her album My Everything. Together, alongside Savan Kotecha and the producer Zedd, they wrote “Break Free,” her gigantic EDM banger. The song is so bombastic and overwhelming in its production (where is Zedd these days?), Grande’s voice big but famously lacking diction, that you can almost let its absurd lines pass you by. “I only wanna die alive, never by the hands of a broken heart,” she belts on its pre-chorus. Then: “I don’t wanna hear you lie tonight, now that I’ve become who I really are.”

Rumor has it that Grande suggested they change that latter line to “really am,” but Martin thought it sounded better to keep it as it was written. Back in the early days of the Backstreet Boys, he was really taking the piss with quips like this. In “Shape of My Heart” (2000), bandmember AJ was giving the banger statement “Loneliness is tragical.” Even the crux of the narrative argument in “I Want it That Way” contradicts itself: What do you mean you “never wanna hear” your “one desire” say “I want it that way?” Britney’s had her own taste of it too. By omitting the word “up” from the flirty phrase “hit me up,” we now have “Hit me baby one more time” lodged into our brains.

Martin’s impact as a connoisseur of the nonsense pop song lyric is felt everywhere: I can hum the melody of the verses of BTS’ “Dynamite” in my head, but haven’t ever processed exactly what they’re saying (ding dong, ice tea and a game of ping-pong anyone?) I think of how smarmy I felt learning the “German” lyrics to Lady Gaga’s industrial pop hit “Scheibe,” only to discover that she’s not speaking German at all—just gibberish that sounded vaguely Germanic.

The clarity, the meaning, is missing from these lyrics—but if it sounds good, does it matter? The great artists of our time bend the rules a bit. That’s part of Max Martin’s genius: His ability to find a song’s emotional heft, not letting something as superfluous as lyrical logic get in its way.

• It’s August, which means we’ve reached a full decade since Frank Ocean dropped Blond. I’m curious: is there a lost artist—of any discipline—that you’re missing? Personally I need new things from Joanna Newsom and Lucas Hedges.

• Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex is out in US cinemas now. Read my interview with him here!

• Can we bring back movie screenshots with subtitles? I saw Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia this week and, between being confused as fuck by most of it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how hard this would have gone on the Tumblr grid:

It was 2019, Donald Trump was just impeached, NASA took its first ever photo of a black hole, and Charli D’Amelio had just started posting in earnest on TikTok. Skeptics felt the Chinese-owned app posed a national security risk. Cynics dismissed it as an app for dancing teens. Midwit lip-sync platform Muscial.ly’s next of kin (literally—TikTok’s creator ByteDance bought Musical.ly only to sunset it, merging all users into TikTok), the app was awash with gyrating teenagers mouthing along to 15-second audio clips. There was a sense of possibility on the nascent platform. Anyone was just one viral video from being a homeowner.

In the years since, TikTok has developed into a significant cultural incubator for comedic talent, new music—this year NPR joked that “The best new artist Grammy goes to … TikTok”— fashion trends, and marketing strategies. (If I ever have to read another Arby’s comment on a video I’m going to go postal.) Competitors like Meta and Snap. Inc scrambled to launch analogous features on existing platforms. TikTok has surpassed all expectations…but what happened to those dancing teens? Was it all a joke? Or will the TikToks we made along the way actually stand the test of time?

TikTok is a platform defined by dance for a reason. Unlike the horizontal landscape of YouTube, TikTok’s vertical confines and audio focused ethos provide fertile grounds for imitable dance. In that proximity is a tender promise: Without training or rhythm, you too can renegade!

The renegade, a dance created by then 14-year-old Jalaiah Harmon, involves a stationary but complex series of snaps, claps, shoulder jerks, pelvis thrusts, and head shifts. It combines existing movements like the “Woah” and the “Dab” to K Camp’s song “Lottery.” It is a dance perfectly suited for French mimes.

Over 29.7 million users (and one, as of this past weekend) have attempted the renegade. Requiring only mobility within the perimeters of an iPhone screen, the renegade can be completed even in the most suboptimal conditions: violently hungover or even potentially post-op after a knee replacement. Critics of TikTok dance have pointed to its static nature, the magpish-ness of its accolytes—white influencers receiving the financial windfall from dances created, uncredited, by people of color—and on a more aesthetic level, how totally cringe it can be. Within the dance community, some worry that TikTok dance distracts from technical proficiency and artistry.

The earliest known documentation of dance comes from paleolithic rock paintings. I bring it up to illustrate that dance is one of the oldest possible artistic mediums, followed only by the urge to document it. The impitus to dance and to share dance is woven into our DNA—dance fosters connection, improves memory, and strengthens neuronal connections. It has had various religious inspirations, it’s been pagan, it’s caused unending controversy, and notably, it’s a form that’s constantly evolving with fads that are often seen as low art until, either through institutional recognition, popularity, evolution, or simply sticking around long enough, they ascend.

I absolutely loathe to quote anything backed by libertarian thinktank the Cato Institute BUT, and I hate to break it to you, “Every New Dance Used To Be Scandalous.” When the Viennese waltz arrived, it was felt to be so morally indecent that it was declared literally unhealthy…until, of course, it became popular enough that German fashion magazines reported, “Waltzes and nothing but waltzes are now so much in fashion that at dances nothing else is looked at; one need only be able to waltz, and all is well.” The pattern repeats, whether it’s twerking or hitting the woah. People turned their noses up at breakdancing too. In 2024 it was at the Olympics (never forget Raygun). During the 16th century in European courts, the energetic Galliard inspired the infinitely smoother jig Tourdion. In 1933 University of Chicago (I can’t mention UChicago without my favorite quote of all time, when A.J Liebling called the University, “the greatest magnet for neurotic juveniles since the Children’s Crusade”) student Katherine Curtis developed American style synchronised swimming by blending acrobatics and German water ballet with music. Contemporary dance is a mixture of ballet and jazz. History offers endless examples of overlooked art forms eventually transforming their genres. Impressionism, Jazz, Hip-Hop.... The beauty of dance is that it’s a universal language; It’s undeniable. To dismiss TikTok dance because it’s accessible, fun, and popular would be a mistake.

Some of our great TikTok dancing teens have parlayed their shimmies into long-term careers. Addison Rae is a bonafide, Grammy-nominated pop star. Charli D’Amelio danced on Broadway. Now 20, Jalaiah Harmon dances and influences 685k Instagram and 3.3 million TikTok followers. The influence of TikTok dance—defined by short choreographed bursts, incredibly literal adaptations of each lyric, and vivid facial expressions—has already flowed fully into the mainstream. Watch Grant Gilmore’s work and witness a style developed by a close camera, or Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun dance gimmick which seems geared toward virality (one lucky audience member gets to go on stage and do “the dance” with her). Remember the dance craze around Charli’s song “Apple”, which led to another tour gimmick, someone being the “Apple Girl.” Or the sudden abundance of dance forward pop stars—Tyla, Tate McRae, Adela. Dance is more popular than ever, in part because of it’s abundance on social media. Dance may have changed TikTok, but TikTok is also the latest entry in the history of dance, and in that, like it or not, it’s forever.

Over the past year, we’ve noticed an uptick in moves across culture, whether it’s viral trends (do you count 6-7 as a dance?), fine art performances (Rosalía’s collaboration with La Horde), or pop music (even Audrey Hobart is doing a jeté).

It’s not like dance ever went away, but that it hasn’t occupied this much space in mainstream culture since the early aughts. I’m talking Center Stage (2000), Bring It On (2000), Billy Elliot (2000), Save the Last Dance (2001), Chicago (2002), Honey (2003), You Got Served (2004), and Step Up (2006). The year 2005 alone brought the premieres of two new dance TV shows in the US: So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars, while 2004 had the infamous Janet Jackson halftime show, and 2003 saw Beyoncé’s solo debut, “Crazy in Love.” Those were the days of dancing in your living room like Regina George’s little sister (2004). In the 20 years since, Hollywood, music, and trends went elsewhere and we learned to love MCU movies, hyperpop, and the Ice Bucket Challenge.

This summer, though, we can feel the 5, 6, 7, 8 coming back in full force for all the reasons I listed above and because, after Hot Girl Summer, Brat Summer, and Brat Summer 2, we’re all sort of ready to shed our self-awareness and just dance. Sweaty, late-night, party, grooving dance. And we have the album to do it to: Confessions II.

So this week, everyone at i-D is exploring what it means to dance in 2026. I interviewed Judy Trammell, the head choreographer of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and Doug interviewed Grant Gilmore, the head choreographer of Katseye. Marley followed London dancers around for a week, and Nicolaia is exploring a brief history of TikTok dances. Flora learned to do the splits with an 89-year old phenom, and our friend Sakura Smith goes deep on dance in Japan. We’ve got a couple more surprises too, so polish off your Capezios and join us.

And remember, if you have a pitch for Dance Week, just reply to this email or leave it in the comments on the Substack app.

For the last decade, photographer Alexandra Waespi has had privileged access to the pit, her camera facing the star on stage. But then she did a 180-degree turn and looked behind her: That ocean of starry-eyed bodies all of a sudden became really interesting.

So she started photographing them too, resulting in a photo series known as “Front Row Feelings,” which we’re debuting exclusively on i-D. Waespi has been collating these images for the last four years, at shows for musicians with largely young female fanbases, like Rex Orange County, and, most recently, Harry Styles’ marathon run at Wembley Stadium.

The pictures she takes feel like they’re lifted from dreams: lurid in color, light reflecting off of glitter and tears, faces contorted into a distinct shape that somehow suggests both yearning and sadness. Here, Waespi tells us about her experience taking the pictures, and how she found herself in her subjects.

DOUGLAS GREENWOOD: Can you start by telling us where this project began?

ALEXANDRA WAESPI: The first time I started touring, I was photographing Adele on the 25 tour. It was my first time witnessing first hand the almost religious nature of fandom. I was amazed and perplexed by it all, the way it felt like a form of worship. There’s an icon, devotion, and a pilgrimage towards this overwhelming collective experience.

After years of touring with musicians, I started to become more curious about what was going on behind me, rather than what was happening on stage. I began watching the fans intently. One image I took kind of kicked it off for me: there was a blue light from the stage washing over the face of a girl leaning over the barricade with her head in her hands… The blue seemed to emphasise the melancholy of the moment, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. After that, I kept searching for more of that feeling.

Can you speak to how people respond in those settings? Do certain fan bases go crazier than others?

Yes, in my experience certain fan bases do go crazier. I’ve found there can be a different energy with some artists, particularly when there is a guy on stage and girls in the crowd. There is more longing and desire, like they’ve been waiting their whole life for this moment. But it only lasts a couple of hours, and then it is over, then there is this strange mix of heartbreak and ecstasy that creeps in. Then the waiting starts again. I suppose it calls back to the times of Elvis and Beatlemania in a way. Not much has really changed.

I find so much beauty and joy within the community of fandom. There is a collective care and kindness. If you’re a committed fan and have been waiting since the middle of the night, then you are automatically in the inner circle of devotees; you speak the same language. My heart is always warmed when I go to the front of a queue outside a venue (and mind you they do this in any weather, I’ve seen them sit through snow storms!) and everyone has made friends with each other. Then you see them in the front row when the show starts, filled with anticipation because they have been waiting outside for 12 or even 24 hours.

What do you see in these fans’ eyes when you photograph them?

Longing, wonder, heartbreak, hysteria, disbelief, desire, hypnotism, euphoria, collective joy. Even if there are 90,000 people in one space, I am looking to connect with one person’s experience for a fleeting moment.

I care about these girls and in a way I see myself in them. Even if I wasn’t ever a fan in this way, I see myself as an emotional teenager. Everything felt more dramatic at the time, more intense. It’s also interesting to me how we as humans have so many similarities in the way our bodies react: there are a lot of hands on the face or covering the mouth, the way our breathing changes, our brows furrow, and our eyes start to well up. With this project, I’m trying to preserve something ephemeral.

What about this project speaks to your wider work?

My approach can be quite meditative. Even though there is heightened emotion in the air and thousands of people around me, I am looking for quiet moments amongst the chaos. I think that’s the thread that runs through all of my work: whether I’m in someone’s bedroom, photographing roses on the streets of east London, or standing in the front row of a stadium.

• I almost feel bad for Charli xcx, whose Music, Fashion, Film sort of felt like a fumigation technique to shake off the looming pressure of Brat. It turns out this new album is just as gnarly and impressive as its predecessor, blessed with strong reviews (and a bad one from The Telegraph? I think she’ll live.) Well deserved.

• I rearranged my trip back home to Scotland to make it to the David Wojnarowicz show at Glasgow’s Modern Institute, subtitled some day this will all be crumbling ruins. Composed of his photography, large scale artworks, sculptures, and video, I found it to be so powerful. The Modern Institute is a derelict townhouse with little fabrications or furnishings. Wandering around it felt like stepping into the crumbling Christopher Street piers Wojnarowicz frequented. Apt. It’s only open on Friday, 11-6, until August 22. Change your plans for it.

All to say, I’ve been spinning the block a bit, and I have some thoughts. I once had a conversation with Emilia Petrarca about the two types of vacation shoppers. One suffers from Vacation Delusion Syndrome: they pre-trip shop for the person they think they’ll become on vacation. The other Brandnewgirlitis: they leave unnecessary room in their suitcase, thinking they’ll return sartorially altered by the experience. I always fall into the optimistic later. Believing I’ll return with a bounty, I often sacrifice packing essentials.

In California I’ve noticed an abundance of Madhappy hoodies, barefoot shoes (Michelle Li wore a really good pair recently), chintzy costume jewelry, massive (I’m talking forehead-to-mustache) vintage shades, long, clean hair as an accessory, simple but figure-skimming jersey dresses (recommending Angel Moon), summer Uggs, short, short, short jorts, a lot of Apollonia LARPing (the Godfather character has been heavy on my mind), EYELINER, and PINK LIPSTICK. I visited my favorite vintage store, Scout, where I ogled some Helmut Lang heels that had what looked like a Silly Band around the ankle.

Whoever you are, the truth remains: one of the best parts of traveling is getting out of your closet!

BACK IN NYC: My LA OGBFF Lauren Schiller stopped by with a dispatch from her OGBFF pop-up in NYC. It’s sort of a Freaky Friday situation.

Talk to me about designing a viral phone case. How was the pop-up?

I made the first one as an arts-&-crafts project with my sister almost two years ago. It took a year and a half to figure out how to actually manufacture it, then the first teaser went viral overnight. Since then, I’ve mostly just been trying to keep up with demand. The funniest part is that the batch I made specifically for our New York pop-up didn’t arrive in time for the pop-up. At this point, I’ve accepted that if there’s a way for something to go wrong, it’ll probably happen to me first. Running a brand is basically learning not to let perfect timing determine whether you have fun.

What is important about a phone case?

A phone case isn’t really about protecting your phone anymore. It’s more like a purse. You carry it everywhere, it’s in every mirror selfie, it’s basically part of your outfit. I feel like the coolest people don’t use phone cases because they DGAF… but the rest of us can have fun with it, and we deserve really good ones.

What do you wish more designers were doing?

Making stuff I want to wear and then just giving it to me…haha. No, but FR, IDK I just hope everyone is having fun.

How do memes factor into your creative process?

OGBFF has always been about cultivating the feeling of an inside joke, just like memes do. But I try not to be directly inspired by memes. I’m more inspired by the collective sense of humor they create.

Mantras?

I just always say I think everything should be fun. If it’s not fun… I don’t want to do it. And when creating, I remind myself that not every idea has to change your life… Some can just make you laugh.

What’s in and what’s out, and what don’t you care about?

Flirting is in. Trying to be cool is out. I don’t really care about online criticism because I don’t really trust or value most people’s creative opinions.

Last screenshot.

I was a little drunk in a bar in New York this weekend when my manufacturer texted asking where the logo should go on our flip-flops. I handed my phone to the guy sitting next to me, told him to circle where he thought it looked best, and sent that straight to production. That’s my most recent screenshot.

The first celebrity death I remember being moved by was Amy Winehouse’s in 2011. I was in my kitchen that summer with the radio on. It was one of the rare instances where I wasn’t already on the family computer, but soon after I jumped online and started scouring over articles while the 24-hour news channel behind me blared updates in unison. My dad said I was too young for Back to Black, which my sister got for Christmas in 2006, but like many gay boys I’d gravitated towards her audacity and artistry. I had no addiction problems but I probably knew sadness, so I found myself in that part of her art.

By 2011, I had found ways to make friends online already, so even when other celebrities died who I was less enraptured by, there was a place to find people sharing their memories of how that dead artist’s art had moved them. Nowadays, the once emotionally dense online eulogy has become streamlined: a prayer emoji or a loveheart symbol over a Variety news announcement we’ve re-posted to our Instagram story.

That’s not to say our feelings about an artist dying lack integrity—it’s just never been easier to let people know how we feel. Right now, so many idols are ascending to the higher plane: Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill died this week; earlier this year, the musician Oliver Tree, Euphoria’s Eric Dane, and the treasured comedy actor Catherine O’Hara passed away too. These four feel specifically sad and strange because their deaths came out of nowhere: Oliver Tree was young, just 32, and died tragically; the others—older but not old enough for their deaths to be expected—battled their ailments in private. Even David Hockney, at 88 years old, felt unstoppable.

It’s a bittersweet feeling to lose someone whose work means a lot to you, but it’s a grief that is hard to place. The word parasocial carries negative connotations, like a stalkerish scent, but it accurately describes what we’re going through. It’s a parasocial kind of grief when we realize the articulator of so many of our strongest feelings is no longer able to put them into new words. In many ways, it’s a trickier grief to process. When a loved one we know passes away, we turn to the people closest to us and touch them. We attend funerals and work towards closure. With our favorite public figures, that process is far less linear.

Maybe it’s just the passing of time, but I sometimes find myself feeling as sad about the death of SOPHIE as I do about the death of my mother, who passed away in 2003. SOPHIE was an artist I never met, capable of such brilliance, but whose opportunity to continue her artistry was stolen from her when she died in 2021. That’s partly because I have followed the traditional beats of grief with one, and find myself stuck in the staccato rhythm of the other.

The Werther Effect was a term coined in 1974 by a researcher named David Phillips, used to describe the ripple effect of a publicized suicide, and the attempts that follow. The most prominent example of this came after Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962, when suicides spiked 12% higher than the annual average. Celebrity hyperfixation was reaching an apex point then, peaking with Beatlemania two years later. (Some sources state that three John Lennon fans were driven to suicide after his murder.)

We can’t walk into the funerals of an artist who’s passed, but it’s never been easier to surround ourselves with people who feel the same way. After Liam Payne died, vigils were held outside the hotel he was staying in. A week after Winehouse’s death, I found myself in London with my sister. We went to her home in Camden and found tealights and wilted flowers lying by the front gate. Online stan communities, derided for their obsessive behavior, also become places of solace at times like this. I once wrote an article about what it’s like when the subject of your stan account dies. Interviewing the admins of these accounts, I was moved by the metamorphosis of their purpose. What was once a place for a star’s every move to be traced instead became a place for fans of a late star to gather. As one admin put it: “No one is alone, we’re all together.”

• The Odyssey is out this weekend and is as good as you’ve heard. Do you need to see it in IMAX? I didn’t, and still thought it was awesome.

• Speaking of endurance art and ancient Greek texts, the only thing longer than The Odyssey right now is a stage version of The Oresteia, currently running at London’s Bridge Theatre and starring our favorite Archie Madekwe. My interest was piqued further when I heard its first preview ran 15 minutes shy of 5 hours! Now, it’s sitting at a comparatively conservative 3 and half. I’ll see it soon.

• By the time this reaches you, the new Gracie Abrams album will be out. I’ve rinsed the two singles over the past few weeks to the point they’ve likely entered my top tracks of the year. Also, she has tour openers for the ages: Samia and Jake Minch.

The theme of this ’stack is this Terrence O’Connor meme that resonated with me in such a profound way I want to go full Warhol and print it out 12x12 to hang on the wall. It skips hand-in-hand with something that’s been bothering me: people hating on “bandwagon” fans. Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you EMERGED FROM THE WOMB IN A MESSI JERSEY. Didn’t know your first steps were COURTSIDE AT THE KNICKS. Sounds slippery. Anyway, what a lame loser opinion.

Right now there’s a bit of a hivemind situation going on in New York—everybody got really into the Knicks, and then subsequently the World Cup—and now Internet pontificators are dividing fans into Sheeple and True Fans. People who wouldn’t have been able to identify a soccer ball if it hit them in the face are building their schedules around the games. Some of the things that people are bandwagoning are great (socialism!), others are okay (dotcakes), some still will be stale in 6 months (teal capris from Los Angeles Apparel and probably also dotcakes).

Over the past decade (rightfully so) jumping on the bandwagon has become synonymous with mental laxitude, a suspension of individuality in favor of group think—TikTok trends, unvetted medical advice from beef tallow influencers, shopping hauls, egregious NYC lines. Personally, I think we need to de-corporatize the bandwagon and enjoy the energy.

But what about critical thought? What about maintaining personal interests? What about my rare collection of soda tabs that nobody else will possibly see value in? I ask this: Are you really thinking so critically about football that the average jaywalker couldn’t grasp it? Are you such a solipsist that it’s unimaginable others could casually enjoy the same things as you? I’m not suggesting that you join the FroYo line made up of 30 people who’ve never experienced anxiety. I’m just saying if you walk by…and there happens to only be two people standing there…don’t deprive yourself on principle.

There’s a distinction to be made between getting something (buying, consuming) because everybody else is, and experiencing something because everybody else is (excitement, joy, camaraderie). I’d like to suspend judgement, our attachment to our own uniqueness, and instead embrace the wonder that comes from collective enjoyment. I personally love joining a bandwagon. That’s where the music is.

• Cheering for any sport. And this amazing sold-out Drift Knicks hat!

• Love Island. Specifically Bryce on Love Island USA. When people don’t like him it’s like, wow… you never fw a pathetic man?

• My brilliant friend Katy’s response to Byline’s Caroline Calloway essay.

• These leopard Cavalli dresses. Recently I’ve been banned by Poshmark. Please Poshmark let me IN!

Let’s start where Homidi did: at home, in a house run by two older brothers whose CD rotation swung wildly between Lilith Fair and Guns N’ Roses. That contradiction, she told me, is basically her whole philosophy in miniature: restraint and boldness aren’t opposites, they’re just two settings on the same dial. Her mother tailored her thrifted clothes and ran a salon and beauty supply store, which is where a young Homidi got her first real beauty education. Watching regular women commit fully to one look and stick to it was inspiring, even if aesthetically far away from what Homidi admired in the magazines she read. The heavy brows, the purple-lined lips and absolutely nothing else, demarcations of women so assured of who they were, that it was impossible for the young Homidi not to admire. Her mother was the elegant flip side of that, burnt sienna lips, jade coated eyes, always dressed for the occasion. Oh, and the magazines, the stacks of W magazines and Vogues that a young Homidi discovered at the salon and then studied, making mental notes about the image as a whole; the light, the composition, the models and of course, the make-up.

It being the ‘90s her bed headboard featured an in-built mirror and it’s here that she first started to freely experiment with cosmetics. The suburbs, Homidi admitted, were dull, but her ambition to get out of them only sharpened with age.

Her actual break came assisting makeup artist Lucia Pieroni and one of her first major sets was a Mert and Marcus shoot with Kate Moss and eight other supermodels, the kind of set that rearranges how you think about the job entirely. Moss is still her reference point, and for good reason: an artist, not a mannequin, who set a new standard for individualism instead of interchangeability.

That’s the throughline of everything Homidi does. If there’s freckles to be brought out and enhanced, Homidi will do it. She’s not taken in by prescriptive make-up looks or ideals and remains enchanted by beauty mavericks like Billie Eilish who challenge the status quo. Take her cover with childhood icon Serena Williams, where the makeup was almost beside the point—the job was earning trust, slowly, until Williams actually let her in.

We also got into the business of it all. The Fara Homidi brand has most recently landed at Mecca in Australia, and Homidi has a theory for why it’s working: proximity. Beach light, outdoor skin, sun that actually touches your face, the exact ethos her visual identity has been chasing the whole time. Australia, in short, already looks like a Fara Homidi campaign.

Then, her philosophy stated plainly: You need a lot less than you think. Homidi proved it live, walking me through her cult face compact and a bronzer technique so light-handed it barely qualifies as touching your face- instead, product dusted on the back of the hand first so as to allow a single upward sweep to change the whole structure of my face with such subtlety, or, a finger tap of highlighter placed strategically, showing and telling us all that it’s the small, incremental additions that transform while allowing the person to still look like themselves (just a bit hotter, let’s be honest). Then, together, we tried her newest launch, the “Blonzer” in Baie—and I’m obsessed. Swept over the cheeks and critically, the bridge of the nose, it achieves that first sun exposure, day one of your long awaited summer holidays vibe, that fresh prickly pinky-gold look that happens the day before you hit peak-tan. Total Richard Linklater ‘70s California, hazy and a little sunburned in the best way. It reads less like makeup and a lot more like weather, minus the skin damage. We rounded out the look with her Lip liner in Faun, layered under her Lip Oi in Tawny. Very Hans Feurer editorial.

Her carry-on essentials? For the record: She never travels without Shiseido’s Benefiance Wrinkle Smoothing eye cream and The Cream from Augustinus Bader, or, naturally her Essential Face Compact.

And then, we got a scoop, because apparently that’s just what happens when you go live with Fara Homidi. I asked about her signature kitten-lash effect eye look that’s essentially mascara fanned outward at the corners of the eye, in lieu of being applied in a straight up fashion, and, instead of answering, she reached off camera and produced an unmarked silver tube. She wouldn’t say a word about it. She didn’t need to. She demonstrated some application, the brush was noticeably unique in shape…there’s undoubtedly a mascara coming, and it’s going to be a whole moment. You heard it here, first.

We closed on dream clients: Angelina Jolie, and Zendaya, naturally, and the one word to describe the Fara Homidi woman. Homidi said “busy.” I said “effortless.” We landed, correctly, on both.

Missed it? It’s live now on i-D’s Substack. Tune in and then run, don’t walk, to buy your own Blonzer compact and live out that Euro girl glow, now.

NICOLAIA RIPS: How would you describe your current routines? Are you superstitious?

ROSE COLCORD: I wish I was more chilled but I’m literally like a newborn. I need routine: A beginning to my day that orients me and an end that lets me digest and reflect. My day is basically: get woken up by my vibrating wrist-band alarm (obsessed), go on a run, end the final sprint with “Daisies” live at Coachella weekend one, cool down to “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones while I walk the block as if all my goals have already come true. Set one, maybe two, MAYBE three things I want to do that day. Cold shower, get ready, walk to the studio. Creative work in the morning, meetings in the afternoon. Home, phone off by 7 p.m., evening with my daughter. Cold shower to wash away the day. Put my daughter to sleep. Read until I knock TF out.

Are you traveling this summer? What’s your philosophy on dealing with the heatwave?

I just got back home to London from Paris. I travel quite a bit for work so honestly I’m excited to be home for a bit, an English summer is hard to beat. Everyone’s so happy because it’s so grim and grey the rest of the year. But I’m spending August in the south of France, between Biarritz and Île de Ré with friends and my daughter Iris!! So I’m excited about that. I literally wear the same five things on rotation, so summer packing is just my uniform/daily essentials.

My packing list:

• A few antique slip dresses

• Two to three handfuls of Cou Cou undies

• 3–4 pairs of ballet flats and Mary Janes (yes, all of them are coming)

• Cou Cou tanks, tees and dresses

• 501’s

• My journal and commonplace book

• A Pointelle cardi to throw on for chilly night

• My book (currently War and Peace - a light summer read!)

• Azelaic acid

• Artichoke tea bags

• My Thistles sunnies

My philosophy on dealing with the heatwave is to embrace naturism at every opportunity and cold showers before bed.

How do you dress for the summer months? What’s currently in rotation?

I’ve been having so much fun getting dressed this summer!! I’m finally feeling more comfortable in my body since having my daughter. My uniform is either a vintage slip, a Cou Cou slip (favs right now are The Iris Slip or The Fleur Dress) or our pointelle slip skirt with a Cou Cou top (right now, The Rina Tee and The Muse Tank). Shoes are just a rotation of my Chanel flats and Mary Janes.

What’s on your reading list?

I’ve been on a memoir spree for the last year. There’s something so special about reading the arc of someone’s life and how they came to understand it. Memoirs are my self-help. As James Baldwin said: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” I just finished “The Cost of Living” which I loved. Also A Woman’s Story and The Years by Annie Ernaux—j’adored. But choosing what’s next for the rest of summer, I was craving a novel. Anna Karenina is one of my favourite books ever, so I took the plunge and went for a super light and easy summer read: War and Peace. I took it off the shelf unsure if I was ready for it. Honestly Tolstoy seems intimidating, but my dad told me (I don’t know if it’s true), that in Russia at the time you couldn’t really publish philosophy, so writers wove it into novels and tried to make them as readable as possible. He is just such a beautiful writer, holding up a mirror to all the beauty and ugliness of being human. Plus the chapters are short, so it’s actually quite digestible.

What’s your work process like?

I fluctuate between extremely disciplined and quite scattered. There’s no in-between. But fundamentally, it rests on the belief that if I’m clear on where I’m going and ruthless on the priorities, anything is possible. I think you don’t really need to know the “how” as long as you know the “what” and “why.” It’s so easy to move through the day as if it’s a thousand serious moves, but I try to approach work with a sense of ease and joy. I don’t really believe in solid plans. Just a clear goal and the determination and spirit to get there.

Design I think of as literally just staying in touch with what I want, what the girls want and a sense of duty to create it. But also discipline. Discipline to create less, better. And discipline to do simple, beautifully.

What’s something you never leave home without?

My Hydrojug and lanolin nipple cream (motherhood’s greatest beauty discovery).

Do you have any moments where you surprised yourself?

This last weekend I was in Paris for a Cou Cou shoot. It was also my first weekend away from my daughter since she was born. On the Eurostar home I started to write an essay in my personal journal for Substack (laptop dead), which I intended to be about my commonplace book and the annotation shorthands I use while reading. But instead (perhaps because I was literally writing it in my journal), it turned into this diary entry that just flowed out of me. What surprised me I guess, was the reminder that when we give ourselves space to reflect (“a room of one’s own,” as it were) how naturally we reconnect with our inner life. I went back and forth on whether to share it, as it was so personal and I’m quiet by nature. But I thought: if one person might resonate, that’s reason enough.

How do you ground yourself?

I’m such a cerebral person, so when I’m up there in my mind, anxious and tangled, I just need to get back into my body. Whether that’s a really long walk alone in nature or a run. Just being away from everyone else so I can hear my own thoughts. Then, once I’m back in my body, sitting down with my journal in peace and quiet. I read somewhere that “the quality of your writing reflects the quality of your mind” and I feel that’s so true. When I write my state of mind becomes so clear. Once a week I try to do a long session with my journal that’s almost my version of a prayer: what I’m thankful for, what’s going well, and what I need guidance or clarity on.

What does it mean to be intimate?

To be intimate, for me, means to be vulnerable. The courage to be like… so vulnerable and weird. The image that comes to mind is reading with my Nana—a whole afternoon together, the only words spoken being “cuppa tea?” There’s something so intimate about being in loving presence without all the chatter.

What advice would you give your future self?

Literally anything is possible. Just trust yourself. Energy is contagious, so be intentional with who you surround yourself with. Be as disciplined as possible about not being busy - busy is the enemy of creativity. And don’t take it all so bloody seriously! Have fun and get on with it!

Give me your sun, moon, and rising in divas. Jane Birkin sun…

I’m an Aries. That’s all I know. Though in moments of complete crash out, I’ll hit up everyone I know for their astrologer, their clairvoyant, their reflexologist who resets your vagus nerve and is apparently the reason for Charlotte Tilbury’s success. In a moment of crash out, I believe in EVERYTHING.

Teyana Taylor didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, it’s very couture. It’s very demure,” she laughed. “I love being hot... everybody else is like, ‘Ooh,’ but I’m perfectly fine—it feels amazing.” Meanwhile, internet patron saint of LOL Quenlin Blackwell argued that perspiration is practically a styling trick. “Looking greased is chic,” she told me. “Chic is on the cusp of messy... but not nasty.” Brenda Weischer was optimistic: “Sweating is couture—it’s hard to produce liquid.” Sure, babe. Aidan Zamiri, however, refused to indulge the fantasy. “No.”

Personally, after spending 5 days power-walking across Paris in Saint Laurent loafers that slowly became steam rooms, sitting through outdoor shows in 95 degree heat, and watching women glide past in couture while I silently negotiated with my deodorant (firmly in my purse at all times FYI), I’m inclined to think everyone was right. Couture is fantasy. Sweat is reality. This week, they happened to be wearing each other.

Sophomore collections are funny things. The first gets judged on promise. The second gets judged on permanence. Matthieu Blazy’s second Chanel couture collection felt like watching somebody settle into an impossibly difficult yet deliciously chic language. Storybook references ran through everything, from the opening guipure suit and miniature book to ducklings morphing into swans on embroidered buttons and vines creeping up heels. Little secrets hid inside linings and pockets, rewarding a second glance (my neck hurt, and for good reason). His couture feels warm, intimate, and wonderfully alive. Oh, and i-D cover star Alexa Demie had us all tripping over each other to capture her beauty (hashtag content) and bask in her insane aura. I’m straight now, apparently.

Jonathan Anderson’s second Dior couture outing approached things from almost the opposite direction, treating fabric like sculpture and construction like an engineering exercise disguised as beauty. Pleating, knotting, and draping became the vocabulary rather than decoration, with flashes of Indian craftsmanship and references to Lynda Benglis filtering through without ever feeling like homework. If Chanel asked you to disappear into a fairy tale, Dior invited you to admire the mechanics behind the illusion.

By Thursday, Paris had reached the point where standing still qualified as cardio. Of course Balenciaga seated everyone outside. There is probably something poetic about seeing your first Pierpaolo Piccioli couture collection while slowly evaporating in direct sunlight. I was too busy sweating through polyester to ruminate. Much has already been made of how much Valentino lingered in Piccioli’s Balenciaga couture debut. Maybe so. But after ready-to-wear collections that felt sportier than we’re used to from the designer, I welcomed seeing Piccioli feel unmistakably like himself again. His gift has always been emotional couture, and I’d much rather watch him begin from his own strengths before letting them gradually collide with Balenciaga’s house codes.

Then came Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier, the clear high of my week. Fashion crowds are paid in social capital to look impressed, and this time they actually were. Jean Paul Gaultier himself spent the entire show smiling and reacting like an especially enthusiastic FROW fan. Lantink brought his surreal proportions and sculptural instincts into couture without sanding away any of the oddness that makes his work sing, whether through impossible forms, exaggerated hips that felt closer to wearable sculpture than tailoring, or gowns that twisted and spiraled around the body like they were still being formed. There was even a flamingo moment! J’adore!

It’s not so often that couture week produces a designer people suddenly can’t stop talking about in hotel lobbies, outside shows, or halfway through bad coffees between appointments. This season, that person was Michael Stewart. Standing Ground’s couture debut possessed the sort of quiet confidence that does’’t need to announce itself. Staged inside the Irish Embassy before a room packed with some of fashion’s most experienced eyes, the collection expanded everything Stewart has been building over the last few years without losing the restraint that makes his work distinctive. Bias-cut ivory gowns skimmed the body with almost impossible precision, while sculptural draping and quietly architectural silhouettes proved you don’t need fireworks to make couture feel momentous. When I spoke to Stewart the day before the show, he admitted, “I’ve never been excited about a show before. Now I finally am.”

When your couture debut features Saskia de Brauw and Kristen McMenamy, you’re probably doing something right.

• Schiaparelli: Daniel Roseberry sent ghostly faces peering from the backs of dresses, inflated latex tentacles snaking around the body, and silicone molded to resemble skin. Wild.

  

• Robert Wun: Robert Wun closed with a model engulfed by a cloud of oversized black balloons, a few suspiciously phallic, because nobody stages existential dread quite like he does.

• Germanier: Germanier threw a maximalist party where every sequin, bead, and upcycled scrap seemed to have consumed three espressos.

• Manish Malhotra: Manish Malhotra brought unapologetic glamour, embroidery so intricate it bordered on optical illusion, and a welcome reminder that couture’s center of gravity has never belonged to just Paris.

There is a gay existence that requires assimilation. I get that. I understand that. Your safety comes first. For everyone else, I do think that there’s never been a more important time for gay people to be militant in their homosexuality. I think there’s something truly baller about those who keep cruising like it’s 1974, even though they have perfectly nice homes to do that in. I think the people who do the gnarly stuff at Folsom Street Fair have a god-given right to. That guy on Instagram who wears latex to the airport? I don’t want to assume your alphabet, but babe I’m proud of you. Whenever I see an unmistakeably queer person walk down the street, doing everything in their power to be looked at, potentially othered, I want to hug them for being so cool and brave for not giving a fuck. There’s a power in our collective nihilism that makes it harder to quell who we are, which seems, day by day, like the intention of the previously normal people around us.

I never thought of Britain as a particularly homophobic country when I was growing up, beyond the kind of bullshit most people get in school anyway. But more and more I’m noticing normies take an active interest in dictating the rights of the LGBTQ community. On Saturday, before I ended up with the sweaty shirtless gay guys, I was in central London watching a street preacher say his piece on the sins of practicing homosexuality. Two teenage furries were goading him in a way that felt appropriate for their age, teasing him, but keeping their hands (paws?) to themselves. But when they walked away, a girl with a high ponytail and a Coach handbag waved them off with a “ba-bye!”, her other hand interlocked in her sportswear-clad boyfriend’s. Two years ago, a diva like that would’ve been on the furry teenager’s side.

1. Tweet

2. The new Ryan Beatty album

I was in my first year of school when Section 28 was repealed in the UK, but I have no real recollection of learning much about queerness growing up. (To be fair, I didn’t live in a particularly cosmopolitan town; I think I’d met three gay guys by the time I’d turned 15.) We use that as a reference point for the era we’re returning to: one where overt displays of queerness are used as fodder for the tinfoil hat crew. Evidence, to them, that laying eyes on a queer person in public is akin to brainwashing. That we’re trying to ‘trans’ kids. My friend Liam has been on a determined campaign to get GB News, Britain’s cursed right wing TV station, to apologize for airing a braindead pundits’ unfounded claims that gay adoptive parents are more likely to sexually assault their children. But no one has—they’ve just brought on other pundits who echo the same sentiment. The fact is that, at the moment, so few people with mainstream sway are willing to put their name behind supporting those whose rights are being rescinded—namely trans people. You know things are bad in this rotten nation when you feel nostalgic for the days of Theresa May, our old Conservative prime minister who, despite being bigoted, sort of useless, and iconically bad at dancing, at least had it in her to stan the dolls. Today’s left-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer, who’s thankfully on his way out, seems terrified of standing with six feet of a progressive LGBTQ+ flag.

As my favorite scholar of the moment, @meditationsfortheanxiousmind, puts it: “The rainbow flag flops violently above institutions that manufacture missiles, drop bombs on hospitals, poison the water in developing countries, and then host a seminar on workplace inclusion.” So every time I see a queer awards ceremony presented by Peugeot, or an influencer post their collaboration with a supermarket on Pride weekend, I wonder if the route to true acceptance is the antithesis of assimilation. Maybe it’s saying the F-slur in a room of people who wince when they hear it, or wearing nothing but a jockstrap to the club, or reclaiming the forests of Hampstead Heath from the dog walkers to ensure its history lives on. Saying “pride is a protest” is as platitudinous and unhelpful as the parades that phrase exists to reject. So what’s our protest, in real terms?

I’ve started hanging out with Geordie Campbell after our mutual friend Ellis Howard connected us, mostly to gossip about the theme of his next collection. He just did a collaboration with Queer Was Always Here. He also gets the Alex Kessler seal of approval—that means a lot in these streets.

I asked him: Can you name a gay person?

Geordie Campbell: “Pride month was last month.”

• I saw the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Hayward Gallery this weekend. I’m a bit shruggish on the new works, which look like chewed up steaks, but the vertigo-inducing Vantablack and mirror pieces are worth the price of admission.

• Can’t stop thinking about this headline??

• I’m off to Madrid to finally see the Zara Larsson show on Wednesday! My allergy to London soil shall lift shortly after that.

• IDC about football, sorry x

So how could fashion people survive at Paris Men’s Fashion Week as the temps crept up? I spent 8 days trekking around sweating looking for the outfits that looked inspiring and felt cool—literally.

My list, in alphabetical order, is here. Let it serve some inspo for the long weekend and beyond.

Brandon Schröder-Seah

The commercial director of Kiko Kostadinov wears a lot of Kiko (no surprise), but puts it all together with an eclectic flea market jewelry.

Bruce Pask

Big Prada shorts are just one important element of the Bruce Pask (AVP of Men’s at Saks & Neiman Marcus) uniform, which has been flawless from Milan to Paris.

Calvin Holmes

Sometimes ice cream man, moretimes founder of C.Friends showroom, Calvin has been sporting Salon C. Lundeman and Birkenstocks for most of PFW.

Callan Malone

The brand director of Thistles has a treasure trove of vintage tops and the Phoebe Philo bag everyone else wants.

Cynthia Mehrej

Cynthia Mehrej is the founder of Renaissance Renaissance, the romantic and ruffly womenswear brand. But I love the way she mixes cute with utiity in her summer looks.

Diya Joukani

The Diya Diya founder is the only woman brave enough to wear jeans in a heatwave, and tried out a Dries Van Noten jacket at the show alongside some of her own pieces.

Edda Gudmundsdottir

Truly one of the most fabulous dressers on Earth, Edda Gudmundsdottir is a stylist for musicians (including Björk). I’m obsessed with her oversized pink dress and golden Dries Van Noten sandals.

Edward Buchanan

An eternal delegate on many Best Dressed lists, designer and man about fashion Edward Buchanan has a great wardrobe and a great vibe.

Eugenia Hermo

The Spanish Rick Owens P.R. genius has a closet full of sexy, indefatigable Rick.

Grace Winter

Manager of the Chopova Lowena sales, in CL with bike shorts and sleeves of tattoos.

Ibtissame Bellhouane

Never have I thought so much about a skort as I did Ibtissame’s Kiko Kostadinov x Levi’s one. She’s the head of PR there. Makes sense she’d slay.

Jacob Gallagher

Thank you Jacob for always giving me a ride in your car and thank you for blessing us all with a wardrobe of vintage Comme des Garçons Homme Plus shirts and Emily Dawn Long tees. As best suits a NYT reporter.

Jenny Smith

Jenny runs the 6397 showroom and runs laps around everyone else trying to do “elevated basics.”

Laetitia Lotthé

A closet full of Junya can do that for you—creative Laetitia has plenty and often coordinates her braids to her looks.

Mike Eckhaus

Sorry I don’t have a better pic of Mike Eckhaus’s zip-off shorts and tank. The night took a turn! So you’ll just have to trust me that Mike’s hybrid garments are 10/10 in 100 degrees.

Nick Tran

The pioneer of “soft leather belts,” my best friend, the only person who pairs LA Apparel with Comme des Garçons. The head of buying and merchandising at Dover Street Market Paris. The head of fashion in my book.

Phil Oh

Fashion’s number one print-mixer, street style photog Phil Oh might often be frowny faced outside a show, but his wardrobe is all cheer.

Sam Hine

Transcendental summer vibe from Sam, in a vintage tee, Bode shorts, and Repetto lace-ups. No wonder he’s on every moodboard.

Sophia Stel

Blessed to have sat near Sophia at Lemaire, where she sported layers of black separates. Best dressed musician? To me, yes.

Thistle Brown

Sometimes it’s as simple as a great trouser as flip-flop, proven by the Thistles founder, photographer, and stylist.

Zainab Jama

The head of PR at Supreme and the coolest woman alive, managing to wear all black in the heat and not even sweat it!

Tada Dairei, nominated by Rikesh Patel

The head of DSM Ginza has tons of Comme and Craig Green. Happy prints always.

Yumi Shin, nominated by Nick Tran

The EVP of Global Partnerships at Nordstrom is the gold standard of good taste, someone Tommy Ton literally waits for outside shows. Yumi was on my BEST DRESSED OF MILAN LIST (pictured here at Bar Luce pre-Prada) and is BEST DRESSED anywhere any time. I once saw her walking back from the gym in Phoebe Philo. TRUE.

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In 2022 I encountered one of these garments in an appointment-only vintage shop in Paris: An Issey Miyake Pleats Please top with a recipe for cherry buns on it. Fashion loves food, but I’ve never been one to be seduced by a Loewe Tomato Clutch or a Dolce and Gabbana dress covered in rigatoni. This wasn’t for the lay-foodie, this was for a PASTRY CHEF, for someone who might actually stop what they were doing and bake the cake, for the founder of an obscure literary magazine with cake in the name. The man presiding over my visit (who seemed acutely aware that everything in the room exceeded my checking account balance) informed me that it once had a sister, a matching pleated skirt. Both came from an early aughts Issey Miyake collection dedicated to repurposed culinary ephemera. I took to the internet to investigate. There were other pastries, namely a “Farmhouse Cake,” rendered in glorious guava pink with a cherry-red type. I surrendered to the obsession, trawling eBay, and messaging sellers on obscure Japanese vintage sites with search terms like ““Recipe Print Please” and “レシピのプリーツを印刷してください” in increasingly desperate combinations.

All roads lead to Depop. In March of this year, a Google Alert notified me of a Pleats Please set advertised as “irresistible for bakers.” “Whimsy and pop!” The time was nigh. We haggled back and forth, offers ricocheting like gunfire, until I was $783.00 poorer and experiencing what I can only describe as post-nut clarity, a feeling that I tried to offset by justifying it as a gift for the recent release of a book.

The things you idolize have an unfortunate habit of disappointing you. Much the same way I thought I would transform into an actualized version of myself after publishing a narrative cookbook (lol), wearing the set made me feel frumpy and exposed: The cut was vaguely unflattering, the color unforgiving for my rosacea-addled skin. It felt like cosplay. The clothes that I’d actually become myself in were grease-stained Agnes B jeans from long shifts and camo Crocs. I was devastated, then incensed. This was my punishment for dressing like the person I aspired to be. No returns on Depop! Then I realized there was only one reasonable thing to do: Bake the Cake. The recipe, however, presented a problem. The pleats had swallowed most of the instructions. Entire verbs had succumbed to the folds. There was self-raising flour, something that appeared to say “add mousse” (?) a “quick oven,” (mystifying) and “glacé cherries,” all of it oozing post-War British housewife.

What I like about baking is that most people think it’s precise, when, in reality, you can usually throw shit together and it will work out just fine (dressing, I realized, might actually be the same way). If there was ever a sound test of the theory, it would be this illegible recipe. I was going to a dinner anyway, and I was expected to bring dessert. I tried to write down a vague set of instructions from the garment. Then I procured maraschino cherries, my closest approximation, and brought them into work. I whisked olive oil and melted butter together because I didn’t have the patience for creaming, then threw in some sugar and self rising flour, “a little bit of milk just enough to make the mixture wet enough.” I didn’t have high hopes when I ferried it into the “quick oven,” but the cake turned out delicious, plush with an added syrupy sweetness from the cherries. The recipe, it turns out, was more satisfying than the garment it was written on.

• 2 cupfuls self-raising flour

• 3 oz. butter (I used half melted butter, half olive oil)

• 4 eggs

• 1 teaspoonful baking powder

• 2½ cupfuls brown sugar

• 1 oz. glacé cherries

• ... ground cinnamon (vibe it out diva!)

• ... nutmeg (skipped)

• …a little milk (“just enough to make mixture wet enough”)

Preheat the oven to a “moderate” temperature. Whisk the butter and olive oil together with the brown sugar. Add a dash of vanilla if you have it, then the eggs. Toss in the self-raising flour, baking powder, and a pinch of salt, then fold in a bit of milk until your batter is the right texture…you’ll figure it out! Top with the cherries and bake until it looks like a farmhouse cake.

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Despite starting off with a flop—Clavicular walking the runway at 424—the Spring 2027 menswear shows might be the most clothing-pilled fashion week in years. The infamous lookmaxxer’s runway cameo was met with not only disdain but reassuring apathy. Because the best shows this season had nothing to do with making memes or -maxxing of any kind. They were about clothes and how you live your life in them.

The main moods that jumped out across the 100-degree days were jubilant, elegant, romantic, and vibrant—a far cry from the streetwear-inflected cryptobro era of yore. Here, we saw menswear exit the manosphere that we hear about so often on our algorithms. There was eclecticism and sharp wackiness at Celine by Michael Rider, where models wore hair beads and shirts knotted up into hats. There was poetry and ethereality at Dries Van Noten by Julian Klausner, with sequin wraps, ballooning anoraks, and patterned scarves made into backless tops. At Rick Owens, comedy and pleasure in the form of climate-controlled Adidas blobs. At Lemaire, rainy sex appeal in stony shades. At Comme Des Garçons, the models jogged for joy during the finale.

DRIES VAN NOTEN

Julian Klausner wanted “something light and delicate” for his third menswear effort at Dries Van Noten. Drawing from an 1876 poem, The Faun’s Afternoon by Stephane Mallarmé, Klausner worked through a pastoral palette in light shorts, clouds-at-dusk printed trenches, and even a little cheetah print. The styling (shoutout Robbie Spencer) with single leather gloves and two-toned socks, only emphasized the spriteliness of these dudes, a bit Puck by way of Provence. After the show, I heard some guys say it was too romantic—god forbid a man have a little whimsy! I loved the embroidered green cargos with a navy anorak and the sea-print swim shorts with an open blouse. That’s sexy and sensual to me.

KIKO KOSTADINOV

Celebrating 10 years in the biz, Kiko Kostadinov did something so few designers today do: Continue an idea they had a season before. For Fall 2026, he stripped away all patterns and fastenings and made a minimalist almost entirely monochrome collection. For Spring 2027, the spirit evolved into stony violets and bright cerulean blues (cleverly coordinating with my hair, TYSM, Kiko). A couple hours after the show, I was taking advantage of his showroom’s AC, marveling at how elegant and mature the clothes are—sophisticated and sleek, windbreakers with hidden pockets, long trousers that end in a “flower” shape that splays out over the foot (some of which were painted blue on the runway). “To achieve something in fashion you have to propose a silhouette, otherwise you’re just making nice clothes,” he told reporters after the show. Bars.

RICK OWENS

It was SO HOT and SO FREAKY DEAKY at the Rick Owens show I felt something almost biblical had occurred. Gigantic wind suits, latex capes, low-rise jeans. He is the only man who should ask guests to sit in direct sunlight at 40-degrees Celsius because his clothing and his spirit demand that kind of primal, carnal, out-of-body experience. I wanna SWEAT I wanna SHIVER at the Rick Owens show.

COMME DES GARCONS

“If the war were to end” was the statement Rei Kawakubo had for her upbeat Comme des Garçons show this season. In flowing stripes, flowers, and punkish bright colors, the collection was a rebuttal of darkness and gloom in favor of welcoming and lively silhouettes. Tailcoats with draped hems were a highlight for me, as were the models skipping their way through the finale.

LEMAIRE

Maybe it was just the one model with a slicked back bob and crimson lipstick, but the Lemaire show felt sexier and loucher than usual to me. Men wore either cropped leather bombers or long trenchcoats in moss, slate, and muted rose as they ambled about in flip-flops or smart brogues. The soundtrack was just the natural jitter of Paris: birds chirping, rain falling, kids cheering. It was a world dripping with taste and a hint of sex. The Lemaire shopper does not use TikTok and they’re better for it.

WILLY CHAVARRIA

“How do we seek and appreciate joy and happiness in a time when everything is going to shit?” asked Willy Chavarria at a preview. His answer was clothing imbued with a sense of slay—big shoulders, loose shorts, cunty bags (his words). Chavarria can take it to the MAX, but here, he offered a chic restraint, choosing to make everyday clothes with a bit of pizzazz. At a preview he referred to one seafoam denim jacket as “Ralph Lauren… because one day I’m going to take over his brand.” I’d put his name in the ring!

Dior showed petulant little princes in loose blazers and neckties. I clicked through the gallery thinking, “I’d party with these guys.”

Celine was probably the wowee moment of the week, with 73 wholly unique propositions for men. Hair beads? Yes. Red leggings? Sure! Drainpipe jeans? Hell yeah. It reminded me of Phoebe Philo’s late stage Celine shows, done by someone so confident in their vision the only unifying thread is that vision itself.

Saint Laurent does a lot with a little, choosing to iterate on a narrow group of silhouettes. I love the anoraks tucked into trousers and the gold section that closed the show, but others can’t stop talking about the plastic shoes.

Jacquemus looked fresh and lovely on the seaside of Corsica. I crashed another critic’s preview of the collection and was happy to see easy shapes and summery colors. Simon Porte Jacquemus is best when he doesn’t overthink it, instead offering a blissful naivete.

My apologies to the below showrooms, shows, and presentations. I am just one woman without a car in 100-degree heat. Acne Studios, Givenchy, Hermes, Lanvin, and Soshiotsuki all offered well-edited versions of modern suiting and vaguely prep looks in lots of beautiful colorways like cornflower blue and sun yellow. I especially liked the acid green at Soshiotsuki and the rep stripe ties worn with chambray shirts at Acne.

Amidst all this individuality and uniqueness, I couldn’t help but wonder… is normie style back? I saw so many amazing jeans and tees, starting with Prada’s super-skinnies and flowing into Auralee’s smart washed denim with a flannel and Our Legacy’s baggies paired with a grungy sweater. The vibe continued at Kenzo, Wales Bonner, and Sacai, hitting a crescendo with Isabel Marant, which has perfected the All-American hot Cali prepster look. But the true master of looking HOT SEXY AND FREE in your JEANS AND TEE is ERL, who staged a presentation of exquisitely worn-in denim, checked shirts, and groovy floral suiting. Forget normcore, please. The best look for a regular dude trying to flex next spring is the CALI QUARTERBACK—sunbleached hair, big tan, loose shorts, and an ERL plaid. There’s no wonder why Pharrell took his LV show to the beach this season. It’s just the vibe.

• It’s possible Maluma attended more fashion shows than I did. I saw him at Amiri and Yohji Yamamoto, shows directly before-and-after each other, in completely different outfits. Did he change in the car?

• Someone told me that they are petitioning for Men’s Fashion Week to move to late-May and early-November because of climate change. Let’s DO IT. I personally cannot survive another 100-degree showroom.

• In my next newsletter… The BEST DRESSED PEOPLE OF PFW. Reply if you have someone to nominate.