‘Louis Vuitton is about fantasy,’ says Humberto Campana. ‘And I am a fantasy guy. I like to tell stories.’ Campana co-founded his company, Estúdio Campana, with his late brother Fernando in 1984. Their work, which centres on pieces of furniture but also includes smaller accessories for the home such as wall mirrors, is shaped from everyday materials. Creatively, they draw inspiration from Brazil, and more precisely the city of São Paulo, where Estúdio Campana is headquartered.

Estúdio Campana has been a collaborator with Louis Vuitton since 2012, the year that the maison first introduced its Objets Nomades line of limited-edition designs for house and home. ‘Everything is possible,’ says Campana of working with Louis Vuitton and its specialist workshops. It’s a creative to and fro that the Brazilian designer likens to ‘a game of ping-pong’.

Debuted in Milan in April, the most recent result of this exchange includes a limited-edition wooden box clad in marine leather, its shape and construction inspired by Louis Vuitton’s totemic travelling trunks. The leather has been dyed in vibrant shades and forms an impressionistic pattern that is Campana’s love letter to the nature of Brazil. ‘It comes from a drawing,’ he says of the multicolour scene. ‘I had been making a lot of drawings inspired by microorganisms, fungus, cell structures and plants. All from imagination. This design of mine was then transformed into the box.’

Sketching has long been a practice to Campana, who is seldom without a sketchbook to hand. ‘It’s a way to get my anxiety down, it’s therapeutic.’ He filled a whole book with new ideas on his flight from Brazil to Milan, he reveals. ‘I always try to find new stories to tell.’

Hunza G is bringing its bold, carefree summer spirit to Marylebone on Saturday 6 June with the opening of its first London pop-up store.

An immersive space designed by studio Boom, Under the Water captures the feeling of a day at the beach with warm yellow floors, a rippled mirror that reflects light, a large pink inflatable dolphin and finishes in Hunza G Blue – the brand’s new signature colour.

"This is the first time we have created a physical home here, and we wanted the space to feel like stepping into the world of Hunza G, not simply shopping it. Under the Water is for our community. A place to experience the brand in person, in summer, in the city” says Founder and Creative Director Georgiana Huddart.

Huddart relaunched the Hunza G brand in 2025. Originally known as Hunza, the label rose to fame in 1990 when Julia Roberts wore its iconic blue mini dress in Pretty Woman. Building on this legacy, Hunza G revisits 80s and 90s silhouettes (one-shoulder tops, high-leg cuts, asymmetrical lines) and retro colour-block hues (metallic tangerine, bubblegum and mango sorbet) in swimwear designed to make every woman feel confident. The brand’s signature is the one-size-fits-all Original Crinkle™ fabric, an ultra-stretch knit providing a flattering fit for all body types.

A curated selection of new arrivals, exclusive products from the recent Burberry x Hunza G capsule and signature bestsellers will be available alongside limited-edition merchandise: tote bags, luggage tags, and water bottles. All the essentials for sun-soaked days.

6 June to 7 August 2026, 3 Paddington Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 5QD, Monday to Saturday: 10am to 7pm. Sunday: 11am to 5pm

Ropes of pearls (some from oceans, some man-made), two-tone slingbacks, straw boaters, a black-and-white palette: the stylistic codes of Chanel are manifold, and known to many. All are anchored in the life and work of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel, who established her namesake business in 1910 in Paris. There are the tweed jackets, their woven fabric a takeaway from long weekends spent in Scotland with Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster; striped Breton tops are a nod to the marinière sailors’ uniforms she spotted in and around Deauville on Normandy’s Côte Fleurie.

Piebald leopard prints are perhaps a lesser-known Chanel heirloom. The pattern first started appearing in Chanel’s work in the early 1930s. Coco herself wore a leopard-print ensemble for Cecil Beaton, when he took her portrait in 1933.

In New York, creative director Matthieu Blazy brought back Chanel’s mastery of big-cat print for his first Chanel Métiers d’art collection, shown inside an abandoned subway station in Lower Manhattan last December. Counting 81 looks that creatively draw from Chanel’s link to the city, the collection comprised skirt suits, billowing silk chiffon skirts, shoes and bags emblazoned with leopard prints. All were made by Chanel’s group of specialist ateliers, including milliner Maison Michel, who imagined a leopard-themed fascinator. Meanwhile, shoemaker Massaro finished Chanel’s totemic slingback in shaved shearling with a spotted animal print.

Handwoven by the artisans of legendary couture embroidery house Maison Lesage, slubbed, knotted leopard tweed shapes a new take on Chanel’s flap bag. A mini version of the Chanel 25, a hobo-style bag available in three sizes, each with two large patch pockets, now comes in a tactile, ponyskin-effect leather.

Cruise shows embrace extremes that ready-to-wear cannot touch: far-flung destinations; multi-layered film and outdoor catwalk extravaganzas, starry front rows plus parties galore. The small number of luxury brands that go big on cruise – namely Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior, Fendi – means there’s more ‘space’ to make an impression and more ‘space’ to spend where it counts. Guests were flown and chaperoned around L.A. for Dior; to NYC for Gucci; to Biarritz for Chanel; back to NYC for Hermes early June its Chapter 2 collection. That’s a spike on air miles.

Where the logic behind Cruise collections was once to offer a timely delivery of winter sunshine vacay garms in November, now it’s less about climate and more about fuelling the high gifting season with collectibles and novelties. Why the focus on the U.S.? The answer lies in the nation’s 0.1% of superlatively wealthy individuals and a newly loaded generation of Nepo inheritors benefitting from the great wealth transfer.

Chanel

But the Cruise route started with Matthieu Blazy’s giddy line-up revealed at the Art Deco Casino Municipal in Biarritz, the chic seaside town where Coco Chanel first set up shop.

With a view over the Atlantic (and thoroughly scrubbed up sand beaches), Blazy rejoiced in the fruits of the sea including lace and crochet dresses that looked like coral; deck chair stripe skirt suits; Mariner knits and classic bathing caps reimagined by Chanel milliner, Maison Michel. Sea horses and shells were embedded into tweed weaves and appliqued into circle skirts – Blazy is a master at 3D.

Touché: we love the ‘neck deco’ featuring silk scarves and chain necklaces; the thigh split skirts worn with bunched-sleeve shackets exposing fanciful print linings.

Dior

Maverick JW Anderson will be involved as creative consultant on no less three forthcoming Hollywood movies including Luca Guadagngino’s AI drama Artificial. That’s A LOT but Anderson takes his ventures in his stride. So, he took Dior to L.A. and set up stage at the newly expanded David Geffen Galleries at LACMA (a $724m project by Peter Zumthor) creating a parking lot scene. Hollywood legends – watcha Al Pacino! and pop stars Cyrus and Carpenter were out in force.

He invoked Grace Kelly in curvy bar jackets worn with ripped jeans (yes, Couture denim is back); Gloria Swanson in feather-trimmed boudoir coats and Cary Grant in lounge suits.

Gifting season? A sequin Cadillac bag revived from John Galliano’s era and a plaid shirt emblazoned with Ed Ruscha’s word art would make a dream duo.

Louis Vuitton

With equal cultural heft, Louis Vuitton chose the just reopened Frick Museum in uptown New York as a venue where guests could admire the grace of Selldorf Architect’s $220m extension. The line-up was an explosive mash-up of downtown/uptown New Yorker style laced with that Patricia Field SATC wrong is right kookiness.

Ghesquiere had discovered a 1930s suitcase in the archive that had been given a Keith Haring doodle makeover back in the 1980s: cue punky pop art get-ups. There were swirling denim rara skirts and belted leather jackets; metallic sports shorts and Haring graffiti tops; jeans featuring a trompe l’oeil print of worn stained denims, flamenco frilled boleros topping bodysuits and Diane Keaton Derby hats aplenty. The show marked the beginning of a three-year patron partnership between Louis Vuitton and the Frick.

Takeaways? A sequinned Chinese takeaway carton shaped evening bag and a mini Haring doodle briefcase.

Gucci

Demna went for a democratic open-air show and launched Gucci Core at a Times Square takeover. It was teased with a hilarious billboard show of Gucci-fied products including Gucci chocolate, Gucci water, Gucci pets, cars and longevity drugs. The Core collection will be a year-round offer of Gucci ‘staples’ that sweep from exec pinstriped suits, fake fur capes, lacquered denim, revived Flora blouses and scarves (the print debuted in 1966) and diva evening dresses as worn by Cindy Crawford. The New York moment was set on fire by the appearance of New Yorkers such as Tom Brady, Paris Hilton and interior designer @eyeswoon, on the runway.

Gucci for all? Demna looked back to the Tom Ford heyday of lifestyle marketing (remember the black Gucci mask and flippers?) and put the house stripes on everything from yoga mat carriers to back packs and water bottles.

Fendi

A Roman in Rome: Maria Grazia Chiuri released cruise through a film and lookbook and propelled her take on pragmatic glamour seen at her Fendi debut in March. The film nodded to Histoire d’Eau, Jacques de Bascher’s 1977 short commissioned by Karl Lagerfeld to coincide with Fendi’s first ready-to-wear collection.

The fictional star is a German tourist named Suzie, who explores Rome through a series of mysterious encounters and a wardrobe of linear coats, long pleat goddess dresses and sequin-embroidered split pencil skirts.

The Souvenir? A parchment lined studded leather and suede Baguette.

What is the first thing you see in the morning?

Opening the shutters of our bedroom this morning, which overlooks the distant blue of the Mediterranean, the light was dazzling, the sky cerulean, the air light, a breath of wind stirring the silvery leaves of the olive trees that border and surround the house.

Describe the view from where you are right now.

From where I stand, my pergola is in full bloom, its cascades of mauve wisteria hanging low in the warm air. The flowers release a soft fragrance of carnation and jasmine, evocative of the elegance of 1920s women. If that scent were ever to find its way back into fashion, I would be quietly delighted.

Is there a view you can’t quite forget?

I know of no more beautiful landscape than this sea of trees flowing into the Mediterranean. It is the image of Delphi and its olive trees, a horizon that has never left me.

Which smell takes you back to childhood?

Olive. When L’Objet approached me to create Delphes, a new fragrance inspired by my childhood memories in the Mediterranean, an olive scent immediately came to my mind. I found a rare extract, never used in perfumery, called Olive Grignon Absolute, and decided to add it to Delphes.

What smell makes you feel at home?

Also the olive. The citrus is considered the heart of the Mediterranean. And the olive is considered the soul. That’s home for me.

What sound do you wake up to?

With the window open, the wisteria on the pergola laden with bees and flowers alike creating a gentle symphony around the house. I like listening to this soft murmur, like the muffled sound of brushes on a cymbal.

Is there a particular dish that has stayed with you?

One memory that has stayed with me is deceptively simple: a slice of warm toast, drenched in intensely green olive oil, topped with a sliver of black truffle and a touch of fleur de sel. It was both rustic and elevated, and it shaped my understanding that simplicity, when precise, can be sublime.

Which dish do you like to cook for yourself?

Something warm, immediate... guided by that instinct more than anything else.

What is your go-to dinner party dish?

I tend to prepare something quite simple. Things that come from what is at hand... made without complication. I prefer when it feels like home, and when the pleasure comes more from sharing than from the dish itself.

Describe your favourite meal.

I remember the company more than the place. A table, a certain light, a conversation... and a dish that arrives at the right moment. That’s what stays with me.

What is the taste of spring?

Artichoke.

Silk or cashmere?

Cashmere.

Marble or wood?

Wood.

Do you have a favourite piece of furniture at home?

It’s always the piece I return to without thinking. The one that receives the body naturally... where texture and presence create something almost instinctive.

Is there a particular object you cherish most?

Working for a time for a saddler, I encountered the most beautiful hides. Some were so fine, so soft, that I didn’t even dare to touch. Because they were tanned with natural tannins, they smelled of violet, narcissus, iris... scents which are considered sacred. I kept one, almost like a memory.

Photographs: Studio Birth, Getty

Boudoir style is a fantastic euphemism that has, over the centuries, covered everything from oil studies of bathing beauties concealed in steamy vapour and draped in cotton towels, to erotic pastels of semi-nudes and through-the-keyhole views of models in little nothings. The genre encompasses a whole litany of artistic techniques and features a dictionary of lingerie from bloomers and French knickers, to corsets and peignoir gowns. And now, it seems, boudoir is back on the agenda, as designers tempt us with the seductive language of déshabillé.

In these jolting, hard-edged times, the mood offers up an escape, a sprinkling of flirtation and suggestions of intimacy. There are plenty of inspirations to pull on. The genre has swerved in and out of fine art (François Boucher, Jules Hippolyte Ravel, Lawrence Alma-Tadema); early photography (EJ Bellocq’s studies of prostitutes in Storyville, New Orleans); and flickered through a century of fashion shoots and movies. Pretty Baby by Louis Malle (1978), starring Brooke Shields, was inspired by Bellocq’s documentary work in Storyville and triggered a vogue for lace-trimmed bloomers and camis. Meanwhile, Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), revealed another bonanza of boudoir moments, as Jane Fonda and her fellow contestants battled for survival in a Depression-era dance marathon. Flimsy house dresses, slip dresses and marabou once again found their way into high style.

The film inspired Alexander McQueen’s exceptional Spring 2004 Deliverance collection that was shown in the gilt- and velvet-swaggged auditorium of the Salle Wagram in Paris and choreographed by Michael Clark. Models danced to ‘exhaustion’ in the round, fainting in dramatic poses into the arms of sailors wearing tap shorts and stockings; crystal-strewn bias-cut gowns draped low over corset tops. It triggered a trend surge in corsetry, camisoles and lace, just as we are witnessing now.

‘Satin slip dressing has been trending for a few seasons, initially in a sleek 90s way; now it is taking a more lavish, glamorously nostalgic direction reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s,’ says Net-A-Porter’s buying manager, Lydia Zacharis. ‘See it in luxurious fabrics such as silk and lace, corsetry, sheer details and pastels, but also marabou-trimmed chinoiserie robes and kitten-heel mules. Brands including Chloé, Saint Laurent, Conner Ives and Doën have been leading the way.’

The sense of lavish is a huge attraction with marabou trims and off-the-shoulder soigné effects worthy of Marilyn Monroe. But where these styles were originally conceived for indoor pleasures and intimate moments, the new chapter takes boudoir out into the open. How to transfer? Zacharis recommends lace-trimmed camisole tops paired with tailoring and kitten heels, semi-sheer slips with chunky knits or lingerie-feel satin slips under leather jackets (a Zoë Kravitz favourite). Stylistically, think about playing off opposites – even a baseball T-shirt looks good with a lace-trimmed skirt, or a Valentino feather-trimmed robe with jeans.

John Galliano is a master of dressing romantic heroines in ravishing or just-about-to-be-ravished style: bias cut, lace capelets, embellished chiffon and swooshing petticoat skirts are all part of his lexicon. It will be fascinating to see what he conjures up in a new two-year consultancy deal reconfiguring Zara’s archives; the first collection arrives in stores in September.

Meanwhile, there is a host of independent designers to sate desires, one of whom is Carlotta Danti, founder of rosamosario.com – a boudoir specialist who uses couture techniques (hand-rolled hems, tiny covered buttons) in her confections, which Rihanna has custom-made. Or consider Yuhan Wang, the London-based Chinese designer, who starts with a classical notion of femininity and plays with the ideals. There’s a rebellious streak in her tiered handkerchief skirts and draped ribbon-tied tops.

Boudoir is far from submissive; indeed, there’s something intrinsically powerful in all the delicacy – and in those peachy, lemon, lilac hues.

Photographs by Chris Brooks. Fashion by Felix Bischof. Fashion Assistant: Alicia Ellis

Lost and found

For The Blend’s May issue, photographer Chris Brooks pictured the season’s most in-demand sunglasses as left behind across Paris. A new pair of glossy black cat-eye shades by Chanel, designed by the brand’s creative director Matthieu Blazy, remain table-top at a cafe; a pair of metal-tone Balenciaga Racer sunglasses wait for their owner’s return atop a roadside plinth, near the river Seine. Loewe’s Speed Shield sunglasses, a model made from metal that featured in the Spanish maison’s Spring / Summer 2026 show by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, have been propped up by a blue door; there are more sunglasses including a tortoiseshell theme pair by Celine and black Alaia aviators to be retrieved.

Four thousand years ago, in Cyprus, lavender was blended into a fragrance that, when unearthed in the 2000s, became the world’s earliest surviving perfume. Millennia on, the herb remains at the apogee of aromatics. From medieval pomanders to 19th-century bestselling scents, lavender’s ancient appeal hasn’t abated with present-day perfumers either. Incense Water by Perfumer H, for example, could be a modern interpretation of a historic attar, mixing top notes of lavender with Roman chamomile, frankincense and saffron.

But what of the plant itself? ‘Lavender’s blue... lavender’s green,’ the folk song goes. It can be a great many other colours, too. With silvery foliage, scented by the tiny mauve, white or deep purple flowers that float in a crowd around each bush, they shift in the breeze, playing host to bees that prize its pollen as highly as we do its aroma.

Ready for harvest from mid-July onwards, lavender is a flower of the warmer months. One of the first plants we’re taught as children to rub between hands and inhale, thereafter sealing in our senses something special and reminiscent of summer. Riffing on this is A Balm of Calm from Penhaligon’s, combining it with other garden favourites, such as geranium and iris, for an instant hit of serenity. Alongside is Le Labo’s Lavande 31, a tongue-in-cheek take on lavender’s more old-school associations, updating the nostalgia with earthy oak moss and amber.

Jersey by Chanel, part of the house’s Les Exclusifs collection, blends the softness of lavender with Bourbon vanilla and notes of white musk, making for something as layered as the lavender plant’s own multifarious scent profile, or what David James, head gardener at Derbyshire’s Melbourne Hall, describes as hazy, blurry and enveloping but branching out well beyond those borders’. That would make sense, given the more than 450 different varieties available. Some of the most popular cottage garden types being English (Lavandula angustifolia) ‘Hidcote’ and ‘Munstead,’ along with lavandin (Lavandula x intermedia), which are those standing in rows on endless purple Provençal hills.

Where other herbs might ignite the senses, this small shrub is said to soothe the mind instead. ‘Despite evoking feelings of calm, lavender paradoxically thrives in the harshest of conditions. Intense heat, direct sunshine and sharp soils make up their preferred home,’ James, himself a collector of rare lavenders and custodian to numerous different varieties, concludes. ‘It’s as if, in taking on all that discomfort, they can impart solace to any wearer of their scent.’

The jumbled letters on Diptyque’s classic black-and-white oval label were inspired by cryptography, the names of each scent becoming a kind of visual riddle for the customer to decode. Despite the deliberate complexity of its label, the formula behind Diptyque’s success is notably straightforward: minimal design plus quality ingredients plus impactful scents equals a product that is unanimously admired. A rare object that can transcend the particularities of personal taste to become something almost everyone wants in their home.

Now, for the first time in decades, these fabled candles have been given a revamp. The changes are subtle to the eye, but took years to develop, including packaging that is now completely refillable, and a three-year-in-the-making, high-quality mineral wax blend that is created almost entirely by hand using two factories in France; one in Provence and the other in Paris. Swiss-French designer Julie Richoz was called in to make subtle adjustments to the packaging aesthetic, such as a raised glass ridge around the label, while retaining the same oval outline and monochrome print that has become the brand’s signature.

The perfumers Alexandra Carlin and Olivia Giacobetti, both of whom have created a number of scents for the brand, have also crafted five new scents for the permanent collection: black sesame, rhubarb, nettle, shiso and coffee; each of which turns the core ingredient into something both recognisable and novel. The fruity acidity of rhubarb takes on a strange brightness with the addition of wood and lemon notes; the natural freshness of shiso leaves has been mixed with almond notes and a delicate spiciness; while the watery, green quality of nettle (ortie) is combined with a rich earthiness inspired by the underbrush. The remaining scents – black sesame and coffee – are slightly more potent, with the former quickly filling the room with a rich, roasted wood perfume, and the latter echoing the warm, invigorating scent of freshly ground beans.

As with all Diptyque’s candles, the wick’s diameter and cotton braiding has been specially selected for each scent to diffuse its fragrance most effectively – a detail few people know about, but which expresses the perfectionism that underlies the brand and has helped it to endure for over 60 years. As Amanda Morgan, MD of Diptyque UK & Ireland, says, “The classic candle has always been iconic for Diptyque, since the first candles came to light back in 1963 with its notable scents from the founders of Diptyque. With this new elevated redesign, we have expanded our herbarium of scents to 51 with new exciting additions and the glass vessel will frame our emblematic oval in a new way.”

What is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning?

The lovely little face of my son George.

Describe the view from where you are right now.

Vanilla walls, white sheets.

Is there a view you can't quite forget?

Sailing in the south of France.

Is there a particular artwork you always return to for inspiration?

Grayson Perry’s Red Alan Manifesto.

Is there a particular artwork you're obsessed with at the moment?

Lily Allen’s portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, by Nieves González.

What sound do you wake up to?

George’s voice saying, ‘Good morning Mum, I love you.’

What gets you dancing?

An Irish bar and my children.

Which singer or song do you never tire of hearing and why?

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin – all the emotions.

What song always makes you cry?

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Into My Arms – beautiful.

And which tune always makes you smile?

Son of a Preacher Man by Dusty Springfield^®.

Which smell takes you back to childhood?

Talcum powder.

What smell makes you feel at home?

Cigarettes and clean washing powder.

What is your earliest scent memory?

Fresh tomatoes in my grandad’s greenhouse.

What was the first meal that made you fall in love with food?

Sunday dinner with a hangover as a teenager.

Describe a dish that's always stayed with you.

Fresh fish while sailing.

What is the taste of spring?

Strawberries with sugar.

Olive or a twist?

Olive, always.

What is your favourite restaurant?

Gatto Nero in Lake Como^®.

Silk or cashmere?

Silk.

Marble or wood?

Marble.

Favourite piece of furniture at home?

My bed.

Is there an object you cherish above all others?

My grandmother’s nail kit; she used this to do my manicure every week for years. I cherish it.

For men, for a long time, there wasn’t much choice in the way of luggage. It was just suitcases and trunks for travel; wallets for cash; and a briefcase for your papers. But in the 1990s there was a cultural shift and the idea of a ‘man bag’ emerged. It was, of course, no different to the kind of roomy shoulder bag women had been shrewdly using for decades, but somehow... manlier.

Today, the briefcase is long dead, and though the backpack sustains, you’re just as likely to see a guy on the street hauling his laptop in an identity-signifying fabric tote bag, or stuffing his gym kit into a slick, boardroom-friendly duffel bag. Perhaps more so.

Statement-making bags have become commonplace on the catwalks of London, Paris and Milan, and, in January, a report by Global Market Insights projected that the men’s luxury bag market would grow from $12.2 billion in 2026 to $18.4 billion in 2035.

‘I think a big part of that is the continued blurring of traditional gender lines in fashion,’ says Benedict Browne, style director at menswear retailer Mr Porter. ‘While that shift has been happening for years, we’re now seeing it fully reflected in everyday accessories. The average man is much less hesitant about carrying a day bag as a statement piece, rather than relying solely on pockets or more traditionally “masculine” options.’

In turn, there are trends in the men’s bag scene, and the latest vogue is for the messenger bag, the original ‘man bag’. The parameters are quite vague, but a messenger bag tends to be defined by a simple rectangular body with a single strap that runs over the shoulder from one top edge to the other. The name is said to stem from the American West and the Pony Express, the horse-powered messenger service of the 1860s.

But in 2026, the gamut of men’s messenger bags is broad. At Lemaire, the achingly cool Parisian brand, new-season messengers are made in partnership with Filt, France’s oldest manufacturer of string bags, and shaped like upturned croissants. If your freight level is low, the fishnet outer can be removed, leaving a soft, simple clutch.

The same elongated shapes are on show at The Row, Gucci and Rick Owens, but more classic, cuboid shapes can be found at Loewe, Dior and Louis Vuitton. At the latter, the mega-brand’s famous monogram pervades, while at Dior, messenger bags double as dust jackets for literary classics such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘book bag’.

Browne describes the Lemaire and Loewe bags as ‘high status’, but also commute-friendly. However, if it’s low-key reliability you need, head to Japanese maker Porter-Yoshida, where, Browne says, bags are ‘consistently discreet, durable and extremely functional’. And sometimes that’s all you need from luggage, be it manly or not.

Saturdays are always special at Paris Fashion Week. Dubbed Super Saturday, it’s when a tribe in remarkable 3D-sculpted designs comes together and spills out over the pavements. Junya Watanabe jackets with geometric protrusions, Simone Rocha skirts in quilted floral silk, and Duran Lantink’s designs with bulbous padding on hips and breasts adorn these individualists. Outfits and accessories physically take up a lot of space. It’s the day when the Comme des Garçons collective of highly experimental designers, including Junya Watanabe and Noir by Kei Ninomiya, present – and a rebellious, avant-garde spirit really gets a grip on the style conscious.

Against a backdrop of 2D design (all streamlined silhouettes, harmonious colours and flat surfaces), this shape-morphing school of fashion stands out like a giant exclamation mark. The body, as Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, has long explored, can be transformed into sculpture. And right now that fascination with kinetic movement, with blow-up shapes, with geometric as well as fluid organic lines, is driving a new chapter in style, as designers explore the joy of 3D to unexpected and often surreal effect.

How best to arrest the eye and body? It can happen with a side-bustle hipped skirt (Italian designer Niccolò Pasqualetti has made odd shapes a calling card); in a flurry of fringes (check Loewe’s silk velvet flares); in a billowing cascade of chiffons that fall into tendrils (via Sean McGirr’s trophy dresses for McQueen); the delicious billow of a marabou tunic (Bottega Veneta) or a giant flower-topped fabric mule (Dior).

This level of shape-shifting splendour used to be the preserve of haute couture, but now those handcraft techniques and the will to experiment is imploding the contours of ready-to-wear. Pieter Mulier, the outgoing creative director of Alaïa, had a field day. ‘I wanted clothes that cry,’ he declared of his taut cocoon dresses that stretch from the neck to the toe, and skirts that kick out into a waterfall of knitted fringes that move like feathers. The shapes are made to ebb and flow and place a focus on body in motion. One dress had a panel of hand-blown glass laced into the décolletage like an armoured breastplate. ‘They’re some of the most beautiful we’ve ever done,’ says Mulier.

The notion of clothes expressing themselves is a tantalising one. Paris-based Ukrainian designer Lilia Litkovska, who sells her collection at Dover Street Market and Selfridges, is a wizard pattern cutter, creating unexpected volumes and structural effects on her trademark tailoring. ‘What’s important is what is inside the volume – it’s like, without the need for words, the soul of the garment is revealed. These clothes I hope really “live” with you,’ says Litkovska.

Others excel in the expressive power of texture, such as the British designer Louise Trotter, creative head of Bottega Veneta. She embraced the scintillating with recycled fibreglass-lined ‘sweaters’ and party skirts in gradated ombré hues, while leather trench coats featured panels of the brand’s trademark Intrecciato plaited leather. ‘It has the feel of fur, and moves like glass,’ she says of the material.

‘How might craft be redefined today? How far can one push the expression of the handmade before its very traces of making disappear?’ These are the big questions running through the minds of Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, creative directors at Loewe. The pair are having fun with polished leather crafted into hourglass coats, multiple collars sprouting from shirts and chunky knitwear.

For Junya Watanabe, 3D is an adventure playground. He turned mundane household items – boxing gloves, wine glasses, shoes, straw hats – into extraordinary pile-ups. ‘By treating ready-made items – objects originally intended for specific purposes – as one of the materials, I recontextualised them and explored forms that could never be achieved through conventional methods,’ says Watanabe. And he continued that journey with paintings, old motocross gear and ski goggles fashioned into ball gowns for his just-revealed AW26 collection. That’s why they call it Super Saturday in Paris.

The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella is over 800 years old. The Italian heritage business’ first retail site opened in 1612, on Via Reginaldo Giuliani, in Florence. Here, in Tuscany, temperatures can reach the low 40s from early July to late August. Reason enough for Santa Maria Novella to create a number of products that offer cooling salvation across the summer season. One even wards off biting insects.

The line of products includes a cleansing gel and a serum enriched with pomegranate extract and niacinamide (a form of vitamin B3) inspired by the brand’s traditional Acqua di Rose, which is made with damask rose flower water and has been in steady production since 1381. Acqua di Fior d’Arancio, for which the scent of bitter orange blossom bud is distilled via steam, is an alternative. The formulation for Santa Maria Novella’s Citronella and Costmary Emulsion blends citronella essential oil with eucalyptus, lavender and mint; an aromatic mix put together to keep mosquitoes away.

Scented with Santa Maria Novella’s signature Melograno eau de cologne, the Dermo-protective Oil nourishes skin after days in the sunshine. Its recipe includes sweet almond oil and jojoba oil, in addition to extracts of St John’s wort and helichrysum, both traditionally cultivated for their anti-inflammatory properties.

Italian fashion designer Simone Bellotti presented his first designs for Jil Sander, the brand he was named creative director of in March last year, at Spring Summer 2026 Milan fashion week. His debut designs are now in store. There, they will now be joined by a line of trainers, the second partnership between Jil Sander and sportswear heavyweight Puma. “I like footwear that is streamlined, with the thinnest of soles, embracing the foot with a natural line,” says Bellotti of K-Street.

Unisex, the K-Street fits close to the foot; an ultra-thin sole is inspired by traditional karate footwear. A running trainer found in the Puma archives gave shape to the K-Street’s upper, which is available in a choice of two materials - perforated suede or nylon - and in three colourways.

Sometime around early March, following a long and unreasonable stint at the business end of Britain’s grimmest weather, thoughts turn to new clothes. Suddenly, we have had enough of heavy fabrics, enough of rain-ready outerwear, enough of layers. We want delicate clothes that billow in a coastal breeze and convey our sun-soaked insouciance. We want sunglasses, light jackets and linen tailoring. We want shoes that can be slipped into a carry-on with minimal fuss.

This summer, those shoes will likely take one of two forms. First, as a driving loafer, which looks to be making something of a comeback. The style is perhaps best typified by the Gommino by Tod’s, an uber-popular, easy-wearing slip-on, upon which the Italian brand has built an empire. ‘Gommino’ means ‘pebble’, and refers to the underside of the shoe, where a solid sole has been substituted for an array of tiny rubber ‘gommini’.

Though Tod’s popularised the form – further typified by a stitched moccasin toe and soft construction for better tactility on the pedals of a car – it did not invent it. That was another Italian brand, Car Shoe, in the 1960s, which was later bought by Prada. When Connolly owner Isabel Etedgui first opened a London store three decades ago, she stocked Car Shoe shoes.

‘I have had a bee in my bonnet since then to create [Connolly’s own] driving shoe that actually is really comfortable to wear when you’re not driving,’ said Etedgui at a recent in-conversation event with shoe designer Álvaro González, ‘and that was always the slight problem with the bobbily one.’

Well, Connolly now has that non-bobbily driver, designed by González. It is sleeker and narrower than the classic shape, and built with glove-making techniques that stitch the thin, solid sole to the upper.

There are great drivers at Gucci and Louis Vuitton this season, too. And at Prada, the driver has equally been put back in focus – although, rendered in black leather, with a sleek Prada logo on the tongue, it is perhaps more Berlin than Balearic. Prada states that the shoe is created via an 800-step, handmade process, so it should fit comfortably, wherever you wear it.

The other summer shoe making early strides is the sort of low-profile, barely-there sneaker. Following on from the recent trend for minimalist, slide-on leather mules, a wave of delicate lace-up trainers is hoving into view, courtesy of the likes of Celine, Dries Van Noten, Hermès and Loewe.

All are unified by a thin sole and a low, elongated upper that recalls 1970s running shoes. Celine’s Flat Sneaker, for example, is positively balletic; available in a range of retro colour combinations, it features suede, velvet and calfskin. The Jet sneaker at Hermès is a little more hefty, but equally as old school, and would look especially good with a gently flared trouser or McEnroe-style short-shorts. Seriously.

Now all you need is for the weather to play ball, too.

Schiaparelli is synonymous with art. Elsa Schiaparelli founded the French fashion house in 1927, embracing the burgeoning surrealist movement while working directly with some of art history's most important names, from Salvador Dalí to Jean Cocteau. This spring, London's Victoria and Albert Museum is celebrating a century of art-inspired style, from Schiaparelli's early designs through to Daniel Roseberry's reawakening of the brand for a 21st-century industry.

Using humour and radical creativity, Elsa Schiaparelli sent shock waves through the fashion world when she launched her initial designs. Cristóbal Balenciaga would go on to name her the 'only real artist in couture', thanks to her in-depth knowledge of art and early inclusion in some of the defining creative movements of the 20th century. She embraced free thinkers and created era-defining fashion moments, designing a pair of culottes for tennis star Lili Álvarez at Wimbledon – a sight unseen at the deeply traditional tournament in the 1930s and dressing Wallis Simpson, the wife of abdicated King Edward VIII, in a lobster dress designed with Dalí.

Her artistic collaborations sometimes veered into darkness a slinky black 1938 'skeleton' dress, made with Dalí, features exposed boning – while also embracing flamboyance, such as an ornate gold bracelet with the face of chimera, made in collaboration with Alberto Giacometti in 1935. The exhibition includes a playful coat from 1937 designed with Cocteau, featuring the outline of two figures moving together to kiss on the back, the shoulders entirely covered by pink folded roses.

A series of original artworks that trace links between Schiaparelli's designs and those in her creative circle are also included, from Dalí's renowned 1938 'Lobster Telephone' sculpture, to a 1937 Pablo Picasso portrait of Nusch Éluard, which has clear parallels with the fashion house's angular and asymmetric definition of the body. Archive images of the young designer highlight how authentically she was enveloped within the surrealist world, as seen in a 1933 Man Ray portrait, in which her head peers over a naked, armless stone bust.

There are plenty of treats for visitors who have discovered the brand through its most recent designs too. The Autumn/Winter 21-22 couture 'lungs dress' worn by Bella Hadid in Cannes is on show, with a simple black silhouette cut-off under the breasts and a hefty gold necklace bearing the pattern of a windpipe and fine network of bronchi. An armour-like Autumn/Winter 2024 design also appears, its intricate features creating sweeping featherlike plates across the chest and arms. A rich celebration of a fashion house that has stayed uniquely ahead of the curve, still able to surprise a century after the movements that first gave shape to it made their mark on the world.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, 28 March until 8 November 2026, V&A South Kensington

‘I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world,’ wrote Italophile E.M. Forster in his 1905 novel Where Angels Fear to Tread. He was referring, of course, to the very features that have defined Italian culture for millennia: the glorifying beauty of its art and nature; the effortlessly elegant style (or ‘sprezzatura’), mixed with an exacting seriousness about doing things right (drinking cappuccinos before noon, no cheese with seafood); the vivacity of its people; and the unparalleled quality of everything they make, from cashmere sweaters to olive oil.

For 110 years, Acqua di Parma has dedicated itself to bottling this unique Italian arte di vivere, creating fragrances as refined as the film stars – Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, to name a few – who chose them as their signature scents. The brand traces its heritage back to Baron Carlo Magnani, who wanted a fresh alternative to the opulent, heavy perfumes that were popular around the turn of the 20th century. His answer was Colonia, a fragrance meant to bottle the feeling of basking in an Italian sun that combined the ‘frutti d’oro’ of Italy (lemon, orange and bergamot) with a bright citrus heart tempered by fresh lavender, rosemary, verbena and warm vetiver, sandal and patchouli.

Now, the premier name in Italian fragrance is celebrating its anniversary with a reinterpretation of Colonia, created by perfumer Alexis Dadier. Colonia II Profumo Millesimato retains the signature aspects of its forebear, but is enhanced by the addition of a special 2024 harvest of Madagascan ylang-ylang, a uniquely complex and rich variety of the plant known for its creamy, slightly banana-esque smell.

‘For this anniversary edition, I wanted to honour Colonia II Profumo by highlighting a rare discovery: the 2024 Ylang-Ylang White harvest,’ says Dadier. ‘Its extraordinary radiance and natural solarity inspired me to revisit the icon in a way that feels even more luminous and precious. By incorporating this unique quality, the fragrance glorifies Colonia Profumo, elevating its character while remaining faithful to its timeless spirit.’ The result is a distinctly Acqua di Parma blend of refreshing, clean notes and warm skin-like qualities; enriched by the addition of a note probably unlike anything you have smelled before. It is, in short, another icon, created by the icon.

The suit’s demise has been announced and reannounced over and over again, and yet it persists. However, in this era of hybrid work, slackening dress codes and mass-casualisation, a new type of formal dress has emerged – and, in its wake, a made-to-measure culture has taken hold, too.

‘Over the past few years we’ve seen a clear shift in attitude toward custom-made casual clothing,’ says Adam Cameron, co-founder of British clothing brand The Workers Club. ‘Clients increasingly want pieces that feel personal and genuinely useful, rather than clothes that impose a lifestyle on them.’

The Workers Club is one of a clutch of brands offering tailored knitwear, T-shirts, coats and denim, and the market is growing. There are big, direct-to-consumer players, including Copenhagen-based Son of a Tailor and New York’s Proper Cloth, smaller brands such as Casual Fitters, and even well-established tailoring houses, such as Thom Sweeney, offer a wider ‘wardrobe’ service beyond their mainstay of tailoring – they can get a custom-fitted merino sweater or pair of Japanese denim jeans to you in just five weeks. But the pitch is the same: why settle for ill-fitting, off-the-rack clothing, when you can commission pieces that make your everyday wardrobe feel more special?

Cameron says his clients are especially open to buying into ‘investment pieces’ such as knitwear and outerwear. The TWC customer, he explains, is interested in design and fabric, and is happy to wait for something that feels unique and long-lasting. And, unlike a bespoke suit, the focus is more on quality and comfort than outward impression. ‘The man who orders made-to-measure from us is usually thoughtful rather than showy,’ adds Cameron.

At Son of a Tailor, the client is more business-focused. ‘Our customers span a fairly broad age range, typically from 25 to 60,’ explains Jess Fleischer, co-founder and CEO. ‘They tend to live in or around larger cities, have an international mindset, and many of them are entrepreneurial in some form.’

The Danish brand’s bestseller is a simple, custom-fitted crew-neck T-shirt, a garment that seems to represent the gateway into custom casual wear. British heritage brand Sunspel recently launched a bespoke T-shirt service to great fanfare.

Beyond fit and convenience, both Cameron and Fleischer note an ethical benefit to commissioning custom clothing. ‘Our model avoids a lot of the waste built into traditional fashion,’ says Fleischer, noting that the wider apparel industry typically operates with around 25 percent overproduction. ‘We only produce what is ordered,’ he adds.

And then there’s the romance of made-to-measure: the process, the sense of authorship, the old-school timeframe. ‘There’s something quietly rebellious about shopping at a slower speed,’ affirms Cameron. ‘It brings back a sense of humanity that’s often missing from modern menswear.’

Kerry Taylor Auctions in London is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading salesrooms specialising in rare and historic fashion. The auction house focuses exclusively on vintage couture, designer fashion, and exceptional garments, with many lots achieving five-figure sums, and occasionally even six.

Among the most sought-after pieces are creations by Alexander McQueen, particularly those designed by the late, eponymous founder himself. His theatrical, boundary-pushing designs consistently generate global interest among collectors and institutions.

One of the most famous examples came in 2019, when a pair of McQueen’s iconic ‘Armadillo’ boots from his Plato’s Atlantis Spring/Summer 2010 collection sold for £60,000, rumoured to have been bought by Lady Gaga.

On March 10, the auction house will present a more focused sale dedicated to rare menswear, including 21 pieces from Lee McQueen’s personal wardrobe. The selection spans sharply tailored suits by Gucci, Margiela and Prada, as well as rarities by Vivienne Westwood – including pieces from her legendary Seditionaries boutique and some extraordinary knitwear finds – alongside a selection of his much-loved trainers. For example, a pair grey pony skin and blue suede Nike Terminator High Supremes lined with faux fur are sure to excite sneakerheads.

Menswear sales devoted to collectible fashion remain rare, making the event something of a milestone. As Director and Auctioneer Alex Baddeley explains, “Men haven’t typically been well served in fashion auctions. We were among the first houses to stage dedicated menswear sales beyond the draw of celebrity wardrobes.” Baddeley, who began his career in the contemporary art department at Sotheby's in London and New York, notes the breadth of the offering: “The earliest piece in the sale is a green silk waistcoat dating from 1770. From there, we move through to a menswear Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld piece from his 2016 Métiers d’Art show, and garments by Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton.”

Baddeley introduced “The Male Sale” as a recurring event at Kerry Taylor Auctions, and this edition casts its net wide. Among the highlights are 63 lots by Austrian designer Carol Christian Poell, all from a single private collector. One of fashion’s most elusive figures, Poell has cultivated a near-cult status among aficionados. He is renowned for avant-garde footwear and artisanal ready-to-wear crafted from experimental materials and treated leathers that evoke a distinctly gothic sensibility. Assembled largely by hand, his pieces are textural, distressed and sculptural, probing the boundaries between beauty and horror.

“There’s something unsettling about Carol Christian Poell’s designs,” says Baddeley. “The way he treats leather can make it appear almost skin-like, the stitching reminiscent of sutures. They are so rare and hard to come by. In fact, one collector told me that there are only 10 clients in the whole of the UK, so they really they are like art objects. There’s a tragic brilliance to them that echoes McQueen’s work, something you saw so powerfully on the runway." It's no wonder that McQueen was a fan too: among his 21 lots are a pair of Carol Christian Poell grey leather pointed boots, with side zips extending all the way to the soles.

Another standout piece from the late British designer’s wardrobe is a striking white double-breasted suit by Tom Ford for Gucci’s Spring–Summer 2003 collection. McQueen wore it to accept his International Award at the 2003 CFDA Awards in New York, cementing his place in fashion history. He later rewore the suit for his Autumn–Winter 2004–05 “Pantheon as Lecum” show, where he was photographed backstage with his close friend Kate Moss, she holding a glass of wine and a cigarette, perhaps accounting for the faint burns visible on the jacket’s white cuff. Far from detracting from the garment, these marks are a kind of label-defining hallmark, underscoring the glamour, mischief and creative freedom that defined McQueen’s life and aesthetic vision. "It's rare that a condition report that includes faults actually adds to the allure of a piece!" laughs Baddeley.

Another label close to Baddeley’s heart is Paul Harnden, who began his career as a shoemaker before moving into meticulously crafted, handmade clothing. His work is steeped in Victoriana, blending a romantic, bucolic spirit with a subtly distressed, modern edge. Each fabric is woven on handlooms exclusively for the designer, underscoring the rarity and uniqueness of his practice. The ultimate niche designer, famously worn by John Galliano, Harnden’s pieces are released in small drops through highly specialised boutiques, such as the Blue Mountain School in East London.

Among the eight Harnden lots on offer is a single ensemble: a brown waxed cotton coat layered over a green tweed jacket and an ivory cotton button-down shirt, paired with a grey lambswool–cashmere rib-knit cardigan and completed with brown leather gloves. The look channels a hardy, rugged strain of workwear, timeless in construction and evocative of a bygone era.

As for the Alexander McQueen headline pieces, Baddeley explains, they offer a fascinating window into the designer’s personal journey through the fashion industry. “In the 1990s, he had a slightly larger physique and dressed casually in plaid shirts and trainers. Coming from a working-class background, he gradually entered the world of luxury, and you can trace this evolution through his wardrobe. By the 2000s, his choices became sharper and more tailored reflecting his own background as a tailor on Saville Row, with carefully selected pieces by Gucci, Prada, Ralph Lauren, and Hermès."

Lot 134 is something truly special: a black-and-white photograph of Lee McQueen by Craig McDean, taken in 2002. McQueen is captured walking with his hands tucked into his jean pockets, a cigarette perched in his mouth, the background a wire fence lending the shot a raw industrial edge. “I think this is a touching image of a man deep in thought,” says Baddeley, “pensive, yet marked with quiet determination.”

The Male Sale takes place on March 10th at 14:00. Register to bid.

Since the 1950s, the mid-length grey skirt has swung between provocative allure and conservative modesty. On the one hand, this classic garment evokes images of demure workwear tied to the secretarial trope and popularised, for better or worse, by Hitchcock’s heroines. After all, who can forget Kim Novak in Vertigo, looking polished and oh-so-proper in an Edith Head-designed wool grey skirt suit? The actress later admitted she hated the ensemble, but acquiesced when Hitchcock insisted that its restrictiveness would enhance her portrayal of the deceitful Madeleine.

Figure-sculpting, soft on the hips and turning each step into a soignée sashay, the grey pencil skirt first entered the fashion scene as a prim-yet-sexy head-turner. But every classic can overreach: after power dressing peaked in the 1980s, the grey pencil skirt lost its potency along with its form-fitting edge. It became looser, duller and less flattering, a quick office uniform snatched from the high street rails. No longer a signifier of sharp sophistication, it became a ubiquitous functional go-to, at least until mid-1990s minimalism reinvigorated the style with low-slung waistbands and stretch fabrics.

In our collective memories, the grey pencil skirt continues to vacillate between quick-grab fashion and cool sartorial statement, and while it is often labelled a ‘wardrobe staple,’ this understates its standout moments on the catwalk and in fashion culture.

In 1995, the late Stella Tennant fronted an entire Vogue editorial dressed in grey tweed pencil-skirt suiting; in one now-famous image shot by famed photographer Arthur Elgort (see top of article), she dives fully clothed into an outdoor pool on a country estate, wellies and all.

Years later, Sex and the City offered its own subversive take on standard office wear: in season 5 of the series released in 2002, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw wears a tight dove-grey pencil skirt with a black tank top, fuchsia Manolo Blahnik Hangisi heels and a tiara, transforming what was once associated with a nine-to-five uniform into a defiantly impractical, fashion-forward look – and, importantly, one more suited to a freelance, work-from-home life.

American Vogue’s former editor-in-chief Anna Wintour remains an enduring fan of this ashen-grey style, as does French fashion editor Carine Roitfeld, but the ultimate devotee is Miuccia Prada, who frequently dons a dark grey, slightly more A-line version to take her final runway bow.

The spring/summer 2026 catwalks signal a renewed embrace of the grey pencil skirt’s stylish credentials. Wraparound styles showcase dynamic front slits and straight silhouettes sit high on the waist, while low-rise iterations echo the archival looks of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Calvin Klein’s new wool Luna skirt, unveiled during Veronica Leoni’s debut for the house, is one such Y2K-inflected example. Paired with a coordinating blazer on the SS26 runway, the style reads as a sleek reimagining of the brand’s minimalist DNA, defined by precise tailoring and clean lines. If the cult 1988 movie Working Girl, starring Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith, were ever to be remade, this would be a costumier’s dream.

According to a February 2026 Net-a-Porter report, customer searches for grey skirts on the shopping platform increased by 275% in the first month of the year with the Luna in high demand.

Coming at this classic skirt style from a more creative perspective, Prada’s rendition feels distinctly collegiate, defined by a high waist and soft pleating. The new skirts are spliced with contrasting fabrics to form an asymmetrical silhouette, reinforcing the theme of the SS26 show, ‘The Body of Composition’, which explored the “dispersion and reunion of different elements, unexpected and unanticipated, composed on the body.” Prada’s charcoal grey mid-length skirts mix textures for a modern take on a classic, pushing the boundaries of femininity and formality.

At Chanel, creative director Matthieu Blazy’s SS26 ready-to-wear collection featured grey, knee-length wrap skirts characterised by a loose and breezy ease of wear. A low-slung, pocketed silhouette was punctuated by a front slit cut high across one thigh, asserting bold femininity. Inspired by an imagined conversation with Gabrielle Chanel, the collection evoked freedom, fluidity, and self-assuredness, with the skirts reinforcing this sense of autonomy and agency.

Jil Sander has long been a go-to for knee-grazing grey pencil skirts. For the coming season, creative director Simone Bellotti has revisited this archival style with a range of pencil silhouettes, enhanced with cut-outs at the waistband, deep central slits at the front, and even dramatic slashes across the fabric, creating a sense of fluidity, as if the material has a rhythm of its own.

Ultra-sheer fabrics, some sculpted into layers resembling plumage or floral clusters, were de rigueur on the Max Mara SS26 catwalk. Yet a dove-grey pencil skirt was crafted in its purest form, featuring a seamless, gossamer construction that sat low on the waist.

For something completely different, Dries Van Noten’s cotton-jersey longline skirt features a ruffle at the waist and an asymmetrical cut, lending a couture twist to a loungewear-inspired look.

For a more minimalist take, turn to The Row, Totême, or Victoria Beckham, where sleek pencil skirts are structured for effortless elegance. Unchanged since 1993, the Issey Miyake Pleats Please midi skirt remains the ultimate classic, with a straight cut, elasticated waistband, and two pockets. Available in slate grey No. 12 or silver light No. 10 from the brand’s coveted (and often sold-out BASICS series), it proves that a classic grey skirt is a timeless investment that never goes out of style.

Back in the hazy days of 1980s London, a group of six Belgian designers arrived to show off and sell their radically new styles. They were billed as the Antwerp Six. Now, 40 years on, MoMu (Fashion Museum Antwerp) is devoting a show to the work and impact of the group: Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee, who collectively put Antwerp on the fashion map.

The Antwerp Six, although very different in their stylistic language, were united by pragmatism, ambition and a belief that a team can make a bigger impression than going solo. They chose the British Designer Show as the launch pad in 1986. ‘You had the post-punk movement; you had the New Romantics. London really was a centre for innovation, for youth culture, which was also inspiring the Six,’ says Kaat Debo, director of MoMu. ‘I think fashion was also ready for something new,’ she adds.

Their ‘newness’ ranged from Demeulemeester’s languid gothic garms to Van Noten’s elegant textile-rich ease, Van Beirendonck’s provocative street style and Bikkembergs’ new-wave tailoring – yet the Six were unified by their passion for craftsmanship. ‘They never collaborated on collections in a creative or artistic way. Yet they studied together, influenced each other and inspired each other,’ says Debo.

Belgian fashion at that time was known for mid-tier contemporary clothing, but not for ‘designer’ fashion, and the Antwerp Six grew out of a state initiative to boost the country’s emerging creative capital. ‘The Belgian government came up with a five-year programme, which was a kind of Marshall Plan for the industry. It founded an institution called ITCB (Institute for Belgian Textiles and Clothing of Belgium) to develop this plan, and one of the ideas was to foster young talent and matchmake that talent with manufacturers through a competition called the Golden Spindle Contest,’ Debo says. For the Six, that meant high-profile campaigns, editorial and professionally produced collections that met the high standards of luxury. They were soon picked up by retailers including Barneys in New York, and Whistles and Browns in London. A guerrilla runway show at London’s Westbourne Studios cemented their reputation. Today, the fashion department at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts is one of the most renowned in Europe, spawning talent including Raf Simons, Meryll Rogge, Julie Kegels, Demna Gvasalia and Haider Ackermann. They too benefited from the Antwerp Six’s impact with Dirk Van Saene and Walter Van Beirendonck holding professor positions.

Around 80 designs are on display, alongside memorabilia, video and photography. ‘I hope that the show will also bring attention to the importance of building ecosystems in fashion. The system has to come up with new recipes,’ says Debo.

The Antwerp Six, 28 March 2026 until 17 January 2027, MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp

One of the most anticipated debuts at Milan Fashion Week this month was undoubtedly Demna's collection for Gucci. When the Georgian fashion designer took the reins from Sabato de Sarno last year, he began immersing himself in Italian culture. Visits to museums and galleries ensued, with Demna finding himself particularly captivated by Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

His debut collection was a celebration of Gucci's heritage. "Above the product, Gucci is culture, it is a way of thinking and a way of being," Demna said in a press release before the show. And the pieces certainly created a mood. Walking in a set that resembled a museum, a star-studded cast of models – including Gabbriette, Alex Consani, Kate Moss, Karlie Kloss, Amelia Gray and Emily Ratajkowski – wore silhouettes that heralded a new era for Gucci, while fully comprehending its enormous legacy.

It was sexy – skin-tight mini dresses, gothic lace and fur coats were accentuated by sequins, slits and cut-outs. The hues were dark and metallic, the makeup moody. Nods were paid to Tom Ford's revolutionary reign at the house back in the 90s – but this was no throwback. Demna just ushered in a new era of Gucci girl.

The baseball cap has evolved far beyond the sidelines. Now a staple of the fashion crowd the world over, it brings ease, attitude and subtle luxury in equal measure. From understated classics to designer statements, these are the caps we’re wearing now.

Dries van Noten first launched the eau de parfum Soie Malaquais in 2022. Created in partnership with perfumer Marie Salamagne, the formulation of Soie Malaquais lists notes of blac currant, bergamot, cacao, silk and roses. “The most striking note is the chestnut,” says Dutch artist Bouke De Vries. “It’s so rich and warm and it reminds me of when I first got to London in the winter and there would be people roasting chestnuts on a brazier creating the evocative smell of chestnuts .”

Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, De Vries trained at the Design Academy Eindhoven and in London, at Central Saint Martins. Following a period of working with fashion designers including John Galliano and Zandra Rhodes, De Vries changed tact somewhat, specialising in the conservation and restoration of ceramics. And he continues to work with ceramics to today, which led Dries van Noten to partner with him. Five masterpiece bottles of Soie Malaquais are the result of the collaboration, rendered in De Vries’ signature collage of ceramic fragments. “The fragments I use are from everywhere, they are mostly 17th and 18th Century porcelain from China and Delft ware from the Netherlands. These are all things I have collected over the years,” explains De Vries.

“For this project, it wasn’t just the fragrance itself that directly inspired the work, but mainly the blue-and-white porcelain element of the bottle,” he continues, describing the scent’s Delft ware influenced flacon. “The Dries van Noten team felt that this detail, belonging to their iconic Soie Malaquais, resonated strongly with my style, providing an opportunity to take a fresh and distinctive approach to the bottle design.”

One particular De Vries Soie Malaquais vessel is festooned with a rose-like arrangement, ceramic shards fanning out like a circle of petals. “The idea was that roses grow well in clay soil,” De Vries explains. “Clay was also used to make these porcelain objects, the fragments of which I then used to grow my own rose.”

Swiss perfumer Christine Nagel has been with Hermès since 2016. During her decade as the French maison’s in-house nose, Nagel has authored scents such as Agar Ebene – part of the Hermessence line of perfumers’ perfumes, Agar Ebene lists notes of oud, ebony and vanilla – and Twilly, which smells of ginger, bitter orange, tuberose and jasmin, and is named after a signature ribbon-like Hermès silk accessory. To Nagel, Hermès is a house with kaleidoscopic inspirations and themes. And for her, all began by researching the materials Hermès works with across its many metiers, from saddlery to fashion and jewellery.

“Right from the start, I immersed myself in materials – the leather store in particular – because at Hermès, everything starts with exceptional materials, unique know-how and carefully executed gestures,” she explains. “The saddle stitch, for example, is not just a technique, it’s a language: a way of assembling two elements together in such a way that they reveal each other over time.”

It’s this stitch that recently inspired a new scent. Released this month, Musc Pallida is part of Fleur de peau, a Hermessence group of skin scents. “In Musc Pallida, I have translated this idea into fragrance – like two pieces of leather stitched together, iris and musk gently merge, intertwine and gradually reveal their intimacy.”

Musc Pallida is above all a tribute to these two key notes, iris and musk.“Iris pallida is one of the most precious raw materials in my perfumer’s palette. It is a form of olfactory gold: radiant, subtle and profoundly elegant,” explains Nagel. “With Musc Pallida, I want to move away from an overly powdery or distant iris to reveal instead its softness, its light and its almost tactile dimension.”

To this, she added musk. “Musk is a surprising material that is difficult to describe in words,” says Nagel, and continues, “If I had to express it in an image, I would say it acts like an invisible underskirt. When it’s not there, everything is flatter. It gives a fragrance more volume. Together, iris and musk form a second-skin fragrance that is at once intimate, sensual, carnal and extremely delicate.”

As tributes and reflections on the late Valentino Garavani still reverberate, one striking and emotive exhibition tells a world of stories through the eyes of artist Joana Vasconcelos. Entitled Venus and staged at Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti’s art and educational foundation, PM23 in Rome – it is the last exhibition that Garavani conceived before his death in January this year.

Garavani first met Vasconcelos in 2018 visiting her studio in Lisbon. “Valentino had an instinctive and deeply cultivated relationship with art. For him, art was never distant; it was a living presence, a space of dialogue and transformation. His sensitivity extended far beyond fashion: he understood the power of creation as a shared human language, capable of expressing fragility, strength, beauty, and resistance all at once,” says Vasconcelos of the kismet.

Known for her provocative mega-scale installations – often made from everyday objects (tampons, mirrors, pots included) conversations continued with Garavani, inviting the Portuguese artist to offer an interpretation of his archive through her eyes. The upshot, Venus, sees 33 couture outfits in dialogue with 12 artworks that play off the abstract and the intimate, the rigour of couture with explosive soft sculptures. The centrepiece is Valkyrie Venus – a monumental work featuring a host of spectral ceiling-hung female forms created in an intricate patchwork of 3D textiles and illuminated with tiny LED lights. “Valkyrie Venus emerged from an in-depth study of Mr. Valentino’s aesthetic codes – his reverence for line, texture, and expression – reconfigured through scale, abstraction, and craft. Couture maintains an intimate relationship with the body, while my work externalises and amplifies gesture into spatial and symbolic realms. Both are languages of form and presence,” explains Vasconcelos.

The creative confluence is vibrant and expansive. While Valentino gowns are adored for their jewel-like colours, poetic embellishments and serpentine silhouettes, Vasconcelos takes ideas of beauty, gender and identity as her field of exploration. She examines female archetypes such as Marilyn: a site-specific installation created from domestic objects (pans, pots) sculpted into towering heels and flanked by three couture gowns. The exhibition culminates with Garden of Eden, an immersive environment inhabited by mythic women – Cinderella, the Femme Fatale included – who are positioned amongst a series of iconic embellished black dresses in tulle, silk, georgette and lace. Outside the gallery I’ll Be Your Mirror is giant mask fashioned from multiple decorative vanity mirrors acts as entrance and finale.

Vasconcelos does not work in an ivory tower and engages communities to take part in the artistic process. ForValkyrie Venus, she worked with social platforms across Rome, including a woman’s prison, inviting over 200 participants to create crochet panels that weighed in at 200kg and which wrap the 13m long Venus in a ‘second skin.’ “I hope visitors leave with the sense that beauty is generative – capable of provoking thought, fostering empathy, and creating unexpected connections. Seeing art and fashion as complementary ways of engaging with human experience can open broader reflections on identity, craft, and collective life,” she says.

When Valentino planned his legacy, PM23, was conceived as a cultural and educational arts space and also a tribute to Rome, the city that spawned Valentino Garavani’s ambition and profound sense of beauty. “The collaboration with Joana Vasconcelos allowed us to explore new languages, weaving together different skills, hands and stories, and to make visible the value of collective work and creativity as tools for empowerment,” said Garavani and partner Giammetti.

The Venus exhibition opens to the public on January 18 at PM23 – Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti Foundation. Tickets are available via the PM23 website or at the ticket office in Piazza Mignanelli.

Valentine’s Day has a habit of swinging between cliché and excess, but at its best, it’s really about attention: little gifts that suggest you know your beloved better than most. This edit, for him and her, is for those who’d rather sidestep the obvious in favour of objects that feel considered – offerings with a sense of story and craftsmanship, that will be treasured beyond February 14th.

Jonathan Anderson’s first couture show for Dior, presented in Paris this January, was a reminder that great design often starts with a simple idea. This creativity touched everything from the silhouettes to the beauty looks, including the remarkable hairstyles, masterminded by revered hairstylist Guido Palau.

Mirroring Anderson's own directive for the collection, Palau translated a personal exchange between the Irish designer and former Dior creative director John Galliano into a romantic vision: a series of blush-pink wigs and pom-pom florals. The inspiration came from a bouquet of cyclamen – soft lilac and powder-pink blooms tied with a black silk ribbon – that Galliano gifted Anderson during a visit to his atelier last year. Anderson later described the gesture as “perfect,” and it ultimately became a defining motif of the collection, subtly referencing Christian Dior’s enduring love of flowers and horticulture.

The wigs were cut into ultra-short bobs with veil-like fringes obscuring the models’ faces, evoking mystery and purity. Their unexpected faded-pink hue added an avant-garde edge, encapsulating a fashion house that has balanced elegance and innovation since its founding in 1946.

Pink hair has an uncanny ability to etch itself in the collective imagination, repeatedly emerging as a symbol of joy, rebellion, and romance. Among its most iconic moments is Kate Moss’s Spring 1999 Versace runway appearance with bright pink hair, a seminal example of unconventional beauty styling. This same year, she posed for Juergen Teller’s famous 1998 photograph 'Young Pink Kate', in which she is seen tucked up in billowy white linens, her head surrounded by sprawl of pink locks, capturing the nonchalant, kittenish charm that defined her public persona.

Pastel-tinted hair, however, is far from a modern invention. In the late 17th century, women of the French royal court dusted their wigs with soft pink, lavender, and baby-blue pigments, an aesthetic echoed in Kirsten Dunst’s cotton-candy coiffure in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 iconic movie, Marie Antoinette. In Britain, this rococo hairstyle trend was more subdued, embraced by flamboyant dressers and rendered with particular sensitivity by miniature portraitist John Smart who excelled at capturing its rosy tones.

The appeal of pink hair arguably reached a pinnacle of popularity in the bold, defiant aesthetics of the 1980s, swiftly embraced by music icons such as Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. In more recent decades, the shade has been revisited by a wide range of celebrities, from Lady Gaga and Lily Allen to Nicki Minaj and Bella Hadid. Guido Palau famously coloured model Kaia Gerber's hair pink in 2020, a colour he later described as " a little soft and a little antique," a description that seems fitting of his latest wigs for Dior too.

On the runway, Jean Paul Gaultier was an early pioneer. His Fall 1992 show at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium, staged as a fundraiser for amfAR, featured male models with choppy, bubble-gum-pink crop cuts, setting the tone for an evening of irreverence and expressive freedom. Madonna, bleach-blonde on this occasion, famously walked the runway in a black maxi dress with cut-out breasts.

For Spring/Summer 2003, Gaultier adopted a more sculptural approach inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder. Natalia Vodianova appeared in two memorable pink constructions: an exaggerated nest-like topknot, followed by a swirl of candyfloss shaped like a giant sunhat, both styles finessed with long, cascading strands. For his Spring-Summer 2003 Haute Couture collection, some models' hair was braided with pink buttons.

Pink hair also recurred throughout Galliano’s work, both at his own label and during his tenure at Dior. In his Belle Époque–inspired Spring/Summer 1998 collection, Shalom Harlow appeared in a rose-embroidered pink organza gown, complete with a cherry-hued flapper wig. Galliano’s long-time collaborator Julien d’Ys later created the now-iconic carnivalesque wigs for his Fall 2009 catwalk, including a vivid candy-pink version that remains widely circulated on social media today.

Beyond Galliano, d’Ys’s decades-long collaboration with Rei Kawakubo at Comme des Garçons has yielded countless sculptural hair designs, with bright pink a recurring favourite. For the Fall/Winter 2009 'Wonderland' collection, exaggerated fuchsia chignons crowned the head like balls of wool, transforming softness into something strange and otherworldly.

A new generation of models has continued to redefine pink hair as a statement of self-defined beauty. Charlotte Free sparked a global craze in the early 2010s with her trademark pink locks, walking runways and fronting campaigns for the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Jeremy Scott, and Chanel.

More recently, Chinese-Australian model Fernanda Ly has brought a sleek, retro-goth sensibility to pastel pink hair, photographed by Juergen Teller for Louis Vuitton’s Fall/Winter 2015 and Spring/Summer 2016 campaigns. Kate Moss reprised her electric pink 90s look for Marc Jacobs' resort 2022 campaign, while Aeri Uchinaga (AKA Japanese-South Korean rapper and singer Giselle) who recently embraced what fans are calling her 'pink-haired era', was the star of LOEWE Paula's Ibiza 2025 campaign. Proof that pink hair remains a potent and exciting force in fashion imagery.

From wrists to necks, Guerlain has added scent to pulse points for almost two centuries. The French heritage brand was founded in 1828, when Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain, a chemist and perfumer, opened his first boutique Paris’ on rue de Rivoli. Following generations were to cement the Guerlain family name within modern perfumery, authoring fragrances such as Jicky - a unisex scent released in 1889 that is notable for its use of synthetic molecules – Shalimar, Samsara and the 1959 Guerlain Vétiver, a masculine best-seller.

And throughout, six raw materials proved pivotal in defining what Guerlain smells like. Notes of bergamot, jasmine, iris, vanilla, rose and tonka bean are listed in many of the company’s formulations. They make up the so-called Guerlinade, a secret concoction – or concorde – that since its introduction in 1921 by Jacques Guerlain has united a number of Guerlain creations. It’s there in Jicky and in Shalimar, in L’Heure Bleu and also in more recent launches such as Mon Guerlain.

This year, Guerlain pays further tribute to this sextet of scents by introducing a line of candles as an extension of its prestige L'Art & La Matière collection. The bee has long been a Guerlain mascot; here, highest-quality beeswax is perfumed and contained within two-tone, mix-and-match jars, which are refillable.

Blended by the brand’s perfumer creation director Delphine Jelk, among the offering is Iris Pallida (iris butter, musk and almond), the jasmine, strawberry and candied apricot Jasmin Grandiflorum and Rose Centifolia, a mix of May roses, patchouli and frankincense. Each L'Art & La Matière Guerlain candle can be engraved with initials or a personal message.

On Paris’ glamorous Rue Saint-Honoré, dwarfed by the vast, gleaming shopfronts of Saint Laurent, Dior and Balenciaga, there is a charming little outpost of the shoemaker Paraboot. The store is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it small, but it holds its own against the industry’s biggest fish. And it’s all thanks to one decades-old creation.

The Michael is the French brand’s flagship design, and the closest thing menswear has to an ‘it’ shoe. For the uninitiated, the Michael is a simple Derby with a flat, moccasin toe, short laces and chunky rubber sole. Not as sleek as a Chelsea boot, nor as elegant as a cap-toe Oxford. You might even call it ungainly. But for those in the know, the Michael is a fail-safe style icon and a totem of good taste. Sitting somewhere between a sneaker and a dress shoe, it marries equally easily with casual wear and tailoring, and is at once low-key and interesting.

In turn, it has become almost ubiquitous amongst the men’s style community over the past few years, with scores of collaborations, special-edition models and even copycat brands. It’s been so popular, in fact, that American GQ recently asked, ‘Is this the most important shoe in menswear right now?’

‘I’ve worn Paraboot since I was a young man,’ says David Keyte, co-founder of cult British clothing brand Universal Works. ‘I bought my first pair of Michaels 40 years ago.’

Keyte espouses the Michael’s versatility, but also appreciates the design for its post-war asceticism. ‘It was made at a time when World War Two was still fresh in the mind in Europe, [so] clothing and shoes had to suit the times; had to be versatile; had to be practical; had to be affordable; had to be utilitarian.’

‘Maybe the design came from post-war austerity, but it’s really stood the test of time,’ Keyte adds.

The Michael turned 80 this year and, as part of the celebrations, Paraboot and Universal Works have come together on a project titled ‘La Beauté Dans L’Imperfection’, which explores the nature of leather and how a piece’s flaws make it all the more special.

The collaboration has resulted in a concise clothing collection featuring graphics lifted from the Paraboot archive, and a reworking of the Michael in three colours. It features a removable leather tassel under the laces and the project’s poetic title embossed onto the side. ‘Every pair is made by hand,’ says Keyte, ‘so no two are ever identical. That’s where their soul lies.’

Foulard – doesn’t it sound so much more suggestive than the Anglo-Saxon scarf?

But that is the way with our French neighbours and silken scarves – at once a trophy, a social signifier and a seductive flourish that might swish past or simply shield la coiffure from the fluctuations in weather. The foulard is a gesture as much as it is an item – and it tells many tales.

At the Hermès Spring/Summer 26 collection, artistic director Nadège Vanhee reimagined the house’s leitmotif silk scarf as a flirtatious accessory to drape around the neck and down over the nipples via the revealing cut of her crop-leather harness tops. ‘I was thinking about the Camargue landscape and Arlésienne folk dress,’ said Vanhee of her stylistic triggers. Once a symbol of French upper-middle-class status, here the scarf took on an impromptu role of breast veil.

And don’t the French do impromptu well? It’s the reason why the silk scarf has been in the armoury of women (and men) for generations, magically transforming into a weather shield, flirtation tool, savvy neck wrap, sarong, bag accessory, and – via the ever-changing artistic prints – a talisman of the zeitgeist. Along the way, legions have tutored newbies in the dexterous skill of scarf tying, extolling its various functions in a way that British royalty never quite proffered.

‘What is interesting is how just a square of silk can become such a symbol for other things,’ says French author and writer Kelly Kaprielian. ‘For instance, wearing one vintage Hermès on my hair one day outside a pub in London, a man asked me if I was Muslim, while my scarf was – in my poor mind – a reference to the style icons of the 50s and 60s: Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly or Jackie Kennedy.’

In the UK, silk scarves were once firmly in the SW1 and shires postcodes, but now, thanks to the voracious appetite of Gen Z and a general impulse to upturn conventions, the scarf is coming into a new golden age. ‘We are draping and tying silk foulards to add colour, drama and interest to simple, elegant looks – styling small scarves on wrists as belts, hair ties and bandanas to bring colour and quirk and character to the everyday,’ says Jacqueline Ednie, head of design, scarves and soft accessories, at Liberty. ‘The origin of every Liberty scarf is an authentic archive source and each has been redrawn and reimagined for today,’ says Ednie, of the ever-growing library of styles.

The big boon to scarves is that they are precious yet versatile – wearing a big headscarf with a sporty tracksuit thwarts expectations, as does tying a triangle fold over the hips of a sheer midi skirt. Luxe brands, including Celine under the new artistic direction of American Michael Rider, are also upping the ante. Rider turned a blue-toned, white-edged, emblem-printed scarf into a number-one accessory, floating from bag handles, over shoulders and cowboy-style tucked into necklines.

In a delicious entente cordiale, I’m taken by the Bouquet Final design in Hermès’s seasonal collection, designed in collaboration with illustrators and artists across the globe. The bicolour orange and ivory design by English creative Katie Scott comes in a leather-fringed silk twilly version. In my view, that’s value-added swish and sway to the foulard game.

‘The scent of skin after effort, of strength giving way to intimacy. Notes of frankincense, patchouli and sandalwood linger like heat on the body, evoking the aura of a man returning from battle, ambition still in his blood.’ Sharmadean Reid, a successful serial entrepreneur, is describing the scent of Denarii, one of four oil body cleansers with which she recently launched 39BC.

With her business, Reid references traditions of bathing. Many are centuries old; cue North African hammams and Japanese onsens. It’s a proposition anchored in historical research: when developing the brand, Reid read widely, and her debut offering is inspired by Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

As well as Denarii, there is Sage Water, which Reid developed ‘thinking of the Priests of Isis in retreat from Rome’ and which lists notes of salt, aldehydes and moss; Silk Veil is a tribute to Cleopatra and smells of neroli, musk and tuberose. The aromas of violet leaf, coconut, fig and cyclamen feature in Fig Milk. ‘It smells of ripeness and of something on the verge of becoming,’ Reid muses. ‘It’s inspired by Cleopatra’s handmaiden but carries the same tenderness and tension as a French coming-of-age film, when yearning and discovery blur into one. A study of pleasure before experience, of desire before understanding.’ Rich in narrative, 39BC is a luxurious addition to everyday rituals.

In his 2015 book, Americana: How Japan Saved American Style, writer W. David Marx illustrates how, in the middle of the 20th century, a modest group of style-conscious Japanese souls imported, appropriated and perfected classic American ‘Ivy League’ clothing and workwear.

As Ametora (which translates as ‘American traditional’) thrived, America’s own sartorial industry – denim mills, shoemakers, workwear brands, and so on – dwindled, and so now, if you want the best old-timey Americana, you should head for Tokyo over Tallahassee.

That said, there are some holdouts. Wisconsin’s Allen Edmonds is still one of the foremost names in fine men’s footwear – and a pillar of classic Ivy style – after more than a century in operation. The brand’s Port Washington factory still churns out thousands of pairs a year, including a Reserve collection – handmade, Goodyear welted, cut from the finest calfskins, etc. – but over the past few years, there has been a swing for modernity.

Last year, the brand brought menswear deity and influencer-in-chief Nick Wooster on board to consult on creative direction. And a culture of vibey collaboration has emerged via the Legend series, which has seen the brand partner with the likes of fashion designer Willy Chavarria and shoemaker Armando Cabral on special editions of its classic styles.

In a boon for Ametora-heads everywhere, the latest collaborator to join the fold is Daiki Suzuki, founder of cult Japanese brand Engineered Garments. For decades, Engineered Garments has sat at the intersection of workwear, classic American sportswear and Japanese streetwear, creating what it describes as ‘garments that become more personal through the experiences you have with them’. It is the kind of label that others want to work with for its zeitgeisty halo effect. But this team-up has a full-circle feeling to it.

The result is the Adirondack Low Hiker – a take on Allen Edmonds’ classic Sun Valley hiker boot, a shoe that Suzuki has in his own wardrobe. The new hiker – somewhere between a mountain shoe and a dress shoe – features a Goodyear welt, EVA midsole and matte black hardware, finished with bold blue laces.

True to Engineered Garments form, the shoe is a slightly spooky riff on a menswear staple, but if it seems a little too out there, hold tight, a more conservative monk strap shoe will be launched in the run-up to Christmas. A little more wearable perhaps, but no less Ametoran.

Fermented skincare dates back to ancient Egypt, where sour milk and patchouli were common treatments for acne. Some five millennia on, a number of brands are tapping into the transformative power of fermented ingredients (albeit in a slightly more palatable way). FKA Haeckels has just released its Fermented Corneum Renewal, a lightweight cream that gently peels dead skin to reveal a clearer, firmer complexion. It is formulated with the company’s signature Spiraglow ingredient, made from spirulina that is slow-fermented in-house at the brand’s headquarters in Margate, Kent, to enhance its antioxidant power, calm inflammation and boost radiance. Even better, the cream comes in 100% compostable packaging.

Like FKA Haeckels, The Nue Co. is known for its innovative, ingredient-conscious approach to all-round wellness. The company rose to fame with its gut-health supplements, which combine clean ingredients with cutting-edge science and Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine teachings. With its Barrier Clear Treatment (£45), the brand translates its expertise into a topical cream that combats acne without irritating skin. It is formulated with live probiotics scientifically proven to inhibit skin bacteria, as well as bio-fermented essential minerals, including zinc, iron, silicon, copper and magnesium, to improve barrier function against pollutants and act as an anti-inflammatory.

For make-up lovers, the Isamaya Microbial Gel from Isamaya French is a prebiotic primer that is both make-up and skincare in one. It is formulated with prebiotics to shield skin against environmental pollutants and is enhanced with four different types of hyaluronic acid, soothing botanicals

Former beauty editor-turned-skincare founder, facialist and acupuncturist Joanna Ellner has made fermented ingredients a foundation of her skincare line and holistic health practice. According to Ellner, fermentation makes for uniquely effective skincare. ‘The benefits are three-fold,’ she says. ‘Firstly, you have the increased compatibility of ingredients with the skin, since fermentation breaks raw ingredients down into smaller, more bioavailable molecules that the skin can absorb more efficiently.

‘Secondly, despite the notion of it being all compost bins and huge leaps, fermentation is an incredibly sophisticated process with incredibly potent ingredients; the fermentation process essentially sharpens ingredients, removing what isn’t needed, and proliferating what is. And finally, and possibly the most important aspect of this, is increased skin tolerance. Our skin barriers are continually compromised and we are always searching for a band aid. Biotechnology, and fermentation as an extension of that, removes the band aid and builds a hospital instead. It’s an entirely new way to view skin science, and it’s built with the aim of not destroying and then rebuilding skin, but gently guiding it back to optimal balance.’

Ellner capitalises on the benefits of fermented ingredients with her brand Reome. Its signature Active Recovery Broth (£125) uses 16 clinically proven bio-fermented and biomimetic actives to enhance barrier function and provide supercharged hydration, while the new Firming Eye Treatment, with DHK-3, harnesses the power of a biotech-fermented triple flavonoid, known for its skin-repairing and firming properties. It also incorporates fermented minerals, botanical extracts and adaptogens that have been through controlled fermentation to enhance bioactivity while remaining highly tolerable across skin types.

Beyond skincare, Ellner recommends maintaining a healthy, ferment-filled diet. ‘My degree in Chinese medicine has taught me that our skin is a beacon of our physical and emotional health,’ she says. ‘The skin tells us what the body cannot. There is, however, no “one size fits all”.’

However you get your ferments, one thing is evident – they are the key to clear, healthy-looking skin.

Anyone who has been to the rodeo is familiar with its unique, terrifying thrill. A young cowboy decked out in his finery – hulking belt buckle, spurred boots, leather hat – mounts a bull; the crowd cheers; a gate is opened and out the pair go, flinging and spinning around until he’s flung to the ground. It is a short performance – the rider needs to stay on the bull for eight seconds in order to be deemed a success – but one that looks, from the audience’s perspective, impossible to achieve.

Byredo’s latest fragrance, Rodeo, pays homage to this brave and foolhardy ritual, its beauty and its violence. ‘Rodeo the fragrance captures the scent of the rodeo itself,’ says Byredo’s founder, Ben Gorham. ‘It’s the art and poetry of the rodeo, the violence, the fascination with the extremity of it. It’s the crackling sound of an old saddle, the singular focus of the bull rider. That moment when everything is calm, just before the rodeo starts.’

In particular, the fragrance is meant to conjure the exact moment those gates swing open, releasing the raging bull into the ring. It opens with warm leather and soft tobacco that recalls the smell of the saddle and the rider’s clothes before transitioning into refined notes of suede and violet, a nod perhaps to the surprising elegance of the performance; and then finishes with earthy vetiver and salted amber that give it a rugged touch, evocative of the dust floor as it’s kicked up by the bull’s hind legs.

It is also the last fragrance that will be released under Gorham’s leadership. Since founding the brand in 2006, Gorham has shepherded it into one of the most innovative beauty brands on the market, with a range of iconic perfumes and a make-up line developed with Isamaya Ffrench and later overseen by Lucia Pica. Byredo will continue without Gorham, but his departure certainly marks the end of an era. In true rodeo fashion, he’s going out swinging.

Despite its ever-evolving nature, there are still plenty of places in London that allow you to temporarily step back in time. Spectacle maker Cutler and Gross opened its first store on Knightsbridge Green, a narrow cut-through between two of west London’s busiest streets, in 1971, and if you peer into the window today, you’ll see a scene largely unchanged in over half a century. Neat rows of elegant frames, stylish staff and customers that look like they lead supremely interesting lives.

Graham Cutler and Tony Gross met at optometry college in the early 1960s, and soon came together to form a kind of yin and yang of eyewear. Cutler was fastidious, concerned with function and utility, whereas Gross favoured flamboyance. ‘People who need glasses don’t have to feel separated from glamour,’ he once said.

That balance between craftsmanship and flair garnered immediate attention from the art set – the likes of David Hockney, Grace Jones and David Bowie. They were drawn in by the melodramatic shapes, the richly coloured acetates, the handmade quality and the capacity for self-expression. Spectacles were once items of pure function – Cutler and Gross made them objects of desire.

Inspiration for new styles could come from anywhere: a film, an exhibition, a moment on the street, and when an idea struck, Cutler and/or Gross would scurry up to the studio and put George Smith, the original frame-maker, to work. Fittingly, the room above the Knightsbridge store is today the place where customers explore the brand’s bespoke service.

The Cutler and Gross collection is broad, ranging from chunky acetate statement-makers, to ascetic metal specs that you’ll barely feel on your nose. There are zeitgeisty collaborations, too, most notably with Palace, for whom Cutler and Gross recently made three pairs of sunglasses, the skatewear brand’s first foray into eyewear.

But the bespoke service, which starts at £895, offers the most authentic C&G experience. The Blend met with Marie Wilkinson, the brand’s style director (and design maven since 1983) at the Knightsbridge store to understand what might be possible.

Bespoke clients start by choosing a frame, she explained, noting how ‘modern workers’ (business types) tend to lean towards Cutler’s more restrained designs, while those in the art crowd – Peter Saville, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Bella Freud among others – still go for Gross’ ‘maximalist’ aesthetic.

They then choose the material, either the finest Italian acetate – polished at the factory near Como for 96 hours, part of a more than 200-hour process for each pair of frames – or buffalo horn, and then the design details. Perhaps your initials engraved at the temple, a parallel etching of New York’s Chrysler Building on the barrel in the arm, or star-shaped pins to hold everything together.

Then it’s the lenses. Cutler and Gross thin its lenses down, so the wearer’s eyes aren’t magnified from within. And unlike most specs, Wilkinson says, ‘they’re built without an ‘optical centre’, so you have the same clarity wherever you look.

Delightfully, the frames you eventually receive will be identified by a code, rather than a name. This is the same for all Cutler and Gross frames, bespoke or otherwise, to avoid the feeling of wearing someone else’s specs.

‘They’re not Elton’s glasses’, explains Wilkinson, highlighting the Rocket Man’s appreciation for the brand, ‘they’re yours.’

Choose your own details – perhaps your initials engraved at the temple or a parallel etching of New York’s Chrysler Building on the barrel in the arm

Cutler & Gross , 16 Knightsbridge Green, London, SW1X 7QL

Could it be a nostalgia for The Wolf of Wall Street vanity and insanity? A yearning for the stability of a corporate ‘uniform’ in uncertain times? Or a desire for a dress code that signals ‘winner’ when success can be so fleeting? The trio of impulses is enough to launch a new ‘corpcore’ mode into the style consciousness. Pinstripe suits, collared shirts, pencil skirts, blazer dresses, polished Oxfords and even attaché cases (courtesy of Balenciaga) are lining up like dutiful executives at a leadership conference.

The pronounced shoulders, sleek lines and sense of polish are a rebuttal to years of work-from-home casual attire that dominated post-Covid. Stylistic cues are being taken from Savile Row tailoring, from 90s dress-for-success manuals, from corporate thriller films and dramas: cue up Meghan Markle in Suits, Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface and Cate Blanchett in Tár. But the twist in 2023 is towards an approachable kind of power.

‘In the past, power was communicated through sharpness, shoulder pads and a kind of armour. The sexualised version – the secretary look – was more about how men wanted to see women. Personally, I admire women who dress for themselves: sensual and intelligent, using their femininity as a tool in clever, unexpected ways. Intelligence is the new power,’ says Vienna-based designer Petar Petrov, whose leagues of C-suite clients are drawn to his distinct suiting cut in fine, light wools. ‘A friend joked she was still searching for her “boss-lady look”. All her employees are younger, and she wanted to feel fresh while also representing authority – but with comfort. She was frustrated because she couldn’t find much out there that balanced those needs,’ continues Petrov. Standouts this season (complete with punchy names) include The Strategist, a single-breasted jacket with a slim, patched pocket, and The Foundation Jacket, cut in Italian flannel with a hidden drawstring at the back to subtly adjust the silhouette.

The demand for assertiveness and efficiency is being answered across the board, from Prada’s slate-grey wool suiting, to Stella McCartney’s double-breasted pinstripe blazer mini dress and lace-trimmed pencil skirt (Rachel Zane to a tee), to Saint Laurent’s Prince of Wales checked jackets and matching culottes. Sets and suits alleviate the morning drama. ‘When we launched the brand, we kept coming back to the idea that a man could throw on a blazer and instantly look put-together. Why didn’t women have that same one-and-done piece? Executives still want to look powerful, but also gorgeous and confident,’ says Veronica Miele Beard, the American designer who co-founded the Veronica Beard brand with her sister-in-law, Veronica Swanson Beard. Their solution is interchangeable sets – crop jackets, midi skirts, button-down shirts, waistcoats and the bestselling Dickey jacket included.

The shared mission is to ease the dull anonymity associated with tailoring via details, proportions and styling. ‘Women in executive roles are prioritising comfort, levelling up and using fashion as a way to connect, rather than to create distance,’ says James Servini, head of personal shopping at Selfridges. ‘Well-made, well-cut tailored pieces can lift an outfit by the way they make the wearer feel and carry themselves. It’s that sense of confidence which makes them a valuable, long-term wardrobe asset,’ he says, noting how tailored trousers worn with sneakers, or jackets with capri pants all amplify individuality.

One of the most charming interpretations of corpcore came from 26-year-old Belgian designer Julie Kegels in a collection entitled Dress Code that debuted after finding a 1980s book Executive Style: Achieving Success Through Good Taste and Design by Judith Price. The glossy tome suggested how a whole office deco/wardrobe ‘look’ might guarantee professional success. Kegels wanted to capture that in clothes. Cue poplin shirts with giant shoulder pads, pencil skirts peeled down at the waist to reveal pale blue silk linings and boss-lady briefcases with their own waterproof ‘capes’. If only the route to the C-suite could be so simple.

Whether your dream retreat is chewing spelt at the Mayr clinic in Tyrol, a master detox at TheLifeCo in Turkey, or a head-to-toe diagnostic-led overhaul at Palace Merano in Italy, preparedness is key. You need to pack well to undergo the rigours of any reset health regime, because often the tough gets going before the benefits emerge and comfort is key. But what does comfort look like in the burgeoning sphere of wellness retreats? How much do you want to express your innate style when you have a packed daily schedule of colonics, vitamin injections, hiking, Pilates and hydrotherapy? Or is stealth-wealth anonymity the goal? These are conundrums worth investigating ahead of investing thousands in self-care with the end ambition of feeling rejuvenated and, well, swell. Those old Covid-era sweatpants don’t really make the grade – and who wants to be reminded of that tragic time?

For Paris-based creative consultant and curator Carmen Haid, founder of vintage site atelier-mayer.com, cosy is the goal. ‘I like to feel cocooned, practical and far away from fashion, make-up and high heels. Most retreats have bathrobes – but I check beforehand, as if not, I bring my own. I pack long kaftans by Marrakshi Life and New Tangier, a cashmere tracksuit (old Celine) and cashmere socks from The White Company, tank tops, T-shirts, a swimsuit by Eau, yoga kit, sunglasses, hoodie, comfy boots, and trousers for outdoors – plus hat, gloves, sunglasses, oil-free sunscreen, sleep mask and AirPods,’ says Haid of her typical packing list for her annual detox at TheLifeCo on the Turkish Riviera. ‘And I always bring my own slippers and a water flask!

Going on a retreat is not dress to impress, it is comfort and utility above all: a chance to explore my inner – rather than the outer – world, and not giving a toss about other people’s outfits,’ she adds. Yet, somehow, not dressing to impress can be just as demanding as the sartorial opposite. You need to think about activities and environment, not to mention your fellow wellness-seekers – shouty, logo-laden fabulousness is not going to go down well when everyone’s into the aching-limb, headache drudge of day three of a master detox.

‘Dress codes depend on where you are going, whether that’s a cleanse or a sports retreat, and remember – there will be different phases of how you are going to feel,’ says fashion editor and creative consultant Claire Thomson-Jonville. ‘As a general rule, I bring logoless things – a full black sports look by Nike, which has great new seamless sports bras and flattering leggings, a cool Champion hoodie, white tube socks, Birkenstocks and sneakers. As the day progresses into early evening, I like a cosy, chic vibe with knit joggers and Loro Piana cashmere,’ she adds.

Thomson-Jonville channelled her own experience of detox holidays into developing retreats around the world with her company, Out of State. Four or five times a year, she runs a silent retreat from a château in the Loire Valley. At the last edition, she welcomed 22 guests from 18 different countries to embark on five days of silence, a total digital detox and a juice cleanse. The thinking behind the retreat is the opportunity to reconnect with self and with nature. ‘People generally experience an emotional breakthrough, and the silent aspect is an opportunity to connect with spirit, soul, and one’s own intuition, which we don’t tend to listen to. Without talking, new connections are made, and that can be transformational,’ she explains, adding that a great Moleskine notebook is a good idea for journalling, along with an Anya Hindmarch zipper pouch and a tote bag for carrying your things around between activities.

Little personal elements can make a big difference. ‘I recently shopped for a client heading to SHA Wellness Clinic in Spain,’ says Sukeena Rao, co-founder of personal shopping/styling service Luminaireco. ‘I chose Alo bodywear, a wonderfully soft fleecy cashmere zipper sweater by Brunello Cucinelli, an all-climate Beta AR Arc’teryx jacket, a pack of three pairs of Raey silk ribbed socks (you always need more than you think), bodywear by The Esthe (the fine-mesh layering pieces are so gentle on the skin) and Olivia von Halle silk pyjamas. And I secretly added Vyrao scent sticks, because you want your room to smell gorgeous.’

In the process of transformation, whether physical or mental, one might also seek aspects of semi disguise. Lara Mead, the co-founder and CCO of Varley, a lifestyle brand with a recently opened store on London’s King’s Road, opts for headwear. ‘Comfort is key, but I also like to feel considered. A DoubleSoftTM tracksuit, which is elegant and laid-back, and an oversized Varley knit are my go-to, and I never travel without a baseball cap – it finishes off a look and hides a multitude of sins. For workouts, it’s plain black leggings – the Always High from Varley are a favourite,’ says Mead, who has the Lanserhof in Sylt on her escape list for 2024. DoubleSoftTM (a mix of viscose, polyester and elastane) is lightweight and breathable, and the signature zipper funnel necks are also handy if you’re leaning towards incognito.

When working hard to rejuvenate from the inside out, choose fabrics that work equally hard for you. Anna Laub, founder of activewear and eyewear brand Prism London (prismlondon.com), with a store on Chiltern Street, spent years developing a seriously stretchy knit fabric for her multi-use Prism2 range that includes bralettes, T-shirts, swimsuits and leggings in gorgeous colours such as olive, apricot and rusty pink. The fabric is quick-drying, sweat-wicking and chlorine-resistant, the swimwear doubles up as bodywear and the leggings are chic enough to wear as everyday runarounds. ‘Prism2 is sustainably made in Italy using a 3D knitting technique that minimises waste, and an eco-dye technique that is Greenpeace-certified. The pieces are all multi-fit too,’ says Laub.

One might experience weight loss on a retreat, so by the end of the stay, a crisp cotton oversized shirt (try With Nothing Underneath or Charvet) and a swimsuit will suit the big feel-good reveal. Think of yourself as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Pack well and pack light – because, after all, you are worth it.

The language of textiles and rugs is a mysterious one. A vocabulary with differences that lie, quite literally, on the floor, but also in details that only the specialist can discern. One of those experts is Jess Maybury. ‘I’m used to looking at 5,000 things and seeing that one incredible object,’ the textile dealer says of her globe-spanning sourcing trips, going on to explain, ‘It started with Ralli quilts from Pakistan’s Sindh region.’

Formerly a model, Jess faced campaigns for Lanvin, Vivienne Westwood and, most notably, Marni – a brand she remains close to. ‘If I’d done a modelling job and was a bit flush, I’d buy 10 or so quilts and sell them through my Instagram,’ Jess says of the beginnings of her business.

From there she went on to host pop-ups and collaborate with furniture dealers such as Milo Cordell and interior decorator Jermaine Gallacher. Now having established her showroom in London’s Hoxton, Jess’ space exemplifies her eye for beautiful discoveries. ‘I have suzanis from Uzbekistan, kanthas, Iranian wall hangings, banjara bags, kilims and more,’ she gestures. The thrill of the chase has always driven her, ‘Whether at a market, auction or even house clearance, I’m guided by instinct, looking for what’s been forgotten. I get so happy spotting something that I’ve never seen before.’

Growing up in Woodstock, Jess was surrounded by exquisite fabrics; her mother, Louisa Maybury, is the founder of a beloved textile gallery in the small Oxfordshire market town. ‘When I was young, I joined her on sourcing trips and now at 32, I’m still doing the same,’ she says of a tutelage that’s taught her well. The pair visited India earlier this year, ‘We met dealers that I’ve known since I was 10 and am now working with. My mum’s influence has been fundamental to me, her curiosity always inspiring.’

She recently returned from a visit to New York where she is stocked by Surrender Dorothy on Union Square. The bright, block-coloured walls of the cult store act as the perfect foil for a selection of her richly patterned quilts. ‘A textile is artwork, much like an abstract painting. Some with psychedelic or science-fiction-like results,’ Jess laughs. It’s an exciting aesthetic but it’s never too serious; it feels joyous.

Parsing the history from each piece is important to her too. ‘People have been trading in fabric crafts for thousands of years, there is a deep tradition of visual storytelling intrinsic in every stitch. Definitions vary from village to village, one natural dye to another. I’m still learning all the time,’ Jess admits modestly. ‘Decoding a rug, for example, can sometimes be much harder than a painting or sculpture.’ A collection of reference books in her showroom is testament to this. Riffling through archaic tomes is part of the job, but Jess doesn’t deny the utility of a Google reverse image search. In the esoteric world of textiles, there are positives to technological advancement.

There’s also no denying the emotional resonance each piece holds. ‘I always think about the women who so often made them in groups,’ Jess says. ‘These have taken hours of work to create, usually way beyond the input of an “art bro” painting... Textiles can still be represented as a twee, feminine hobby, but what’s quaint about women making things together? To me, people being creative is one of the purest things.’

Now with clients including stylist Francesca Burns, designer Ashley Williams and actor Patricia Arquette, what’s next for Jess? ‘It’s more about where I’d like to learn about next... I want to explore South America and the textiles of Guatemala,’ she says excitedly.

Fitted with a blush-pink door, a neoclassical townhouse on Charles Street, Mayfair, is the London pied-à-terre of Dr Joseph Hkeik. In his native Sydney, the Australian cosmetic physician founded his All Saint Clinic in 1999; in London, his recently opened site goes by the name Le Petit Saint. It’s a place where innovative tools and techniques are framed in artistic flourish, including light fixtures by designer Lee Broom and Vivienne Westwood rugs. But, aside from consultations with Dr Hkeik, who will travel between his clinics during the coming months, it’s Le Petit Saint’s on-site facilities that are worth booking in for.

A menu of non-invasive facials includes treatments using advanced Synchronous Ultrasound Parallel Beam Technology (SUPERB™) to stimulate collagen production, the EmFace with sculpting synchronised radiofrequency, or LED light therapy.

For the Saint Rexonage Quantum Lift, the clinic’s team uses the Rexonage, designed to interact with the skin’s stem cells using Quantum Molecular Resonance technology. Non-invasive, the treatment is said to increase dermal thickness.

IV therapy – such as the Longevity Experience IV, which combines the coenzyme NAD+ (widely discussed as a tool to rejuvenate cells) with essential nutrients – forms part of the boutique clinic’s whole-body wellness offering, which also includes Hyperbaric Hydroxy Therapy, experienced via a 30-minute lie-down in the clinic’s own cylindrical device. Promised benefits include skin rejuvenation, a reduction of inflammation and a boost of energy. Elsewhere, a 20-minute catnap in one of two Energy Pods is soundtracked to content mixed to match the three key phases of a short sleep cycle.

Following the introduction of its Dior Lady Art project 10 years ago at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016, the maison has extended carte blanche to a global list of creatives. Both blue-chip names and artists on the rise have since reimagined the Lady Dior bag. Among them are Mickalene Thomas, Ian Davenport and Judy Chicago. In 2017, German-American artist Friedrich Kunath, whose work – created in his studio in southern California – features permanently in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Paris’ Centre Pompidou, added rainbow-coloured handles and cloud-shaped charms to his Lady Dior.

French painter Inès Longevial is among this year’s line-up of 10 collaborators, which also includes UK-based artists Marc Quinn and Lakwena, and Haitian-American painter Patrick Eugène.

Longevial is known for her use of colour in portraiture. It’s a specialism she has now applied to a trio of Dior creations. One Lady Dior bag is emblazoned with a blue-tone female likeness embroidered with multidirectional threads; another is made using a patchwork assemblage of the artist’s best-known works and is topped with a crown of dusty lilac feathers. ‘As a child, I watched my grandmother assemble fabrics with infinite patience. Patchwork has always been a part of my imagination,’ Longevial explains of the design. ‘I worked on an assemblage of faces and details, such as flowers, suns and snakes.’ Finally, a mini Lady Dior is embroidered throughout.

At Dior, every Lady Dior bag comes with a bundle of charms spelling the brand’s name in polished metal. It’s a detail Longevial reinterpreted on her feather-topped design, separating the four letters and placing them across to visually striking effect. ‘This bag could well be the evening companion of David Bowie or Niki de Saint Phalle,’ she decrees.

The bottles of a group of recently launched fragrances are more than mere vessels. Considered objects, some are shaped from materials more regularly used in a sculptor’s studio than perfumery laboratory, others are the creations of award-winning architects and industrial designers.

At Louis Vuitton, Fantasmagory, the seventh scent of the maison’s Les Extraits line, is the work of in-house master perfumer Jacques Cavallier Belletrud. Here, the key note is vanilla: Cavallier Belletrud chose tahitensis vanilla, whose pods, once sourced in Papua New Guinea, are pulped and then cryogenically frozen, before CO2 extraction captures their aroma. Fantasmagory’s flacon is equally visionary, as Louis Vuitton’s signature rounded glass bottle (designed by Marc Newson) is topped with a silver metal cap in the shape of a wind-blown flower, as sketched by Frank Gehry.

French creative Philippe Mouquet designed the bottle for Barénia Eau de Parfum Intense by Hermès. A follow-up to 2024’s Barénia Eau de Parfum, for this year’s iteration the brand’s in-house perfumer Christine Nagel swaps the formulation’s patchouli note for the rich scent of a patchouli absolute. Mouquet is well versed in Hermès’s visual vocabulary, having previously designed printed silks, timepieces, including the Heure H, and the Terre d’Hermès bottle, among others. This new flacon is lightly dressed in an amber tone degrade lacquer, its metal plate inspired by Hermès’ Collier de Chien bracelet.

Another French heritage business, Trudon has introduced Nuit Rouge, a new collection of three night-time fragrances. All three, including the amber woody Midnight Omen (by perfumer Émilie Bouge), come in ruby-red lacquered glass bottles with golden metal name plaques. At Perfumer H, a golden beetle sticker is placed on limited-edition issues of Rose With Insect, for which Lyn Harris added the scent of peaches, neroli, cardamom and musk to rose. Gold tones also come to the fore at Dries van Noten. An olfactory interpretation of nights in Cuba, perfumer Jordi Fernández’s Havana Gold blends the scent of liquorice with tobacco, all captured in an amber-tinted glass flacon with an aged brass base.

Also of note are Eragon by Parfums de Marly – one of three fragrances that make up the brand’s new Les Extraits offering, which is inspired by guillochage, a centuries-old mechanical engraving technique, and which come in glass bottles topped with tactile, engraved metal caps – and Lazuliou by Diptyque. Themed around peacocks and the bird’s striking plumage, Lazuliou’s paper box is decorated with a watercolour by artist Nigel Peake. A textured illustration also features on the glass bottle, framed in Diptyque’s signature oval.

Elsewhere, it’s the possibility to personalise that makes flacons stand out. Dior’s Rose Star is a thematic tribute to Christian Dior’s favourite flower and his lucky star. Created by the maison’s perfume creation director Francis Kurkdjian, 100ml and 200ml bottles of Rose Star can be ordered with Couture caps – embossed with Dior Oblique, Cannage, Houndstooth, Toile de Jouy, Plan de Paris or an animal-theme Mitzah pattern – as well as complimentary engraving.

Staying with caps: at Loewe, the lids of three new Crafted Collection bottles (Roasted Vanilla, Iris Root and Bittersweet Oud) are sculpted from pale white granite.

Finally, Ffern. The creations of the Somerset-based company are released seasonally and available by lottery. If successful, expect to receive new scents with each season’s solstice or equinox. At Ffern, sustainability is writ large. Outer packaging is free of plastic, there’s a kraft paper tube in lieu of caps, and the glass bottle is fully recyclable via regular recycling collection.

Gucci Westman

Make-up artist, founder of Westman Atelier and Italian pyjama enthusiast

Charles March

The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, philanthropist, artist, founder of Goodwood Events and wearer of buffalo horn sunglasses

Liza Laserow Berglund

Co-founder and chief creative director of Nordic Knots, who serves tea from antique teapots

Rosemary Ferguson

Wellness expert, founder of the R Health Club and Smythson note-taker

Kesewa Aboah

Artist and lover of thoughtful discussions

Jonny Gent

Founder of Sessions Arts Club and Cabin Studio, and Takibi Firepit Chef

Oona Finch

Drama Student and Keen Sunglasses-Wearer

Álvaro González

Designer and Player of Rummikub

Tapestry by Graeme Black, POA

Graeme presented this new tapestry work in October at Thorns Gallery in Yorkshire and then in London. The colours, the texture, the proportions are beautiful, elegant, modern and warm. His work is a study of tree trunks found around his home in Yorkshire. He started in charcoal, then oil and now wool.

A stay at the Lanserhof medical spa, Tegernsee or Sylt, Germany, POA

I love going to the Lanserhof. It’s my time to unwind, recharge and take care of myself. I like to spend time in nature, swim in the lake (if I’m at Tegernsee), and focus on balance rather than restriction. A week of treatments at Lanserhof truly feels like the ultimate luxury. The Tegernsee location is just an hour outside Munich, making it wonderfully easy to reach, but if I can slip away from work a bit longer, I’ll go to Sylt – the island is pure magic.

Necklace in 18k Fairmined textured gold set with white diamonds and rock crystal by Ana Khouri, POA

When I decided to create my own textures while working with gold, I felt an incredible sense of freedom. I develop each texture separately and then incorporate it into the metal on each piece. Since most of my work consists of one-off pieces, I have the liberty to craft unique compositions using the rarest and most precious materials. For example, we began this necklace by moulding the design to the body, perfecting its function, and only then moved on to working with the chosen materials. I love shaping and moulding the rock crystal, then combining it with gold and white diamonds.

Wedged precariously between the industrial hulk of Newcastle and the biting hostility of the North Sea, South Shields doesn’t exactly scream ‘fashion industry’. And yet, since 1894, it’s been home to one of the UK’s most important and celebrated heritage clothing brands. And, right now, that brand is cooler than it’s been in a long time.

Like Hoover vacuum cleaners or Google, the name Barbour has long ceased to refer to just matters of the company itself, and is now a catch-all term for any and every piece of outerwear made from waxed cotton. Many brands make them, but if you take to the street (or the harbour, or the moors) in a wax jacket, people will assume it’s a Barbour.

Scotsman John Barbour came down to South Shields at the end of the 19th century with the view of outfitting the town’s seafarers and fisherman in his oil-cotton outerwear, and that he did. For almost a century, a Barbour jacket was a piece of hardy workwear and little more – popular, capable and reliable, but culturally unremarkable.

Then, in the early 80s, Barbour released the Bedale and Beaufort, two jackets that would swiftly reposition the brand as unofficial outfitter to the British upper classes. They were favourites of the Royal Family – who duly granted Barbour a series of warrants – and then, perhaps even more influentially, the Sloane Rangers, a group of preppy young aristocrats that adopted the Barbour as their default outer layer. Princess Diana wore one while visiting the Isle of Barra in 1985, shielding herself from the persistent Scottish mizzle.

Apart from a brief period in the heady days of roughboys ‘Indie Sleaze’, the Barbour wasn’t ever quite as zeitgeisty as it was in the 80s. But recently, the brand’s stock seems to have suddenly risen once again.

Collaboration is nothing new in fashion – and over the past few years Barbour has variously teamed up with the likes of Noah, Supreme, YMC and Ganni – but this autumn/winter, there is a flurry of new partnerships across the price spectrum and, curiously, each collection features its take on one cult Barbour in particular.

The Spey was another of the brand’s 80s creations, replete with the corduroy collar, the South Ayrshire tartan lining and the oversized two-way zipper. But, designed for the rigours of fly-fishing, it was cut with a drastically short body. The Spey remained the reserve of country sportspeople for decades, but in line with latter-day trends for cropped-torso clothing, its star has risen, and though it started as a cult buy for those in menswear’s preppy fraternity, it seems that, now, everyone wants a piece of the action.

This season, there are cropped collaboration Barbours in collections at Arket, Levi’s, Paul Smith and John Lewis, although none are quite as aggressively short as the original Spey, which Barbour still stocks.

The best of the bunch is at Margaret Howell, where the cropped Barbour forms part of the brand’s fourth collection together. ‘Exploring their archive again reminded me of the strength and purpose in traditional outerwear,’ says Howell, a designer lauded for her mastery of luxuriously functional clothing. ‘I find real satisfaction in refining pieces that are made with care, designed to be worn and built to last.’

Durability is indeed integral to Barbour’s appeal, and purists may decide to seek out an authentic 80s model, though an original Spey will probably set you back well over £1,000. If you don’t want to follow the crowd, the smart move might be to invest in a Barbour homage from the likes of Drake’s, Ralph Lauren or James Coward.

That said, it’s hard to argue with more than 129 years of coat-making heritage. If it’s good enough for the King himself, perhaps it isn’t worth the gamble.

For most people, the holiday season is a month-long Ferris wheel that cycles between moments of high and low energy – from party to exhaustion; overbooked calendar to comatose on the couch; expertly executed glam to pyjamas and Netflix. In preparation, we’ve compiled an edit of the best beauty products to see you through both sides of the spectrum, a toolkit that allows you to easily transition from party mode to the day after.

For make-up lovers, the launch of Chanel’s limited-edition holiday collection is a noteworthy event of the season, especially since the brand unveiled its Cometes Collective in 2022. Composed of three make-up artists – Ammy Drammeh, Cécile Paravina and Valentina Li – the collective has breathed new life into Chanel beauty with a radical approach to colour. This season, French make-up artist Cécile Paravina took charge of the holiday collection with a rich range of blues inspired by a starry night sky. The Les 4 Ombres eyeshadow palette in Nuit Astrale (£60) features a glimmering purple-silver shade, medium matte blue-grey, elegant lavender and aqua-blue highlighter. Cosmique, a matte blue-grey nail polish (£27), complements the shades.

Where Chanel took inspiration from the sky for its holiday make-up collection, Byredo looked to the sea. Designed by Lucia Pica, Byredo’s make-up partner and another master of colour, the collection features a range of shades inspired by ‘the shifting light and contrast of the Nordic Sea’. The most innovative of these designs, pictured below, is the Liquid Lipstick Vinyl in Sea Whisper (£45), a transparent shade glimmering with subtle silver pearls that wears elegantly alone or adds a glittering touch to any of your lipstick shades.

For an extra touch of glitter, try Dior’s Forever Glow Maximizer in the limited-edition shade 001 Abracadabra (£38, dior.com). The most sparkle-filled edition of the brand’s beloved liquid highlighters, the formula is infused with iris extract to hydrate skin. To wear, daub the applicator in a crescent shape from the uppermost part of the cheekbone along the hairline, then blend with your fingers. It can also be applied to the bow of your lip for added plumpness or worn as a gloss on eyelids for extra shine.

Finish your party prep with a spritz of All Night Until First Light by Discothèque (£120), a fragrance inspired by Ibiza’s Amnesia club, which opened in 1976 and is credited with popularising house music. A warm, citrus scent, it features heart notes of saffron and magnolia, blended with warm cashmere and juicy grapefruit and rum.

When the sun actually does rise, and you have cold city streets, not glimmering Ibiza sand dunes, to face – fear not. First, give your skin some much-needed hydration with a product like Omorovicza’s Daily Dew (£110), which is formulated with the brand’s patented Healing Concentrate (a high-powered distillation of Budapest’s mineral-rich waters) to deliver a boost of moisture, while also blurring pores and creating a dewy glow – in short, quickly reversing the effects of a night that was high on revelry and low on sleep.

A swipe of Macrene Actives High Performance Eye Cream (£105) gives an additional plumping and brightening boost to the delicate under-eye area, with a blend of 38 plant extracts, hyaluronic acid and peptides, formulated by New York dermatologist to the stars Dr Macrene. While a glaze of Guerlain’s new Abeille Royale Bee Lab Shot (£51, guerlain.com) on top will deliver a concentrated blend of 20 percent vitamin Cg for a radiant glow and Norwegian black bee honey to support the skin’s natural repair process.

To feel as good as you’ve managed to make yourself look, try taking the NRC + Resveratrol supplement from Australian wellness brand SWIISH (£49.95), which is formulated with a potent dose of vitamin B3, known to reduce tiredness, fatigue and support alcohol metabolism.

In Sense Check, our monthly Q&A, we unearth the sensorial pleasures of a contemporary tastemaker.

What is the first thing you see in the morning?
My husband, asleep. I'm a morning person and he's a night person. Then I look out of the window to see what the weather is. I rarely close the curtains. I like to see what's going on with the day.

Describe the view from where you are right now...
I'm actually looking out of my cottage at a white beach with a palm tree. I have been dodging the rain for a few days in the Caribbean, on Mustique.

Is there a view you can't quite forget?
Being at the top of Oblivion at Alton Towers. It tips forward before you plunge into the dark. I'm not great at heights, but I love rollercoasters.

Which artwork could you see every day?
My husband [Jake Chapman] is an artist, so I am lucky to have lots of things. I see a Mat Collishaw every day, a Damien Hirst, a huge Harland Miller Penguin print, and the Chapman Brothers' art.

What sound do you wake up to?
I live in the country, so in the summer it's birdsong. In the winter, it's quiet. It might be my dogs barking downstairs! I'm usually up by sixish. It's quiet and calm, and I quite like that.

What sound would you like to wake up to?
I suppose because of where I am today, waking up next to the ocean is pretty nice.

What gets you dancing?
I'm a bit of a 90s raver, so I like house music. Disco will always get me on my feet. Being around my girlfriends makes me feel like dancing. There's been a lot of dancing here – on the beach, in the kitchen, around the pool…

Which singer or song do you never tire of hearing?
The Stone Roses' "I Am the Resurrection". Also, Alison Limerick, "Where Love Lives". Music is amazing. It can change my mood.

Which smell takes you back to childhood?
When I was seven, we lived in Rio for two years. Then my dad moved to Kuala Lumpur. So the smell of tropical rain really reminds me of being a child.

What do you smell of today?
I just had a dip in the sea, so I smell of the sea and a bit of suncream. And the Dior perfume Lucky.

Does your home have an aroma?
Usually whatever my latest cooking adventure is. Garlic, herbs, things like that. And I usually have a candle going. Ambre Nuit by Dior is amazing.

What's your flavour?
I love spices, like cumin, turmeric and coriander seeds. Anything with ginger in it, I'm happy with.

Describe a dish that's stayed with you...
When I'm away, it’s vongole. I am not a massive pasta fan, but vongole to me is always like you're on holiday. Even just the clams – delicious!

What is the taste of spring?
I'd think of the colour green: cabbages, spring greens. Spring can still be a bit cold, so I'd make a roast chicken with slaw, new potatoes and mint.

Olive or a twist?
Are we talking Martinis? They are my go-to and I like the best of both. A Dirty Martini with a twist.

A dish you cook for yourself ?
I have a Thai green curry that I like to make. It's really easy, you just put everything into a blender. I love the taste of it and enjoy the whole process.

Silk or cashmere?
I'd say silk pyjamas but cashmere for everything else. The feeling of cashmere is the best.

Marble or wood?
To touch, wood. Marble is quite cold and hard.

What does spring feel like?
To me, exciting. It's a fresh breeze rolling in after winter. You can see things coming up, growing. This sounds cheesy, but spring feels quite hopeful!

Favourite piece of furniture at home?
My bed – I look forward to getting into it. I actually have a dead posh cashmere blanket on there, from Louis Vuitton. I love my sleep, basically

roseferguson.com

This article was originally published on The Week

‘A good perfume is one whose scent corresponds to an initial dream,’ the perfumer Jacques Guerlain said. For Guerlain with Shalimar, the dream was the love story between Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan I and Princess Mumtaz Mahal in 17th-century India, and the scent he created corresponded so well that he not only created a ‘good’ perfume, but one of the most successful in history.

Shalimar takes its name from the royal gardens the emperor built for the princess, before her untimely death inspired him to build one of the seven new wonders of the world – the Taj Mahal. Moved by this story of tragic love and the imagined culture of a land far from his native France, Guerlain set about creating a sensual and smoky fragrance that, in his words, ‘lets your senses take over’.

The real key to Shalimar’s innovation, however, came courtesy of Guerlain’s friend, a chemist named Justin Dupont who was experimenting with a new compound called ethyl vanillin. The synthetic ingredient created a uniquely potent vanilla scent that became the foundation of what would not only become Shalimar, but a whole new category in the history of perfumery: amber fragrances.

Amber perfumes are defined by their unique blend of warm, sweet and powdery notes, a profile Shalimar achieves through a combination of fresh bergamot with floral notes of rose, jasmine, iris and that signature, synthetic touch of vanilla and tonka bean. This unique combination of notes also forms the foundation of Guerlain’s ‘Guerlinade’, an accord that has become a signature feature of almost every one of its scents since Shalimar’s creation in 1925.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Shalimar and to celebrate, La Maison Guerlain has created Shalimar L’Essence, a fragrance that reconfigures the original’s essential components into a new, more modern variation.

Shalimar L’Essence celebrates the vanilla character of its ancestor with a new interpretation of the ingredient. Delphine Jelk, perfumer and Guerlain’s director of perfume creation, formulated Shalimar L’Essence with a rich Madagascan vanilla tincture that heightens the woody, slightly leathery qualities of the original formulation. Notes of subtle bergamot are still present, as well as a blend of rose absolute and powdery iris. Rich in added musks that did not exist a century ago, this new iteration of Shalimar is richer in a way that is designed to appeal to modern tastes. The new edition also features a fresh update of the perfume’s classic art deco-inspired ‘batwing’ bottle, with a bold, gold-lettered logo emblazoned on its front.

‘I wanted the new Shalimar to keep the emotion, to go into its heart, its essence,’ says Jelk. But, she continues, ‘I wanted to associate it with certain ingredients, like certain musks that didn’t exist in Jacques Guerlain’s time, and bring it a sensuality that fits with the spirit of the times.’

For a long time, lip unguent didn’t come on a stick. It wasn’t served up in smooth columns of ruddy, angle-cut perfection and didn’t benefit from a bullet-like compact casing and micro-engineered, swivel-action system that delivered lushness to mouth, to order, in evenly intense quantities.

Five thousand years ago, things were more make-do and basic – the men and women of Mesopotamia crushed gemstones to smear onto their faces, while Egyptians ground cochineal insects to make carmine colour for the lips.

During the Bronze Age, women from ancient Harappan Civilisations in Southern Asia used pieces of ochre with bevelled ends as early experiments with lip decoration. As far back as the second and third centuries, Sanskrit texts report Hindus preferring to colour lips with red lac resin and beeswax, while flamboyant types from the Tang Dynasty used scented oils for extra enticement.

Long associated with seduction, emancipation and sensuality, lipstick gained in popularity in the 1500s when it was boldly adopted by Queen Elizabeth I. However, the lead and vermillion concoctions acquired a reputation as the uncouth warpaint of actors and prostitutes (in the 1500s a law was passed ‘declaring the use of make-up to deceive an Englishman into marriage punishable as witchcraft’). But gradual social acceptance, better formulations (beeswax, castor oil, pigment and silica) and a Jazz Age rebrand caused a century-long boom. Silent-movie star Louise Brooks helped by providing big-screen endorsements.

But who actually invented the game-changing rouge à lèvres twist-up case? The first lippy actually on a stick?

The French claim that the Parisian beauty house Guerlain got there as far back as 1870 – a maison employee being inspired by the screw mechanism seen on a candlestick. Picky historians have a different view, citing the hand of innovative jewellers in the 1920s who repurposed used cartridge shells from World War One, fashioning make-up holders which were added to the purses and chatelaines of Clara Bow types.

Over in the US, circa 1915, powder-puff magnate Maurice Levy sold lipstick in a small metal canister called the ‘Levy Tube’, which deployed a lever to raise the lipstick's bullet, Americans also maintaining that the first swivel tube was patented in Nashville, Tennessee, by James Bruce Mason Jr. in the 1920s... or was it the Scovill Manufacturing Company’s metal-cased swivel tube patented in 1923? A case must also be made for inventor William Kendall whose ‘neat, ornamental and serviceable lip stick holder’ including ‘a lipstick receiving follower’ was registered in January 1917.

Toutefois, the Maison Guerlain prevailed – making lipstick for the European masses and going on to lip-service the rest of the world. Other French fashion and cosmetics houses would follow.

One hundred years later, variants such as Chanel Rouge Coco and Rouge Dior 999 shift multimillion units annually. Back in 2023 the global lipstick market was valued at $9.5 billion. It is projected to reach $15.6 billion by 2033.

Our favourite lipsticks

‘Number one on the side and don’t touch the back, number six on the top and don’t cut it wack, Jack.’

Were the Beastie Boys responsible for the tonsorial nomenclature known as the mullet? Certainly, the lyrics to the New York hip-hop trio’s track Mullet Head, from their 1994 album Ill Communication, is widely acknowledged as the first time this particular hairstyle – short on the sides and top, lengthy and ratty behind – was given a definitive name, having been previously referred to, variously, as ‘hockey hair’, ‘bi-level’ or ‘Bowie’ cut.

Currently enjoying a quasi-ironic renaissance among east London hipsters, trending with public schoolboys and even adopted by Hollywood actors, including Gladiator II’s Paul Mescal, the ‘do’ actually has a much longer (at the back) history.

Roman emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, born in 42 BC, was said to wear his hair ‘rather long at the back, so much so as even to cover the nape of his neck’ following a Claudian family tradition.

In the sixth century, the prominent Byzantine scholar Procopius noted that factions of young males were leaving their hair long at the back but cutting it short over the forehead – both practical and stylish, the barnet kept hair out of the eyes, while providing warmth and protection for the neck. Procopius described the thatch as ‘Hunnic’, preceding 20th-century German males’ devotion to the mullet by some 1,400 years.

But was the mullet, so beloved of cinema’s warriors and heavy-metal drummers, originally designed for war and aggression? Native American tribes and Celtic warriors of the Iron Age chopped their locks just so for intimidation and heroism, thrilling at their flowing manes as hand-to-hand battle commenced. Then, in the subsequent un-rockin’, namby-pamby centuries, wigs took over and men’s heads were hidden under the preposterously powdered postiche of times past.

History records that David Bowie, during his Aladdin Sane period, revived it in the 1970s (with the help of Bromley pirate Suzi Ronson, then Suzanne Fussey). Much imitated but never bettered, it was called a ‘feather cut’ back then; versions appearing on Aussie Rules footballers, across Scandinavia and skimming the shoulders of pretty much every male musician from Rod Stewart and Keith Richards to Paul McCartney.

In the 2010s, the style appeared on Iran’s list of ‘un-Islamic’, ‘decadent Western cuts’ and was reportedly banned by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Some tastemakers believe that similar tonsorial draconianism might be appropriate for the men of Hackney and Shoreditch.

The fashion industry is known for its capriciousness, but 2025 has been an especially volatile year, with a litany of high-profile creative directors changing places. From January through to the summer months, there have been new designers installed at Bottega Veneta, Chanel, Gucci, Balenciaga, Maison Margiela, Jil Sander, Versace, Marni – the list goes on.

But the most resonant move was that of industry darling Jonathan Anderson, from Loewe to Dior, and his debut show, men’s Spring/Summer 2026, was perhaps the most hotly anticipated catwalk presentation of the past decade. In the end, amid all the tumult, Anderson chose to build his inaugural collection around one piece of classic menswear: the simple, blue-and-white-striped business shirt.

In various guises, striped button-ups – in lightweight poplin, rather than thick Oxford cotton – popped up under preppy ‘repp’ ties (also striped), or peeking out from beneath slubby wool blazers, or paired with matching boxer shorts. They even made it onto the show’s front row, where the likes of Robert Pattinson and Josh O’Connor dutifully scrunched their crisp collars out of shape, as per Anderson’s preferred styling method.

Just a few days before, in Milan, resurgent British brand Dunhill had put the striped shirt at the heart of its collection, too, though the collars all laid as intended. In more of a nod to the riverbank than the Square Mile, creative director Simon Holloway broadened the stripe to a deckchair gauge, and used it in shirts that splayed out at the neck to make space for a neckerchief, and even worn neatly beneath bow ties and tuxedo jackets.

‘The blue-and-white-striped shirt is a classic because it takes you away from plain blue or white, but still looks timeless,’ says Luke Sweeney, co-founder of tailoring brand Thom Sweeney, where the brand’s archetypal point-collar shirt is available in a simple ‘Bengal’ stripe. Named for a regiment of the British Indian Army, the narrow stripe helps to give visual texture to otherwise simple outfits, and looks especially good with navy tailoring, adds Sweeney.

For inspiration, Sweeney’s co-founder Thom Whiddett points to financier Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), who opted to finesse his striped ‘power’ shirting with a contrast collar (and in doing so, created the de facto ‘banker’ look). A faithful rendition of that shirt – known as the ‘Gekko’ shirt – is available at Jermyn Street’s Turnbull & Asser, and offered to ‘any high-flying city gent with a fondness for cinema’.

For something a little less boisterous, the head of tailoring brand Husbands Paris, where the striped, contrast collar has been softened, in line with the maison’s sense of chic 1970s glamour. The blue-and-white stripe is flecked with a little black, and the collar is fuller, designed to sit beneath an extra-wide suit lapel.

Proof, perhaps, that the humble blue-and-white stripe is as timeless as the collared shirt itself, and that even in this ever-changing landscape, there are sartorial constants. Crumpled collar or not.