It was almost fated to end this way: Back in 2024, Warner Bros greenlit this Big Oil satire from the typically reliable auteur Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (Birdman, Amores Perros) with an eyewatering rumored budget of $125 million—you imagine based on the fact that Cruise, one of today’s few real box office draws, had signed on to star. That’s a steep hill to climb in today’s climate, and making money isn’t everything, but all of the similar anxieties that surrounded One Battle After Another this time last year—that an original movie made for a lot of money might crash and burn—lifted when we realized that it was actually quite a good movie.

The problem with Digger is that it’s not interested in engaging its audience. It’s a black comedy with barely a funny joke in it. A movie with a message that we’ve been fed innumerable times before in a more piercing fashion. This “big swing” spirit that’s enshrouded this movie since we heard of its existence—one that Iñárritu and the studio is asking critics to withhold—doesn’t really make it better. In fact, it exposes plenty of flaws in the film’s thoughtless logic. I get the impression that that polite request has been made because it makes what’s already a fairly niche film even more niche, narrowing its appeal. That’s a death knell for its box office potential.

So what’s it about? In the walls of his mansion in America, billionaire oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Cruise) lives a sheltered existence, devoid of empathy for anyone other than his mangy, incontinent cat. A phone call comes: In Greenland, one of his lucrative oil rigs has caused a widening crevice in the ice, and methane is escaping. Any moment now, an explosion will put Digger’s employees in danger, and cause a massive block of ice to detach, get caught in a jetstream that will drag it towards northern Europe, and cause a seismic, catastrophic tsunami that will kill hundreds of thousands of people.

A meeting of US government officials is called, including the hapless President Compson played by John Goodman, but of course it’s the moneymakers, not the policymakers, who lead the response. Everyone in the picture—with the exception of Riz Ahmed’s Ganesh, the President’s scientific voice of reason—wants to wash their hands of it. Until it becomes an unavoidably US problem.

The film, a “parable” about climate change, is completely devoid of subtext—loud, blatant, painting in broad strokes. Its fascistic, capital-driven characters literally lean forward when the topic of conversation turns to money, and scoff at human casualties. Great actors play cartoon versions of real people, which would be fine if the film was willing to match them on an equally exuberant, comical level. But instead it plods along in a series of dull confrontations and even duller conversations, searching for a deeper purpose in its chamber-like set. To respect those who want to go into the movie without spoilers, the most I’ll say is that the film has an element of artifice to it—it may be a matryoshka doll but each one looks identical.

I’m not typically an Iñárritu hater—I loved Birdman’s quirks, found things to like in his lumbering Netflix movie Bardo that nobody saw, and thought Babel was beautiful. But there’s something deeply ironic about a film about mishandled wealth being this expensive and, well, badly handled. Passion projects are important; I’m always glad to see a filmmaker get carte blanche and go crazy. But the results here feel so inconsequential. You can Marmite market it in any way you want, but let’s call a spade a spade: Digger just isn’t very good.

• I’ve never really understood the Tinashe thing on a stan level, but her new record Popstar is thrilling.

• Dove Ellis, the singer-songwriter who I love and will shout about until I’m blue in the face, released a live EP in support of War Child this week, recorded at a show I saw earlier this year. He’s got a “not of this earth’”voice.

• I haven’t seen it yet but I’m hearing the Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, starring Anne Hathaway and my new bestie Dakota Johnson, is camp and stupid in a good way.

• i-D has a few Who Weekly stans on staff, and I’m eagerly awaiting the UK arrival of its creators Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber’s first book, I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity.

It helps to be jolted awake by Prada. The 7 a.m. flight from Heathrow into Linate was a proper fashion bus, and we all rustled to change into our “quick drag” (as José at Vanity Fair called it) to be Prada-appropriate. I’ll admit I was worried. The menswear show presented in June, often as a counterpart to this September womenswear show, was all pants. PANTS?! I am vehemently anti-pant, and while I admire the perfect 5-pocket on a rocker lad, it will simply never be for me. Thankfully, Mrs. Prada is for the girls, instead presenting 63 unique iterations of the skirt.

Sound the klaxon: SIXTY-THREE NEW PRADA SKIRTS!!!

Was it a statement on obsession and appropriateness? Commentary on the Prada hoarders—and those who’ve recently given up that life? (Shoutout, Emilia!) Maybe it was just love, that in her skirt, Mrs. P is most herself. I can relate. In the kinky nylon Velcro pencils tightened over florals, I found sex. In the organza-covered silk midis with flattened bows, I found sweetness. In a bejeweled metal number, there was joy, and in leather skirt suits with mini pleated numbers, there was punk. My favorite is a red silk number, just to the knee, pleated upward around the body with a cascade of ruffles dripping down the front.

After the show, I had a gelato with i-D bestie John Glacier who summarized the Prada secret perfectly: “Be you. Be bold. Admit you are already beautiful.”

So I’m on a Prada high and need to keep the good vibes going… what does one do? SHOP. If all you care about is consumer power, scroll to the bottom for my vintage store recs.

But before that, I’d like to talk about Gucci. The #StoreShow was held in a gigantic fake Gucci store somewhere out west of Milan, a perfect Synecdoche, New York kind of headtrip into a surreal other world. I don’t think anyone was studying the implications of a fake store, of a fake universe, of the fake clients who perused the very real sunglasses and jewelry. Everyone was looking at Shawn Mendes, Cardi B, and Jannik Sinner in the FROW or Tina Leung, Jill Demling, and Candace Swanepoel (wow) on the runway. What I enjoyed most about this Gucci show was the earnestness about being a little tacky. That’s a lie, actually. What I loved were the plaid skirts with layered shirts and bombers worn with white tights. (Me?!) But the overall atmosphere of pseudo-sophistication, of playing with glamour and wealth, of teasing appropriateness, of pushing it to a fabulous limit, felt really right for Gucci and really right for Demna, who’s always liked to toe the line of taste. The collection, twisting from prep to South Beach ooh-la-laaaaaa, felt like a new direction for him, less tied to the street and more tied to the private jet lounge at Teterboro Airport.

The other show that gave me an electrifying jolt was Jil Sander. Minimalism?! No, I know it sounds crazy, but Simone Bellotti is hitting his stride at the chicly understated brand. Aside from the fold-over bags in superhero colors, I loved the small ways he infuses levity into the clothes. Maybe it’s a colored tight. A “baroque” gold button, as he called them during our coffee meeting, or a “messed-up” mountain print in neons to surprise shoppers (and the audience). Ballooning cape dresses in lemon and rose got gasps at the show, but the real standout is a pale pink crushed silk dress with a sheer overlay that flutters around the neck. Simone told me he’s already gotten many requests for it as a wedding dress.

Before the wedding, there’s the romance, of which there was much at Diesel. La Horde choreographed an audience of writhers, kissers, and people just putting their tongues in each other’s mouths. It was hot? But weird? But funny? Sort of a perfect summation of Glenn Martens’ brilliant tenure at Diesel, where he made the hottest, weirdest, most fun clothes in Milan. I loved seeing Ella Snyder, the first-ever model to walk one of Glenn’s Diesel shows, close the show in her red hair.

Elsewhere around Milan, there was a fabulous, quirked-up Marni show that really took up the dorky-chic mantle once upheld by Prada, with sock-boots and layered jersey capris under nylon midi-skirts. The room was vibrating with excitement and the shoppies. Meryll Rogge has found a way to stimulate our minds and our wallets, which I do think is a uniquely feminine skill. Meryll, I’ll be seeing you at the salon and at the check-out counter.

Moschino turned brilliant, thanks to new designers Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina, who had the genius idea to cast their models against the Milanese sky and hundreds of people in their everyday clothes. The Moschino cast went one way, the crowd went the other. A nice display for breaking the mold, and for the colorful, boxy separates Simone and Loris presented.

Ferragamo left propriety behind and offered steamy—in every sense—sex appeal with latex dresses and broad, 1940s-inspired tailoring. I enjoyed the structured coats most, and the draped tailoring worn by forever Ferragamo model and personal bestie Zainab Jama.

I left Milan on an absolute high at Bottega Veneta. I sat beside i-D cover hero and legend Goldie, who chatted me up for 20 minutes before the show and a couple of times during to point out different jungle songs on the soundtrack. HEAVEN. But the clothes, too, were a heavenly diversion from the more cerebral and structured look Louise Trotter has been advocating for at BV for a couple seasons. The spilling-apart crocheted tops were favorites, as was the sorbetto trio on Mariacarla Boscono. Bottega Veneta was the only show in Milan to really evoke those happy summertime vibes—sitting at the seaside, three spritzes deep, reading the newspaper, and wondering what the future might hold. Maybe that’s where Kendall Jenner (who closed the show) and Jacob Elordi (her BF in the FROW) will be wearing their Bottega next…..

Now the SHOPPING, I PROMISED YOU.

1. Madame Pauline Vintage: Recommended by my style north stars Brooke Bobb and Nick Tran, this store is a well-curated selection of vintage Versace, JPG, and Chanel, with prices to match. I went with Miyako Bellizzi, the world’s greatest stylist, and she got a great no-label emerald taffeta overskirt that was giving 1980s corporate Christmas Party.

   

2. Cavalli e Nastri: A Milanese mainstay, the multiple Cavalli e Nastri locations mix the high (a Yves Saint Laurent taffeta white gown) with the random (anonymous knit halters and acrylic floral earrings) for a delightful shopping experience. After hitting the women’s store with Miyako, Sam Hine and Noah Johnson joined us to hit the men’s, where Noah had got a Gianfranco Ferré bomber earlier in the week.

   

3. Pezze: Kind of an It Spot, Pezze has a small selection of Y2K vintage and ephemera, like flip phones. I tried on a perfect pair of bottle-green Bulgari sunglasses that I regret not buying. If you’re reading this, Pezze owner, pls DM me.

4. Bivio: There’s Prada bags and random charity-shop items at Bivio, making it a fun hunt. I almost left with said Prada, but I did watch Miyako leave with a vintage Eddie Bauer “Floatation Suit.” You can imagine the silhouette.

5. Via Lambrate: A bit outside the city, this store is the more chill sister of Madame Pauline. Brooke Bobb and Chloe King hit it up and left me drooling over endless pictures of vintage Prada and Dries Van Noten.

6. Sous Vintage: My forever favorite in the south of Milan, Sous has an eclectic mix of Tom Ford-era Gucci and the best army jackets and shearlings in the city. I love the vibe in there and was depressed that I missed out on visiting this trip.

7. It’s not for sale, but I had the time of my life: The Prada Galleria exhibition space of vintage Prada pieces from 1913 to today: The expansive show proves Mrs. P is a genius not just of fashion, but of communication. The displays ranged from her 2009 gold metal dress to the newly designed NASA space suits, from ’90s Prada Beauty packaging to the Prada LG phone from the 2000s. I was so high on Prada that, yes, I did shop at the Galleria store after, where I ran into another inspired shopper Becky, buying the most amazing Fall 2026 pieces.

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Aris Navarro is often shirtless. You can find him on OnlyFans or at a farm in Greece.

I’d take you on a first date to… My village. Think bomb food, cheap local wine, and skinny-dipping. I believe in… Romanticising as much as possible. You’ll never see me… Waste food. I eat like a pig. The last thing that made me cry was… The ending of La La Land, basically a horror movie disguised as a musical.

Ecca Vandal is a South African-born musician, loyal to her fans and her Chopova Lowena skirts.

I’d take you on a first date to… Fluffy’s, an ice cream shop in LA. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… A DVD I borrowed from the library: Bad Brains live at CBGB in 1982. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… A city with affordable rent, permanent golden hour, and live jazz on every corner.

Lucila Safdie makes clothes and Marley Wendt writes about them. They are best friends.

We’d take you on a first date to… The karaoke bar down our street. We believe in… Everything happens for a reason. You’ll never see us… Without each other. The piece of media that rewired our brain chemistry was… The Summer I Turned Pretty. Our worst habit is… Gossiping. Our signature scent is… Buzz candy.

Auri Ribes and Sam Coppel are two people we love who found love.

My dream blunt rotation is…

AURI: Mary-Louise Parker, Peter Sellers, and Jon Lovitz.

SAM: Erstwhile US senator and presidential hopeful Huey Long, erstwhile US senator and president Lyndon B. Johnson, and Liz Truss.

I’d take you on a first date to…

AURI: Mexico.

SAM: Ledge near water.

I believe in…

AURI: Life being precious.

SAM: Man on the street. Funny format!

You’ll never see me…

AURI: Without my laptop.

SAM: Not wearing a piece of clothing I’ve made.

Meredith Mickelson loves acting. She lives in Los Angeles.

I’d take you on a first date to… Matsuhisa and a Lakers game. I believe in… God. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Any Wong Kar-wai film. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… One where I could teleport and talk to the dead. Pretty sick combo. Time stands still when… I sneeze.

Payton Talbott fights for a living. The pro martial artist hails from Reno.

My dream blunt rotation is… My childhood dog (Gunner), Jack Foley, Agent Smith (The Matrix). I believe in… The collective consciousness, pop music. You’ll never see me… Giving unwanted advice. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Toonami. The last thing that made me cry was… Cutting onions. My worst habit is… Not sleeping. My signature scent is… Ginger.

Calvin Holmes founded Charms and has since become London’s favourite ice cream man.

I’d take you on a first date to… An ice cream tour of London. You’ll never see me… Hating on rum and raisin. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… The food fight scene in Hook. Time stands still when… I’m eating a Dairy Queen Cherry Dipped cone. My worst habit is… Buying kitchen appliances and never using them.

Ledbyher is the UK rapper taking bedroom drill global.

My dream blunt rotation is… Gemma Collins, Snoop Dogg, Baymax from Big Hero 6. I believe in… Aliens, ghosts, and my sister Anjeli. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… @shopkeeperdee. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… Narnia! Time stands still when… I’m three blunts deep. My signature scent is… Jo Malone’s Peony & Blush Suede.

Ariel Steinbach and Atticus Wakefield are a New York It couple. They love making art and they love each other.

I’d take you on a first date to…

ARIEL: A Sophia Stel concert.

ATTICUS: Double Down Saloon

I believe in…

ARIEL: Asking for forgiveness, not permission.

ATTICUS: False idols and snake oil salesmen.

The last thing that made me cry was…

ARIEL: Sentimental Value.

ATTICUS: The IRS.

Time stands still when…

ARIEL: I’m alone in my studio.

ATTICUS: Painting—might be the fumes.

My signature scent is…

ARIEL: Chanel N°5.

ATTICUS: Marlboro Gold.

Underscores is based in Los Angeles and is here to save underground music.

My dream blunt rotation is… Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth. You’ll never see me… In a crowwwwwnnnn. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Bones and All. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… When I was a kid, the frozen yoghurt private school they went to in an iCarly episode. My worst habit is… Looking at Twitter.

Carolina Durante is a Madrid-based rock band named after one of its members’ summer flings.

Our dream blunt rotation is… Iggy Pop and Patti Smith. We’d love to hear their stories. We believe in… Everything YouTube tells us. The piece of media that rewired our brain chemistry was… Social media. It’s like that Parquet Courts song: “And it feels like my brain is the binary code’s problem now.” If we could live in a fictional universe, we’d choose… Studio Ghibli.

Eni Subair has a wardrobe sent from heaven. She is also an editor from London.

I’d take you on a first date to… An escape room. It tells you so much about someone! You’ll never see me… Driving. Can’t do it, won’t do it. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Seasons 1 through 10 of Grey’s Anatomy. I’m a simple woman! Time stands still when… I hear Mariah Carey in the wild.

Zane Li designs the clothes you wish were in your closet.

I’d take you on a first date to… Malibu Seafood. You’ll never see me… On a hike. The last thing that made me cry was… Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues. Time stands still when… I’m awake from jet lag at 2 a.m., after travelling back and forth to China. My worst habit is… Forgetting to eat. My signature scent is… L’Immensité.

Zoë Bleu looks like a fairy, but is actually an actress. She recently played the lead in Luc Besson’s Dracula.

I’d take you on a first date to… A church or temple or somewhere to light a candle and make a wish. I believe in… Light and love. I feel love in its purest form is the perfume of light. The last thing that made me cry was… Deyrolle, when I saw the bug section. The colours absolutely fucked me up.

Konnie Stafford is a Central Saint Martins student and founder of The Majency, a mother agency for trans models.

My dream blunt rotation is… Pete Burns, Cleopatra, and the coconut crab that ate Amelia Earhart. I believe in… Wearing navy and black together. The last thing that made me cry was… Now why should I tell you that? If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… Trandinavia. My worst habit is… Being an unpunishable redhead. My signature scent is… Salmon.

Nayan Patel makes art. He has a soft spot for Choco Leibniz.

My dream blunt rotation is… John Waters, Nicole Kidman, Grimes. You’ll never see me… Wearing an Apple Watch. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Lady Gaga Live at the SXSW Doritos #BoldStage (March, 2014) (HD Remaster). The last thing that made me cry was… That’s personal! Time stands still when… I press the button. My signature scent is… Rolls of nickels and ashtray.

ZEP is the biggest musician from the smallest village in the Netherlands.

My dream blunt rotation is… David Bowie, Sister Nancy, Rick Owens, and my dad. I believe in… A free Palestine. You’ll never see me… Yeah, probably. But if you do, say wassup! The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… FKA twigs and Spike Jonze’s Apple commercial. My signature scent is… Aftershave and gasoline and roses.

Skaiwater has been cosigned by all your favourite rappers. They’re from Nottingham.

My dream blunt rotation is… Brad Pitt, Kanye West, Jesus, Steve Jobs, John Kiriakou. I’d take you on a first date to… The crib. I believe in… Me. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Babylon. The last thing that made me cry was… My last session. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… This one.

Camila Arroyo has body control like no other in CDMX. She also holds a PhD.

The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… Beau Travail by Claire Denis, Daddy Yankee’s early mixtapes, William Forsythe’s ballets. If I could live in a fictional universe, I’d choose… The one in the movie Center Stage. Time stands still when… Dancing, when performing, when in love! My worst habit is… Being late to everything—except work.

Nellie Eden is a beauty editor. When this magazine is out, she’ll also be a mother.

I’d take you on a first date to… Watch me eat a very expensive steak. The piece of media that rewired my brain chemistry was… The opening credits of Roswell. The last thing that made me cry was… Cat adoption videos on social media. Me and my bestie Ana Takahashi send them to one another daily. My signature scent is… Carnal Flower by Frédéric Malle.

Daniel Arnold is a New York legend who takes pictures.

My dream blunt rotation is… A fox, a goose, and a bag of grain. I believe in… Love and death. Hunger and thirst. The last thing that made me cry was… Unabashed jubilation and abstract homesickness. Time stands still when… My boy walks down the street. My worst habit is… Photography. My signature scent is… I like the pope’s cologne that they sell at the Vatican.

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So without a DVD—or even a movie, actually—what follows is the magazine version of a Director’s Commentary on i-D’s AW26 issue. Not because we want you to buy it (if you do, it’s now available at your local mag-monger, and there also are a couple copies left to order online here), but because there’s nothing more delicious than the rare, esoteric information that gets trapped inside physical media.

Ah, our covers. You might look at these covers and see icons at the top of their respective fields, photographed beautifully, and looking impossibly cool. What I mostly see is fluorescent pink, which serves as a type of connective tissue for the entire issue. What I like most about this pink is that the way it’s printed is impossible to see on a screen. In its printed form, it has an intensity, vibrancy, and presence (it even fades over time) that makes you glad you picked up something printed on paper. That was the exact idea, courtesy of our art director Brent David Freaney.

P. 38: One of the most fun parts of making magazines is being able to leave Easter Eggs noticed only by people who pay way too much attention (and maybe only you). Something we’ve done for the last four issues of i-D is assign each of our contributors a typed emoticon—like “i-D” itself—which appears at the bottom of the pages that they worked on. You will also notice that the entire page is incredibly pink.

Pp. 66–67: “What’s Up” is a section that we started doing in the last issue that was inspired by a portfolio from 1993 that Editorial Director Steff Yotka found in the archive. The idea is quite simple: take a couple dozen of our favorite people (some you know, some you don’t), snap their picture, and ask them some questions. This approach to storytelling was a seminal part of the early issues of i-D, and it still works very well today. This issue, we added a questionnaire that each participant had to fill out by hand. We then scanned their responses and incorporated some of them (in pink, obviously) into the layout.

Pp. 124–125 and pp. 76–77: Mag-making is inherently about nerding out, and we love nothing more than a callback to the archive. i-D’s archive room is literally the central location in our London office, and spending time there is inspiring on a near-hallucinatory level. There’s a lot of ways to reference a magazine’s history in the present. For our profile on Jake’s, we used i-D’s iconic Straight Ups format to document the denizens of the beloved London brand’s pop-ups. (If you’re wondering who the dashing gentleman in the white cardigan is, that’s Deputy Editor Alex Kessler, who wrote the profile.) Another way to reference the archive is to find something that disappeared for some reason and simply bring it back—like we did with i-D’s defunct Writing Contest. If you can believe it, we got over 2,000 submissions for the Contest—and if you can believe it, we read every single one of them. This piece by Isabelle Eastman from Spokane, Washington, is one of the winners.

Pp. 138–139: If you forced me to tell you what my favorite story from the issue is, I would probably say Associate Editor Marley Wendt’s portfolio on gallery girls in London. It has all the hallmarks of a classic i-D story: underground spunk, anthropological levels of honesty, and deeply fabulous people you’ve never met before.

Pp. 264–265 and pp. 92–93: Perhaps one of the great paradoxes of mag-making is the reality that you are making something that some people will read dutifully line by line, but also something that most people will flip through haphazardly. That’s why we put a great deal of creative focus on what we call “openers,” the first spread in a story. These are the proverbial signposts that pull you out of skimming by capturing your interest—whether that’s your interest in wacky accessories or Sophie Thatcher looking spooky.

Pp. 180–181, pp. 148–149, and pp. 198–199: I apologize in advance to those who know me because I say this all the time, but at its core a magazine is… one page glued to another. Sounds stupid, but that’s exactly the point. Sticking things together is the principle act of making a magazine, and that’s something you can create ideas with and have fun with in a myriad of ways. One of my favorite ways of sticking things together is with spreads in which similar images (or even two copies of the exact same image) are printed across from each other. It has this instantly cinematic effect, like you’re seeing two frames in a spool of 35mm film. It also has a special uncanniness when you’re holding the magazine with each hand side by side, with each of your eyes side by side, that is inherently gripping on a reptile-brain level. It’s something that you cannot replicate in the vertically-dominant zone of social media—but I’m curious if the new folding iPhone might change that.

Pp. 118–119 and pp. 220–221: 9 times out of 10, I find fashion editorials incredibly boring. No doubt, there are masters of the genre who have blown my mind and changed the way I think about images. But most of the time, my brain just goes, “Okay, cute person, cute outfit, flip, flip, boring, next!” So what makes a fashion editorial actually good? Sometimes it’s about knocking your socks off on a purely visual level. Or about a force of personality or casting that brings a human gravity to the imagery. But some of my favorite fashion editorials ever sing because they have a concept that engages your mind just a little bit. Take Jackson Bowley and Alex Kessler’s shoot about the state of menswear—yes, you can just shoot a dude looking hot in clothes, but adding the maternal figure dressing the model adds a dimension of Freudian fun to a study on what masculinity means today. Or take our fine jewelry story, shot by Shahram Saadat and masterminded by Fashion Director Clare Byrne, which places deeply luxurious items into gloriously unluxurious everyday settings. By simply flipping that context, you suddenly have something with semiotic tension that’s also powerfully chic.

Pp. 128–129: i-D is a magazine that has fun, but at the end of the day, we’re going to make you read and have real thoughts at some point along the way. To that effect, Senior Editor Nicolaia Rips wrote this incredibly astute and funny essay about the fact that people don’t read anymore. I would tell you more about it…but just find a copy and read it yourself.

Did you catch the MOTHER tee on page 153 and 240? This easter egg is an Aritzia exclusive, in collaboration with i-D Magazine. A limited edition run will be available to purchase on Aritzia.com from tomorrow, September 26.

Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to sign off and say thank you, since this also happens to be my last issue as the Editor-in-Chief of i-D. It’s the honor of a lifetime to make magazines for a living, and an even bigger honor to have you guys read them, whether it’s here, elsewhere online, or in print. Since the moment I started working in publishing, it’s been treated like a frail artform on the verge of extinction. And yet here we are, writing with laptops that match our Birkins…

LFW is the place you’re likely to find something unexpected, where the designers are young and the clothes are often trying to make a point. The appeal of LFW is partly that its coolness belongs to its residents. It’s a fashion week built around experimentation and the idea that the next big thing can happen practically anywhere. But when an entire fashion week has a reputation for being cool, you start to wonder what everyone is doing to maintain it. And whether being “cool” is even still cool when it’s the expectation.

The last time I was somewhere this obsessed with being cool was in high school. You’d think that, by adulthood, we might have moved on from the grand illusion of coolness and popularity. But then you arrive at a fashion show, see someone you’ve met five times, and they ask you who you are. Suddenly, you’re back in the school cafeteria, trying to figure out which table you’re supposed to be sitting at.

The coolness presented on the runway in London was very literal. There were cigarettes in hand—whether a recession indicator or simply proof that you were in London—and sunglasses worn indoors. London, known for its repertoire of all-nighters, offered a very “Cool 101” approach to the idea: at Aaron Eesh, models walked through a grimy Camden venue in nylon tights and leather hot pants, looking as though they had somewhere better to be. R&M Leathers was one of the brands that opened the season with an off-schedule show that was, shockingly, all leather, because sometimes the quickest way to look cool is to commit to one bit completely. At Mowalola and Liza Keane, leather took on a more sensual life, and both brands understood that the coolest girl in school knows exactly what she looks good in.

The funny thing about LFW is that it’s full of different cliques. The cool kids are not only the ones in leather coats, they are also the “weirdos,” which kind of feels like a sentiment about the city itself. When I arrived at newcomer Ellen Poppy Hills’ show, the walls were plastered with art school kids drinking Campari Beer cocktails from plastic cups. Down at the Bloomsbury Lanes bowling alley, Chopova Lowena’s star-studded cast of London creatives—from artist Athen Kardashian (who earlier served Campari’s at Hill’s) to tiara-wearing dogs—modeled a vampire-inspired collection accented by their signature tartan-carabiner-skirt madness. Experimental approaches thrived: Sól Hansdóttir’s debut included layers upon layers, while Paolo Carzana placed their disheveled draped pieces inside a spooky church. Even CSM-graduate Gui Rosa transformed her unconventional crocheted garments into a Gossip Girl fantasy straight from Constance and St. Jude’s.

In true school spirit, fashion’s new vanguard dresses smart. Geordie Campbell presented ties under latex coats, taking a material more commonly associated with provocation and giving it a distinctly studied presence. A Letter twisted their paper dresses into cotton IRL, while Oscar Ouyang continued to show that dressing with edge can mean something proper, too. To top that off, Steve O. Smith held an old-fashioned couture presentation inside the drawing room at the Royal Academy of Arts, as if the editors in attendance were his professors—or perhaps his students.

It’s also very hard to give London Fashion Week one energy—there’s a lot going on—which is exactly why a clique hierarchy functions well for it. Sometimes it feels like several fashion weeks are happening at once, all occupying the same city (and very often within the same walls at 180 The Strand). London is considered the “cool” fashion week because it has so many different definitions of coolness happening at once. Even the pretty girls are popular for a reason. Simone Rocha leaned into the romance that has become her trademark, with taffeta and silk that felt more assured than delicate. Joyce Bao and Ewusie offered their own interpretations of femininity, while LVMH Prize finalist Petra Fagerström showed up with the energy of someone who has not yet been at school long enough to become predictable. Her sophomore collection took a darker turn on beauty, with dark florals and a slightly gothic sensibility to pleats. She may be the new kid, but is hardly going unnoticed.

Between fashion editors skipping shows for a pint like it was maths class, it became clear that the Spring 2027 class had a distinctly 1980s streak. From Ashley Williams’ domestic take on ’80s silhouettes to Mé Mé’s geometrically structured shoulders at Fashion East, what once was is back again. Even Yuhan Wang opened with a model lying on the bed, twisting a phone cord around her finger, straight out of an old-school rom-com. And following in the ’80s spirit, bright colors were all over: Talia Byre swapped her classic stripes for hot pink in a way we haven’t seen since Stephen Sprouse’s heyday, while Lucila Safdie offered houndstooth and studs in every color of the rainbow.

What’s so great about London is that, despite being commercially tied, even the big names are the coolest kids. Erdem blossomed in tuxedo jackets, bringing a sense of occasion to its romantic collection. Christopher Kane’s Mulberry debut reclaimed the It Bag, making a case for the accessory as the real social currency of the season. And at Burberry, the trench coat continues to allude to everything underneath it: a piece of outerwear that has always understood the power of suggestion (and London weather). And then came the event of the year: homecoming at McQueen. Seán McGirr didn’t put the girls in typical prom dresses, showcasing embellished frocks and sheer gowns instead. McGirr’s show carried all the anticipation of a school dance: the big name, the heightened expectations, and the question of what everyone would wear.

In a time when “iconic” and “groundbreaking” are used so frequently, the more humble word “cool” carries a particular weight. It suggests something more elusive: that a brand—or in this case a whole fashion week—has found its own rhythm without necessarily needing everyone else to agree. Perhaps being cool is more about finding a table where you actually want to stay. Not to quote Gwen Stefani, but being cool is also about being okay with where you ended up. There’s no single cool table at LFW, because here, everyone’s an outsider, and that’s what makes everyone fit in.

With the cliques taking shape, I asked a few designers: If LFW were a high school, which table would their brand be sitting at?

Lucila Safdie says… “They wouldn’t be at the table, they would be skipping class and hanging out at the mall.”

Gui Rosa says… “The froyo corner at Constance Billard and St Jude’s.”

Ashley Williams says… “They wouldn’t, they’re home-schooled.”

Sól Hansdóttir says… “I always wanted to be at the Mean Girls’ ‘Art Freaks’ table!”

Joshua Ewusie says… “We definitely give off that we gatekeep, but always happy to put you on.”

R&M Leathers says… “At detention!”

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Within moments, they’re discussing menswear shops in Michigan, mutual friends, and a tuxedo shirt bought months earlier, while cardigans and hoodies migrate steadily from rails to arms. Nobody appears particularly concerned with buying anything. The conversation simply keeps unfolding until, eventually, somebody wanders over to the card reader. Fashion has spent years polishing retail into theatre, where every interaction carries the faint whiff of choreography. Jake’s operates on entirely different instincts. People linger. They double back. Someone accepts a coffee, a slice of cake, or, if they’ve timed it right, one of Jake’s martinis made in the shop’s small kitchen. The afternoon bends around whoever happens to walk through the door. Which is perhaps how a family from Detroit ended up here.

Since opening in late 2024, Jake’s has steadily become one of London’s most talked-about fashion destinations. Open only on weekends and spreading largely through word of mouth rather than marketing, the low-key East London spot sells Burt’s own collections alongside work by friends and collaborators, from Six95 bags to Nina’s Karten handmade cards to Faimann’s accessories. Burt’s Fair Isle knits crowned with leopard-print hoods, reconstructed horse-blanket jackets, and felted shrunken hoodies have developed the sort of reputation usually reserved for much older brands.

Burt spends most Saturdays in the shop himself. He has an unusually sharp sense for reading a room, one he credits less to fashion than an upbringing spent working in his parents’ businesses in Somerset. Furniture shops, market stalls, a cupcake café; retail, in one form or another, has always been part of the family language. “I’ve worked in shops my whole life,” he tells me. “Some people just want to be ignored and look through the clothes. I so get that. Some want loads of attention. I fucking love talking.”

It sounds simple enough. But every friend and customer I speak to eventually lands on a mysterious quality. Ask Stefan Cooke, Burt’s partner of 14 years and collaborator since Central Saint Martins, why Jake’s connects so deeply, and he laughs before giving up on precise words: “There’s something about Jake.”

Cooke, of course, has known Burt for longer than Jake’s has existed. They met at a house party in London while both were studying on the BA at Central Saint Martins, before returning for the college’s prestigious MA and build Stefan’s eponymous label together after graduation. Burt and Cooke have spent the past decade figuring out one of fashion’s least forgiving industries side by side—weathering everything from an independent label’s usual financial acrobatics to the inconvenience of a global pandemic. “He’s incredibly inventive,” Cooke says of his partner. “You’ll be having a conversation and he’ll come up with 10 ideas that are somehow all the best. He’s always thinking about how to make something engaging. It never felt like he wanted his own name on something. There was just something else he needed to say.”

That “something else” had been steadily accumulating for years. While Stefan Cooke found its footing on the runway, Burt found himself collecting ideas that didn’t quite belong there. They arrived as scraps of research, photographs, old garments, half-finished sketches, combinations of colours and fabrics that felt instinctively right—but somehow wrong for the world he and Cooke had built together. Rather than force them into the collection, he filed them away. “I’d come up with things and we could both tell they weren’t right for Stefan Cooke,” Burt says. “I’d just save them.”

And the folder kept growing. Then came Japan. Burt speaks about Tokyo with the enthusiasm of someone recalling a favourite relative rather than a city. Frequent work trips to Korea became an excuse to spend more time in Tokyo, wandering around with stylist Alice Goddard and photographer Theo Sion, both longtime collaborators. Burt would disappear into baseball shops (he’s a Red Sox fan), workwear stores, tiny cafés, kitchen suppliers, impossibly specific vintage boutiques—anywhere that promised to reveal a corner of the city they hadn’t seen before. He researches obsessively before every trip, plotting routes around the places that couldn’t exist anywhere else. What’s stayed with him wasn’t the clothes; it was how those shops made him feel.

On a flight back to London in the summer of 2024, somewhere between Haneda and Heathrow, he turned to his friends with a decision that sounded almost casual: “I’m going to go back and fucking start a shop.”

Back in London, the idea found an unlikely home. The managing director of Stefan Cooke had access to an empty building by Old Street, soon to be redeveloped. Burt claimed a corner of it, bought around £400 of paint, roped his parents into helping him transform the space, and opened the doors. There was no elaborate launch strategy, no investor waiting in the wings, no certainty that anyone beyond a handful of friends would bother showing up. “I took it really seriously,” he laughs. “At the same time, I thought it was really funny. I was having meetings about cakes and furniture and displays, but I was also like, ‘No one could turn up.’”

And yet, they did. First came friends, then curious strangers, then customers returning with friends of their own. The clothes evolved almost as quickly as the conversations happening around them. There were tiny knitted dresses with camouflage hoods, Fruit of the Loom sweatshirts printed with Dennis Cooper quotes, reconstructed T-shirts, and the first horse-blanket jackets, each stitched with a label reading “Jessica Six”—the working title Burt assigned to ideas that lived outside of Stefan Cooke. After one collection, he abandoned the name altogether. “Jake’s just felt more personal,” he says. “Like you were coming to someone’s place.”

If Tokyo planted the seed, New York threw open the doors. Earlier this year, New York Times menswear critic Jacob Gallagher published an affectionate profile of Burt that introduced Jake’s to a much wider American audience—but he’d been organically championing the project long before then. Gallagher first encountered Burt at an early 2025 Brooklyn pop-up after spotting one of his sweaters on Instagram. He bought it almost immediately, and soon realised it was the one thing in his wardrobe complete strangers always wanted to talk about. “People would always ask me what it was,” he tells me. “I don’t own many clothes that do that.” The article fuelled further sold-out pop-ups in New York.

Gallagher believes Burt’s appeal lies in its community. “It feels like the way people used to buy clothes,” he says. “You’d walk into a place because somebody made interesting things, you’d chat to them, and if something spoke to you, you’d take it home.” Jake’s, he suggests, feels like “entering a friend’s living room.”

When Jake’s returned to New York for a pop-up this spring, the queue stretched through the building before the doors had even opened. Almost everything sold out by sundown. Burt spoke to every customer himself, apologised for the wait, encouraged them to take their time, and politely refused one particularly determined request that a well-known influencer jump ahead. Burt shrugs at the memory. “Why would he skip the queue? All these people have waited two hours.” It neatly captures the philosophy behind Jake’s. The person buying their first hoodie receives exactly the same welcome as the stylist shopping for a Hollywood actor. Fame might open plenty of doors in fashion; at Jake’s, it still waits its turn outside.

The irony is that Burt isn’t particularly interested in remaining small. He talks excitedly about opening Jake’s in New York, Tokyo, Seoul, Los Angeles, and Melbourne, imagining neighbourhood shops run by those who understand their cities better than he ever could. Not flagships or temples to luxury, but places with their own regulars and rhythms; you might wander in on a Saturday afternoon without intending to buy anything at all. “The fantasy is to have shops around the world and travel between them,” he says.

As we wrap up, the conversation drifts again to people over pieces. Burt tells me about someone who works for the Welsh company that restores the horse blankets he turns into jackets; they mentioned that their horse had died after 18 years together, so he offered to turn one of its blankets into a bomber jacket. They haven’t even met properly yet. It feels entirely in keeping with Jake’s. Before a garment reaches the rail, there’s a story attached to it.

Back in the shop, another customer pushes open the door. Jake looks up and asks where they’ve come from. Twenty minutes later, they’re still talking.

Henrik Lischke, 28, Fashion Editor

I discovered Jake’s… Years ago. I trialled one of its miniskirts for the Sunday Times. What I love about the brand is… Jake’s incredible eye for colour, composition, fit, texture, and form. Today I bought… A Six95 pendant necklace by Bristol-based designer Sally Kite. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Happy to spend my money without a trace of guilt.

Sally Kite, 37, Designer

I discovered Jake’s… When he reached out just before opening the shop, after spotting one of my Six95 bags on a mutual friend. I’ve been making bags and accessories for Jake’s ever since. What I love about the brand is… The clothes are cool, easy, and never feel precious. Today I bought… The hoodie. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Like myself.

Nicola Neri, 34, Stylist

What I love about the brand is… So many of the pieces are made using waste yarns, deadstock fabrics, and repurposed materials. I love the idea of giving something a second life. Today I bought… Another striped jumper, with the unfinished edge. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Elegant and comfortable. On the way here, I was listening to… Robyn.

Adam Iezzi, 52, Founder, AI PR

I discovered Jake’s… Through my work with Stefan Cooke. What I love about the brand is… It has soul, which feels like the antithesis of what “luxury” means today. Today I bought… A white Six95 belt. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Young. On the way here, I was listening to… Robyn. So far, I’ve collected… About half a dozen pieces.

Vincent Pons, 33, Stylist

What I love about the brand is… The sense of community. And Jake’s makes the best martinis. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… The knits in every colour and collect them like toys. Jake’s pieces make me feel… All sorts. On the way here, I was listening to… Addison Rae. So far, I’ve collected… A few Faimann bandana keychains. But I’m only just getting started.

Eleanor Butler-Jones, 29, Knitwear Designer

What I love about the brand is… Everything feels one of a kind. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… Even though we make the knitwear for Jake’s, I only own one Fair Isle leopard-hood cardigan. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Warm. They’re new, but they already feel lived-in. On the way here, I was listening to… “Tear You Apart” by She Wants Revenge.

Emily Powick, 28, Brand and Communications Consultant

I discovered Jake’s… Through a mutual friend. I was there when he opened the first shop in Hoxton. Today I bought… My mum the leopard-print cardigan she’s been asking for. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Like I’ve found my corner of London. On the way here, I was listening to… CONFESSIONS II by Madonna and “Molly In The Club” by Sophia Stel.

Luke Cassar, 30, Sales Director at JW Anderson

What I love about the brand is… The stories behind the pieces are incredible, but the shop itself has become a real landmark. I’ve missed places in London where you’re guaranteed to bump into friends or make new ones. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… One of the new reversible jackets. So far, I’ve collected… One beautifully patinated horse-blanket jacket.

Eli Richards, 26, Stylist

I discovered Jake’s… Working on Stefan Cooke shows. What I love about the brand is… Everything looks good on me. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… One of the Guernsey jumpers. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Like the best-dressed kid in sixth form. On the way here, I was listening to… My mum, asking if Jake had any green hoodies left.

Marta Úrbez, 29, Art Director

I discovered Jake’s… By word of mouth. What I love about the brand is… Jake’s is endlessly specific. He’s built a richly imagined world, and you can tell he’s having fun with it. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Nostalgic. Every piece feels like a better version of something I would’ve died to own in high school. On the way here, I was listening to… The Sundays.

Zac Klein, 27, Head of Marketing & PR at AllSaints

I discovered Jake’s… Through my very fashionable friends. What I love about the brand is… Jake. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… The cream sweater with the T-shirt skirt detail. It’ll be mine soon. Jake’s pieces make me feel… As cool as my best friends. On the way here, I was listening to… “Army of Me” by Björk. An elite karaoke song.

Louis Thompson, 28, Chef

I discovered Jake’s… Over coffee in 2024. He asked if I’d bake for the shop. Next visit, I’m hoping to buy… The mauve horse-blanket jacket with the grey shearling collar. My god. I’m also still thinking about the Six95 watch with the dice face. Jake’s pieces make me feel… Bad as fuck. So far, I’ve collected… Three Faimann pieces.

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NYFW has acquired a strangely persistent bad rep over the years. The complaint usually goes something like this: the cool designers left, London has CSM, Paris has all the heat, Milan has all the money, and New York is what, exactly? Quite a lot, as it turns out. This season I finally went, partly for work and partly because I wanted to see whether New York Fashion Week was actually as beleaguered as everyone keeps saying it is.

Fashion Week in New York has always had something to prove. Eleanor Lambert launched Press Week in 1943, when war cut editors off from Paris; 55 years later, Helmut Lang moved to New York and decided to show before Europe, with Calvin Klein and Donna Karan following suit. New York jumped the queue, and fashion month as we know it was reshuffled. New York gets interesting when it stops worrying about the other cities and does its own thing.

I arrived with my bf Will, who loves New York but hasn’t been in 15 years, and we spent the first half of the week at the W Union Square, which was fab, before moving downtown to Nine Orchard. There, I shared an elevator with Rosalía and somehow behaved like a normal adult who didn’t want a selfie (gulp). There was excellent food, too much food, and one sushi-related gastrointestinal incident whose perpetrator will remain unnamed for legal and karmic reasons.

But enough about my bowels. Let’s talk fashion!

The big dawgs.

If the cliché is that New York has lost its heavyweights, someone forgot to tell the heavyweights. Ralph Lauren kicked things off with the kind of assured American fantasy that makes all the industry chatter about “brand codes” seem faintly ridiculous; Michael Kors went mod at MoMA, with Nico on the soundtrack; and Calvin Klein continued to click into place under Veronica Leoni, who seems increasingly comfortable stripping the house downto the good stuff. Khaite, of course, kept doing Khaite. It’s refreshing to experience a fashion week that isn’t embarrassed by the fact that fashion is also supposed to sell clothes.

Tory Burch remains one of the most interesting big New York brands to watch. This season, opulence collided with sportswear—delivious texture and shades upon delicious texture and shades—and at one point a scarf fell onto the runway in front of me, so I picked it up to prevent a model from going flying, and then took selfies with New York Mag’s Sam Hine. Fashion journalism!

Thom Browne closed the week with a giant chrysalis, dancing caterpillars, and full fashion theater. Luke Meagher of Haute Le Mode had a simpler defense of the whole thing when I asked if NYFW still matters: “Why shouldn’t she? A commercial juggernaut, Miss Girl.”

New guard, old houses.

Just as interesting as the big-ticket shows was what was happening inside the old houses. Henry Zankov made his debut at Diane von Furstenberg, bringing the house back to the runway without treating its famous codes like museum pieces, while Rachel Scott pulled off the rather insane feat of showing both Proenza Schouler and Diotima in the same week. Her second Proenza collection felt freer, more assured, and chic as fuck, while Diotima remained unmistakably her own.

New York is also very good at making room. Vanity Fair’s José Criales-Unzueta pointed out to me that when established designers stepped away from the week after the pandemic, they inadvertently created space for younger names to become NYFW’s protagonists. Some eventually leave for Paris, Vacquera being the obvious example, but that doesn’t diminish New York’s role in making them. As José put it, “Willy would not be in Paris, and would not be Willy if he didn’t have New York.”

The fun part.

Writer Taylore Scarabelli was less interested in defending New York against the other fashion capitals. “I’d be hesitant to say that New York Fashion Week matters more or less than the rest at a time when capital-F Fashion—by which I mean the clothes produced by and for the one percent—is less culturally defining than ever,” she told me. “That being said, I’m here for the peacockers and the off-calendar brands.”

Same. The New York I fell for wasn’t necessarily the one mounting the biggest show, but the one sending you across town, up some stairs, into somebody’s apartment or, in Collina Strada’s case, all the way to Storm King (don’t ask me where that is), where Carly Rae Jepsen performed and a margarita fountain rewarded the schlep. Miss Claire Sullivan celebrated five years with go-go dancers and Ellie the Elephant; Kai Cenat, the world’s biggest Twitch streamer, made his runway debut with his new label Vivet; Luar took over the Unisphere in Queens; and Lii’s Zane Li, fresh from winning the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the LVMH Prize, delivered one of my favorite collections of the week, with its strange color and sporty precision.

Conner Ives made his New York debut at The Grill after years of showing in London. “Returning to NY was always my intention,” he told me, explaining that people were often surprised to learn he was from New York. “I felt I had to correct the narrative.” Elsewhere,Sandy Liang roughed up her particular strain of downtown femininity with sportswear, while Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen and SC103 made the case for clothes that still feel intensely touched by human hands. Emily Dawn Long skipped the runway entirely for The Crack of Dawn, a genuinely good fashion film, which is rarer than it should be.

Our EIC-to-be Steff Yotka summed it up best: “NYFW matters because New Yorkers have the best humor, grit, glamour, and spunk. If you don’t feel that, you’re just going to the wrong shows.”

Where else does Ralph exist in the same week as a handmade pair of jeans in somebody’s apartment? I <3 NY.

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It might not feel like it, considering how many movies came out this summer that seemed to do gangbusters at the box office (did you know that Spider-man movie has made $2.5 billion dollars?), but the general consensus from the independent movie world is that 2026 was cooked. Ask any reporter for a trade magazine and they will confirm the feeling. That was the word on the street during the Cannes Film Festival back in May, but back then, I disagreed with that assessment. Then I arrived in Venice and heard much of the same thing. I’m on a boat heading back to Marco Polo airport feeling, well, whelmed.

For reference: the Venice Film Festival recently birthed Yorgos Lanthimos movies like Bugonia and Poor Things alongside big Oscar players like The Brutalist and Frankenstein. It’s where Fight Club and Memento and Spring Breakers found their first audiences. Heck, Lady Gaga was minted as a movie star when she arrived at the festival for A Star is Born in 2018, and then had to endure the horror show that was Joker: Folie à Deux on the same carpet in 2024.

Compared to Cannes, Venice is a somewhat fresher experience for me. If I’m counting correctly, this year was my fifth. Usually, I come away feeling like I’ve either witnessed true film mastery or at least a moment for the culture. I was in the room for the Don’t Worry Darling press conference, which Florence Pugh famously sat out. I could press my ear to the wall of the theater where Chris Pine x Harry Styles “spitgate” occurred. I saw stars like Timothée Chalamet and Jacob Elordi met with fan hysteria as they stepped off the boat. This year—bar a brief appearance from Robert Pattinson—felt muted by comparison.

We could have expected this from the moment the line-up was announced back in early August. There were no real surprises. We all had our fingers crossed for Tom Ford’s new film Cry to Heaven, but it wasn’t finished in time. The only unpredicted film, really, was Naza—the new documentary from two of the four directors of No Other Land, the Oscar-winning film about the lives of the Palestinian community living in a town in the occupied West Bank. Naza was the last film I watched; a documentary about the horrifying mechanics of mass murder, and how those who take part in it can be haunted by it, or wash their hands of their complicity in it entirely. It was a reminder of the kind of important, conversation-stirring stuff we come here for.

Naza had some company—there were a handful of films I came out of the festival genuinely excited about, padding out the mid-off that mostly defined it. Here’s everything I saw, and what I thought of it.

Agata the Writer

Mia Wasikowska, of Alice in Wonderland, Stoker, and Leviticus fame, adds a new string to her producer bow with this intriguing film about an Australian novelist arriving in Bosnia to house sit for her book editor. She also has the intention of writing a novel set during the war that tore that country apart, but when she meets the locals, her response isn’t as warm as she’d anticipated. It’s an interesting concept, revolving around the idea of creative appropriation, that ends on an ambitious final scene that I respected more than I enjoyed.

Bucking Fastard

Werner Herzog’s first narrative feature film in seven years is a weird romantic fable set in Ireland. After being slammed with a restraining order from a freaked out ex-lover, two sisters who speak, dress, and act in unison, set out to find a world in which their lovestruck quirks are accepted. Great central performances, and a really pungent making of mood, even if it loses its way a little.

Bunker

Florian Zeller, who won an Oscar for his dementia drama The Father, returned to Venice with this relationship drama starring real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. Bardem plays an architect who’s offered the chance to design a bunker for a malevolent tech billionaire, which forms a rift in their marriage. It’s got promise with its performers, but fairly swiftly turns heavy-handed and stupid.

Company

Casey Affleck, known best for his acting roles, returns to the director’s chair with this story-within-a-story historical western. It looks the part, but is weirdly stony and convoluted, with a first draft script, making it move like molasses.

Eklipse

In the Austrian mountains, two friends on a farm bond over milking cows, messing around on a karaoke machine, and exploring the pastures around them. But when one learns the revelation that their friend’s absent father has AIDS, their close dynamic changes. A gentle and promising film about adolescence and understanding.

Everest: The Other Side

In this documentary from the makers of Free Solo, a thrill seeking couple attempt to achieve something that’s never been done before: scaling the north face of Mount Everest before descending it on skis. It’s a compelling and emotional story, but one that raises a bunch of moral questions around following your dangerous ambitions, and your responsibilities as a parent when you make these things your calling.

Ink

Danny Boyle pivots from zombies to the soulless hacks of Fleet Street in this movie about the rapid ascent of the British tabloid newspaper The Sun in the ‘70s, and the perverted formula that made it all work. Brash, loud, and badly behaved.

Look Back

The celebrated Japanese manga gets a real life reimagining from director Hirokazu Kore-eda. A pair of schoolgirls, both of them mavericks of manga storytelling, band together to become two of the industry’s most prodigious artists. But their early success soon meets the realities of growing up. A deeply special coming-of-age film, featuring a collective of relatively new young performers. It’ll make your heart sing.

Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People?

Harrowing and violent, probably excessively so, this adaptation of an American Vietnam war veteran’s memoir, reflecting on his scarring time as a soldier, is visceral and well-formed. But when it tries to depict the titular character’s reflections on his actions, they’re never quite as convincing or skin deep.

Musk

Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, takes a stab at summarizing the professional and personal life of billionaire businessman Elon Musk—it takes him 5 minutes shy of 4 hours. Despite not digging up much we don’t already know, it serves as a comprehensive primer on a public figure, one Gibney knows is more dangerous than he is an easily-mocked jester.

Naza

Shot on the pitch black rooftops of Tel Aviv, this documentary mostly uses first person testimonials from the IDF’s technical teams who candidly describe the ways the Israeli military is knowingly murdering innocent civilians in Gaza. It’s shocking; a horrifying feat of journalism.

Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger

In the lead-up to their long awaited reunion, filmmakers Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern gain unique access to Liam and Noel Gallagher, following them on the road as Oasis tours the world. It functions as a great concert movie, but also feels like two other things: a portrait of forgiveness, and a film about the near religious impact of live music. You’ll never see more grown men cry; it’s so euphoric it could solve the male mental health crisis.

Place to Be

Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó made his English language debut with a gruelling portrait of a difficult birth ruining a relationship in Pieces of a Woman. His third is much frothier, featuring Hollywood legend Ellen Burstyn as an elderly woman trying to find a new home for a pigeon that’s flown through her window. It also features Taika Waititi, who despite being quite annoying sometimes, fits the brief of a hapless real estate divorced dad character well. Fine!

Possible Love

The big, novelistic centerpiece of this year’s festival was the return of Lee Chang-dong, the Korean director known best for his masterful last movie Burning. This one is more grounded, but equally thought provoking and beautiful. A laid off worker at a steel factory and her depressed husband cross paths with a well-to-do filmmaker who wants to make a documentary about unemployment in Korea, and her VC husband. There’s a shared fascination, as if the subject and the director are piercing the class membrane that separates their lives—but are they friends? Or is there something more exploitative at play?

Primetime

The starriest film at this year’s festival was also one of its best, which isn’t always the case. Lance Oppenheim’s film about the voyeuristic schadenfreude of American culture, Primetime, is partly a takedown of the now-defunct reality show To Catch a Predator, and a portrait of its fearless leader Chris Hansen (played here by Robert Pattinson). Tense and blackly comic, it feels weird to call it a crowd pleaser, but that’s probably the truth.

Queer Edward II

Now legendary cinematographer Seamus McGarvey spent time on the set of Derek Jarman’s exuberant and very gay take on Edward II back in the early ’90s, in the company of Tilda Swinton, responsible for capturing some BTS footage. Over 35 years later, that same footage has been stitched together anew by first time filmmaker Theo Rollason, into a thrilling and emotive portrait of a punk-minded filmmaker, and a seismic moment in British gay activism. The real breakout of this year’s Venice.

The Basics of Philosophy

This movie, supposed to be Paul Schrader’s commentary on cancel culture and atonement, is hokey and misjudged with the sheen of a Lifetime movie. About a philosophy professor confronted with the ghosts of his past. Hilariously eligible for the Queer Lion, the festival’s prize for LGBTQ+ cinema, despite its queer characters being plucked straight from the year 1981.

The Color of the Sun

You might anticipate something with a Jeremy O. Harris co-sign to be writerly, but this debut feature from Xavier Tera, which he produced, is all-consuming, moody, and very often wordless. In Okinawa, a teenage boy and his mates are enjoying their final summer before graduating high school, jumping in the river and kissing girls—at least they’re trying to. Then an American boy from a nearby military base shows up, and the language barrier creates a new kind of communication.

Too Much Sugar

Filmmaker Robert Greene frequently makes documentaries that toe the line between real and make-believe, and his latest is no different. Too Much Sugar was born from a chance encounter he had with a parent from his kid’s basketball class. That man was Ryan Holliger—a small-town Missouri guy who’s always seen himself as a superstar. Too Much Sugar is a film about him, and the friends and family members who surround him, but it’s also, in part, about Greene realising the filmmaking dreams of those people too, as their own imagined stories are realized along their own tragic, bittersweet narratives.

Wild Horse Nine

The big Oscar hopeful from this crop. Martin McDonagh, he of The Banshees of Inisherin fame, directs this story of a CIA veteran and his protege sent by their bureau chief to the Easter Islands. It’s a big dad-friendly black comedy about the legacy of a friendship and the life we leave behind us. John Malkovich might, and should, win an Oscar for it.

Woman Unknown

The only film directed by a solo woman in this year’s competition was this morally sticky and absorbing story of a Danish woman living in post-WWII Copenhagen. She survived Nazi-occupied Denmark by sleeping, literally, with the enemy. But when word starts to spread about that secret, she finds the walls of her new life closing in around her.

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I first heard about Doxy through writer and amici Camile Sojit Pejcha. Created by Celina Reboyras, the magazine is for sex workers by sex workers. This issue’s cover star Ari Kytsa, an e-girl and online sex worker, co-hosted the launch party, which featured a reader line-up of downtown personalities: writer Sophia June, who read a piece from her forthcoming novel; performance artist Mani Mekala; writer Nico Lou; Mackenzie Thomas; and Ivy Wolk (the latter two unfortunately had to bow out because they were sick, and I, your humble writer, ended up filling in a surprise guest set that involved a Vaquera panty skirt that haunts my closet). The two story venue was packed, elbow to rib. Thankfully, it was an audience unafraid to be close. And don’t worry… by the time burlesque act The G Strings arrived on stage, things got loud.

Doxy provides balm for a sore need: For too long, sex workers have been written about, their aesthetics bastardized, co-opted, and capitalized on, and their voices ignored. Even the title hints to the magazine’s intentions, a double entendre meant to demystify the taboo: “Doxy” is slang for a mistress or prostitute, but also for doxycycline, an STI drug. In the hazy aftermath of throwing a really great party, Reboyras stopped by to talk about all things doxy.

NICOLAIA RIPS: Tell me what inspired you to make Doxy mag.

CELINA REBOYRAS: I’d say my biggest inspiration behind Doxy stems from the desire to help build and unite the community that I so desperately sought out in my early twenties. Before moving to NYC, I grew up in South Florida, where I worked as a stripper in Miami for about 6 years. During that time, I always found myself feeling quite lonely, largely due to the lack of community and friendship within my line of work. I had many close friends, but none of them sex workers. I soon realized how essential community is, especially when working a job that is so heavily stigmatized. As for the decision to make it a print magazine, I’ve just always been a fan of tangible media (especially now, as online censorship is a huge issue sex workers are facing). I spent my teenage years going to hardcore and punk shows, where DIY zine culture is prevalent. I have a lot of Riot Grrrl zines from the late ’90s that I’m obsessed with. Honestly, the first issue of Doxy very much feels like a zine, partially because I had no idea what I was doing.

How’d you get started in the industry?

In 2016, I was working as a receptionist, where I think I was making like $11 an hour. It was horrible. I had never been more bored. I knew I wanted to quit my job and start college, but there was the cost issue of tuition and books, and I had been thinking about starting sex work. One day it just hit me. It was a random Tuesday when I clocked out of work and googled, “Where can I buy stripper heels?” Then I drove to the closest sex shop, where I purchased the cheapest pair of 6-inch Pleasers, stole a bathing suit bikini from my sister’s bedroom, threw all of that in an Adidas gym bag, and went to this hole in the wall, no-name strip club that was down the street from my home. I figured if I tried out stripping and hated it, then at least I didn’t waste a ton of gas driving to a club far away. I got hired to work that night and made $450, which was more than what I made in a week at the time. I put in my two weeks’ notice the very next day. Eventually, I got hired at a much larger strip club and finished my bachelors degree. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

What does “Doxy” mean to you?

When I started Doxy, all I wanted was to create a publication that could unite a community for sex workers, to give them a platform for their voice to be heard, all while educating others outside of the sex work community in the process. It’s hard to put into words what Doxy means to me because it means so much. What means the most to me, though, is what it means to other sex workers. Several people that I didn’t know came up to me during the release party last week to tell me that they’re so grateful for Doxy and for what it’s doing for the sex work community. That was incredible to hear.

Doxy is pretty restrained when it comes to nudity. Can you tell me about that editorial choice?

I’ve always wanted the photography in Doxy to showcase these women in a softer, more intimate way that I felt aligned with the interviews and essays paired with it. Sex workers are such talented, layered individuals, and I don’t think that nudity is required to convey that just because of their profession. Which brings us to full circle to the fact that most sex workers make their money from being nude, from selling sex, and it just doesn’t sit right with me, morally, to be profiting off a publication that features another individual’s nude body. Also, I never wanted Doxy to be a publication catered to male readers. If every photoshoot consisted of nude content, then I’m not really doing anything different from what Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt did.

In your words, why is it so important right now to uplift sex workers’ voices?

I feel like sex work is having a bit of a pop culture moment right now, which we’re seeing a lot of in film and television—Anora, Euphoria, Margo’s Got Money Troubles. There’s a lot of interest and fascination in the world of sex work right now, and I think that’s awesome, but we need to make sure that the representation that’s being fed to the world is coming from us, the sex workers. It’s important that sex workers tell their own stories.

What’s your favorite story in the current issue?

I have two. The first is the essay titled Race and the Club, which is written by my friend Sigourney. I think racial dynamics play such a huge role in the strip club, as well as every sector of sex work, and it was great to feature such a beautifully written essay on the topic. My other favorite story is the interview I did with our cover girl Ari Kytsya. I think Ari’s ability to be so transparent about her job as an online sex worker, while having the online platform and influence that she does, is really beneficial in challenging the stigma and misconceptions people have about sex workers.

One of my favorite’s was the “What’s in Your Bag” section. What’s in your bag/what are your essentials?

I love this question. My go-to purse right now is my Fendi Spy bag. It’s low-key become the junk drawer of my purses. I have so many things in there: loose pieces of gum and tylenol, the vape I bought a month ago and forgot all about, some mysterious purse dirt. My absolute essentials, though, are my Arrae anti-bloating pills, my favorite nude brown NYX lip liner, and a travel size deodorant because the heat in a New York City summer is not something to mess around with.

What do you think people get wrong about being a sex worker?

A lot of people have this misconception that every sex worker is either a victim or a whore. I never understood why sex workers had to be shoved into one of those two little boxes, and what do they believe separates the two? What makes one sex worker a whore and another a victim? When it comes to sex workers, it seems nearly impossible for people to separate one’s job from their identity, and I’d like them to try.

Last week was your third issue launch. What do you see for the future of Doxy?

I envision Doxy to keep growing on a larger scale. I envision a bigger team of editors and writers. I envision our readership multiplying, our issues continuing to grow in page count. I also envision a larger non-sex worker audience. A lot of people who aren’t sex workers are really interested in Doxy, and I’m watching that audience grow with every issue. I believe Doxy will do what I set out for it to do, which is establish community and help reduce the stigma around sex work.

One exception is Primetime, which I saw on Friday evening in the second row of a packed cinema. The film is based on real life, and so I don’t think spoiler tags serve quite the same function, but if you want to experience Primetime purely as entertainment, then maybe hold off on reading this until it hits theaters: September 25 in the US, October 30 in the UK.

It’s likely that you know how Primetime ends already. 2006: Chris Hansen and the crew of Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator surround the plush Texas home of an assistant district attorney named Bill Conradt. This was a bending of the TV show’s strict formula. Typically, a suburban house rigged with cameras becomes the ensnarement spot for men suspected of being pedophiles, lured there via online conversations they have with decoys with the promise of sex. Then, Hansen surprises them. Conradt was one of these men, but he wasn’t budging from his home, and so they came to him. As the local police and a camera crew entered, a gunshot rang out. Before any face-to-face conversation was had, Conradt had killed himself.

This was the case that essentially unraveled To Catch a Predator, a perverse show captured in perverse detail in Primetime. The movie, produced by A24, directed by Lance Oppenheim, and starring Robert Pattinson as an spookily accurate Hansen, comes two years after the release of a documentary, Predators, that questioned the intentions of the hugely popular show. It chronicled the fallout of those who had been used as decoys, publicly stung, or who worked on it.

All of these characters are present in Primetime too, making it an interesting, unsettlingly compulsive companion piece. Though it has fictional elements to it, with several characters given different names and conversations imagined, the film is largely based on the Esquire article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich.

The purring voice of a man, his face shot in extreme close-up: “I will undress you as you undress me.” It’s Hansen, rehearsing excerpts of the chat log between an online predator and a teenage girl. He treats it like Shakespeare; in a few minutes, the predator who wrote those words will be downstairs. Del, a young decoy played by Phoebe Bridgers, androgynous and experienced enough to play both men and women, welcomes a man into her “parents” house. She baked cookies; he brought condoms. Then, Hansen comes down the stairs, reciting the practised lines from the man’s chat log that landed him there. He walks out the door and is promptly body-slammed by a police officer disguised as a bush.

Captured on camera, Primetime presents this frenetic, compulsive formula as the magic that transformed Hansen from an Emmy Award-winning journalist into a TV shock jockey. It works, and it makes people feel good: so good, in fact, that NBC wants to use it to plug the hole left by the death of the sitcom. All of a sudden, To Catch a Predator is primetime television, going toe-to-toe with Lost in the Wednesday night 9 p.m. slot.

Primetime is about power, how we use it, and the culture of intimidation. In the film, that intimidation propagates from a number of angles: Skyler Gisondo plays Dan, a 23-year-old cast to play a full decade younger than his age. On his first day, he’s late onto set, arriving almost in tandem with their target. Dressed in a green polo and swim shorts, he stumbles into the kitchen, nervous, as a 30-something guy (played, in a wild piece of casting, by Jonathan Lipnicki of Stuart Little and Jerry Maguire fame) reveals his genitals to him. He did not know this was the job he signed up for.

Meanwhile, a journalist from The National Enquirer has been stalking Hansen, capturing a photograph of him with his finger in a woman’s mouth over dinner, despite the fact he has a wife and children at home. Like his own prey, he too has been ensnared. It’s a strong enough revelation to send Hansen spinning, just as the demands of the show increase.

A call from the network comes: Lost now has polar bears, so they need to go bigger, or the show is chopped. A sting operator from Perverted Justice (Matthew Maher) thinks he has the answer: a big-dog government official speaking intermittently to who he thinks is a teenage boy. Suddenly, dealing with small-fry blue collar workers isn’t good enough—they need to take down a man who’ll become known as “the whale.”

The film has a great ensemble, with Merritt Wever getting a solid side plot as Hansen’s lead producer, while Bridgers is a natural, contributing a new song to the film called “On Video.” But it’s Pattinson and Gisondo who deliver the two career-best performances. Pattinson, known better for his pomp as an actor, is sort of serial-killer sly in his mannerisms here. He captures Hansen perfectly, with his practically unflinching face and pursed lips. The voice is a straight facsimile of Hansen’s too. Gisondo, as Dan, this deadbeat actor transforming himself into, as his best friend puts it, “a nubile and hairless” pedophile’s wet dream, gets the most engaging arc. All he wants is to be in musicals (we get two renditions of “Seasons of Love”), but instead his big break comes in the form of these morally knotty, dangerous confrontations with bad people. But he’s good at it, Hansen says, and sometimes that praise and a paycheck means more than slumming it in community theater.

It’s a film that asks a handful of severe, somewhat terrifying questions: Is this good work? Is this noble work? And who is responsible for a dead suspected pedophile? To Catch a Predator was designed to transform hunting sex predators into a spectator sport. Is shaming someone publicly the best way to stop someone’s evil and dangerous compulsions?

“There used to be a pillory in every civilized town,” Pattinson’s Hansen says in the film. “Now, there’s a television in every home, and I’m on it.”

I believe it’s utterly respectable to have something evergreen in your life that you obsess over thanklessly, because if you switch around too often people might think your spine got swapped out with a chocolate eclair. Further, in this moment of fast, fast, FAST fashion, we must beat on, boats against the trends. That’s why we’re launching a little Substack monthly column about our obsessions.

To kick things off, I want to talk about my favorite pattern: cheetah. I actually don’t care about the difference between cheetah and leopard print. I’m sorry if that offends the big cat community. If you’re close enough to a cheetah that you can tell the difference, you’re too close to the animal, and you’re too close to me!

My obsession with animal print started when I was a kid. In my bedroom at the Chelsea Hotel, my mom installed a luxurious wall to wall leopard carpet. What followed was a love of glitz, glam and camp. Of course there were setbacks. In high school I rebelled against being fab and having good taste, by exclusively wearing stretchy pants and shirts I stole from the Urban Outfitters sale section. In college things got even worse. There wasn’t a leopard, cheetah, or zebra in a ten mile radius. I bobbed my hair (unfortunate for my hair texture), started wearing sallow brown tones. It was a low.

Only in the past couple years have I really been strong and comfortable enough in myself to return to that first love. In fact, I’ve found most of growing up is realizing that you had pretty good taste as a kid, before you get trapped in listening to the world’s opinion. In the past month I’ve acquired cheetah rainboots, cheetah flats, cheetah pumps, cheetah skirt, all on TOP of my copious previously existent cheetah collection. What can I say? It’s a neutral.

• This bra oo la la

• This robe

• This bag

• A parakeet

So when Steff Yokta, i-D’s soon-to-be editor-in-chief, asked if I was available to cover Daisy Chain Fields—Olivia Rodrigo’s first ever benefit festival with an all-female lineup—I knew it was meant to be.

My first day of coverage began the day before the festival, at a press conference run by Olivia Rodrigo herself. There, she pledged a $10 million donation to nonprofits supporting women, girls, reproductive rights, and community health. As we were heading out, Rachel Carroll, a journalist at NME, turned to me and said that this was the first time she’d been in a press conference where women outnumbered men. I wondered if I’d ever experience it again. I hope I will in this lifetime.

Once I got home, I decided to make i-D-themed pins to hand out at the festival. My social media pages were flooded with girls sharing what charms they were going to bring to trade, and what better way to join in than with i-D memorabilia?

Finally, the day of the festival came. I hopped on an Amtrak to dodge traffic, where I encountered some girls sporting the cutest Daisy Chain Fields pins. I took it as an opportunity to make new friends (I’m a stranger to stranger danger), and we ended up sitting together the entire train ride there. There’s something so beautiful about girlhood and the way it draws us together, and this time, it happened through outfit compliments and pin trading.

The best thing about the festival was that the set times were staggered so no two artists overlapped. I ran back and forth between stages all day, which in turn meant I got to run into a lot of cool people and see so many amazing sets.

• Quiet Light and her backup dancers came out in these sheer long-sleeved babydoll minidresses that were seriously to die for.

• Eli got the crowd pumped. She pledged a $30,000 donation to the Black Mamas Matter Alliance and FreeFrom, and then proceeded to kill it on stage!!!

• A mom and daughter gave me a rundown of their hand-drawn pins with their favorite artists. So cute.

• Rachel Chinouriri’s stage presence is everything; she even played an unreleased song from her upcoming album, I Think I Spoke Too Soon.

• Megan, Yoonchae, and Lara from Katseye came out to introduce Baby2Baby, an organization that provides children in need with basic necessities.

• Devon Again has done it again!!!!

• I lost my portable charger in the Die Spitz mosh pit. Worth it.

• Santigold is the definition of cool.

• Two sisters wearing matching flower crowns told me how pins were their way of expressing that everyone deserves love and support. My heart.

• Bikini Kill took me back to my riot grrrl roots.

• I cried through the Mitski set but was also locked in to get good footage for i-D’s social pages (praying you don’t hear my sobs in some of the clips).

• I camped at the main stage after Mitski and met the sweetest mother-daughter duo ever. Shoutout to Annie and Hallie (yes, like the Parent Trap, they say) who stayed with me in the barricade until the very end.

• Doechii IS the don, Doechii IS the dean, Doechii IS supreme!!!

• Chappell Roan’s set was. Wow.

• Olivia brought out Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, and Stevie Nicks through her set. I don’t think there was a single dry eye in the audience by the end of it!!!

Events like this don’t come often though they’re especially needed. I dream of a future where a press room filled with women is the norm, festivals actively support important charitable organizations, and women everywhere receive the recognition they deserve.

In Chappell’s own words, it’s a femininomenon!

Parton, a woman whose big-everything aesthetic feels like a chicken and egg situation for drag artists everywhere, was also the most important country artist of her time, and a real philanthropist. Curry, famously coy about his own personal life but spiritually bisexual, rode the wave of his campy early turn as Dr Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show into a decades-long career, inspiring Halloween costumes and sing-a-long screenings for the masses. And even if the art layman couldn’t mention Kusama by name, they recognized her polkadots, pumpkins, and endlessly inspiring infinity mirror rooms. She spoke an artistic language everyone felt fluent in.

To traverse those worlds is a skill few are capable of: most ‘mainstream’ culture is shackled to its normie sensibility, and the freaks never quite break through. But Parton, Curry, and Kusama all managed to maintain a rare equilibrium, appeasing a mass audience while also understanding the bedrock of a left-field fanbase.

Parton, the godmother of country music, perhaps summed this dichotomy up the best. She was all over the radio of red state America for most of her life, as beloved by bigots as she was by the benevolent—recent studies discovered that 75% of Democrats and Republicans appreciated her work—all because what she sang about was so piercingly universal. She was, in that sense, almost a religious entity, a scribe of hymns. Her original version of “I Will Always Love You,” to me, remains the best. I get chills hearing Ryan Beatty sing “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” her bittersweet twang embraced and reformed by someone five decades younger than her.

Her most heard songs, the “9 to 5”s and the “Jolene”s, felt so strikingly specific in their storytelling—and yet, that specificity managed to riff on the human condition. She gave us this gospel-like delivery, all while managing to wrap a metaphorical, and often physical, arm around society’s most marginalized too, disagreeing with the anti-trans bathroom bills in her home state of Tennessee in 2023, and supporting gay marriage.

In country music, they are largely niche subjects to give a shit about, but Dolly managed to forge a career that wasn’t impeded by what she believed in. Her appearance, proudly artificial, became a moodboard staple for drag artists; she even nodded to that similarity herself (a story has recently recircled about how she lost a lookalike contest to a drag queen once). She wasn’t wholly traditional, or conventional, but died an icon. You know you’re moving crazy when you’re being mourned by someone like Donald Trump—even though he’s a key architect of the policies being weaponized against the people you stand with. She pissed off nobody.

Curry was lured towards weird stuff: Rocky Horror, but also his turn as Pennywise in the miniseries It, and his appearance in Muppet Treasure Island. For many he was a face from their childhood, a star of Home Alone 2 and the movie version of Annie. He moved like a freak sometimes, but still managed to make those off-kilter projects feel mainstream. His CV ran the gamut of palatability, beloved as much by those die hard Rocky Horror fans, wearing suspenders and make-up, as he was for his more staid material. To receive the respect of the bisexual community is a rare, valuable feat. Curry was the girl who could do both.

Then there’s Yayoi Kusama. Later in her career she’d earn an almost pop art level of notoriety, called upon by luxury brands to design handbags, her work transformed into IG-friendly fare. There was something sort of innocent about its sensory straightforwardness, much in the same way people talk about the unambiguous, IV-precise feeling of hearing a 2010s Katy Perry pop song. Is that crass to say? Maybe. But Kusama had the credentials too: she spent her early years as a provocative performance artist, staging “Homosexual Wedding” (1968), in which she “married” two men decades before such things were legal. They wore one wedding dress and Kusama, officiating, made them swear on a phone book rather than a bible. Her dresses were made from spray painted macaroni and bulbous potato-like balls of fabric. She’s lived in a psychiatric hospital for the past 50 years. That she found a style that inspired the Reels generation is miraculous—but again, proof you can be rebellious, brilliant, troubled, and adored by millions.

It makes you think who’s doing that today. The pop world has Gaga and Chappell—uncompromising, political artists with large audiences. The art world’s living geniuses also feel sort of greedy, accepting crasser versions of Kusama’s LV link-up. But they’re a rarity. It’s a tricky, almost impossible balance to pull off. The passing of this trio of artists felt so successively sore because they were some of the few who managed to make interesting work, as interesting people, but with a uniquely gigantic blast radius. Even days later, with the dust settling, the loss of these rockstars still feels like a loss of something larger, more undefinable too.

• I feel like I say “Oscar season starts here!” about four times a year but this time I mean it. We’re in the “-er” months, which means the triple threat of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto Film Festivals will kick off next week. Expect dispatches from me on your IG and in your inbox too.

• The new issue looks soooooo good btw 😈

• If you’re in London, you have one Saturday left to go to Charms, the inspired gelato pop up brainchild of i-D visuals director Alice Lees and her boyfriend Calvin. <3

@ioeylim asks: What contradictions in your life have you made peace with?

I do not feel peaceful!!! I want my cake, I want it to be chocolate cake, I want to eat it, AND I want to share a slice with everyone.

@lydiamckimm asks: I’ve been seeking advice from cool self-possessed women on how to become less of a stranger to your desires, more generally than sexually speaking!

Much of desire is a lot about finding space to daydream. If there was nothing, what would you create? If you were suspended in space, what would you want? If child you saw yourself now, what would they think? If you had a really sick graphic shirt, what would be on it? To speak elliptically for a moment: To be less of a stranger to your desires, you must be less of a stranger to yourself.

@dianaafonte asks: Do you think it’s possible to work a job you like and make a livable wage in NYC? What does it take? Public humiliation, pimping one’s mind out, no sleep, etc.?

In times of confusion, ref back to the holy scriptures: Sex and The City, specifically. “In New York, they say you’re always looking for a job, a boyfriend, or an apartment.” I think there’s a similar message here: Work a job you like in NYC and deal with public humiliation, low paychecks, sleepless nights, striving, all for the hope that one day it will be worthwhile, with the cliff of despair looming on the other side that maybe it won’t. Or maybe you really like finance, and in that case, congratulations high roller.

@lalalovemonster2011 asks: Please say one cute sneaker for the office.

I personally don’t wear sneakers. I’ve flattened the bridge of my foot to such an extent that the only thing comfortable is a ballet flat or boot. That said, I like these Nike Air Rifts. Can’t go wrong with Asics.

@annapei asks: What object/accessory/feature(s) makes you feel most like you? Most confident? Most attractive? Not advice but curious your answer and how it might help others to find this niche.

There is a whole category I’ve dubbed my evergreen objects—things I put on that consistently make me feel strong. Jewelry (a silver bracelet from an Argentine designer, my grandmother’s wedding ring), perfume (Freckled and Beautiful), and lipstick (Benetint).

A question from a follower who would like to remain anonymous: Should I quit my job?

Yes! You are a smart, beautiful, sensational woman who is skilled at reinvention and world-building. They don’t deserve you.

@saturnhorse asks: Where to look when the subway screeches to a halt and all the ads are indecipherable AI code boy slop so u can’t look at the ads and there’s no service on your phone.

Great question Saturn, horse! This is a perfect time to organize your photo albums. I’m sure you have so many duplicate photos and are constantly buying more storage when instead you should just delete photos you don’t care about. The easiest place to start is “screenshots.” You don’t need that photo of a photo. Delete it. Personally, my photo albums are very organized. I have dozens of hyper-specific albums I’ve made on commutes over the years, diligently labeled “taxes,” “boyfriend,” “author photos,” “scary medical records,” and even “family secrets.”

@beazlevy asks: Do we think there will be another wave of “body positivity” or is it just skinny again for the foreseeable future? Are the dolls sufficiently protected in the fashion world or is another T-shirt needed?

Ugh, the creep fest of the Ozempidemic. What are we doing!!!!! I think the pendulum will swing back and there will be another big to-do about all the things that we should already be to do-ing. It isn’t enough, and the dolls will never be sufficiently protected in the fashion world if they’re not sufficiently protected in the world writ large.

An answer from stylish girl @niktakhani to the question: What are you back-to-school shopping?

• Candies’ suede clogs. Bratz doll fantasy reimagined.

• A special pillow to prevent side sleeping/promote back sleeping. Need to retain my fat pads.

• White noise machine. I have professional upstairs neighbors but also need to make a 7.30 a.m. workout.

• White mesh canopy for my bedroom setup. I had one age 10, which was also the age I discovered Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. I now have a birchwood Japanese platform bed, and it surprisingly works well with a canopy!!

• Botox injections for my pits (I hate deodorant)

• Yerba mate and otherwise caffeinated teas. Azealia Banks was right about coffee drinkers having hot breath and anger. Also, a tenant of traditional Chinese medicine.

@cinnamndoll asks: Do you accept pitches for the Substack or is it faculty-ran only?

We do accept pitches! Nicolaia.rips@i-d.co

@spaaaah asks: When are we going live?

Next week??

• This Sophie Haigney piece on the fantastical and poisonously colored, caffeinated beverages taking over the nation. Scrummy.

• Marlowe Grandos rightfully being acknowledged the Queen of Canada. Drake should write a song about her.

• Reading about King Baldwin the Leper and his traitorous sister Sybilla.

• I went to the best store in the world (Maison Empereur in Marseille) and bought a new rose perfume, an embroidered lingerie bag that says “lingerie,” a portable yogurt cup, a little napkin for my purse to stash snacks in, and a stamp for letter writing. And as presents: clementine liqueur, four blocks of fragrant Marseille soap, a soap carrier made of hard plastic, a special toothpaste, a small spoon, chestnut cream, and mustard from Dijon.

Here is an abridged version of my review:

“Pretty Babies takes all of the mystique, anger, and fluttering eyelashes of Lana Del Rey’s songs, all the parts people find alluring and problematic, and manifests it with luster on screen. It’s a cautionary tale fueled by the fake promise of the American dream, about ambition and where it takes us.

Small-town America: teenage girl Marie (Emily Alyn Lind) is about to finish high school and plans to follow in the footsteps of her idols—the old Hollywood legends who star in the only movies her mother lets her watch. At school, few people understand her; her only real ally is her best friend, Luna (Sadie Stanley), a nickname she earned because, we’re told, she’s a “lunatic.” They’re both convinced they’ll be stars one day; Marie wants to go to college and train, but Luna knows she has the guts to make it happen without anybody’s permission. Largely detached from the love of their parents, a violent incident prompts them to go on the run together. They steal a car and head for Los Angeles, where dreams come true.

Of course, the film knows that the life they’re in pursuit of isn’t as glamorous or straightforward as they might have thought. Teeming with atmosphere, grit, and glitter, the film is a visual marvel; its frames bronzed by the sun of the States these girls are traveling through, crackling with grain and pops of color that feel like living in a Petra Collins picture. (Evans admits she only recently learned of Collins’ work.) At times it feels like we’re living in the dreamworld of its protagonists.

Evans has made characters that don’t rely on technology for anything, really. Movies set today tend to focus on contemporary forms of sex work, but the film leans into the kind that might seem easier to romanticize: real-life meets. That’s been the trope that’s plagued Del Rey’s reputation since her early albums: a glorification of gendered violence, or “daddy” culture. But Evans doesn’t ever treat sex work as edgy or as fodder for her interesting art. If anything, it subverts expectations (Marie’s first meeting with a client is an eye-opening experience), and manages to neither demonize sex work as a profession nor condone it entirely. Instead, it feels like a film about how men will always fail to be a woman’s savior. They fuel rifts between friends who, deep down, know they need each other more than they do a romantic partner.

It’s a tragic foreshadowing for the messiness of these girls’ journey that they idolize the “olden days” of Hollywood without considering the fact that the stars of that era were hooked on barbiturates and sadder than ever.”

You could argue that Del Rey has spent over a decade as America’s greatest cultural archaeologist, digging away at its dank and falsely unattractive past to make new, inquisitive work. Born to Die and its Paradise Edition addendum were so old- fashioned that they were considered pastiche and derivative, embraced at the time only by gay guys and girls on Tumblr who understood the vision. But soon that supposed shakiness firmed up: Ultraviolence caused chaos with its title track’s supposed glorification of domestic violence, but was more warmly received. Lust for Life felt like a poppier slant on the more grown-up world she’d built. Then Norman F*cking Rockwell came—her masterpiece. It paired this hazy Americana throwback sound with references to Kanye West and iPads.

Nobody’s been successful in making music that sounds like Lana (not without trying) because her music presents itself as something inimitable. There’s as much Julee Cruise as there is Eminem in the fabric of it, twisted with influences from outside of the world of music, poets and authors who themselves made fascinating work about the American psyche. And yet, we can encounter a mood and feel like it’s something that would fit into her oeuvre.

Despite their beef, the shared image of a swampy American south feels like it connects Ethel Cain to Del Rey’s world. The visual presentation of British pop star Sienna Spiro hearkens back to the coiffed, bee-stung-lips image of Del Rey in the early 2010s. The literature of Ottessa Moshfegh, namely My Year of Rest and Relaxation, captures the kind of lackadaisical approach to a depressed existence that punctuated some of her early interviews. This lush Sylvia Plath archive/resell IG account that i-D icon Marley Wendt put me onto. It even fits retroactively! The Virgin Suicides? A Lana movie. Lolita, obv. Her influence is so all-consuming that she’s able to take credit for things that existed before she was even on this earth. In the mood for a movie with Lana Del Rey vibes? Someone’s cultivated a 1000-strong list of them on Letterboxd.

That’s an impressive influence, and I’m not sure how much Del Rey would take credit for this stuff. But in an age of flat pop apathy becoming the dominant power in music, it’s sort of wild to think that Del Rey, who’s never had a sniff of a number one single in the UK or the US, has managed to become the biggest “vibes” artist of her age.

I spoke to an alligator from the Louisiana bayou who may or may not have met Del Rey’s husband, tour guide Jeremy Dufrene.

I asked: What do you think of Lana Del Rey’s music?

The alligator said: “I think it’s great.”

• I only saw one thing at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, and that was Buggers—a piercing portrayal of the relationship between the artist Francis Bacon and George Dyer. Most theater at the Fringe, despite its lauded reputation, is violently mid. But I found Alastair Hall’s succinct (50 minutes!) and creatively staged play to be really affecting, with some of the most real writing I’ve heard spoken out loud on stage in ages. Pretty much every important newspaper has given it a 5-star review. It’s very good!

• Not to be a bitch, but the Chanty Beluga thing grew garish and annoying sooo quickly. Not Ms. Beluga’s doing, just an evidence of how quickly the culture can make something a “thing” and just as swiftly make it feel like your grandparents find it funny. And by that point, it’s just not that funny any more.

At fashion school in New Zealand, I rocked Rick Owens Geobaskets and posted crazy on Instagram, collecting streetwear kids from all over the world along the way. Years later, the fit pics have dried up and, against all odds, most of us have real jobs. But we’re still bound by the thing that brought us together: music.

This is how I found myself hosting an Opium party in London.

For the uninitiated, Opium began as Playboi Carti’s label in 2019 and has since ballooned into a whole creative universe around Carti, Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, and Homixide Gang, with producers, artists, and creatives like F1lthy, Gab3, Sexisdeath, Fritz Owenz, Myles Henrik Hall, and Artdealer in its orbit. The sound is blown-out 808s, distortion, hypnotic repetition, and alternative influences; the look pulls from goth, punk, and metal. Eventually, the internet did what it does best and flattened the whole thing into an “Opium aesthetic,” meaning fans weren’t just listening to the music, they were dressing like it too.

So when Playboi Carti opened for The Weeknd at Wembley Stadium during his five-night sold-out run, obviously I went (VIP).

My heart was pounding as I watched Carti come onstage to perform “Timeless” and “Rather Lie” with Mr. Weeknd. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The pyrotechnics were so egregious that I genuinely thought my eyelashes were going to singe off.

I went home and watched Carti music videos until I ran out of White Claws.

The next morning, I woke up to discover that the white cotton nightie I had planned to wear to the party that night had been returned to sender. A fashion emergency!

I was too hungover to shop properly, so I texted the very well-dressed Camille Charrière, owner of a crazy and enviable wardrobe, and told her about my predicament. She told me to meet her assistant at her house and take whatever I wanted. I settled on a blue latex Versace number, the kind of dress popularized by Love Island UK contestants and lovingly dubbed the “Clingeh” by fans.

I spent the rest of the afternoon adding names to the guest list, getting drunk, and shopping on Portobello Road. I complained that nightlife was starting to feel like a job. Getting dolled up and procuring designer clothing is, of course, my job.

My musician boyfriend, Jezmi, who has his very own long and storied career in nightlife, looked at me with an expression suggesting that I was a bratty little cow.

I painted my face in vaguely Opium-baddie style—half clown, half slut. I got latex lube all over the wooden floor, and Jezmi slipped in it twice.

Music critic Shaad D’Souza came over to my house because I had texted him in a manner suggesting I had no friends and therefore nobody to Dyson Airwrap the back of my head. He helped himself to a drink from my fridge and told me I was like Susanne Bartsch. I asked if I was like the Opium Amanda Lepore for the night. He said, “Sure.”

I’d never been to Egg before, the legendary King’s Cross club where the party was held. As I approached the doors, my heel kept falling off because I had stretched the shoes out the previous year by wearing them with socks to the Charli xcx The Moment wrap party, which happened to coincide with a sex party in a mansion in central London.

Security gave me a hard time, despite the fact that you could see the outline of my belly button through the latex dress. Later, my friend told me that security had pulled her into a medical tent and shone a flashlight in her eyes because she was fabulously wine-drunk.

Eventually, I made it to the green room, where I was greeted by plastic carafes labeled TEQUILA #1, TEQUILA #2, TEQUILA #3, and WHISKEY.

In attendance was a gaggle of London nightlife fauna: a The Weeknd lookalike, Sinn6r, Coucouchloe, Anaïs Setareh, Uneek, and Myles Henrik Hall of DIARY 1999, who was my connection to the Opium universe.

F1lthy, the prolific producer whose distinctive sound helped shape the sonic world around Opium, headlined the party. From his first track, the crowd was already in a mosh pit. Multidisciplinary artist and new-gen style icon Gab3 followed with his hit “I Got Bands,” before giving the crowd an exclusive preview of several unreleased tracks from his upcoming album, 00RAV3. In oversized cat-eyes, a leather Perfecto, and a tangle of Chanel pearls, pins, and diamonds, he looked every bit the rock star.

Shelovesmeechie brought the same energy, going off throughout F1lthy’s set before grabbing the mic to perform a track of his own. Fritz Owenz kept the crowd moving with a set of his own, while Woozy—Gab3’s protégé and my new favorite person—stepped behind the decks for Gab3 before somehow ending up behind the decks with me and Jezmi.

There comes a point in every night when you’ve had enough of TEQUILA #2 that you decide it’s probably a good idea to get behind the decks.

I tried to play Arcade Fire.

Wrong vibe, obviously.

So I put on Nettspend.

They hated it.

Okay, how about “Jeans” by 2hollis?

Everybody stopped moving.

They just stood there, staring at me, holding up Snapchat screens with song suggestions typed out in Comic Sans: Che’s “On Fleek,” OsamaSon’s “Addicted,” and 50 Cent’s “In da Club.”

Jezmi grabbed one of their phones and closed all the apps. Woozy took someone else’s phone, we took a selfie on it, and handed it back to the kid.

By this point, we had cleared the dance floor. My work here was done.

• I’ve started enjoying brushing my teeth because I got a Suri toothbrush.

• I was in America for 10 days and spent the whole time doing boots-on-the-ground cosmetics research. Here are my takeaways: K18 dry shampoo is the best on the market; Farah Homidi lip liner in Minky blended with Make Up For Ever Endless Cacao is my new lip combo; I recommend the Soft Services Buffing Bar to everyone who has skin; Victoria Beckham eyeliner and Water Tint blush will be in my kit forever; I only moisturize with AmLactin procured from CVS.

• Cheesecloth from LA Apparel.

• I brought back a Yu Mei purse from New Zealand for each member of my household, and they are thrilled.

• An annual Tate membership would be a great gift to give.

• Sasha Sorrell jeans will be the new Hedi Dior jeans.

• Shout out the beautiful Annie Kraum and her beautiful new makeup brushes.

• I’m not interested in going on holiday in August, and I’m looking forward to summer being over.

• I’m scared of toxic cookware and BPA again. Does a nontoxic airfryer exist?

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.”