Whatever its true meaning, PDA is a London nightlife legend, a Black, Brown and Queer party that ran from 2011 to 2021 and nurtured creative talents including designer Maximilian Davis, creative director of Ferragamo, director (and PDA co-founder) Akinola Davies Jr, who won Outstanding British Debut at the BAFTAs last night, Ib Kamara, Creative Director at Off-White, and Shygirl, whose video for ‘BEAUTS’ is a compilation of the stairwell cam that defined the PDA era.

In the party’s later years, one photographer was also there to capture it. Liz Johnson Artur is a legend in her own right, known for her documentation of subcultures and the Black diaspora, which she began in the early 1990s. She’s also no stranger to the fashion industry, having shot covers for Dazed, i-D and Garage Magazine (the latter being one of my favourites - Michaela Coel with her face painted in gold leaf). When I heard she was releasing a book about PDA, I asked if she would be open to talking about it.

At a time where nightlife spaces are closing at alarming rates, and younger generations seem more interested in looksmaxxing than funmaxxing, this book represents exactly what makes independent club culture so important. Parties like PDA provide a safe space to experiment with style and identity; to let loose and become who you really are. They’re also an incubator for genuine community - the relationships that sustain the creative industries with fresh ideas, diverse perspectives and ongoing support.

The book primarily documents the partygoers, always dressed in fabulous outfits (the stripes of Asai’s famous Hot Wok top can be spotted on a few occasions). But there are quieter moments, too, chronicling Johnson Artur’s friendship with many of the PDA collective, particularly founder and DJ Ms Carrie Stacks, who appears on the cover.

In this conversation, we discuss the making of the book, and how it represents just one perspective on PDA - a party whose influence still reverberates in the creative industries today.

Georgia: What was your first experience of going to PDA? What were your first impressions?

Liz: Someone I met in Berlin invited me to a gig, and I just went along. And one of the things that happened there was that Carrie just walked towards me. That was my first flash of seeing Carrie.

That evening I started taking pictures and then they told me about PDA and I was like, “Okay, I need to go.” I have to also make the point that I’m a different generation to most people that go to PDA. For me, my clubbing days were in the 90s.

Mischa [Notcutt], who was one of the main figures, she didn’t allow people to take pictures. So I went to Mischa’s place and we met and she said I could take pictures. One of the first images in the book is from that first night at PDA. What can I say? I went in and I loved it. I think what I loved was the way it was a warm place. People were welcomed; they treated each other as equals.

Around about how many pictures would you take each time you went?

You can’t do that by numbers. The way I take pictures is that I take a certain amount of film with me that has to last me for the night. Sometimes I would take three rolls, sometimes I would take five rolls. I would never come back with a roll not shot. But I think I paced myself. It didn’t feel like I had to catch everything right here, right now. I just went with the flow - you can see it in the book.

Usually when I work, I print the pictures that I’m interested in, and so the PDA book kind of grew in the time that I was shooting. So every time I would go and process some film I would print it and put it in a book. And it became a very big book over the years.

The PDA bible?

Exactly, the PDA bible. That’s what I wanted - the bible standard. What I took was something that was my perspective. I think PDA has so many other levels. As I said, I’m probably not a typical PDA goer. But I became close to them and I think that’s what the pictures represent.

When you talk about shooting people you describe it as more like a collaboration with the person. How do you go about building relationships with your subjects?

I think it’s a matter of communicating what I want or what I do, and seeing if they allow me to take a moment and take a picture. These moments are not always a verbal communication. A lot of times they’re just glances, just being present so people see what I do. I don’t shoot on a phone, and I have cameras that are actually quite slow. So it takes time for me to take a picture. And I think with PDA, it was a matter of people really accepting me.

I think what is important is to say that I don’t give directions. I receive what people give me and my job is to make sure that moment is there in good quality. I think what people give me is something that they feel comfortable doing.

When you were getting the film developed did you show your subjects the photos?

This is an interesting question because I don’t really. Sometimes I do - when I was making the PDA bible and people were here [in my home] sometimes I would show them what I had. But it wasn’t a thing where I would take someone’s picture and they were like, “I want to see it.” It’s the enjoyment of that moment, of capturing it, that I really like. And I guess because I work on film and you can’t see directly what it is, you have to work with trust. And the trust was that people kept allowing me to take pictures.

It’s to the credit of how PDA was - very inclusive, but also very protective. And I think the way Mischa, Akinola, everyone who was involved in it, they created an atmosphere where people felt free to be who they wanted to be. And I think my pictures got a little bit of that.

I always wonder if you felt in competition with the stairwell photos? I feel like there are two visual histories, yours and the stairwell.

This is why I’m saying that the book represents my perspective, which is how I moved about, how I approached people, who I chose. The stairwell is very much PDA. That’s being at PDA, that’s the people who make PDA. And I think there are many ways of telling the PDA story. But I think if you want to get to the core, then it’s the staircase.

It’s almost like PDA is this essence and there are these fragments of capturing it. Some of it is like verbal lore, then we have your book…

PDA accumulated a lot of what London, in terms of talent, represents. And I think it’s something where they will probably tell their own story, because they also documented the story of PDA in their own way.

It’s also important to see that these things are so multifaceted. The people who run the place are the people who have the real story. What I have is a glance into it and being allowed in. So it’s a privilege.

I want to talk about the book itself, as a physical object. Why did it feel like the right time to release it?

Sometimes the right moment is just there and you don’t actually know why. Usually when I make books, I’m very… I wouldn’t call it a control freak, but I’m used to doing the books that I want to have. With PDA, it was also very important that people like Carrie, Mischa - that they were also involved in choosing what pictures went into it.

I also wanted their involvement because as much as PDA is wonderful, PDA is also a very fragile place. When you step out, the world outside is very different. The people who gave me their picture in PDA might have a much harder time once they’re outside PDA. So there’s a certain kind of responsibility about how and who to show. That needs the involvement of everyone - I couldn’t have done that just by myself.

That was something I was thinking about, how PDA has this real legacy of privacy. It’s this place where people are very expressive and flamboyant, but nonetheless, it is a closed thing. Was it nerve wracking at all being like, “We’re going to show this.” Not necessarily being able to control the audience once the book is out there.

Of course, yes. And I think we went through certain stages. Because as I said, PDA, it’s not me, it’s the people who run it and the people who went there. And they’re the ones who are exposed. In the moment, people gave me their picture, but it might be a thing where for this picture to come out, it might be an issue.

PDA is very protective. That’s something that I had to respect. I was allowed into a space where people felt free to be who they are, but it doesn’t mean that you can do it 24 hours a day outside of PDA.

And how did you choose the cover photo? I feel like that’s a million dollar question for a book.

It’s the cover that I chose for the Bible.

[at this point, Liz retrieves the original ‘PDA Bible’ from her shelves - like a huge scrapbook bursting with images]

So this is the PDA Bible. It’s very thick.

Oh, wow. It’s massive.

It’s massive. And it chronicles everything from when I started. And I think I just chose this picture because Carrie was one of the people that I got very close to. From my perspective she is in the book all throughout because for me she represents something very essential. Without putting it into words, I think it’s actually quite evident once you go through the book. And I wanted something that is… close. Rather than being flamboyant, being close.

It captures the glamour, but also there’s a pensive nature to it as well. Most of the book is photos at the party, so in the club or just outside. But then there are a few ‘getting ready’ pictures, and that really beautiful sequence of Carrie having a cigarette on the balcony. I think about the Leigh Bowery exhibition I went to recently, how so much of the night is getting ready for the night. Was that something you thought about?

I think for me, there was PDA where it was this space that suddenly opened up and people came in. And equally, in terms of my involvement with PDA, I got close to some people. Carrie was staying with me, we’d make food. And those moments for me were also part of PDA.

Those pictures are very important for me, because I don’t look at the PDA book as a club book. This was the place where I could do the portraits that I wanted to do, so I used that as a backdrop. But my approach was probably more of a portrait photographer. And I think the moments when it wasn’t PDA, it was still very much about the people who made PDA. All these moments are important because I perceive PDA as a warm place. It wasn’t just a club night.

That’s such a lovely expression, a warm place. Although I’m sure it was boiling hot at times!

Listen, the hardest thing was to keep my lens not fogged because it was sweaty!

There are moments in the book when Carrie reappears, and it’s almost like this breath, or a moment to think, and then you’re back in the party.

I guess that’s a good way to see it. You go in and it’s very intense, it’s sweaty. And then there are these moments when you’re not there. And I guess because Carrie and I spent quite a lot of time outside PDA. That gave me these moments where I could capture her in a way that tell you a little bit more about her.

As much as I love style, what I try to bring out is the human being. And I think it’s moments like this that get you a little bit closer. I’m also very grateful to her that she allowed me so close.

Would you call your relationship kind of artist and muse? Or do you think that’s totally cheesy?

I think the idea of a muse is a little bit dehumanizing. I prefer to think of a closeness, a human exchange. Rather than the artist who uses a muse - because a muse is a human being.

Perhaps that’s why we often associate the expression with a man and a younger woman.

It is kind of like the chosen one and the one who tells the story. I like to think that what I do requires a certain kind of eye level. It requires that you actually see the person on the same level. That you don’t look down on people, that you don’t look up to them. But you see them on a level where you can exchange what you want to exchange.

Would you say that your pictures get better, the better you know someone?

It’s an interesting one because my work is very much about - I wouldn’t say people that I don’t know - but people that I want to know. If I look at the whole of my work, a lot of times I look for people in places that are public, in places that are actually accessible to others as well. And that’s where I look for these sort of private moments, because it’s those spaces that we all share, that we need to remind ourselves that we are on eye level.

I’m not interested in exposing someone’s privacy, I’m interested in showing someone’s humanity. And I think that’s something we carry outside. We always have it with us, and it’s a question of respecting that and preserving it.

It’s something that I had to also learn to overcome in terms of guilt, taking someone’s picture. I can say for myself, I don’t like being photographed by anyone. I’m very protective of myself. And I guess that’s why I appreciate it when people let me in.

Buy the PDA from Climax Books, Tender Books, Studio Nocturne, or your favourite independent bookseller.

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Don’t forget to catch up on the Threads of Conversation podcast - this week’s guest was TikTok star and stylist Chani Ra, aka. The Fashion Nap, who rose to viral fame making videos during her newborn’s nap time. We discuss going viral on TikTok, building a career on social media, and how she balances content creation with her most important job: motherhood.

You can also find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and follow Threads of Conversation on Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe below for more podcasts, essays and interviews.

Sometimes I think of YouTube as the tortoise from that Aesop’s fable, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’. As new products and platforms race to optimise user attention and capture market share, YouTube is the steady constant; moving at its own pace, but continuing to dominate the field.

In the fashion world, the platform plays host to some of the most interesting researchers and creators - one of which is understitch, an anonymous historian who’s amassed 190,000 subscribers, who tune in to watch their meticulously researched digests of some of the world’s biggest fashion and beauty brands (underskin, is their sibling beauty channel). As one commenter put it: “this is my fashion university”.

Here’s understitch, on what it takes to run a successful YouTube channel today:

When did you start your YouTube channel? What was the thought process behind it?

I started because I was watching Great Art Explained and couldn’t find anything like that about fashion. I had no idea the first few videos would blow up in the way they did. I just wanted the information to be remembered in the same way.

How do you choose which topics to cover in your videos?

Mostly I pick topics that I find personally interesting, or that there is a lot of misinformation about. Loewe, for example, had almost nothing online about their heritage. I’m about to release videos on Baby Phat and Phat Farm, and equally their history is really watered down online. There’s so much more to fashion retailing than people know, and so I try to clear the air and provide academic-level research in an entertaining way. If my videos are good enough to be added into a university syllabus (and they have been), I know I’ve done a great job.

Can you tell me about your research process? How do you go about it, and how do you know when you’re ‘done’?

I’m never really done. Some videos can take months on end. My McQueen series took over a year, for example. I don’t think anyone would truly believe how much research and effort goes into it.

How long does it take you to make a video and what are key steps from idea to upload?

Length of research really varies depending on how old the brand is. I basically read, listen and watch every single piece of media I can get my hands on, in or out of print.

I then find gaps in the research, contact the relevant people who have inside knowledge (as long as they’re still living) and try to answer the questions that come up naturally. It's really a long process, but it is one I truly love.

How do you structure your time when you’re researching?

It’s different for every project, but it is hard to find a balance. I can’t cut from any of the research, writing or editing stages very easily so I end up working 12+ hours a day, every day, most days. Even on Christmas and my birthday there is work being done.

You’ve had a lot of support from luxury houses - for example Loewe, who you worked with during the research phase of a lot of your videos around the house. How do those relationships start?

These days I know the brands and they know me. I was connected to Loewe by Cathy Horyn, Stella McCartney reached out to me directly, and I’m working with my next big brand currently. Where I draw the line is when they want to read the script before. I won’t compromise on the information.

Do you ever encounter pushback from brands who don’t like how they’ve been portrayed?

Yes, it has happened. I don’t care.

What have you learned over the years of being a YouTuber?

It’s significantly more work than you’d believe to do informational videos. I recently just started doing more personal videos for Patreon and channel members and that only takes days, compared to the months of research that my biographical videos take. If I wasn’t so in love with information, it would make my life a hell of a lot calmer!

What are your favourite topics to cover? Are there any themes you find recurring in your work?

I love innovators. The Body Shop video on underskin, (my beauty channel) was a dream to make. Gentle Monster too, I adored making. I’m generally so passionate about fashion that I’m so excited to research each brand. The only time it gets boring is when there’s a lot of misinformation or the books are boring or languid.

What kind of content performs best, and why do you think that is?

Brands that failed always perform better. I guess people just like a complete story.

When did you decide to add your additional channel, Underskin, and why?

Oh that was within weeks of my fashion channel. I knew I wanted to have a secondary outlet for beauty so I didn’t have too many topics on the one channel. It’s just better for the algorithm.

I know they say don’t choose favourite children, but do you have any favourites from the videos you’ve made so far?

Honestly, no. I enjoy videos where I’m working with the brand, but fashion brands don’t generally love YouTube so it’s never as easy as I know it is for my short-form friends.

You keep yourself anonymous. Why is this important to you?

Because my channels aren’t about me.

We’re in an interesting time when independent creators are capturing market share from traditional forms of fashion media. What’s your view on independent creators vs. legacy publications?

I get millions of views a year, just me alone. I’m not a top level creator in terms of numbers by any means, because my target market is not the general public, it’s quite niche. So considering that, just in terms of numbers, creators far outweigh traditional media readership. We all have our niches too, which means we better target an audience than a generic magazine. Plus, generally, we don’t have to cater to advertisers because fashion brands rarely sponsor creators, which makes us more honest and reliable for the end consumer. All the things that make a better end product, creators simply can provide better.

There’s definitely space for magazines with a point of view (think Bricks or L’idiot Utile) but legacy publications are such pawns to advertisers now that it makes them almost irrelevant. I think they can make a comeback; there’s something of value in having these brands as curators, or good writers and photographers. But until they do it better, they will continue to be second string. If not to creators, then at least to magazines that curate taste instead of just serving one giant book of ads.

You’ve also branched into writing books. Can you tell me about this?

It came about when I realised I’m writing 60,000 words+ for some videos and I just cannot edit a 6-8 hour YouTube video and not go totally insane trying to keep on my upload schedule. My books really are genuinely how my scripts look as I read them to you in video form, just with a bibliography, and they allow me to disseminate reliable information without cutting.

Also, some fashion books are horrifically misinformed, so hopefully I can steal market share from those.

Who are other independent content creators you admire? Either on YouTube or more widely.

Fashion Roadman, Rian Phin, Chani Ra, BoringNotCom - all great thinkers and great communicators of their opinions.

If a new fashion creator was reading this, what’s one thing you’d tell them to focus on?

It’s a lot less glamorous than it looks on Instagram. Also, a shocking amount of people think everything is AI now, so if you’re good at what you do, prepare for endless comments about that - even if what you do is impossible to create using AI anyway!

As an independent creator, you have to be your own boss. Do you have any ‘rules’ or boundaries you’ve set for yourself to stay on track?

I don't have rules but I probably should. I cannot express this enough, I never, ever stop working. My research is 99% done behind a screen or in the pages of books, so I literally never leave my house, and I work around twelve hours a day researching. My friends regularly make fun of me for it.

Friends of mine in a similar boat try to work normal hours, but I'm not there yet. Maybe it will happen one day if I can afford a research assistant, but until then I feel like if I stop working everything will fly away from me.

It's not a very 'healthy' lifestyle and I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn’t unceasingly interested in fashion. But fortunately I am, and I'm thrilled to read and read and read.

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This week I want to introduce you to my friend Vickie Biggs, a London healer who gives the most incredible reiki massages whilst padding around her studio in a pair of Alaïa shoes (more on those later).

Her roster of clients reads like the guest list for a fashion event - probably because she spent so many years in the industry before finding her true purpose as a practitioner.

Vickie is someone who constantly inspires me - a strong, independent woman who’s built her own business with no bank of mum and dad; just intention, intuition and grit. I also love that she’s gone through so many periods of transformation - both inside and out, and how she blends all these facets of her style into who she is today.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, and maybe take a few useful nuggets of wisdom for the New Year.

Can you walk me through your career trajectory?

I moved to London to study graphic design at Chelsea College of Art, and ended up working for Acne Studios alongside studying. I worked in their store and also assisted the head of special relations and PR.

When I graduated, I left Acne and was involved in the art book publishing world. I used to host erotic photography book nights at Claire de Rouen with Lucy Kumara Moore. I also lived with the legendary Lyndell Mansfield in my early 20s for many years and she took me under her wing, and to every fashion party she went to (which was a lot…)

What was the thing that you really loved about working at Acne?

My manager hired the most incredible people - it was one of the only brands that really invested in the people to create their environment; the vibes were a big part of how Acne curated their staff. We also had so many amazing customers who were doing things outside of the box, really artistic. Acne Paper [Acne’s magazine] was still really big; it was a really inspiring place to be.

And then you worked with Ben Ditto in publishing?

Ben had just opened his photo studio and had a gallery and I came on board to help him run that, and also worked closely with him on projects. He later changed the direction of his business to go more into art directing and creative direction - I still did some consultancy for him, but I moved back to Acne.

During that period of my life I was also quite unwell. I had a big health scare which meant I had to stop drinking. I didn’t realise I had a problem with drinking, but when I stopped it came out in all of these different areas of my life. I became completely addicted to working - which can be really great because you get rewarded for this devotion to something, but it was actually incredibly damaging.

During that period I got fully sober and my life totally changed. Well, my internal life did, but my external life didn’t.

I basically had a reconstruction period where I was just at Acne and I was figuring out how to be a sober woman. It probably looked from the outside like I’d taken quite a few steps back, but it allowed me the space to figure out who I was.

Then I got offered a job as a retail manager for a sustainable womenswear brand. During that time, I realized that I didn’t want to work in a retail space. My friend suggested I see a psychic and I was like, “Well, I’ll go if he’s reasonably priced!” And he was.

We had a really pivotal session, where he told me I had healing hands and that I needed to be a healer. He gave me this permission slip to go and explore what I could do. I did an aromatherapy course and I loved it. I was like, “Fuck it, I’m just going to quit my job and like do another aromatherapy course and work in the corner shop”.

I wrote my resignation, I paid for my course, and the morning that I was about to hand my notice in, I got a message from Yasmin Sewell at Vyrao. We’d met six months previously. She was basically like, “Hey, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I really want you on board to work with me full time.” I told her I was studying to be an aromatherapist and she loved it because she’s really into all of that [Vyrao is an energy-based fragrance brand].

So I left and started working with Yas, and we launched the brand. I was with her for almost two years, and alongside working with her I was retraining. But also in that period one of my closest friends passed away. She was about to turn 50. It was kind of a wake-up call. She lived every day like as she had wanted to, and she did everything that she could possibly have done in her life. I just thought, I can’t live this duality of coming to work and sitting at desk when actually my heart’s screaming to be doing something else.

I probably would have ended up working with Yas forever, because I absolutely love her. But she could tell I wasn’t happy. We had this really beautiful walk where she was like, “do you just want to be a practitioner?” And I said yes. We were both crying.

I realised that if I put even 75% of the effort I’ve put into all of the other jobs I’ve worked into my own thing, then I’d be OK. So I started doing treatments from my home, and then I got my own little studio space, and I built from there.

For so long, it felt like I was just hitting a brick wall in my head and didn’t know where to go. It just felt so hard. I think if it feels like you’re fighting the whole universe to make something happen, it’s a sign that it’s not working. I think culturally we have this view that success should be really difficult, but in so many other cultures that’s not the case.

Going back to style, I think that what we wear and how we express ourselves on the outside can reflect so much of what we’re going through inside. What was your style like at this time, and how did you notice it changing?

I think working for a brand for so many years where you’re given free clothes and you’re also so broke, you just adopt the style of the brand. It took me a while to find my own personal style.

I think my style has definitely changed a lot from doing this job, because it has to be very practical and comfortable. At the beginning, I found it really difficult to know how to express myself, because I was basically just wearing pyjamas. And I got really upset because I’d been used to wearing suits and dresses.

You tend to see people who do body work wearing black a lot, and it’s because you just get oil over literally everything!

When I lived with Lyndell [my hairstylist friend], she like had such a distaste for designer clothes even though she worked in fashion, because she was like, “It’s a fucking waste of money! You can go to the charity shops and find something amazing that no one else has.” She used to get so mad at me for spending all my money on these expensive items.

She used to take me to all of these charity shops and secondhand shops with her, and I’d watch in awe of how cool she was. She was a full punk, and looked amazing all the time with her crazy pink hair. I remember she took me to Atsuko Kudo and made me buy my first ever latex piece. I used to wear latex and looked like a bit of a goth!

I love how with vintage shopping, you just have to relinquish control. If it doesn’t fit you, it’s not meant for you. It almost feels like this element of fate. I find that really magical.

And how would you describe your uniform in the studio? You always look very elegant and you have these winks to your past life in what you wear.

Yeah, I try to have a nod. When I was studying you’d have to wear these hideous nurse outfits, and a specific shoe for the exams. I got the shoes for the exam and then returned them on the way home!

Do you have a favourite item of clothing at the moment?

I’m really into puffy sleeves, they make me very happy. When you’re doing massage you have to have all of your arms free. My Alaïa shoes were my greatest ever vintage find.

Can you tell me how you got them?

Basically, I went to a flea market, and this guy was selling them and didn’t know what they were, and I got them for £25.

No, stop!

I saw them in the corner of my eye, and they were my size. I paid for them, and I was like, we have to leave because he’s going to realise what he’s done! I took out the stuffing when we were on the bus, and I was like, “these are real!”

Wow.

I’m really good at manifesting vintage!

A lot of your clients are in fashion. Do you think that it’s because the fashion industry creates a need for your type of work?

I think that the fashion industry is really stressful. I also think people are more open than they’ve ever been to trying things which are a bit more like out there, like Reiki or cacao.

Is there a treatment that you find your fashion clients gravitate towards?

Reiki massage is probably the most popular because we store energy in our body. I think [fashion] can also be a very sad place for people, especially when they’re exploring spiritual avenues and feeling really conflicted about being in an industry that acts so against their moral and ethical code.

But also it’s also magical to be in that space where you’re creating imagery and stories and it’s such a playground for people to be in. The most amazing artists get to showcase what they do. Often those people are drawn to energy work or holistic things because they’re open and creative.

What elements of your experience in fashion, beauty, branding and art direction have you transposed into building your own business?

I think the world-building is what I loved the most being a brand manager. Also working closely with people, making people feel better, that human contact like when you’re working in a shop.

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What began as a Wimbledon fashion boutique in 1987 had risen to become one of the UK’s most beloved luxury retailers - a reputation that helped buoy them along, even as the e-commerce seas got rough. To me, the brand always evoked the same energy as a busy Dries van Noten print - chic, but also warm and fun. It triangulated nicely between the minimalism of Net-a-Porter and the arch cool of SSENSE. But you need more than good vibes to sustain a retail business these days.

Last week, it was revealed that two young entrepreneurs had acquired the brand, with plans to relaunch it in 2026. The responses I saw ranged from excitement and anticipation, to surprise and concern. To understand more about the situation, I called my friend Chinazo Ufodiama - a brand and communications consultant with a fortune teller’s knack for predicting the future of fashion business.

Georgia: So Chi, can you give us a brief overview of Matches’ story?

Chi: Matches started as a really successful fashion boutique, founded by Ruth and Tom Chapman. Then Net-a-Porter launched luxury multi-brand retail online. Matches saw the competition that created, and became part of the big e-commerce rise in the early 2000s. Matches was known as a place for discovery, because they were supportive of emerging designers. It also felt a lot more accessible than some of the bigger giants.

Then, in 2017 Ruth and Tom sold to a private firm, APAX partners. And that was the beginning of the end, really. What then happened was Matches took a similar strategy to Glossier. This was a moment where a lot of brands were trying to pivot and become tech companies. So all of a sudden you have all of these really big salaries and massive growth targets because you’ve invested in this tech strategy which is meant to optimize and accelerate growth.

Maybe you do manage to achieve this, but you can’t just keep growing and growing, right? There’s only a limited number of customers who are actually going to spend and buy luxury, and who have a taste that aligns with the curation.

So then what happens is that you have to get rid of the curation to grow your audience as much as possible to meet your targets. But then you start losing your identity because you’re trying to appeal to everyone. And in the process, you lose your core customer.

Georgia: And what’s causing the wider slump in luxury e-commerce that we’re seeing now? I’m thinking of the SSENSE news, too.

Chi: The internet is so price-conscious. We all have tools to help us find the cheapest price of any specific item we want. Businesses are also battling against the resale market. Our consumption habits are so much faster now - you’ll have an item that’s been on the shop floor for maybe four weeks, and you can already buy it secondhand because someone’s bought it and decided they don’t want it anymore. Also, the consumer’s been educated and programmed to expect discounts at certain times (ie. all the time). So nobody is buying full-price.

Georgia: And do you think that retailers focusing on their in-person experience is a solution for this?

Chi: Definitely. The thing I’m most excited about and I see as a potential solution is the return to the department store. I feel that happening. It’s that in-person experience; that discoverability. For example, you can spend the day at Selfridges and get your nails done, then you can have lunch and then you can, you know, buy yourself a cheeky snack, and then have a coffee.

That’s another thing we’ve lost in luxury - that personal human interaction, human consideration. E-commerce has destroyed that. We’re losing the curation, the taste - and people want that.

Also, consider the emotional value that comes from a positive interaction with another human being. I think the absence of that is contributing to the shortened life/love cycle that people have with their clothes, because they don’t have that connection. And then on top of that, you layer on the lack of differentiation within the actual product. Everything looks the same.

Let’s talk about the Big News. Tell me a bit about the guys who have acquired Matches. What’s their story so far?

Chi: So Joe Wilkinson and Mario Maher. They’re both from Sheffield - Joe was a personal shopper and Mario comes from wholesale distribution. They founded a luxury mystery box called HEAT in 2019. The idea is that you could buy a box for ~ £100 and you would get sent a box with products worth ~ £200. I thought it was a really smart idea. It’s a great solution for the industry’s overproduction problem, and also a way to introduce new customers to these brands.

A few years later, they launched their next venture, MILE, which is a members-only app platform, similarly for customers to buy off-season and therefore off-priced luxury goods. Again, it’s a smart business model in that every single user is building some level of profitability into the business (via membership fees), and then you’re making sales.

Georgia: Going back to the Matches announcement, what are the questions you still have about the future of the company?

Chi: I think that what’s really interesting about Joe and Mario is that they have been really successful in establishing alternative business models to sell luxury goods, especially to Gen-Z. Although historically, those have been off-price. I’m keen to see how they’re going to translate their learnings in order to sell something at full price. They can’t relaunch Matches and follow the same business model as before. So I’m interested to know what their approach is going to be like. Is it going to be more of a marketplace model like we see at Moda Operandi?

Georgia: Can you explain what you mean by marketplace model?

Chi: Marketplace means that a business connects to the e-commerce of the brand. So the retailer is essentially a digital shop front, but the brands are responsible for the operations, the fulfillment, and holding the stock. It’s a really lean way to operate from a multi-brand point of view as you don’t need a warehouse of stock etc.

Georgia: What do you think is the most important element to make this relaunch a success?

Chi: I think that you need buy-in from the entire industry. There are wrongs that need to be made right, and there were a lot of people who were burned by the closure. That closure was toxic. The news, it was going on for weeks, months.

I’m intrigued to know who it is that they’re going to bring in. They need a really powerful team around them. Who’s the A-team? Because on paper, the A-team that we might think of, they aren’t the right people - because we need renegade, alternative thinkers. People who come from different industries and probably don’t even have a track record in luxury multi-brand e-commerce. They’ve said that the relaunch is going to be lean and tech-optimized, but personally, I would build in as much human connection as possible. I think that you need multiple people who are the faces behind the curation.

Georgia: My last question is around re-launching Matches’ much-loved in-house brand, RAEY. It doesn’t sound like ex-creative director Rachael Proud will be going back, and the brand really was her baby. What are your thoughts there?

Chi: £150 million [the amount that Hulcan, Joe Wilkinson and Mario Maher’s holding company has raised] isn’t a lot of money to invest in the marketing that is needed to relaunch a brand. Especially if you don’t have the original creative team, and you don’t have the original suppliers - because a lot of them were also burned by the closure.

What made RAEY successful wasn’t the name, it wasn’t that it was available to buy on Matches - it was the world, the product, the images. Without the original team you can’t replicate that. So it’s going to be something completely new, completely different.

What were your thoughts/ feelings around the news? Let me know in the comments.

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Common Threads

Regular readers will remember that exactly a year ago, I purchased my first pair of FiveFingers. Since then, I’ve written about them, posted about them, gone viral on TikTok, and generally become an unofficial spokesperson for the shoe.

It was only a matter of time before I made contact with the mothership. Abby Bucknall is FiveFingers’ Global Head of Marketing. She joined the brand a year ago, and is the person behind their marketing rise to fame. We got on a call to talk about how she built a world around these weird and wonderful shoes.

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Can you give a quick whistlestop tour of your career journey up to this point?

My journey’s been a bit of a winding road, but always rooted in materials and experience. I started out studying textiles, but I wasn’t so interested in fashion as clothing - I was more drawn to how fabrics make you feel. My degree was really focused on haptics and sensory perception, which naturally led me into thinking about environments and how people experience space.

That’s what got me into set design, and my first real break was at Selfridges, working on their windows. After a bit of time out, I then joined Napapijri in 2018 as a creative manager. This turned into an eight-year journey where I immersed myself in outdoor gear, really understanding both the product and the culture around it.

When you started at FiveFingers, what was your brief?

The brief was really about heroing the performance side of FiveFingers. The shoe’s had a few different waves - first with the barefoot running movement, then it was picked up by fashion, and then it fell off the radar. The challenge now is to build a long-term strategy, one that focuses on how the shoe actually makes you feel and what it delivers in terms of performance. It’s about moving away from short-lived hype cycles and instead creating a consistent narrative that keeps the product relevant and enduring.

We spoke about looking at a brand through fresh eyes and appealing to a new audience, but also not alienating the core customer. How do you find that balance?

A big part of it is about respecting the community. The diehards don’t just want to see new visuals - they want to feel reassured that the right information is being shared, that their knowledge and passion are being honoured. They also want to feel a sense of belonging; that warm hug that’s always been there. So even if we evolve the visual language, I make sure the tone of voice stays rooted in that familiar, comfortable world. That way, people feel included rather than alienated.

This is kind of a clichéd question, but what kind of places do you look for visual inspiration?

I’ve always collected books, and a few years ago I picked up this Olympic series from the 80s — ten volumes, all filmed by local people at the time. Looking through them, I thought, this is exactly what I want to bring to FiveFingers. You see these raw moments - a girl just out of the water, a guy mid-flip in the air - with that high-contrast 80s aesthetic where the whole focus is on the expression, the feeling.

What struck me is how immersive it is: you feel like you’re right there with them. And I think today, so much visual work gets over-coded to answer, ‘will this be a success or not?’ Instead of letting you connect viscerally, like I can feel what he’s feeling — or even, I want to feel that. That’s the energy I wanted to capture.

With more traditional fashion brands, when they get a new creative lead, there’s so much pressure to have the vision and execute it straight away. I remember seeing a post where you were talking about feeling like you’ve really found your stride at FiveFingers. How did you know you’d arrived at that point and what was the process of getting there?

When I first arrived at the brand, within six weeks I’d already been to the U.S. and back, and I was told, ‘You need to shoot five different categories of terrain and shoes and not heel strike etc .’ I remember thinking, how am I going to create five distinct characters and scenarios, and make sure it’s a true sports story when I’m not coming from footwear background?

I ended up working with Alberto Cantù, a photographer I’d met at Napapijri. Honestly, I had no idea what I was doing — but I wasn’t overthinking it. And when the images came back, I had this real wow moment. They provoked an empathetic response; you could feel something in them.

Then in January, we worked on a special Lunar New Year limited edition. I was specific about wanting certain poses, certain light. Alberto really understood it — and it tied back to what I loved about that Olympics book, capturing feeling through expression. The response showed me people had connected with it, and that was incredibly validating.

After that, we did some of the more traditional outdoor shoots — the kind of imagery people would expect. But it wasn’t clicking with newcomers to the brand. Because we’d already been driving in a new direction, going back to a conventional viewpoint actually felt polarizing.

So I think I learned through that first year what was performing well, and what the new, hybrid ‘aesthetic-but-sporty’ audience was responding to. And I think that made me realise that we needed to keep pushing that high contrast emotion and aesthetic.

There’s so much heat around FiveFingers at the moment. At what point did you start to feel like it was really taking on a life of its own?

I think it was around the time someone sent me your Substack post. I’d also sent a pair to Doechii’s stylist, which was just before Easter. When I saw FiveFingers on her ‘Anxiety’ music video, and it was the only shoe featured, I was like “OK. Something’s going to happen here…”

And then it was like a rollercoaster - it just exploded since the campaign. Since April the Instagram has grown by 35,000 followers and it keeps increasing. It’s a momentum that keeps building because people are seeing the world we are creating and want to be part of it. We go left when people go right.

I always think it’s like when someone gets famous really fast. All of a sudden, they have all these people in their face telling them they should do X and Y. Even for me, when I’ve had pieces go moderately viral, I feel like ‘Oh, do I need more of that?’ Or I don’t want to publish anything, as it feels like there are too many eyes on you. It’s intimidating. How have you stayed true to your vision and your instinct during this time?

I think it’s natural to feel that pressure, especially when something takes off. You suddenly start questioning yourself - should I do more of that, or should I hold back altogether? For me, it’s been about coming back to the core of what I believe in: the product, the community, and the feeling I want to create.

If I chase what’s trending, I’ll lose that. So instead, I’ve learned to trust the rhythm I’ve set - to keep the tone consistent, keep the storytelling honest, and not get distracted by short-term spikes. Of course it’s intimidating at times, but I think if you’re clear on your vision, it gives you the confidence to hold your ground.

In terms of what you’re describing, for me it’s about consistency - keeping the same pace, the same posting rhythm, the same visual language. It’s also about engaging with the community and not getting distracted by what others could bring. You need a strict plan and the discipline to stick to it.

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Take seeding, for example. Everyone wants the shoes, and of course I could send them out to celebrities, but that’s not the right move. As exciting as it is to see fashion picking them up, at the core this is an incredible training tool. And training doesn’t just mean elite sport - it can be as simple as walking.

Lately, a lot of the questions we’ve had have been about fashion, so I’ve made sure to bring the message back to performance. The product is designed as a tool for movement - whether outdoors, in the gym, or just on the street. Even LeBron James has started wearing them; it’s the first shoe he’s ever posted that isn’t Nike. That tells you something about its credibility as performance footwear.

Oh I saw that! I sent it to all my friends. I was like, “guys, it’s me and the king”.

Exactly - and that’s the core of who we are. Trends come along but ultimately the product works. And they feel amazing - once you try them on your feet it’s like this addiction.

I joke that I go to the gym for vanity, but I’m always surprised that it improves my health and fitness as well. In the same way, I started wearing FiveFingers for the aesthetic, but I now realise that all the foot pain I used to get has gone away.

If you look at a lot of the girls on Substack and TikTok, you then see a lot of them then talk about their three-month experience in them, because they're feeling the benefits. Most people have never separated their toes, so that in itself is already a talking point that goes beyond an aesthetic.

How do you monitor that kind of press you’re getting? Is it important for you to keep tabs on the conversation?

From an internal point of view, the feedback is so important. Because if you think about how the shoe fits, everyone's toes are different. So for our product team, those comments are going to inform how we then adapt and keep building on what we're doing.

I learn so much by having visibility on everything. People tag me and then I read through it, and I really enjoy it. It’s such a personal experience for people that it really fuels me to keep pushing on. Also, it’s so complimentary how many people send me all the people in FiveFingers to my personal Instagram.

There’s so much hype around FiveFingers right now, but this can also be dangerous for a brand - you don’t want it to seem like a trend or a fad. Is there a way that you strategize around the hype?

You just don't repost and take all of that on, so you’re not flooding your audience. Making sure you're quiet in moments is important. Because if you're just constantly screaming at people they’re going to be like, “Wow, I've seen this everywhere.” So for us we just have to make sure that we have something new to say all the time, but we do it with a clear communication strategy.

Something I really noticed and like is that it doesn’t feel like you guys are playing into your own hype. You aren’t trying to capitalize on it too much, other than growing the brand storytelling. You’re not one of those brands that are in the comments being like, “Babes I love your shoes”.

No, no, no.

You’re still being cool about it. There’s still some mystery.

The more I think about fashion, the more I have an existential crisis that fashion doesn’t really have a soul. It’s just like a virus that needs a host cell - turning clothes and subcultures into costumes.

What’s interesting with FiveFingers is that they start from a completely different place. They’re a performance shoe, designed for function first. But when people ‘put on the costume,’ they actually have a genuine, physical experience. Wear them long enough and your perspective shifts - suddenly, normal shoes look strange. You find yourself asking, why would you ever make shoes like that?"

I hate the word inspiration because it's so overused, but are there any other brands or creatives that you really like or admire?

These days, it’s Satisfy Running for me. Those guys smash it out of the park. I went to their showroom and they were explaining their t-shirts with the holes, and how they put it on different people and mapped where they sweat, and then they found the most common points, and that's why there are those holes in the t-shirt. That's genius, because you've made something so aesthetically appealing, but it has pure function at its core. And to me that’s what I think FiveFingers are, too.

We touched on collaborations - you've been doing quite a lot of special projects recently. Can you tell me a bit more about the things you’ve been doing?

From a marketing perspective, we’ve focused on working with smaller communities and influential groups. For example, we partnered with Secular Sabbath in L.A., who are rooted in wellness, and most recently we did a frog festival there. The whole idea was to explore how the frog influences movement.

We gave people the shoes and let them experience them in different ways - meditating, being in a pond, in the banya. It became less about product demonstration and more about creating a pathway back to yourself through movement. That intimacy and authenticity has been far more powerful than chasing mass exposure.

When it comes to collaborations, we really want to stay focused on niche, passionate communities. Recently, we were the main sponsor of the World Toe Wrestling Championships in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Honestly, it couldn’t be a more perfect fit. These are people who literally strengthen their toes every day, and we’re bringing them a massive Toedium experience with a FiveFingers shoe. It’s fun, a little unexpected, and totally authentic - exactly the kind of connection we want to keep building.

I’m British I grew up a lot on markets with my family. I was thinking a lot about the characters I encountered as a child, and I think at the heart of it I just wanted to shine a spotlight on communities of people that think differently and feel honestly.

Did you make up that word?

Toedium? Its a traditional toe wrestling term!

So good.

There’s a woman from Yorkshire that basically has no time to train because she works on a farm. She puts barrels around her legs while she's feeding the cows, and that's how she strengthens her feet. So now we've given them all FiveFingers. It's a really crazy world to be part of because ultimately, people are kind of obsessed with feet.

Do you think it's just this cultural moment or do you think that people have always been this way?

Definitely - people have been obsessed with feet forever. But I do feel there’s a general shift of people just wanting to feel more.

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Have you got a pair of toe shoes? If not, why not? Are you a convert to the FiveFinger lifestyle or still FiveFreaking out at all these toes on show?

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Unlike the clean, minimal 90s fashion pictures we see floating around Instagram, there’s something deeply human about these images. The characters and their emotions burst from the pages, pulling you into their hedonistic swirl and beckoning you to join them on their next night out.

“If you look at the book now, I made it look fun. But it had a dark side to it,” Stemmi remembers. “There wasn’t much else to do other than party. It wasn’t that we weren’t thinking about careers, but there were no opportunities in Berlin.”

It was through an internship at a magazine that Stemmi got his start in fashion, and has since become one of Berlin’s most respected styling talents. ‘Anfang/Beginning Berlin 1994-99’ represents the dawn of his lifelong fascination with people and subculture; a rare glimpse into a lost world that was both a beginning and an end.

Housekeeping: There are a lot of (amazing!) images in this piece, which means it might get cut off in your inbox. Hit ‘view in browser’ or ‘read full message’ to see the whole thing.

What was the genesis of the book?

I started in fashion in the early 2000s, and that was the rise of digital, when everyone started using Photoshop and everything was sharp. After the 90s, this whole analogue aesthetic wasn't a thing anymore. So I didn't look at these pictures for maybe 20 years.

My ex discovered them - he's a photographer. He said, “You have to do something with these”. When we broke up and I left Berlin, I was suddenly compelled to look at the photos. But I looked at them with the trained eye of a stylist. I was like, wow, they're actually very good.

And how did they become a book?

I started showing the photos to people. They were all so enthusiastic about them - I could have never imagined that they would be so interesting for other people. But the more people I talked to, the more excited they got. Everyone was like, “Oh my God, I really feel like I’m there. It really shows that time and how it felt.”

So I thought, okay, I'm going to look into publishers. I went to the book fairs - Off Print and Paris Photo. But I didn’t like the vibe of it. I overheard conversations where people were like, “It's so tough, no one makes money and you have to invest.” After more than 20 years of working for free on editorial for magazines, I was just like, no, this is not going to happen. I was really discouraged.

Then I showed it to my friend, Honey Dijon. She was like, “Girl, this is something you know.” And then she was like, “And guess what? I'm a co-publisher now for IDEA books.” I had never thought about IDEA. It's so obvious that I didn't think of it. I’ve followed them for more than 10 years and I love what they do.

So she made the introduction. They were like, “Oh my God, this is such a treasure. We love it.”

And whose idea was the incredible cover?

I did most of the layout, but there was also a graphic designer. We ping-ponged back and forth and she developed a font. She used some inspiration from party flyers I sent her from the 90s. And we decided this amazing t-shirt was going to be the cover.

Karla [IDEA’s Art Director] just put the obi band in place [the narrow paper strip around the cover], covering the lower part of the t-shirt. And then it just happened. They refer to it as one of their best covers.

It’s so good.

Everyone's like, “I'm not gay… What?!”

That’s the amazing thing about the book and its cultural relevance now, and why the cover works so well. In this era of ‘us vs. them’, and the fear of people crossing over to the dark side. It gives you that shock of being betrayed; there’s tension and release. It’s so smart.

As a stylist, so much of your life revolves around clothes and style. What was it like going back and seeing it through that lens, seeing what people were wearing?

I think it's on page 4, the first lesbian couple I ever saw, Ava and Kim. One is wearing this leopard coat and the other one something furry and red. I looked at them and I was like, “Wow, I still dress people like that.” This time influenced me so much. I think that's also why I took the pictures. It was a pain in the ass taking pictures back then, but I wanted to shoot these people because I thought they were the coolest people I had ever seen.

I started at 17. Moving into a squat, they were all 10 years older. They came from all different countries, and I had never seen this growing up in the GDR. I also learned English with them. There were Australians, English people.

Also some of the looks, this is still how people look. I would almost dare to call it ‘the original moodboard’. Because no one before us dressed like that. It was this moment where the electronic music scene gathered all these subcultures. One of my friends was a goth, another one was a hip hop kid, another one was a punk. They all merged together and influenced one another’s styles. But it didn’t happen as fast as it does now. It took years.

You also include a number of self-portraits. Because the photos are organized chronologically, we’re essentially watching you grow up. Even attitude-wise, at the beginning, you seem quite naïve and shy, and then you get a bit more poise and confidence towards the end.

The other thing I noticed is what a big role hair dye plays in people’s style.

In the mid-90s we would dye our hair a new colour every weekend. We shared pots of hair dye. Then everyone shaved their heads in the late 90s.

It's fun seeing different characters pop up throughout the book with different hair colours or hairstyles. Early in the book someone’s wearing a pair of textured green trousers - they look like they could be Bottega Veneta.

They were probably made from fake grass from the hardware store. There were all these small brands in Berlin that did almost made-to-measure clothes. It was called ‘chic, charmant and abwaschbar’ which translates to ‘chic, charming and wipe clean’.

What was the style mentality - how were you shopping? Were people sharing clothes?

You can't really see it in the book but there's this one T-shirt my friend is wearing that I wore for probably three years. A camouflage T-shirt. I think it was even a brand which was rare; G-Star. We hardly wore brands as they were very expensive.

We would just have this one T-shirt or one pair of sunglasses from Diesel or whatever. The rest was mostly thrifted. And we shared it - in the book you see best friends sharing this one long-sleeve tee.

At a time where the 90s has become such a trend and so many people are trying to replicate it and commodify it and imitate this spirit, what your book shows is that this aesthetic was born of the lived reality of that time. The aesthetic was dictated by the culture, not the other way around.

Exactly. People cared how they looked, but you wouldn't take a picture of it. I did by accident. People would dress up every weekend just for themselves and for the other 10 people they knew.

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Was there a ritual around getting dressed?

We would hang out together and do it mostly. Three people had a bigger flat where you could meet and we would be 10 of us, sharing hair dye and cooking together. There was a birthday almost every weekend, so we’d start by celebrating that and then go out.

Whatever it was back then, you were obviously compelled to document what was happening around you. Is there any element of your life or of culture now that holds a similar fascination?

I think it's subculture. I love to portray people, creative people; people that mean something to me. I lived in Italy before, and now I live in Georgia. I started going out a little bit again in Tbilisi because I like the clubs so much, and the community. Oftentimes they remind me of people from back then - these characters repeat. Which is also something that a lot of people told me when they look at the book. I now get all these messages from the people that bought the book. They tell me it feels like now - and they’re 22.

I suppose when you document a community or a friendship group in its truest sense, there are always those archetypes. There's the quiet one, the femme fatale, the matriarch. Like that woman in your book, the one who often wears a dog collar…

Ines.

She's got that leading lady vibe.

I loved her but I was scared of her almost. I never saw her without makeup in all those years. She was always perfectly made up. If it was 8 in the morning or 10 in the evening, she would appear and she had this look, this posture.

On the topic of subcultures, people say that subcultures are dead now.

What subcultures had back then was time. People really identified with a way of living and also a political opinion, and expressed it with clothing. And they really had years and years to get into this role.

Why do you think the 90s have captivated us for the last few years?

Because it's the last time subcultures existed, I guess. Techno started as everything was melting together. Subculture for me is when you have your own music, your own style, and you're in this closed circle.

One of the things I loved in the book was the ‘Friends Wall’. It was a photo of your apartment with all the pictures of your friends printed and stuck on the wall.

Everyone had that. I’ll explain this process quickly, as it was very long. So I’d take the picture, go to the lab, get the envelope with the little prints and the negatives. A week or two later, I bring the prints and pass them around. Everyone fills out the paper with the prints they want; number 2, number 17, number 18. Then I go back to the lab with the negatives and they reprint all of them.

I get the pile of prints and put them in the envelopes for each person. Another week or so later, each person gets an envelope with their prints. Then they go to the copy shop, put it on the copy machine and just make a huge A4 or A3 black and white copy. And then they stick it on their wall. It probably took a month from taking the picture until it was up on the wall.

Can you remember what you were thinking about when you took your pictures?

I thought, oh my God, this person looks so beautiful. There was no deeper concept behind it. It was feeling the moment, and loving them. Each time you click, it costs money that you don't have. So you just click and hope it's going to work.

My final question is about the photo of you and your ‘altar’ in your room.

Yes, me on the floor.

What are you worshipping? What is in your altar?

That's my ‘friends altar’. Like everyone had. There are the pictures on the wall. Then there are tapes; the recordings from the DJ sets in the club. If you knew the DJ or the people working in the club you could bring an empty tape and record the set.

Then there’s one of those envelopes I talked about when you get the prints. Cigarettes, candles. Because we were squatting we had water, but no electricity. So we had to use candles for light.

What else? Obsession by Calvin Klein - we used it because we were obsessed with Kate Moss. She was the only supermodel we could relate to, because she looked like us. Then the address book, you would write a few numbers in the address book. A film roll, an alarm clock. A little bag made from the plastic grass I mentioned earlier. And I’m probably eating - yeah, there’s some food on the plate. So this is me looking at my friends, having dinner with friends.

It's like the pandemic dinners. When your friends are there, but not there.

Exactly.

Buy ‘Anfang/Beginning Berlin 1994-99’ from IDEA or here for Europe.

Have you listened to the Threads of Conversation podcast? You can also find it on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. You can also follow Threads of Conversation on Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe below for more podcasts, essays and interviews.

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Threads of the week

Last weekend at Glastonbury festival, watching a cabaret fiddler at 3am on Sunday night. Wearing Oakley glasses, adidas zip up, Dauan Jacari skirt and very dusty COS boots designed by my friend Leonie, who actually introduced me to Stemmi.

Loose Threads

Renell Medrano is the undisputed queen of music videos this year. Alongside Lorde’s recent ‘Hammer’ video, she also just dropped a new one for Bad Bunny. I don’t know what camera she uses but there is something so luminous and intimate about the way she shoots skin - you can feel every bead of sweat.

Fun fact: Lorde’s video was shot at the ponds in Hampstead Heath. Another big fan of wild swimming on the Heath? Harry Styles, who took Hamish Bowles there for his 2020 Vogue cover story. In 2022, he also chose a local London Lido to meet Lou Stoppard for his Better Homes & Gardens profile. That man loves an open air dip!

I’ve been enjoying (re)-exploring ’s Present community homepage. There are so many tips and resources geared around his philosophy of ‘just getting started’. I love how friendly and unintimidating the vibe is - it’s gentle, cool and collaborative. (In case you missed it, I interviewed him about his design practice last year).

All I want is a Yohji summer.

Julia Fox on the sinister linguistic trend you might have missed.

PS. Happy pride everyone. I love you!

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Do you think subcultures are dead? Why/ why not? Let me know in the comments.

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We share the opinion that style isn’t about fashion per se, it’s more about the emotional connections in what we wear; how clothing holds memory - personal, cultural, ancestral. For Tom, fashion is especially linked to his love of music, too.

Also, continuing my theme of fashion-people-building-fashion-things-outside-fashion-capitals, he’s based in Yorkshire! Any Northern readers, say hi in the comments.

Tell us about My Own Garms.
I’ve been making My Own Garms for about three or four years now. I’d already been producing podcasts for clients for years, so I had a really clear sense of what I did and didn’t like. I knew I wanted a broad mix of guests - so many podcasts end up feeling like the same conversation over and over, and I was keen to avoid that.

Talk us through the format and how you structure the episodes.
Although My Own Garms is about clothes, it’s really a lens for talking about people’s lives. I’m also a big fan of grime and bass music, so nearly all the music in the show comes from that world. The structure of the show reflects that too - My Own Garms is from a Wiley lyric and each segment is named after lyrics from some of my favourite grime tracks.

There’s Rep Your Ends, inspired by Sniper E, which focuses on place - where someone’s from and how that shapes them. Then That’s Not Me, which is a Skepta lyric, is all about fashion fails: times people dressed in ways that didn’t feel right. Top 3 Selected is from a Ghetts tune. That section satisfies my inner list nerd. And then there’s Next Hype, from Tempa T, which is about what’s coming next - personally, professionally or stylistically.

Where does your own interest in fashion stem from, and how would you describe your style?
My interest in fashion really comes from subcultures — especially musical ones. I was a mosher, then went through a hip-hop phase, then got into electronic music and more rave-y stuff as I got older.

I love the cultural codes in clothes. Things like playing with brands that have been associated with football hooliganism, or flipping preppy styles that were traditionally reserved for a certain kind of person. I enjoy using logos and garments that carry certain meanings and finding ways to repurpose or reframe them — like building your identity out of fragments of all these different worlds.

Menswear has absolutely exploded over the past few years. How do you feel like your point of view fits into the conversation (or goes against the grain)?
Yeah, it really has exploded, hasn’t it? I don’t know if it’s just where I live, but there used to be loads of blokes who dressed terribly - like 90% of them —-and now it feels like it’s down to maybe 50%. That’s cruel, isn’t it? I’m probably in that 50% half the time anyway.

But yeah, it does feel like things have opened up. There’s a much broader spectrum now, and that’s something I’m really interested in. I like speaking to people across all ages and backgrounds, from streetwear heads to tailoring obsessives. I want that more holistic view of what’s going on in men’s style.

The podcast’s audience is about 85% male, so there is a definite menswear skew, and I guess my perspective fits into that.

Any brands or trends you love to love (or love to hate)? Or people that are inspiring you style-wise at the moment?
I’m in a bit of a whirlwind romance with Olmes Carretti’s Best Company at the moment. My mate Seb - who runs Gone Fishing Vintage in Manchester and was a guest on the podcast - put me onto them. It’s classic Italian Paninaro gear from the late ’80s and early ’90s, and I’ve properly gone down the rabbit hole. I’ve ended up with five or six vintage sweatshirts, all beautiful loopback cotton, mad colours, but with a great quality and finish to them. I've got a gorgeous, boxy denim jacket by them, that makes me feel like a bully in an 80s film.

I know Paninaro isn’t a “trend” exactly - it’s been bubbling away through Stone Island, Moncler, that whole world - but I think it’s due a more full-blown revival. I’ll definitely be out this summer in white trousers and boat shoes pretending I’m in Milan in ’89.

You’ve had a really broad range of guests over sixty episodes. How do you plan who to approach?
60 episodes? Is that right? That’s mental. If you’d asked me, I’d have guessed around 20. As for how I choose guests, it’s pretty whimsical to be honest. I try to keep things varied. If I don’t know someone personally, I’ll just slide into their DMs and ask if they fancy doing it. Only one person has ever turned me down, and honestly, I really respect them for it. It wasn’t on brand for them, and I probably shouldn’t have asked in the first place. But, Blackhaine, if you ever change your mind - come on, mate. You’d make my dreams come true.

And while I obviously can’t pick a favourite child, I absolutely loved having Jojo from Rag Parade on the last series. He’s like this hyperactive ball of knowledge and stories - been doing it for decades, full of great tales, just the perfect mix of obsessive and entertaining.

In terms of creating the podcast, what have you learned along the way? Any tweaks and improvements you’ve made season to season?
I’ve definitely improved at making reels. A few from the last series did mad numbers. You sort of have to play the game with social media now. You need the cliffhangers, the clickbait-y openers, the provocative hooks. You’ve got to boil a bit of piss on Instagram to get people talking. It’s grim, because it’s not really how I am in real life. But if you can get people riled up in the first few seconds of a reel, chances are it’ll hit a million views.

I’m also thinking of introducing some new sections next series. One of the current ones — That’s Not Me — has started to produce a few too many samey answers. There’s a Tempa T lyric I love — “What kind of things do you have?” — which is him basically sizing up what he can nick when he breaks into your house. He’s a lunatic, but I love the line. I’m going to flip it and use it as a way of asking guests about prized possessions — the things they own and why they love them.

If you were a guest on your own show, which items of clothing would you discuss and why?
The first thing I ever bought on the internet was an N.E.R.D. trucker cap. I was in sixth form college, and this was before it was even easy to buy things online — that’s how old I am. I was obsessed with The Neptunes - Pharrell and Chad - and their In Search Of... album under N.E.R.D. I loved it. I think it came from the other side of the world, and it just felt completely unique. No one else at college had one. In fact, I don’t think I saw anyone else wearing one for a good year and a half. It made me feel mint - like a boss. All my mates wanted it. It was the perfect mix of musical fandom and hip-hop style. I deffo sold it on eBay for about a quid when I was skint, which I regret massively.

Finally, any shoutouts to brands or fellow fashion creators you particularly admire?
The weather’s been dead nice lately, and I’ve just fallen in love with a brand called SMR Days. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be pronounced “summer days” or just the initials, but either way, their cotton is unbelievable. What really sets them apart is the feel. You can’t see it in photos, but the fabric against your skin is just incredible. Proper tactile joy.

And in terms of creators, , actually. His Substack writing and short-form reels are brilliant: sharp, informative, really entertaining. I love what he’s doing.

Check out My Own Garms on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and - as of recently - Substack!

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Threads of the week

Summer is here which means I don’t know what to wear! (I just ordered a Spiral Boxer skirt from Dauan Jacari - hoping it will be the silver bullet for my summer style..) For now I’m wearing a silly Only Fans tee, vintage adidas basketball shorts, Kara handbag, GH Bass Weejuns and vintage Chanel sunglasses. I think I look a bit like someone’s mum, but I think it could also be the way I’m holding my phone…

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I’m sure we’ve already metabolised all the Met Ball content from last week, but there’s one queen of the Costume Gala who kills it every year. Whilst everyone else waits for Rihanna, I’m on the edge of my seat wondering what Chioma Nnadi will pull out of the bag. Her taste in designers is exquisite, unexpected and always so cool - often wearing smaller names or indie designers. Here’s my tribute to all her looks:

Are raves the new runways? (love that Miu Miu’s girls are both readers and ravers… feeling seen)

Old news now, but I guess male designers find big boobs pretty funny? Women who actually have big boobs beg to differ…

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In fashion, we’re often tricked into thinking that a successful career looks like living in a small, overpriced apartment in one of the four fashion capitals, stressed to the eyeballs and drowning in work.

Shibon did this for two decades - very successfully - but like all true originals, she knew she had to go her own way. So, at 41, she packed up her life and moved to Spain. Here, we chat about the realities of her move, and what her life and career look like these days.

Over on the podcast, you can listen to me discussing the recent fashion month with Dazed’s Emma Davidson, chatting to Instagram research king Samutaro about his career and discussing the eight items of clothing that define designer Jawara Alleyne’s journey in fashion. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

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With fashion, I’m often thinking about how to build both a sustainable career and a sustainable life. One where you can actually enjoy it, where you're present in it. Instead of always calculating or networking or hustling.

That's exactly where I was coming from. My soul was looking for where I was going to move. And it makes sense it was Barcelona, because Barcelona was the first city that made me fall in love with European living, back when I was 20 years old.

What are the changes you’ve noticed in yourself since moving?

I’ve seen such a shift in my wellbeing, in my stress levels (or lack thereof) and just finding joy in life and sharing that joy with people in a way I wasn't able to do before. Because in New York, all of us are there to hustle. And I get it; I get why we do it. There was just something more that I felt I needed in life, and I didn't want to look back with regret.

Did you grow up in New York?

I grew up in LA - Redondo Beach, suburban LA. I moved to New York from 18 until I was 40.

The thing that I find fascinating and inspiring about your story is I feel like most people don't even consider that there could be another option. It's either live in a major city, or completely quit fashion. Move upstate and start a bakery, or keep grinding. There's no sense of a middle ground. When did the idea of doing something different start percolating?

Well, I will say this. I'm extraordinarily lucky in that I was raised with parents that always taught me not to be afraid and encouraged me to pursue what I wanted.

I remember thinking about a decade ago, “Maybe I’ll break up with New York”. Right before the pandemic I kept thinking, okay time to get serious about moving to Europe. I was hyping myself up to start the process for Lisboa, but I was still too nervous. And then 2020 changed that plan altogether.

How did you settle on Barcelona? What were your criteria?

It's almost like my soul knew before I did, because of that discovery aged 20. Since moving here I've unpacked all my old journals, and Barcelona featured a lot. So it obviously cracked open something in me at a young age.

The spring before my 40th birthday, I was having lunch with my friend the photographer Camila Falquez, who was raised in Barcelona. She said, “How do you feel about Barcelona?” I told her I loved it. And she said, “Well, my parents want to do a house swap”.

I'd never entertained this idea. The New Yorker in me was like, “No, no, no, no, no - I can't do a house swap for a month!” And then I was like, wait, why wouldn't I? So I did a house swap with them and three days in, it was like, “Oh my God, I'm moving to Barcelona.”

Can you tell me about the timeline and the practicalities of actually making the move happen?

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the way I did it! I think I'm very organized, but for me it was chaotic.

After Paris Fashion Week in February 2023, I came straight to Barcelona, met with a lawyer, met with a real estate agent and started getting going. The thing that I hadn't factored in was the visa process. It was a new visa - I'm on the digital nomad. Looking back, I would give myself more time to meet with more lawyers. My lawyer was not great, and that really, really delayed things.

And then on the other side, when you land, it's going to take a year to get your bearings. I'm not old, but I'm not young. So I have things that are like my practices, and I had to refabricate those in a way that makes sense here - or even dismantle some of them because some don't work for me anymore. Every day is an exploration of that, you know?

In terms of work, were you worried about breaking the news to people, and losing out on work?

I've done a bit of work here, but there's also a difference in pay scale in Spain to New York or Paris. So I've done jobs in Paris. I've done jobs in London, but I mostly fly back to the States. People don't have a problem with me living here - or we work it into the agreement. Perhaps there’s a flight contribution, or there's mileage. Every job is different and it's just a learning curve.

Can you give more detail about the differences between the way you worked in New York and the way you work now?

Oh my God, the way I worked in New York was all work, no play. Okay, all work, some play, no sleep and just grind. I mean listen, I built a career that was able to pay for me to move abroad to have this life. I'm proud of all the work I've done and I'm really proud of the journey, But now it's like, everything is really intentional and deliberate.

For example, the other day I was hit up by the PR for an actor - I do very limited red carpet, but I have my clients and I keep it tight. I have to connect with them on a soul level. So we had a call because I wanted to make sure if they really wanted me to work with her, that we connected on a deeper level. And I think that sort of depth and intention is something that I'm seeing more of in my work.

Even now with my team, I tell them all the time, “What we're NOT going to do is stress about clothes.” Because I have a different mindset. That calm, making sure that my team is doing okay and that they realize that there are bigger and more important things than fashion. I think that's a very different way of working.

What do you think instigated that shift - to pack up your entire life and ship it across an ocean?

I've been doing a deep dive on myself for around 7 years. Really looking inward, trying to show up as my best self. Being able to look in the mirror and love the person looking back at me.

There have been so many shifts in my life that gave me the courage to move to Spain. But the calm and the high vibration I’ve found here - it takes active work. So on a down day, I actively sit with my negative thoughts.

What do you miss the most about your old life?

The two things I miss about my old life are my friends and the spices that I can get in New York. I cook a lot and some very specific spices are hard to come by here. But honestly, I don't miss a lot about New York. I can honestly say that I love New York, but I'm not in love with New York anymore.

What's your routine like in Spain?

I wake up, usually do a lounging morning and then I exercise. And then I usually do work or get inspired or run around, ride my bike. Every day depends on whether I have a job on. The longer I've been in my career, the more last minute they’ve become. Because of the time difference, a lot of times I'll get confirmed at midnight. And then I have to stay up til 4am to prep for my team or get a pitch deck over. So that's definitely different.

What's the percentage split in terms of Spain versus travelling?

I would say I spend about a third of my time travelling. I go away for pretty long stints - the last one was a month, before that was about 3 weeks. I will say this: I'm very proud of myself, because on my last trip to New York, I was there for four weeks and I had no stress on that trip. I couldn't believe it. On paper there were so many moments that I should have been stressed, but I just dialled in high vibration Shibon.

Do you work with Spanish clients or is it still more international?

I started working with Spanish clients probably nine months ago. The first year was a little rocky - I was going through some family stuff and it was very heavy and I really didn't have the capacity to do much. So when I came out of that, it was full steam ahead and I got jobs right away. I've done jobs with production companies here. I did an independent film, I've done a Netflix job. People come to me for various things.

I also have to be willing to lower my rates, because I wouldn't work here if I only gave them my New York rates. It's not realistic, you know? The reality of moving somewhere with a smaller industry is that your lifestyle improves, but also you can't command the same rates.

If someone wanted to follow a similar path, what advice would you give them?

Do ample amounts of research. I would suggest someone tries to do a month somewhere - even if you can do a week here, a week there. Try and immerse yourself in the culture. Reach out to people, ask questions. People want to help people's dreams come true. If I can help people pursue their dreams and their goals, hit me up!

My parents always said, if it was easy then everybody would be doing it. These things take some gumption and courage. I fought for this, and it was so worth it.

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Find Shibon on Instagram here and here.

Threads of the week

Experimenting with a headband this week - this one is from my local chemist. Worn with Dries van Noten jeans, Prada sandals, longsleeve tee from Total Luxury Spa, military liner from my trip to Japan and sunglasses from Dries van Noten x Linda Farrow.

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Very happy to see one of my fave writer/ podcaster/ Substack OGs Phoebe Lovatt at the Miu Miu Literary Club in Milan. I wasn’t there, but I loved listening back to her interview with Lauren Elkin. Also really enjoyed her recent episode with artist Martine Syms.

I haven’t read this yet, but I want to.

A fascinating mini history of one of the world’s most ubiquitous condiments.

I’ve been doing some consulting on Liberty’s beautiful line of fragrances, Liberty LBTY. This collaboration I commissioned with artist Orfeo Taguiri is a particular favourite, as is this very satisfying ASMR video. Oh, also this interview with perfumer Frank Voelkl (also the guy behind Glossier You and Santal 33!)

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But aside from her amazing style, it was also refreshing to discover such a funny person in fashion - an industry not exactly known for its sense of humour. In between the outfit shots, she shares self-deprecating commentary on everything from her exercise regime to her hatred of the Parisian metro, mixing up the fashion content with a refreshingly real - and often hilarious - outlook on life. I suppose it resonated with me as someone who also has a silly side, and has sometimes felt pressure to separate funny from fashion (my first model agent told me I put too much of my personality on my Instagram, and suggested I make it private).

A bit more snooping led me to discover that Lola is a Belgian PR based in Paris, who works primarily with emerging designers to help them navigate the early stages of their business. I wanted to know more about Lola’s unique point of view, so I called her to discuss her career, her values, and her distinctive sense of style.

What was your route into PR?

I didn’t study marketing or communication, or even fashion. I studied graphic design in Brussels. At the same time, many of my friends were starting to become successful musicians. They knew I loved dressing up and had a lot of clothes, and that I had good connections. So they’d often ask me to lend them clothes or help them find outfits for their music videos or shoots.

I ended up travelling to Paris several times to style for them. Instead of lugging a suitcase full of clothes, I decided to reach out to some brands and PR agencies. One day I sent an email to an emerging brand and they agreed to lend me pieces, but they said they were at their new PR agency, called Radical PR. It was only about 2 months old, so really young. That’s how I first met the team at Radical. One day I asked them if they were looking for someone to join their team, and I ended up staying with them for five years.

What were the activations or projects that you were working on during that time?

I helped on all of the projects. It could be gifting lists, invitations for dinners, shows, seating plans, contacting journalists and meeting new clients. I did so many things - I didn’t have just one job. I even did some set design, and production for shows. So I can actually do most jobs in this industry now!

I always think of a scene from that film ‘Pretty Woman’ where Richard Gere asks Julia Roberts, “Who are you?” and she responds: “Whoever you want me to be.” Now I’m freelance that’s how I feel - I’m whoever the client wants me to be.

I think when you’re freelance, you need to be able to do so many different things. Like a Swiss army knife!

Was there any project that was really memorable for you?

After three years there, I really wanted to open a new department in the agency that would go back to Radical’s roots, working with emerging designers and brands that were underrepresented. Because the agency had started to grow and get bigger clients, and move away from its focus on smaller designers.

Everyone was super enthusiastic about it, so I started developing the concept there. But the agency was still too small to fully dedicate a separate division to it. I absolutely loved working in that niche, and it made me realise that working with emerging designers was exactly what I wanted to do.

So that’s when you started your freelance career?

I was really scared at the beginning when I left the agency, because I didn’t know what I was truly capable of. And now I’m really so honoured and touched and grateful to see that I’m surrounded by an amazing community of people who have supported me from the beginning, that trust me.

How do you think you cultivated those relationships?

I have a very personal and genuine approach with people; I’m not playing games with them. It means that if I reach out, I truly believe that they will be interested in what I have to say, or the client I’m working with. I’m so lucky and I’m so happy to have this community of people who support me professionally and personally. Because for me, what I’m doing is professional, but it’s personal, too. It’s my passion.

I feel like fashion can take itself very seriously. Fashion people are not very good at laughing at themselves, but you have a great sense of humour, and you show your personality on your Instagram. I think that’s quite a rare thing. Was that an active choice to be yourself? Or did you have to work up to that?

Yes, fashion has always had this reputation. But the fact is that I am not from Paris. I’m from Belgium, and I didn’t grow up in a fashion-driven, pretentious or celebrity-filled environment. My mother is a hairdresser and studied drawing, my father worked in Belgian television as a translator.

I’m also an extremely sensitive person which means that I am incapable of not being myself. For me, the more honest you are, the more transparent you are with people, the more things flow and come to you. I never understood why people pretended to be something they weren’t. I just don’t get that.

In this industry, people often think that the more sensitive you are, the more weak or incompetent you are. For me, it’s completely the opposite - I see beauty in it. We have feelings and that’s what makes us unique. And I believe that the more you share that with others, the more you can feel connected to them.

So I’m really transparent - both in real life and on social media. For me, I don’t see any difference between the two. I put everything on Instagram: funny, not funny. My work, not my work. Everything! And when you meet me in real life, you’ll see there’s no difference. I’m not a catfish - I’m really like this.

When you’re working with independent brands, how do you begin that relationship?

Most of the brands I’m currently working with, I began as a consumer. I started buying them - I prefer to buy clothes directly from the designer, rather than a wholesaler or e-commerce site. I always like to meet the person in real life. I show my support by buying their clothes, and I explain to them what I’m about. It doesn’t happen instantly. It takes time before the designer understands who I am and what I’m doing.

And at some point they say, “OK, it makes sense, we have to work with you.” And I’m like, “Yes! Let’s go.” Most of them don’t pay me, but we’ll create some agreement. The idea is to help them find enough money that when they grow and they have enough money to pay me, they will. But at the beginning, I’m not thinking about money. I’m just thinking about how I can help the designer I love by using my skills and my contacts to make things happen for them.

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How do you supplement the free work that you do?

Most of my clients are emerging designers, but I also work with big brands that allow me to pay my bills. I’m always trying to create synergy between them; the emerging and the bigger brands.

I guess that works, because you can bring those two sides of culture closer together.

Exactly.

Can you talk a bit about your platform, Outset?

As the name suggests, Outset refers to the the start of something. It has a double meaning for me. It represents my first solo project as a freelancer, and it reflects my interest in working with emerging designers who are at the start of their brand. My goal is to use my skills and everything I’ve learned over my years in this industry to help them.

So this includes pure PR work, like writing press releases, sending them to targeted press, organising events or doing gifting. Creating a community around a moment or a product. I also do consulting - not just in marketing or strategy, but also in design.

Outset is a platform where I show what I’m doing and how I’m supporting emerging designers. I also work with bigger brands for certain projects.

Can you give an example?

For the past 1.5 years, I’ve been working with Converse (s/o Fauzia!). They’ve trusted me to be involved with their internal All Star Programme, which is a really inspiring initiative. It supports emerging creatives in their projects—whether it’s releasing a book, hosting an album launch party, or recently, supporting emerging designers, which I manage directly.

I want to ask you about your sense of style. For me, I’d say I have two style personalities - either very sleek and all-black, or it’s stoner surfer boyfriend. Acid wash, big jeans and t-shirts. But rarely anything in between. How would you describe your style?

For years I only wore skirts and dresses because I felt super comfortable. I was wearing Johanna Parv every day to be honest! But for the past few months, I’ve been obsessed with pants - super wide ones. I always tuck them into my socks because I think the shape looks better that way. It looks a bit like a ‘jester vibe’ - circus performer style.

What do you do outside fashion, to keep you feeling creative?

Even if my work is my passion, I’m always doing other things on the side that are not about fashion. I love riding my bike. I discovered pilates and yoga a few months ago and now I’m obsessed. I also make music. I’m a DJ, and my DJ name is ‘NONANTE’, which means ‘nineties’ in Belgian French. I really wanted to have a Belgian name, and in Belgium we don’t say the numbers the same way as in France.

My favourite video on your Instagram is the fake Architectural Digest ‘Open Door’ video where you were brandishing your little Belgian flag.

You know this was a casting video? It was for a luxury brand who wanted to get talent that weren’t models for a fragrance campaign. I don’t know why they contacted me, but I was like, “OK!” I really wanted to be myself and show them how I am - but I didn’t get the job!

But yeah, I’m a DJ on the side, and my speciality is Drum and Bass and Dubstep. I started making music because it’s something that’s allowed me to travel mentally and makes me feel really good. And recently I’ve been investing in a musical instrument called a ‘handpan’ - it’s the huge metallic disc which you tap with your hands. I’m in discussion with a specialist, because you need to have a connection with the seller before buying it; a certain trust. It has a very positive musical timbre, and when you are receptive to it, you really feel that strong wave of good energy.

I think since I went freelance a year and a half ago, I really wanted to do 100% things that feel positive. Personally and professionally. I only work with people I love and who I feel a connection with. I trust myself and I trust my feelings - if I don’t feel it, I don’t partner with them. Even if the person or brand is really famous!

With this instrument, you can’t learn it. You just need to feel it. You don’t need to take a class or look on YouTube - it’s about the connection you have with the instrument. And that’s what I love - you decide to put your energy into this instrument, and you feel your own energy through the vibrations. So for me it’s really deep and really powerful.

It fits together with everything you said about your approach. It’s easy to say you trust your gut and your instincts, but that North Star can waver sometimes and get lost. So it’s always interesting to hear about how people continue to cultivate the connection with themselves to maintain their intuition. Because it’s not a given.

My friends often ask me how I can be so ‘myself’, without being afraid of how people perceive me, or what they think of me. If someone is thinking badly of me or says something not nice about me, I don’t care. If you have feelings like this for other people, it means you are not happy in yourself.

OK final question - what is one of your goals for the future, or something you’d really like to achieve?

I hope that one day Outset becomes an agency known for helping emerging designers with their development. Managing funding, whether from the French government, or from bigger brands supporting the emerging designer through financial support.

I imagine myself old, with long grey hair, working for someone like LVMH, Gucci, Chanel - companies with the resources and reputation to truly invest - and being like, “OK! This year we’re going to give money to this emerging designer and that emerging designer and support them to do their presentation or their show.” And then I’ll still have Outset as a managing agency.

So for emerging designers, their first step is to go to Outset, where we explain to them how everything works and help them find money and structure their company. And then I’ll be working for a big brand to help inject financial support once they understand everything. Because if they don’t understand how the industry works, then they won’t have the skills to be successful. For example, if an emerging designer gets hype on the internet and everyone wants to buy their product - if they don’t have the systems in place to produce the products, then the brand will flop. This is what I want to share with young brands and teach them.

So that’s my goal and how I see myself in the future. Also, I don’t want to forget my musical side, which is really important for me. So I see myself being really old (still with the long grey hair) doing retreats with my handpan!

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Threads of the week

Speaking of Johanna Parv, I went to her sample sale last week and got this top, which has an invisible pocket built into the neckline. I should have got the shorts, too - but as you know, I’m bad at shopping.

Loose Threads

Tina Brown has opinions about private jets.

Such a clever editorial concept!

One of my favourite DJs, Tygapaw, created a mix for Sherelle’s Radio 6 Music show, ‘The Sweat Box’. If you like techno, this one’s for you.

Or for something more chill, here’s a really nice ambient mix by my friend Nat.

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Who is your favourite fashion person to follow and why? Let me know in the comments!

Some housekeeping: You can also listen to podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This email might get cut off in your inbox, so click ‘view in browser’ at the bottom - or read on the website or Substack app.

Next week, I’ll have a special guest on the podcast - someone who’s been to all the shows and can tell us first hand about what went down in New York, London, Milan and Paris.

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Reporters!

The ones who write about the clothes.

Lauren Sherman has the fastest intel and the juiciest gossip. Mentions in her newsletter Line Sheet are both feared and revered.

Emilia Petrarca of Shop Rat (formerly senior fashion writer at New York Magazine) always has the wittiest takes.

Social media stars!

The ones who make the clothes go viral.

Lyas’ TikTok is full of the sharpest reviews and the funniest celebrity run ins - and now he’s fashion correspondent for Interview magazine, too.

If you haven’t heard of monochrome multi-hyphenate Brenda Hashtag where have you even been now’s your chance to get to know her!

Models!

The ones who wear the clothes.

A potted history of yours truly.

Alva Claire is set to be a huge star. So far this season she’s walked for 16Arlington, KNWLS and Burberry and sat front row at Acne Studios.

Editors!

The ones who decide which clothes will get coverage.

Dara is the Fashion Director of Interview magazine (and Hunter Schafer’s stylist). She’s the tastemaker of now.

Lynette Nylander was the Executive Editorial Director at Dazed when I interviewed her back in 2022. Now she’s Executive Digital Director at Harper’s Bazaar (and one of the best dressed women in New York.)

Designers!

The ones who design the clothes.

One of my favourite shows at London Fashion Week this season was Lueder (by Marie Lueder), who staged her first show as part of the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN cohort - a prestigious sponsorship award for young designers.

Bianca Saunders shows on the menswear schedule - those shows happen in January and June. Here, she discusses showing in Paris for the first time and dressing Usher for the Met Gala.

Photographers!

The ones who take pictures of the clothes.

Cris Fragkou travels to each of the four cities, taking beautiful pictures backstage and shooting street style for The Cut. Here, she picks a few of her favourite photos from her archive.

Producers!

The ones who make all it all happen.

Claire Burman is the founder of CEBE, the production company behind some of fashion’s most exciting shoots and shows. So far this season they’ve produced a party for Off-White in New York, the legendary Fashion East show in London, a show for Skepta’s brand MAINS and the recent Vivienne Westwood show in Paris.

Threads of the week

A new way to take pics with my phone strap. Top is from Total Luxury Spa, jeans from Dries van Noten (via Depop), loafers are Weejuns from GH Bass. Socks were bought to break a banknote to pay for a banged up rental car on a Greek island for a few hours last year.

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(see above) did an incredible job cataloguing the recent history of online fashion media. A fascinating read and an intoxicating dose of nostalgia.

More flowers for my guests - congratulations to Dara and Lyas (above, again) who were both inducted into the Business of Fashion’s BOF 500 (“the definitive index of the people shaping the global fashion industry”).

The downside of wearing Vibram FiveFingers.

Reading this in preparation for my trip to Japan.

Telfar just launched a new leather collection at the Selfridges Corner Shop. The pop-up includes a chance to appear on Telfar TV and a rotation of DJs from NTS.

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What have you all been up to? What are you into at the moment? Let me know in the comments.

As a thank you, here’s me in Jacquemus’ La Femme Enfant campaign video, shot in Paris by Bertrand Le Pluard almost a decade ago today.

Have a great day!

For this interview I spoke to Ester Mejibovski, the design wunderkind who ended up in fashion by accident (“I had the stereotypical ‘Devil Wears Prada’ idea of what it would be like”) when she was offered a role at Dazed three years ago. Since then she’s been responsible for endless inventive and memorable magazine spreads, working closely with Editor-in-chief Ib Kamara and Art Director Gareth Wrighton to define the publication’s refreshed vision.

Alongside her work at Dazed, Ester also recently worked on the Naomi Campbell exhibition at London’s V&A - a huge feat for a single designer. She’s also designed show invites for Margiela, exhibition graphics for Campbell Addy, and collateral for musicians like Shygirl. I really love her work and I hope you do too!

Don’t forget to subscribe for more Threads of Conversation. You can also listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow on Instagram.

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You’ve been instrumental in shaping the design of Dazed since Ib Kamara and Gareth Wrighton took over. What was the brief from them?

At the start, Gareth was like, ‘OK, it’s Ib’s Dazed - how can you interpret Ib’s styling through the design?’ I’d never had a brief like that before. So I was looking at fashion imagery, photography, all these things that aren’t related to graphics at all, and trying to interpret the way Ib styles. 

The first issue was the Rihanna issue - we spent a month, seven days per week, trialling a million different things. That was the first re-design, and since then we’ve kind of re-designed every issue a little bit. 

Then in 2023, Gareth asked me to completely re-design the magazine by myself. I had three months, and his brief was this red, squiggly Cy Twombly line painting that technically has nothing to do with graphic design, and this TikTok of two shrimps forming a heart. He asked me how I could interpret these two things - the TikTok and the painting - through the design of the magazine, and make a system based on these things that have nothing to do with graphics. 

That’s very much the style of the briefs with Gareth - here’s something so unrelated to design, sometimes not even visual, and then how can you translate that into a graphic design concept. Which is incredible - he’ll never say, ‘Make it look like this design’ or something he saw online. That’s never, ever the brief. It’s always something really random - a painting or an idea.

When I was working on the redesign, a lot of it was conceptually based on TikTok, because its visual language is so familiar to the magazine readers. We had the credits on the top left, just like the username on TikTok - but you wouldn’t be able to tell in the final design that that was the reference. If you know, you know. And that’s kind of how I work now - if you know, you know, but if you don’t, that’s fine.

How does the process of planning the design work? What are the kind of conversations that happen?

We generally just chat. I don’t have to go to the office, but I go because it’s so fun and we come up with ideas so much faster. If I stay home I get depressed and bored. We chat about everything that’s happening in pop culture, what we want the magazine to look like, how we use white space, what the energy of the issue needs to be according to the theme etc.  Then I go home and sit in silence and think about how to interpret all these things.

We also have a lot of graphic stories that don’t have fashion images. And that’s something I absolutely love working on. We had the sex column for a couple of issues, which didn't have any images. And the brief was to interpret the article graphically by making the text columns perform sexual acts.

Another article was about online dating, so I made the columns into phones and added hands swiping left and right. Once we had an article about psychedelics so the brief was to design the article as if the person reading it was reading on psychedelics themselves.

The design is a way to visualise the articles using typography - and, if needed, graphic elements like a bitmap of a hand - but always within the constraints of the grid/type system we have in place already. The process of coming up with the concept of the article is the most fun bit. I used to want to be a painter, and now I’m able to use  typography to create an image in a way.

Which bits of design do you work across?

I do a little bit of everything. So motion, creative, concept, graphics. I also designed a show invite for Margiela. That was a really fun one! It was a collaboration with Bior Elliott. The show was in a theatre, so we decided to do a ticket. We found this amazing Britney Spears ticket from her 2000s tour in Wembley, and we based the ticket design on that. Then we were like, ‘OK, what’s the storyline?’ Because we had to do three trailers. So we did one trailer that was the ticket being printed, and then another with the ticket being ripped off at the entrance. And when it was ripped, it would reveal the date of the show - the ‘aha’ moment. And then the third one was the ticket being scrunched up. Then Bior booked the cheapest photo studio in London, in Dalston, and we shot it ourselves. It was very DIY. I was very surprised that the outcome looked so clean, as it really was us just figuring it out! I think that’s a lesson I learned about the industry - I used to think things were so professional, but in fact it’s often so DIY! 

What other fashion-related collateral have you worked on?

I used to work on social media trailers. Sometimes I’d do fashion dinner menu design, drink design, fashion show invites, fashion show notes, merch, exhibitions, websites. Quite a lot of random stuff!

⁠Is there a project you’re most proud of?

It’s definitely the Naomi Campbell show at the V & A that opened recently. It’s the biggest project I’ve ever worked on, and my first project as my own studio. I’ve been working on it for a year. It’s been so different, working with a museum rather than working with a magazine. Working with really serious curators who every step along the way ask you to explain the reasoning behind each decision. Also so much beyond graphics.

I had to work out the system for the labels that are at the bottom of each showcase. The curators asked things like, ‘Do you know what angle they have to be at, and what height, so that they’re readable and accessible for all museum visitors?’ That level of precision - so many questions that I’d never considered before. What material are the section panels with all the information (the boards which tell you what the section is about), what texture? It was very intense - thinking about something for so long and considering so many different things.

I went back to it this weekend and I was thinking about how it doesn’t look like that much work, it just looks like simple labels explaining which dress it is. Nobody will know how long it took us to figure out the size of the label rail, the lighting above the labels, the size and the height of the label. Whether the section panel was backlit or lit from above - so many decisions. That’s how it always is with design work - everything takes a lot of time.

That was definitely my most straightforward graphic design project. The process was deciding what font we use: deciding what’s the most readable but still in the realm of Naomi’s world.

When it went live I almost cried! There was a moment in March when I was having so many nervous moments because there were so many unresolved questions, and I had no idea about materials or lighting. And Ibby, the set designer, was like, ‘Think big! We can do whatever you want. Any material!’ And I was like, ‘I don’t even know what materials exist!’ But somehow everything worked out, and I’ve learned so much from this project. 

Can you talk a bit about your creative process?

It always depends on the project/brief but for example I did the ‘I Love Campbell’ exhibition graphics for Campbell Addy. I was like, OK, the name of the exhibition is so close to the classic ‘I Love New York’ graphic (by Milton Glaser). That’s a visual everyone is familiar with, so how can we play with that? Finding a reason, a concept. It needs to make sense. I like finding something, an object, that’s part of people’s real life experience. Because that always relates to people way more than anything that is purely graphic/aesthetically pleasing. The Margiela ticket is also a good example of that.

⁠People are returning to magazines again these days. Why do you think this is?

I think that now, print is more of a special thing. When people decide to make a print project (magazine, book etc.) it’s not cheap, it’s a commitment. They’re more likely to  care and put time into it.

And I do think people miss having something tangible, something real to hold, something to collect. Yes, we have our phones, but nothing online is permanent, or easy to reference. Even if you make a moodboard on Instagram or whatever, it’s so hard to look at later on. Whereas if you collect magazines or any print material, it’s physical and it takes up space. There’s a reason for it to be in your room, and so you’ll look at it.

Dream project or brief?

I’m working on it now - it’s my ‘please don’t steal’ project. At university I was worried my bike would get stolen because my bike seat kept getting nicked. I made this massive sticker for my bike that said ‘please don’t steal my bike’ and people kept stopping me at red lights saying how fun it was. So I made smaller stickers that people could put on phones, laptops etc. - referencing the stickers you get on company laptops with a barcode and the company name. 

Then in October 2022 I made an artwork for the MAJOR exhibition at the Strand, that was a set of ‘please don’t steal’ lighters on a plinth, and visitors could steal them. It was incredible watching people try to decide whether it was ok to take a lighter or not. The project has been evolving quite organically.  At the moment I am working on a collaboration between ‘please don’t steal’ and my friend who has a jewellery brand. Very excited about that!

I’m not sure how commercial I want it to be, because it started as an art project. I think it’s good to have your own self-initiated project where there’s no client, and you can do what you want. I don’t think you need to monetise everything.

I’d also really love to do visuals or graphics for a pop star. Especially tour visuals! I absolutely loved the creative/visuals on Rosalía’s tour, and of course Beyonce’s were incredible. I’d really like to work more with young fashion designers, interpreting their vision - less so for graphics and more for overall creative. I think my strong suit is coming up with ideas. I had the pleasure of working with Marie Lueder for her AW24 fashion show, helping her with visuals for her show announcement - that was really fun. 

Ultimately, I absolutely love Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger. Barbara also used to be a magazine designer! Being able to use type and imagery beyond just relaying information for usability, but visualising a concept instead.

You can visit Ester’s website and follow her work on Instagram.

Threads of the week

I have a bad habit of finding amazing things in vintage shops and not buying them. Here’s a pair of Yohji trousers I found in Time’s Up in Copenhagen and have thought about every day since. (If you’re visiting, also check out Strand32 and Jerome).

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All my friends have been posting this new brand ‘Normform’ and their bubbly stickers. Intrigued to see what’s up, and commending them for a strong tease strategy.

Sault dropped a surprise new album as a WeTransfer download. We are not worthy! Impressed by the WeTransfer team consistently delivering interesting and innovative projects with great artists.

Emily Sundberg said that home tours are a recipe for getting robbed, and she’s not wrong.

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Add your thoughts in the comments, and let me know whose Threads of Conversation you want to hear next!

These days, brands rule fashion. It feels like brand perception and identity have become even more important than the clothes themselves, especially as the industry expands and becomes more corporate.

To learn more about the topic, I tapped the wisdom of two brilliant designers working across some of the industry’s most interesting brands and publications. As the interviews ended up being quite long, I’m going to spread them over two newsletters - one today and one tomorrow.

First up is Hugo Hoppmann, a designer who’s worked on logos and branding for Salomon, Lu’u Dan, Nike, Sies Marjan, Prada, Miu Miu and Kenzo. He’s also been working with Mugler since 2019, where he refined their wordmark and recently redesigned the house’s iconic star logo.

He also has his own magazine, PRESENT, an amazing publication focused on the creative process and encouraging anyone with an idea to ‘just get started’. I love the humanity he brings to PRESENT, covering themes like discipline, fear and confidence - plus he always features really interesting designers (including Lu’u Dan’s Hung La, Tareet and Santangelo).

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What was the first time you became aware of the importance of design (by which I mean graphics, typography, identity)? Was there a brand that really stood out to you?

For me, it started with sports. My first memory as a child is the Chicago Bulls logo. I was so fascinated by this logo, and drew hundreds of them. The bull always looks different - sometimes super angry, sometimes super friendly. I would also give them as gifts to my friends.

When you talk about an identity, what are the constituent parts of that?

A strong graphic identity serves as the visual essence of a brand, encapsulating its values, personality, and mission into a cohesive visual language. A few things come to mind: Recognition and memorability, emotional connection, communication of values, flexibility/scalability, consistency across platforms, “uniqueness” and differentiation in a crowded market.

The pillar for the visual identity is the typography. The type choice is the base, and also helps you figure out the right tone for the brand. For example, I had a fashion client where they didn't even have a name yet. We had 10 different name options, so for each one I made 10 versions in 10 different typefaces — this really helped us decide on the final name, because the different typefaces had such different meanings and feelings attached to them. That's the power of typography, which is an overlooked element sometimes.

In the end, it’s really about all the details. Today we have so many different mediums. So for example, I love doing websites. I think it’s often underestimated how much you can actually communicate through the website - not only the style but also the UX. How do the buttons behave? There are small brands who have incredible websites and then there are big brands who have quite hideous websites.

Georgia: Can you talk about the process of redesigning the Mugler star?

Alongside updating the Mugler wordmark, I was approached by Casey Cadwallader to redesign the star because he wanted to put his own spin on it. Those kind of elements are often a super delicate topic, because if you redesign a logo, it’s almost guaranteed that some people will hate it, because everyone’s so used to the old version and people get very attached to brands.

The process of creating the new star was really fun - projects like this are always really rewarding because I can sit down and actually sketch a lot of different things by hand. And with Casey, it's amazing because he is a creative and a designer himself. And he has very clear ideas and is also very good at thinking about graphic design. So he had a lot of sketches for the star already. So then it was kind of mix and match - I did sketches and then he gave me his sketches and we did a lot of different versions. Just iterating until we got the perfect one.

It can seem quite banal when I’m talking about it, because in the end, it's just a star. But of course, the process to get there is long until everyone is really happy and feels, “this is the perfect shape.” The goal was to have a star for Casey that represents “his” Mugler and what he’s trying to express.

Georgia: It's the equivalent of the modern art joke where people say, “Oh, my kid could have done that.” In the sense that it seems so simple, easy almost. But what appears optically like a very small change, is actually something that's so emotionally resonant. Those tiny details make such a difference.

I feel like in the last few years we've lived through this era of endless collabs, and obviously when you do a collaboration, your brand needs to be really strong in order to stand out and not be dominated by the other party. Do you feel like that's had an impact on branding trends? And are there other trends that you've noticed?

My first thought is that, let's say like six or eight years ago, there was this whole wave of redesigns of all big fashion brands where they radically stripped down: the killing of the serifs!

It was Bureau Borsche and their Balenciaga redesign, right? When everyone was trying to go a similar route.

You're probably right that it started with Balenciaga. If you google it there are these overviews where they put 10 brands from this redesigning period as before and after. And it's really crazy how about 80% of them got simplified to a simple sans-serif. I think this was also the time when Yves Saint Laurent became Saint Laurent.

I found this fascinating, and it's interesting that it now seems to be reversing back. It’s happening much faster than I thought it would. Burberry is a good example - they went from the old logo, then they simplified it, and now they're back to a modernised version of an old logo, plus the horse. I love this because it feels so much more expressive.

What do you do when you're working with a brand, and they don't know who they are? What are the kind of questions that you ask them to get them closer to knowing who they are, so that you can design the identity around that?

First of all my main focus is to listen closely to understand what the client really needs. Sometimes a good tactic I to ask to share stuff they don't like - what are the values of brands or styles and vibe that they don't feel connected to at all? For a lot of people it's easier to say what they don’t like than what they do like. Maybe because if you tell someone what you like, it's more exposing.

I also try to find the poles of the brand. If your brand is in the middle of the solar system, then what are the planets that are surrounding it that you feel connected to?

It also comes down to personal values. What Steve Jobs did with Apple is interesting, because it is a technology, but he mixed in his interest in Eastern philosophy, arts, calligraphy. He combined all his passions and ultimately that's what made Apple stand out. Apple was the first operating system with a focus on good design and great typography, with pre-installed quality typefaces for everyone to use. It spoke to creative people, and that’s still the core pillar of Apple – mixing technology and good taste. That’s what makes them unique.

That leads onto my last question, which is about PRESENT and how it informs your work. When you work with so many clients, how do you decide on your own style?

The thing with PRESENT and its graphic language is that the topics that I'm talking about with the project — creative psychology, how we work, mindfulness, philosophy — content about all these topics often looks pretty badly designed. One of things I want to do with PRESENT is to package these topics that I find super valuable and share them in a way that’s more attractive, easier to consume and fun for my peers and my community. I try to find a graphic language that’s more appealing and also more approachable. It can sometimes be difficult to identify with these topics, because we might have prejudices and preconceived images in mind. Meditation is a good example of this - a lot of people still link it directly to esoteric imagery and everything that comes with it. And visually I think a lot of people are put off by that. It’s a pity that people are just distracted by basically bad branding.

I did an interview earlier this year with Martina Tiefenthaler - she was the chief creative officer at Balenciaga, but we were discussing her project called Vegan4000. She said a similar thing - that vegan restaurants are associated with a ‘vegan’ aesthetic. And obviously she's someone with a strong, compelling design sensibility. So with Vegan4000, she’s trying to ‘rebrand’ veganism to make it feel more modern and exciting, like her work in fashion.

Exactly! For me with PRESENT, it's similar. All these topics that are usually packaged in a different way, I want to make them more sexy, or closer to my vision of good design. It’s a way of packaging them differently and putting my own spin on it.

How long should a good brand identity last? 10 years, 20 years, five years?

That's tough. Ideally, timeless, forever. But that being said, looking at PRESENT, it’s also changing all the time. We're learning the whole time. Life is not stagnant and not static. So I think it's actually pretty unrealistic, timelessness in this way.

I feel like if a brand is getting redesigned, it means that the brand is questioning itself, and I think that's a good thing. Of course though, I'm fascinated by branding that is graphically so powerful that it lasts a long time.

Is there a brand that springs to mind when you think of that?

I’d say something like the Mercedes star, the Nike swoosh. But for fashion, it’s often tied to a specific phase or timeline or decade, and I think it's good to adapt to the times. It really depends on the brand. Most of the time  it’s the simplest designs which last a long time - something like the peace sign, this is the ultimate logo. The yin and yang. The Christian cross is basically the logo of the Christian church. 

God is a great graphic designer!

Join PRESENT’s community here, subscribe on Substack, and visit Hugo’s website here.

Threads of the week

New boots! I found these amazing riding boots on Depop, designed by my super talented friend Leonie Barth for COS a few seasons ago. L-R: worn with a Total Luxury Spa longsleeve and Nike shorts, then with a vintage ice hockey jersey and jorts customised by Chloe Baines, finally with a Hanes tank and some vintage running shorts.

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I’ve been sick this weekend, but managed to do some reading and watching (and scrolling).

A film I enjoyed on Mubi was ‘The African Desperate’ by artist Martine Syms. The story is a satire of Syms’ own experience at art school, and the film is set across a 24-hour period (Syms said she was inspired by the time constraints of movies like Run Lola Run). Speaking of design, the credits and typography by Special Offer Inc are amazing.

Two books I finished: ‘All Fours’ by Miranda July. If you’ve read it, please make yourself known in the comments!! I need to talk about it - the epitome of the head-exploding emoji.

Secondly, ‘New Methods for Women’ by Sharmadean Reid. It feels like all the best self-help and business books melted down and reconstituted into an actionable, modern compendium of advice and tools for work and life. Sharmadean is a real inspiration.

The perfect TikTok does not exi…

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Let's start at the beginning of your hair journey. How did you become a hairstylist?My mum was a hairstylist. So I worked for her when I was around 13, 14 on Saturdays, sweeping the floor and shampooing. Alongside hair, I was also studying art and sculpture. I had no idea about fashion at that point. I just loved working with my hands, building shapes and painting and that kind of like craftiness, as well as hair itself.

I moved to London when I was 21, and started assisting an amazing hairstylist called James Pecis - I worked with him for about eight years. Once I came to London, it opened my eyes to publications and I became obsessed with magazines. I was very into independent magazines and art prints - the paper and the quality of it, the different textures.

When did you start to become aware of the waste problem in the industry and feel like, “You know what? I want to do something about this.”
James [Pecis], who I worked for, he’s been such an inspiration. He's actually just launched Blu & Green - a very authentic eco hair product company. And his way of thinking was always very low waste, very minimal - being very conscious of how you're working. So I think that was really instilled into my mindset, and also through my own passion for rethinking waste and how we could do better.

I started talking about it with a friend of mine, Chris Deagle, when we were assisting on shows and looking at hair tooling. There wasn't really anything that was truly sustainable. There was a bamboo option, but it would still rot away or disintegrate. Also, there wasn't something that bridged consumer and pro. So we were like, “I wonder if we could do combs out of recycled plastic? Is that possible? The products that we're using, could those be part of the story?” Something that we use, and then fold back into our tooling itself, like a full circle. Beauty from waste. That became our slogan!

I really love that kind of upscaling - something that you turn from trash into something beautiful, but also very practical, that you can use in the shower or backstage.

Did you ever expect to get this far?
RE=COMB has expanded to be bigger than I ever I thought it would be. I think that if we can do it, as a self-funded, tiny company, then maybe we can encourage bigger companies to look at things slightly differently. I just really wanted to prove that it's possible.

How do you manage balancing RE=COMB alongside your hairstyling work?
I don't know how I'm managing it! I have my full time job. And then I come to the studio every other day that I can, really. I guess that's just a ‘small business’ way of doing things - you just do what you can. It's still a very, very small company. There's only four of us. But you can do quite big things with a tiny company, because we can move quickly.

Can you describe that journey from sitting backstage and talking to Chris, to being where you are now and actually having the physical product and selling it to stockists?
Our first conversation happened around 2017. After that we were just thinking about it and sitting on it. At the end of 2019 we started to research, looking online for micro recycling. There was a company called Precious Plastic, who provided microsized recycling resources. They share open source information, showing how things can be done, like how you can injection mould or sheet press or work with plastic. How you shred and grind down the plastic and how you get it to form. They've even got an academy where people go to learn about recycling. Everyone's super passionate about sharing their knowledge. We gathered knowledge on the way to make a hair comb in a mould, and how you actually do that.

Then we prototyped it. Our first mould wasn't as good as what we've got now. So it's been a bit of a journey in discovering what works and what doesn't. And then for us, obviously, it's really important to make something that's functional. So making something that actually works, and is really durable as well. So our first one, the teeth weren’t right, it was a bit too flimsy.

We also wanted something that’s made out of recycled material, but is also readily recyclable, which means not mixing any plastic ID codes. So say, a milk bottle, it's got a number (2) on it, and it's HDPE (2) HIGH-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE. So that's one source. And then another piece is number (5), which is POLYPROPYLENE (5). So they're two different plastics. What we do in the workshop is to separate each ID code. If we mixed them, there would be an inconsistency in the product, and it also wouldn't be home recyclable.

Once we had a few samples, whilst we were away on the shows, we gave them to lots of people to try. It was an amazing resource, having people in the industry trialling the product to see if it actually worked. We got feedback, and we improved them. Then we invested in the workshop, got our own machinery, and now we have our plastic bank and everything's super organised.

What are the main products that you're recycling and making into RE=COMB?
We get a lot of DVDs, which are amazing. Lots of people are clearing out, so we get tons of them. That's one colour source. A lot of salon waste such as shampoo and conditioner bottles etc. For the clear plastic, we use loads of takeaway boxes, milk bottles.

Do you have an arrangement with the council to give you recycling, or do you source your own empties?
Nothing from the council, it’s all through our connections. There are around 40 workshops around ours. We have a donation bin outside and lots of people know we're here. Also on set, I get loads of people giving me stuff. Lots of my friends in the industry will also come by and do drop offs. They often collect plastic empties through the salons that they work in. So we get a lot of salon waste. And then we have some bins in different places where we do collections.

We both know from working in fashion you've got to make something look sexy in order for people to buy it. With that in mind, I think the creative direction for RE=COMB is so strong. Can you tell me about coming up with the story and the creative?
RE=COMB was founded on that ‘beauty from waste’ idea, and re-messaging recycling. People think of it in a dirty way - if something's rubbish, then it's not clean. I loved spinning that idea and making it become sexy, or interesting, or artistic. I didn't want to give RE=COMB a traditional tooling identity - I wanted it to feel quite different, or like a beautiful object, and to shoot it in a fashion context.

What's the thing that’s surprised you most about running RE=COMB?
Sometimes I can feel something and know what plastic it is, which is something I never thought I’d know! Other than that, I'm a hairstylist, I'm dyslexic. I didn't think that I would have the skillset to understand the technical aspect, the machinery. But it’s actually really simple once you know how.

What's something that’s been challenging?
Probably when we do collections and things aren't clean. It takes a lot of time to clean them. Then with the messaging, it’s a challenge to get people to understand the authentic story. Because I think a lot of the time, it's like, “Oh, it's recycled.” But it's understanding the complex reality of what that means, and being conscious of what can be recycled onwards.

What's a product that you'd like to develop next?
We did a clip for Helen Kirkhum who makes upcycled trainers. We made a clip which she did for a bag. Another thing we do is a hair barrette, and we also do hair dice as well. I'd love to do more of those kind of things - different objects or different hair tools, or a collaboration with a brand. It would also be great to allow other companies to use our facilities. A next step where we could make products for other people who are interested in recycling. Because we've got all the resources and all the machines now.

I feel like there's circularity in terms of making RE=COMB, but also a circularity in terms of creativity. Do you feel like working on RE=COMB feeds you creatively?
Yeah, definitely. I really love the physicality of the material and the colorways, so I think that part is a very creative process. And when we can do shoots, that's a really nice creative outlet.

What’s one tip that you’d offer people that love fashion and beauty and want to become more sustainable?
I think a good tip for recycling is to clean things out - rinse them, get rid of any debris. Also taking off the lid, as they might be a different plastic ID. Or dismantling the different inserts in a beauty product before you put them in the recycling, as there are often a few different types of plastics used. Otherwise they’ll be scanned as a whole.

Shop RE=COMB on their website and follow them on Instagram and TikTok.

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I know we’re all over the Met Gala by now but I couldn’t resist

Podcast rec no.1: Law Roach on The Cutting Room Floor. One commenter said “I think this might be your Mugler robot” and they were right. This was my Northern Lights this week.

Podcast rec no.2: Editor-in-chief of The Cut Lindsay Peoples on Longform. Another inspiring listen.

Jia Tolentino’s reporting is as chilling and brilliant as ever.

The writer Paul Author passed away. His wife, writer Siri Hustvedt, wrote a very moving tribute to him, expressing her outrage at how quickly the media claimed ownership over his death.

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About a month ago, I introduced the Threads of Conversation book club. The first book I chose was about the topic of taste - bad taste to be precise (that’s literally the name of the book). Fast forward to last Wednesday, and I’m facing a packed audience at Salted Books in Lisbon, a beautiful English language bookshop run by writer Alexandre Holder, where I interviewed Nathalie Olah about her book, Bad Taste. For those of you who couldn’t be there, here’s a little recap of the night.

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Nathalie began with a reading from the book, a passage where she remembers visiting her local video rental store when she was 7 years old. There, she encountered a poster of Pamela Anderson, advertising the star’s new movie, Barb Wire. “Anderson wore a skin-tight satin and PVC bodysuit and stiletto heels, breasts nuzzled together like the two bread rolls that I carried in a plastic bag from the bakery a few doors down, as she raised her arms to wield a .357 Desert Eagle,” Olah recalls. “[It was] the severity of the image, the polarities of yellow hair dye and black lycra, the cutesy babydoll face rendered severe thanks to the needlepoint eyebrows, lavish winged eyeshadow, and frosted lip gloss that got me… this image presented a kind of freedom.” 

The freedom that Olah is talking about is a freedom from the confines of ‘good taste’, a strict social code which keeps us locked in a cycle of class prejudice and consumerism. This is what she explores in her book.

Georgia: Taste is a giant topic. What made you say, ‘Okay, I’m going to try and put this in a book.’?

Nathalie: I'd written a book prior to this in 2019 that was more of a straightforward polemic about the state of cultural production, particularly in Britain, and how it was skewed in favour of a very small, very white, very affluent elite. Whilst writing that book, this question of taste kept cropping up. Because the justification that people used for why they hired particular people and not others was that they grasped taste in a way that somebody else didn't. And so taste seemed to be completely caught up in the question of class representation. A few people that read that book said the bit about taste was interesting, and that they wished there'd been more of that. So I thought, ‘Okay I'm going to write a book about it.’

Georgia: You divided the book into ‘Homes, Food, Fashion, Leisure and Beauty’. Why did you decide to split it up that way?

Nathalie: I was trying to think about our consumer identities and where they show up in our shopping habits, and it tended to be those five categories. The way that you style your house, the way you style yourself. But also the forms of leisure that you take part in, which you now advertise to the rest of the world.

Georgia: In terms of the references you used, how did you choose what to include? Obviously, the more contemporary references you use, the more urgent the book will feel for the current moment. But if you use too many contemporary examples, then the book will age quickly. How did you find the balance?

Nathalie: In the book, I do close readings of scenes from television and film to illustrate some of the points. I wanted each chapter to have a personal element - so either an anecdote or a bit of reported journalism; my own encounter with the question of taste around that particular issue. And then I wanted to look at a cultural artefact - so a scene from cinema or TV, before doing the slightly more theoretical, dense part of the analysis. So each chapter follows that structure. The choice was completely organic and reflects my own interests — these were scenes that I had thought about obsessively over many years.

Georgia: These cultural artefacts range from Axel Vervoord, the guy who designed Kim and Kanye's incredibly minimal, sleek, grey home, to The Sopranos, and the film Blue is the Warmest Colour. Can you pick one of these references and talk about how it fits into the book, and why you chose to include it?

Nathalie: My favourite one is Under the Skin, the Jonathan Glazer film. It’s in the ‘Fashion’ chapter, but you wouldn't necessarily think it's a film about fashion. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a very strange film with very little dialogue. It stars Scarlett Johansson, but it's shot in Glasgow and rural Scotland, and a lot of the footage is real footage, not staged. So she would walk down the street and Jonathan Glazer would film her from a distance. But the people she's interacting with don't realise that they're in a film. They don't know that they're interacting with Scarlett Johansson. She's dressed in, like, Primark clothing. But it's still her - no prosthetics, no elaborate makeup. It's quite obviously Scarlett Johansson, but when you put her in normal clothes and walk her down a high street in Glasgow, she ceases to be Scarlett Johansson. And that, to me, was a symbol of how powerful clothing is.

I also think The Sopranos is a really good example of taste politics. They're nouveau riche, but they're new money under the worst circumstances imaginable, because he’s a gangster. There are lots of scenes in which the Sopranos are interacting with their neighbours, the Cusamanos. Financially, Tony’s of the same standing as they are. But he's Italian American, and has a very different aesthetic sensibility to these waspy white Americans. 

The Cusamanos tend to soothe themselves quite frequently throughout the show with assurances that they have superior taste. And that's almost the only thing they're able to soothe themselves about, because quite often, when they're having critical conversations, someone will point out that the conditions in which they got rich - the American banking system for example - probably aren’t ethically any more clean than what Tony Soprano's doing. And then they always then make some comment about the way that Carmela chooses to dress, or the way that she styles the home. They reassure themselves that they are better people, that they've got a better moral compass, because they know how to present more respectably than the Sopranos do.

Georgia: Your thesis is that we all think that we have personal taste, but actually our ‘taste’ is a result of capitalism and political forces that we’re not necessarily aware of. After writing this book and thinking about taste so much, do you think there’s such a thing as neutral taste? Is that even possible?

Nathalie: The conclusion I was trying to draw is that there are these very seismic forces that are acting on us in terms of our consumption habits and the ways we behave. And one thing that all of us urgently need to do for many reasons, not least because of imminent climate catastrophe, is think a lot smaller. In terms of my consumption habits, increasingly, things come recommended through friends, or handed through friends, or mended by a friend. This skirt [Nathalie gestures at the skirt she’s wearing] was something that a friend gave me that she said she thought would really suit me. As opposed to me going into these vast corporations and basically being told what to wear. So I think it's more about gathering and having conversations and learning about the world through community, as opposed to the forces of advertising.

A lot of the ideas around what constitutes good taste also have their origins in the religious wars of the early modern period. The conflict between the Catholic and the Protestant Church, and the Protestant Church essentially winning out and conquering America, and becoming the definitive aesthetic code of this waspy North American white elite. So a lot of our ideas of what's tasteful, understated and minimal have their origins there. You tend to find the idea of what's ‘gauche’ is anything that's coded as Catholic historically.

Johnny Pitts quotes Franz Fanon in his book Afropean, saying that ugly will always be defined as whoever is the other. So whoever capitalism fails, whoever it has to define as its other, whatever the aesthetic sensibility that's associated with that group of people, or the behaviours or the preferences or the traditions, they will always be coded as ugly. So it's almost not a visual aesthetic thing. It's a lens through which you look at the world.

Georgia: One of the things I found really interesting in the book is this idea of good taste being essentially ‘clean’ and ‘under control’. Whereas bad taste is associated with the unwieldy, messy and chaotic. It’s funny that you began the book with the Pamela Anderson anecdote, because people used to think she was kind of tacky, but she’s recently had this renaissance in fashion. She’s all over magazine covers, doing campaigns. Firstly, she’s older - therefore she’s desexualised, because past a certain age, women start to fall off in terms of the way society views them. Secondly, she doesn’t wear makeup anymore, thirdly she’s now a vegan. So literally the transformation of Pamela Anderson in the time since you’ve written this book proves your point. That those more puritan qualities are still what society deems ‘good taste’, this sense that she’s more refined and ‘luxury’ now.

Nathalie: Yeah, and what's really interesting about her is the moral arc. Because she was really vilified in the 90s, because she married Tommy Lee really quickly, and she got Hepatitis C from him. She was always characterised as irresponsible, a bad influence on women. She had all these artificial modifications to her body which were seen as an aberration against womanhood. Now she's America's sweetheart and they're like, ‘We love Pamela Anderson, isn't she adorable?’ But I wonder whether if she didn't shun makeup and still dressed as she did in the mid-nineties, whether society would have permitted her to have that moral arc.

Georgia: Another thing I want to ask you about is this idea of two currencies that you touch on in the book: money and time. And how a lot of the things that we consider to be ‘good taste’, are things that were made using time-consuming, ‘natural’ methods, and how these are considered morally better somehow. Can you tell the story about buying gifts for your family?

Nathalie: I thought it was quite interesting to think about how luxury had changed over time with my family. I grew up working class. I'm middle class now. But for my parents and certainly my grandparents, convenience and ease and things getting sped up, that was luxury. They lived very hardworking, time-poor lives. Advanced modern conveniences like the microwave - those were the height of luxury to them. Obviously tastes have evolved since then, but I recalled this time in my early 20s. I'd saved up all my money to buy my family what I considered to be really nice Christmas presents. There's a shop in London called Labour and Wait that sells sort of earthy and homespun homewares. And I was like, ‘Well, that's so chic. I'll buy them stuff from there.’ And just the look of disappointment on their faces when they opened yarn, and old feather dusters. They were like, ‘We've spent the last 50 years trying to get away from all of this stuff. What are you doing bringing this into our homes?’

Georgia: The last question I want to ask you is about the chapter on beauty. You make a definition between beauty, sexiness and romance. Can you explain the difference between those three?

Nathalie: There’s a book by the sociologist Eva Illouz called The End of Love, which I would really recommend if anyone's interested in this. Essentially, she was arguing that there's a distinction between beauty and sexiness. Beauty is something that's always presented as inborn, innate. It’s this ideal that, essentially, advertisers have created, or at least seized upon from art history, and they use it as the thing that haunts us all. This image of a beautiful person that we should all be, but none of us can be. It’s an ideal that we can't ever attain. But the way you get there is through sexiness, and sexiness is something that’s bought. So it's almost like they throw you a bone. You can’t be beautiful, but you can buy ‘sexy’ instead.

You can buy sexy, but it will always be coded as second class. So sexy is never beautiful, according to the logic of marketing and advertising and modern media. And the people that present as sexy are always treated as trashy. And the advertising industry has also turned body parts into commodities, so anyone who just happens to be born with a big ass or big boobs, through the language of advertising is in possession of these commodities. And the more commodified you look, the less beautiful you are.

A big thank you to Nathalie, Salted Books and everyone who came along and asked such great questions. Stay tuned for the next event.

Threads of the week

On my phone I have an album called ‘outfit ideas’. Oftentimes, I’ll screenshot people I see on socials whose look inspires me in some way - either the whole thing, or certain details (is that creepy? It’s purely for styling purposes!) It’s also a great way to get an idea of your own style. After a while you start to see a really clear picture of what you’re drawn to, simply due to the items or elements that appear across multiple images.

Anyways, I can’t remember where this photo came from or who these people are, but I just loved the vibe of the person on the left. Something about the graphic on the back of the tee (the best vintage tees are printed on the front and back - it’s more expensive to print both sides and somehow feels more considered, too) told me that this person cared about vintage tees just as much as I do.

The technical pants have the perfect proportions and construction, and the socks and sandals just looked so damn cool. Altogether effortless, sleek, contemporary-but-not-hypey. Anyways, I didn’t realise how firmly this image had lodged into my brain until I realised today that I was wearing almost the exact same look. I screenshotted that photo in June 2022, so 2 years later, I’ve subconsciously recreated the inspiration. Thank you, whoever you are! I hope you don’t mind me sharing here.

Outfit credits (I’m sure you’ve seen me wearing these bits before): tee is vintage Harley Davidson, bought from a vintage market called Mercado Amour in Lisbon. Technical pants are also vintage, from an amazing Portuguese seller called Daia. The Birkenstocks belong to my boyfriend - they’re way too big, but I weirdly love how they look that way. The lighting in my selfie is terrible so you can barely see the socks (or pants) but they are a ribbed pair of cotton ankle socks from Cos, for a little more texture play.

Loose Threads

Thanks for the love on the Thread about fashion and literacy. Here are two more examples I should have included.

Someone designed a typeface by growing fungi. As we already know, microbes are cool.

I really like this branding. Product is cute too.

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Add your thoughts in the comments, and let me know whose Threads of Conversation you want to hear next! And if you enjoyed this edition, why not forward it to a friend?

Today on the topic of mindful shopping, I’ve got an interview with the founders of Alta Store, a kooky independent fashion boutique in the heart of London’s Soho. With seemingly every retail juggernaut sinking into the choppy waters of administration, panic buyouts and mass-layoffs, it feels like a pretty bleak time to be trying to sell clothes. Not for Alta, who just celebrated their 1-year anniversary.

Founded by five designers (Alia Mehta, Sam Balcombe, Elif Gencer, Timna Weber and Matilda Little), the concept began as a pop-up series called ID Pop-up (for ‘independent designer’ - they changed the name because “Everyone kept asking if we were part of the magazine!”) After the success of the temporary stores, they decided to take the plunge and open their own permanent space, a place where they could continue to build a community of likeminded shoppers and designers. Here, I chat to Elif, Timna and Matilda about how they’re doing it and what they’ve learned.

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How did you all meet one another?

Elif: Online! On Instagram. Just mutually reaching out to say: “I love your brand!” and responding, “I love your brand too!” Appreciating and following each other for a while. It was right after lockdown. We wanted to come together, show together and be in a real space.

How did you start Alta, formerly known as ID Pop-Up?

Matilda: It was a couple of messages thrown around Instagram. A few of us knew each other beforehand, but then it was really just a fluke that we got on so well, and that the pop-up worked. We got addicted to working together on something, and it was really nice to form a community.

Where are you all from?

Elif: I’m Turkish, Matilda is English. Timna is Austrian, Alia is half English and half Indian and Sam is Australian.

Alongside your own labels, how do you decide on the curation and which brands to stock?

Matilda: Honestly we don't really over strategise it. We actually go with our gut quite a lot. We're part of creative communities in London, so when you hear of someone you're like, “Oh I’ve always liked them, why don’t we get them in?” All of our brands started online, so once we get that impulse of wanting to see something in real life, that’s quite a good indicator.
Elif: If it’s interesting enough for us to want to see it in real life, then we know it should be in the store.

How would you describe the flavour of Alta?

Elif: It has to be interesting in a way that’s not been seen before.
Matilda: And wearable. Our pieces aren’t so wacky that you wouldn’t wear them day to day.

What have you found have been the best sellers?

Matilda: It’s hard to say, because we often have one-of-a-kind pieces. The pieces get that get attention are quite vibrant. We also sell skirts very well, because you can have a fun skirt and everything else can be quite simple.
Timna: But in general we do see that if we get brands in which are very simple, they don’t sell so well. So basics or things you could find in another store.
Matilda: People come to us for a new, unique piece.

How would you describe your customer?

Matilda: When we did our pop-ups, I thought I knew our client, but more and more I’m surprised by people who come in. I think that’s also about our location - we’re so lucky to be so central, it’s like a meeting point for London. We have great footfall for all kinds of people.
Elif: I would say definitely people that are into fashion get most excited when they walk in. They really appreciate seeing a store that’s so unique and exciting to browse.

Yeah, I feel like the people I know that have the best style are big fans of Alta! Are there any trends you’re particularly noticing right now that people are buying into, or that are reflected in the pieces that you stock and the designers you’re in conversation with?

Matilda: The only way I can describe it is lot of trimmings. It’s almost like haberdashery style. There's lace everywhere, there’s buttons there’s bows. It’s quite fun, light. Those things do really well in our shop. Also in general there are so many amazing upcycling brands presenting themselves to us. I feel like growing up I was never aware of that, so it’s exciting to see more of those.

What are some things that you’ve learned? Good lessons and hard lessons.
Timna: We all come from a creative background, so we definitely needed to learn a lot about how to run a business!
Matilda: We’re business ladies now!
Elif: Yeah - it was a creative like itch that made us start, but we didn’t really think about the business side of it. And probably 70% of it is business! Thankfully we have each other to rely on and learn together.

When you say business can you be more specific?
Elif: A lot of VAT! I still cannot wrap my head around that.
Matilda: Organisation. Being on top of everything. Knowing exactly where the inventory is at all times, and being able to pass on that knowledge to someone to help you. Teamwork.
Timna: Making sales reports, a lot of accounting, lots of maths.

Is there any particular thing that’s been a real highlight?

Matilda: I’d say working as a team, because a lot of us came from working on our own brands by ourselves. It’s such a relief to be able to talk through decisions, especially when you respect the others’ opinions.
Timna: And to be connected to customers, getting feedback. Talking to them.

As designers, how has working in the store and observing how customers interact with the product influenced your designs or your business strategy?

Elif: Honestly, when you're just designing at home and isolated, you’re dissociated from the customer a lot. Being in the store is like live market research, collecting data to help you design better. For example, I had a corset-style dress that has the breast area open, and so you’re meant to wear something under it. But I noticed people weren’t sure how to wear something in it, and it made them a bit uncomfortable. So now I know I have to cover that area with something, so that it’s styled for them already.
Matilda: It’s pushed my confidence. When you’re designing by yourself and just projecting onto the internet, you get likes but that doesn’t mean anything. To actually see people try stuff on makes you feel like: “Oh yeah, I actually know how to design. I have a vision and I should just be happy with what I make and not second guess myself so much.”
Timna: For me, it was very interesting to see what kind of customer I have. For example, I was surprised to realise that I have a lot of guys buying my stuff.

Are there any lows, or things that are particularly hard?
Matilda: I guess rent is pretty intense. Being on top of money. That’s part of learning how to grow a company and run an effective business. But we think it’s worth it to pay more to be in that location.

Where does the name Alta come from?
Elif: It’s like ‘alternating’, because we constantly change the brands in the store.

What have you found is the best way to advertise?
Matilda: I think just being present in the shop. We take it in turns to work there alongside our other jobs. It’s not really a marketing strategy, but I think word of mouth - which is kind of wild, because nobody does that these days. But us being there means we get to communicate what we are directly to the customer. And also communicate about all of our brands. Because each of us know a lot about every single brand we have, so we can explain how that piece was made etc.
Elif: We actually don’t advertise at all, other than in the store!

Everyone’s feeling pretty rocked by the recent closures of major multi-brand fashion retailers. Is that something you feel like has affected your store at all?
Matilda: I think it slightly aligns with why we wanted to start Alta in the first place. I feel like in the 2000s, the vision for fashion was all online retail. But I think after COVID lockdowns, when we’d been online for 2 years straight, we personally were sick of being online, and we weren’t reaching the people we wanted to reach. So our impulse was to be IRL and meeting people. We weren’t ever on the same level or competing with those big retailers anyway, but I think in a way it kind of makes sense to me. I think people want to be feeling the fabric, they want to be present in real life, to see what they’re buying. It’s like the internet used to be escapism and now everyone wants to escape from the internet and come to a real place.

What are some brands that you’re stocking currently that you’re really excited about, other than your own?
Elif: We have almost 50 brands and we love all of them! More than half of the brands we have are local - we try to represent a lot of new local talent, so we’re always keeping an eye on that. We also really like brands that have a niche. Like an artist, they really study their topic, material or a certain object for a long time, and really obsess over it and perfect it. We have a brand called Horti which we recently got - they make ties and brooches and stuff. They’re made so well and super original.
Matilda: We have some really fun new jewellery designers - this one called Emma Anaïs Anscheidt. She does beautiful silverware and she sews buttons onto the silverware.
Timna: Genevieve Devine. She uses antique fabrics and spoons, so she makes these spoon earrings. It’s playful but high end.

And what about the merchandising inside the store?
Matilda: We’ve commissioned an artist friend to make these amazing shelves. In terms of merchandising, we’ve put a lot of effort into moving from a pop-up, where designers had their own sections, to really curating and grouping items that work well together.
Elif: It’s very instinctive.
Matilda: Sometimes we’re all in there playing dress up! Figuring out what looks good together.

If someone was wanting to create something similar, what advice would you give them?
Elif: I think it’s really simple - just be nice to everyone. To the customer, to the people you’re working with, to the designers you’re representing. Fashion can have this reputation for being unapproachable, but being nice gets you way more places!
Timna: And don’t do it alone!

Any exciting plans or upcoming ventures or goals for the next year?
Timna: We’re planning some pop-ups abroad. So our first one will be in Paris in September, for fashion week. It’s already all planned - we’re super excited.
Matilda: We’re also starting a newsletter, which hopefully will allow us to introduce our designers a bit better. Getting better at marketing and communications!
Elif: Yeah, we’re starting a monthly Alta post that will introduce a brand every month and have a little Q+A with pictures etc.
Matilda: And we want to go into menswear. We get a lot of men coming in wanting to dress fun as well! But we’ve found it harder to find independent menswear brands.
Timna: Menswear brands, get in touch!

alta-store.com
@altastore.ldn

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Threads of the week

Still in Lisbon, weather is getting warmer. Wearing a vintage Harley Davidson tee, silk skirt from Zilver and Prada (men’s) technical sandals.

Loose Threads

A big few weeks for fashion. The Matchesfashion announcement, the Oscars, Chioma Nnadi’s first Vogue cover, Carlos Nazario leaving i-D. This industry is a rollercoaster right now. Meanwhile, Phoebe gets ever hornier.

Jason Okundaye’s book is out! Can’t wait to read it. This is a super interesting podcast where he discusses his and writing process. I was also lucky enough to commission him back when I was Features Editor at Browns Fashion - I especially enjoyed this piece he wrote on what writers wear.

A really interesting photography concept.

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Tell me about your journey into veganism. When did you become a vegan and what influenced the decision?
I grew up with a very regular Austrian diet. I'm the youngest of three, and when I was 10 years old, my brother and sister and some of our friends all turned vegetarian at the same time. We had this VHS cassette going around from house to house, showing a video on animal transportation from farm to slaughterhouse. We were all shocked.

I wanted to become vegan for quite some years before I actually did it. But there were so many people around me saying it's unhealthy, it's dangerous. That I wouldn’t be able to find food anywhere because restaurants don't know what it is. But then I just said, “No, I want to try it.” And so I did. Now my entire family is either vegan or vegetarian.

When was vegan4000 born, and where did the idea come from?
I started it in 2015. I was sharing what I was cooking with a co-worker at the time. I was already living in Paris and working in fashion, and we had an amazing kitchen in the studio where we worked, but it was never used. And so instead of going to places nearby the office to grab awful salads and sandwiches, we were both like, “Let’s cook together.” And then I wanted to share it. I didn't think it through at all - I just started doing it.

Because I spend the majority of my time with my real job in fashion, vegan4000 is something that I do without a plan. It's something which allows me to have balance, and something besides my job that is much more playful, very intuitive, humble and real.

I work in fashion, and there’s so much about it that is fast, there's pressure. There is so much that we have to do, in terms of the quantity of product that we have to make. At times you lose the foundation that you need in order to stay grounded. Eating vegan and thinking about what kind of food is good for me is perfect to balance that out.

What about the name and number 4000 - where does that come from?
I had my personal Instagram account before (@mrt4000), and 4 has always been my lucky number. Then, when I wanted to do the vegan thing, I thought of vegan4000 as a connection to my other account. Later, I thought about the meaning of it - because it sounds like “vegan for thousands”, like an amount of people. But that’s actually a coincidence. I’ve now started using V4K as an abbreviation, as it’s quicker and easier and nicer to play with.

Also graphically it looks really strong - the sharp angles of the letters. I thought it implied ‘Year 4000’, as in veganism of the future. Because it has quite a futuristic aesthetic.
It has all of these things - and that's that's what I like about it. I don’t think it through. I’m a creative, but one of the things that I’m good at is being quite rational and organized in my job. There's a certain type of control that I always have. But with vegan4000, I don’t do that at all. I have a much more light and playful approach, and that means that I often discover there are more layers of meaning to it than what I originally had in mind.

It's like the subconscious mind takes over when you’re doing something with less pressure, and you end up making something that has more creative layers.
Yes, it's exactly that.

Can you talk about the vegan4000 creative direction? I feel like yours is the antithesis of the ‘live, laugh, love’ vegan aesthetic.
For a very long time I had to go to ugly restaurants that looked awful, the food presentation wasn’t nice. Even the food packaging of certain things - everything was so off in a very strange way. Vegan food was always weird and it didn’t even look like food. Often vegan restaurants had the craziest, brightest LED lamps. If that’s how people perceive veganism, I totally understand that everyone would say we are all crazy and radical and that it’s not nice. That it doesn’t look good and doesn’t make you feel good.

And so, a while ago I decided the thing I have to do is give this way of eating and this philosophy of living a different image. So this is why I’m now putting a bit more effort into it than I might have done at the very beginning. I think that it's so rich to eat this way; so beautiful aesthetically speaking. More beautiful than a dead animal on your plate. So everything around it should look that way too.

Does your aesthetic in fashion complement the aesthetic of vegan4000?
Of course, one thing influences the other. Since I am a creative, I'm a designer and I produce things, I have the urge to do that with vegan4000 as well.

Are there any fabrics which derive from plants that you're excited about using in a fashion context?
Absolutely. I've put a lot of focus on finding out what there is. The good news is that there’s a lot out there, but the bad news is that a lot of them are not yet available in large quantities. Some because there are not enough requests - so they don’t have the money to actually buy more machines, or develop a quicker way to make the fabric in order to supply the necessary quantity for commercial use. Another reason is that the techniques are not scalable. So some lab leathers made from mushrooms or other types of vegan materials, they can only make one square metre of ‘skin’ in a couple of weeks. So if that's all they can produce, it's impossible for big companies with big quantities to use them.

But there is so much innovation - there are also materials made from cactus, pineapple, different types of plant fibres. And mushroom leather of course, which is mycelium.

Why do you think there’s a reluctance to adopt these fabrics across the fashion industry?
The problem is time and financial targets. A lot of innovations and inventions are already there, but they don't match with what the capitalist system requires. It’s unfortunate, but I have hope.

I wanted to ask your opinion on why you think food and fashion have become so intertwined recently?
I think that fashion and brands have started to serve themselves anywhere to make a bigger buzz. In an interview I gave a while ago I said that, to me, there is almost no difference between the entertainment industry and the fashion industry anymore. Because you need to create moments and experiences and events and things people can talk about. I would say that's what it is. They just needed more, so why not food? Why not make a drink? Why not make dinner experiences? I do see it in a bit of a critical way, because it's almost sad that fashion could not just remain focused on the fashion product. Now everything else has to join to create this lifestyle brand.

But then on the other hand, like me for example, I enjoy creativity and I enjoy the fact that I'm able to make conscious choices in terms of my lifestyle. So I choose what I want to wear, and I'm representing myself in a particular way with what I wear. And I'm doing the same with eating.

For that reason I totally understand that they go hand-in-hand, because it's not only about what you put outside on your body, but what you put inside it. For me, both are so important. So they almost belong together.

I also feel like we're at such an emotionally heightened place in our current world, and eating is such an emotional, primal act. And fashion is so personal - it’s what you put on to protect yourself. It’s a way of speaking to the outside world without using your voice. So the similarity lies in that emotional language and connection.
I totally agree.

What are your tips and hacks in terms of maintaining a vegan lifestyle alongside a busy fashion career?
I personally only buy organic food. It helps me to make better choices in the store because they offer less shit. It's easier to buy stuff that is not wrapped in plastics and seasonal food if you buy organic, because usually they only offer that. From my experience when you buy local, seasonal ingredients, they last longer in the fridge, because it's the right time for them to be eaten. So they don't rot as quickly or turn weird. My boyfriend and I do one big shop on a Sunday in the organic market near our house, and then we try to make a meal plan for the week.

Is there a book you would recommend or a particular resource for people interested in learning more?
I learn a lot on social media, because my algorithm is just vegan accounts. So I learn all the hacks there. Some insta accounts I like are @low_res_food, @plantbasednews, @veganwelcome, @livekindly, @danielhumm, @elevenmadisonpark. There’s also a book by Max La Manna called ‘More Plants, Less Waste’ - there are recipes but also a lot of tips and tricks on how to shop, how to store and how to reduce food waste.

What is vegan4000's signature dish, if you had to pick one?
I love, love beans. I also make tacos all the time, but they are completely freestyled. I don't follow any rules when I cook. With tacos, you can make it with leftovers and whatever's in the fridge.

Which country has the best vegan food?
I think Japan in terms of umami and flavour. Vegan Japanese food can be incredible - the way it looks, the way it tastes, the textures, everything.

And can you think of anyone who is vegan that people would never expect to be vegan?
Maybe my mom, she's 71. She's so cool. She was 45 when she turned vegetarian, and then when she was around 60, she became a vegan. Where she lives in the countryside in Austria, she's the only vegan in her age group. And no matter what her friends or people around her say to her when she goes to a birthday or is invited somewhere - and she's sometimes quite hurt because people say crazy, awful things - she's just going for it. She's healthy and she looks amazing. You know, it's never too late. Anyone can turn vegan at any age.

Lastly, what would your last meal on earth be and what would you wear to eat it?
Corn tacos, and I would wear leggings and a very tight top. Everything very tight. Crew neck, not turtleneck.

Vegan4000’s taco recipe:

4 corn tacos, baked in the oven at 220 degrees for 5 minutes

3 Beyond Meat balls, smashed and fried in flavourless coconut fat

1 large porcino mushroom, cut in 1cm thick slices, fried on medium heat in olive oil or flavourless coconut fat

1 small leek, cut into small pieces and fried in olive oil or flavourless coconut fat. It should turn a little brown for maximum taste

4 small leaves of radicchio, washed

8 yellow cherry tomatoes, 2 smoky garlic cloves, parsley, paprika powder, salt and pepper - all blended into a raw salsa

Chopped fresh parsley to garnish

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Threads of the week

Wearing a secondhand Maryam Nassir Zadeh cashmere sweater from Depop, vintage leather trousers and Ann Demeulemeester boots.

Loose Threads

I went to the opening of the ‘Cute’ exhibition at Somerset House this week. It was interesting and eerie in equal measure - if you go, let me know what you think.

I don’t drink coffee, but Louise Chen’s new breakfast slot on NTS is the best way to wake up.

Three moments that stuck with me from Paris fashion week (men’s and couture): Martine Rose’s unbeatable vibes, GmbH’s passionate, political show, and the uncanny tenderness with which Maggie Maurer held Schiaparelli’s digital baby. Oh, and Margiela’s glistening doll makeup of course - Rhode could never.

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Well Emilia, when I lived in New York, laundry day involved bundling downstairs to the laundromat across the road, where I’d shove a week’s worth of grubby garments into a machine, inserting a stream of quarters and returning 45 minutes later to transfer the soggy blob into a dryer. More quarters, another 45-minute wait and finally my warm knot of clothes would be ready to take home. The whites would be a shade greyer, the darks a shade lighter. Over time, many items acquired a light dusting of bobbles - the laundromat patina, aka. memories of the whirring inferno where fabrics go to die.

These days in London, I’ve got the luxury of an in-house washer, but I still spend a lot of time peeling apart wet socks and wrestling with dripping sheets. After all, laundry is modern life’s Sisyphean task, a never-ending cycle of rinse and repeat.

I’m taking a while to get to my point (hope you’re enjoying the scenic route) but this week, I interviewed someone who might be changing all that. No, this newsletter is not about laundry. Instead it’s about the infinitely more interesting Rosie Broadhead, a designer who’s developing new fabrics that self-sanitise, as well as creating textiles that can heal skin conditions whilst you wear them.

I first encountered Rosie’s work when I visited my friend Marie Lueder’s studio, where Marie showed me an algae-encapsulated knit they’d collaborated on. The piece originated from Rosie’s SKIN SERIES project, where she develops textiles that contain natural ingredients to soothe and nourish the skin. Now she’s working on a new probiotic treatment for sportswear as an alternative to antibacterial finishes (and yes, that means less laundry). I got her on the line to learn more about her pioneering work.

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Rosie: Are you in London right now?
Georgia: Yeah, I’m in my little anti-seasonal depression chamber ie. my study, where I have this big orange light.
Rosie: Does it work?
Georgia: Kind of. I feel like it gives me a vibe when I’m on video calls, because I look like I’m in a James Turrell art piece or something.

Rosie: I’m in this office space in Ghent right now. It’s very sterile-looking, quite lab-like. Which I guess is fitting!
Georgia: Can you tell me about what you’re doing there?
Rosie: I’m a designer. My background is in research and development in sportswear. I have a company, SKIN SERIES - I call it a therapeutic textile company. SKIN SERIES focuses on how we can improve our skin health or our relationship with clothing through what we’re wearing.
Alongside that I'm also researching probiotic textiles, which are an alternative to the antibacterial finishes you normally find in sportswear. So basically adding healthy bacteria into textiles to try to improve your odour.
Georgia: Do you consider your work to be futuristic?
Rosie: With SKIN SERIES, it was a bit of play on futurism, but also kind of like this dated future, because a lot of its sci-fi aesthetic comes from the 70s, and that isn’t the future anymore. Bacteria are also something that have existed in in the world and on humans for centuries. We’re not really creating a future, we’re actually looking at the past and bringing that into the present.

Georgia: That’s a nice allegory for circularity.
Rosie: I did a lot of research on the body and the kind of bacteria that are already existing on our body, or ingredients which already exist in nature. My biggest focus at the moment is on probiotic finishes. That’s basically encouraging the growth of pre-existing good bacteria on your body, so when you’re wearing a probiotic garment, these bacteria become more active on your skin.
Georgia: So what you’re working on is a probiotic finish, not an antibacterial finish?
Rosie: Exactly, yes. We’re trying to avoid antibacterial finishes, as these kill everything on your skin. Instead we’re promoting the growth of healthy bacteria on your skin, so it works in the opposite way.
Georgia: If you wash these probiotic garments, does that then kill the bacteria?
Rosie: No, you can wash them. Although we’re trying to make you think about how often you need to wash your clothing, because it's not always necessary, and it has a detrimental effect on your clothes and the environment. Laundry uses a lot of energy, and microplastics are being washed into our water systems. However it’s still very much ingrained into society that this is something we have to do every time we wear a garment.

Georgia: And do the probiotic fabrics have the same benefits as your algae encapsulated pieces that you made for SKIN SERIES, which had healing properties?
Rosie: Yeah, so the bacteria that we’re working with can also have a healthy effect on your skin, the same way that algae does. It can be antioxidant, and promote cell regeneration. It could also be preventative for someone who suffers from eczema or psoriasis. We don’t say that it’s going to cure your eczema, because that would be a medical product.
I think there has been a lot of focus on bioactives, especially in skincare, but less so in fashion and clothing, something that’s next to our skin all the time.

Georgia: Would you ever see a point at which this technology is developed so that your beauty products are encapsulated within your clothing? So instead of applying a moisturiser, you might have your moisturiser encapsulated in your clothes?
Rosie: Yes - what you’re wearing next to your body also has the same potential effect on your skin as your everyday skincare regime. If anything moreso, because you’re always in contact with textiles.
Georgia: I guess we’re used to taking probiotics internally, but I’d never thought of using them topically.
Rosie: People really understand taking probiotics internally and what that means, but it’s the same thing topically on your skin. I saw a project many years ago that kind of inspired me to go down this route. It was basically a bra where you could add the medication you’d take if you were susceptible to breast cancer. This medication comes with a lot of side effects if it’s taken orally, but this designer/doctor was looking at how you could design a bra to take this medication transdermally. That blew my mind. How clothing could also become a vehicle for healing the body internally, and on the surface of the skin.

Georgia: Your work feels like it’s at the intersection of fashion, beauty and wellness. Do you see these industries becoming more integrated in the future?
Rosie: Yes I do. I think when you realise that textiles can have an effect on your skin condition and that skin is a porous membrane, it seems obvious.
Georgia: With Gorpcore and the growing sportswear trend in fashion, what do you think is driving this enthusiasm for performance-based clothing?
Rosie: I think people really like the idea that their clothing is more than just fashion; it’s providing some kind of protective layer. I guess the problem with that is that it is really focused on the kind of chemicals that I’m trying to actively de-promote. Like waterproof finishes, which are very toxic to the body. Some of these garments have performance properties for someone who’s going on a multi-day hike, but people are wearing them to the shops. Sometimes you don’t need that level of performance. I’m trying to promote the idea that our bodies are sometimes enough, you know?

Georgia: Your SKIN SERIES garments are very beautiful, and very on-trend at the moment. Was that something that you were thinking about when you were designing, or more of a happy accident that the bodycon trend returned around the same time?
Rosie: It was deliberate because I do see the importance of making science desirable. I think if you make something beautiful that people would like to wear, you can get a bigger audience on board with it than if you perhaps put a scientific paper out and only 10 people read it. It’s a different way of communicating. Design and fashion provide this opportunity to rethink the materials around us that interact with our bodies. It becomes more personal and has the power to change minds or inspire.
Georgia: Lastly, can you tell me about the exhibition you created, ‘Surface Tension’?
Rosie: It's a cross-disciplinary online exhibition I did with Wilson Oryema. It’s thinking about what already exists, because there's a lot of focus on new innovation in sustainability, but there are a lot of existing materials and solutions already out there. I was really interested in this MCP glove, which is a glove that compresses your body to maintain cardiovascular function, for when you're going into space. Initially it was something that was showcased a lot in sci-fi movies but no one had ever actually made it. But there’s this team in Brooklyn that are making these suits a reality.
Georgia: What are you exploring next?
Rosie: I’m working on a new research project on hormones. Hormonal changes throughout a woman’s life can cause health issues, and there are knowledge gaps due to underfunded women’s health-related research. This means limited therapeutic and medical solutions. You often read that synthetic materials can be endocrine-disrupting - that means the chemicals can alter your hormones in a negative way. But I was like, what if we can alter the endocrine system in a positive way? I like the idea of health, especially women’s health, being more open-source and personal, rather than part of a system.

Threads of the week

Speaking of laundry, here’s an outfit that’s waiting for a spill. Wearing some Dickies dupes I bought on Depop with an old Japan football jersey and my Cecilie Bahnsen Asics sneakers. The belt is custom BFG merch, given to me by a dear friend.

Loose Threads

I had a lot of thoughts on Phoebe Philo’s debut.

I’m really looking forward to reading this book. And this one and this one.

Did you know that the photographer William Eggleston made music? Me neither. Well, he just released a new album.

Lastly, some strong feelings about jorts in Glasgow:

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Emilia makes writing about fashion entertaining, imaginative and, oftentimes, side-splittingly funny. Formerly Senior Fashion writer for The Cut at New York Magazine, Emilia is beloved for her offbeat, voicey pieces which range from venting about her love-hate relationship with The RealReal to meticulously analyzing (and sampling) Anna Wintour’s lunch. In January she went freelance, and in September she launched her newsletter, Shop Rat.

My aim here was to talk about what makes good fashion journalism, but due to a. my New York nostalgia and b. my efforts to make Emilia laugh, it’s more of a meandering tour of the topic with some stops along the way. I hope you enjoy.

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Georgia: Hello! Firstly, I’m a big fan, so I’m very excited to be speaking to you. When you launched your newsletter I was like, “Yes! More Emilia.” I guess that’s a good place to begin actually. So, why did you start ShopRat?

Emilia: I started for two reasons. One, when I was at The Cut, I would do a lot of quick, fun posts that would respond to whatever I was talking about on Slack or in my group chat. In my new freelance life, I just wasn’t writing those sorts of posts anymore.

Two, when I went freelance, I was afraid that I’d be disconnected from the fashion world, and so I made an effort to get out of my apartment and be out and about in New York and going into stores, just to stay connected to what was on the racks and what people were wearing. I wanted a way to commit to that. The point is that every week I have to go out into the world and basically take notes on what I’m seeing and report back.

So far it’s been really fun - I’m trying to keep it casual and not take it too seriously.

Georgia: It sounds like the beginning of dating. I love that you’re in a situationship with your newsletter.

[Emilia laughs politely.]

Georgia: Can you tell me a bit about your earliest fashion memory and how you got your start in fashion writing?

Emilia: My mom used to call me the little girl with a big opinion because I was annoyingly opinionated about very specific things that had to do with my clothing. I refused to wear babydoll dresses, for example, and obviously, most dresses for little girls are babydoll dresses. 

My mom worked in journalism, so I grew up around magazines and loved flipping through them. At the time, most magazines for young girls were fashion magazines, so I don’t think I ever really considered any other option; it just made sense for me. I didn’t want my brother’s Sports Illustrated.

Georgia: You’re like, “There are no clothes at all!”

Emilia: Yeah! 

Georgia: You’re now a celebrated fashion journalist, and you write so well about clothes. In your opinion, what makes good fashion writing?

Emilia: Emily Sundberg has a newsletter, and she said something in it the other day, which is that good fashion journalism tells you upfront why the subject matters. I think the best fashion criticism takes an inside approach, but also a more macro view. It connects what you’re seeing on the runway to what’s happening in everybody else’s lives. It focuses on what people are actually shopping, what people actually desire, as opposed to what companies tell you to desire.

Georgia: What would you say is your special sauce as a writer?

Emilia: Something I’ve always had that New York Mag really encouraged and helped me identify is curiosity. I always need to know more about something or get an answer. I can’t turn that off and so I think I’m doomed to be writing forever! Also something that New York Mag encouraged was curiosity that morphs into obsessiveness. I’m not just *mildly* curious about something - I need to know EVERYTHING. I need to know what time someone was born and where, and who their past five girlfriends were. I’m hungry for more information about things. In a non-creepy way..!

Georgia: So how much do you really know about Lenny Kravitz? Is the question.

Emilia: Honestly, not enough. Never enough.

Georgia: His TikTok debut was too good. I hope he came up with that himself, even though it was probably someone clever on his team. Anyway. You’re beloved for your sense of humour in your writing. What tickles you most on other people, clothing-wise? Anything you find particularly charming or amusing?

Emilia: I mean, that hair clip that I wrote about. It’s not charming, but it’s going to haunt me, I fear, until the day I die. I see it everywhere. I guess I find it charming that somehow we all end up doing the same thing by accident.

Georgia: It’s so true, I cut my hair recently and then found out that everyone is supposedly getting a f*** ass bob. How did I not even realize that I was so susceptible to the hive mind?

Emilia: I also love when people customise something, like when they customise their Crocs or have a funny phone case. I love when people do little things that make something feel personal and where I know that they did that for them, because it makes them happy.

Georgia: I once interviewed Ryuichi Sakamoto and I had, do you remember the Chanel No.5 iPhone case with the chain?

Emilia: Yes.

Georgia: I put it down to record the interview and he politely pointed at the top and asked if it was the mic. I was like, “No, er, it’s a fragrance-shaped phone case…” I felt like such a silly fashion girl.

When it comes to getting dressed, do you have an outfit methodology?

Emilia: I think in my old age I have learned that I like what I like, and I think I’m more of a uniform dresser. I want to be experimenting more and having more fun, but I really just like wearing the same three things. Working in fashion you look around and realise everyone has their own sort of uniform. It also helps me streamline when I’m shopping, because there’s so much that I see that I want, but I can just be like, “That’s not me.” I appreciate it and someone else should wear it, but it’s not for me.

Georgia: That’s a good skill, because for most people - myself included - we think, “But it could be me.”

Emilia: Oh, don’t get me wrong. I did the closet turnover for fall/winter and was like, “Who the f*** did I think I was last fall? Where is she going in these boots? But then you get reintroduced to the person you were last year. I also feel like my [style] core is getting stronger and stronger, as I also keep buying the same thing over and over again.

Georgia: What’s the one thing that you buy the most?

Emilia: Um, I have a problem where I’m like, “I really need gold shoes.” And I think I now have about five pairs of gold shoes, because I forgot that I already bought them.

Georgia: They’re very easy to miss.

Emilia: Yeah, I mean, it’s so silly. It’s like the most base human instinct: “Shiny! I need that.”

Georgia: You had a column for The Cut called ‘Hey Fashion Friend’. What is the one thing that you wish someone had asked you?

Emilia: Somebody asked me recently over DM, “How do you do your laundry?” And I thought, actually, we don’t talk enough about how we care for our clothes. And I am curious now about how other people do their laundry. 

Georgia: How do you do your laundry?

Emilia: The answer is that I screw it up every time. I’m constantly destroying my clothes, and I need help.

Georgia: Another gold shoe bites the dust.

Emilia: It’s really bad.

Georgia: Who is your favourite person to follow and on which platform?

Emilia: The first person that comes to mind is Diane von Furstenberg on Instagram. She’s always on some yacht with Oprah and David Geffen. She just lives this insane life and has no filter, and is also really working it in her selfies, giving blue steel. Every time I see a post from her, I just crack up and slow clap.

Georgia: Where do you feel like you learn most about what people are wearing?

Emilia: The subway, for sure. I try to keep my eyes open and not be on my phone.

Georgia: What did you think when you came to the UK? Did you take the tube?

Emilia: I did. Everyone is very clean and I was especially impressed by the men in the UK. They wear clothes that fit them and everything was very neat and put together.

Georgia: I was looking through my camera roll recently, and I have so many photos from the subway when I lived in NYC. I have a photo of two girls wearing the same outfit next to one another, without realising. Then there’s one of two people getting married. I don’t know what it is about the New York subway, but it is its own fashion show.

Emilia: 100%. It’s the best show on earth.

Georgia: Emily on The Subway.

What’s your favourite piece you’ve ever written?

Emilia: The RealReal story is the one that I felt the most passionate about. It felt like I finally got something off my chest, and it felt so good to put something out there and have so many other people respond that they felt the same way - just as obsessed and just as upset. And then the Anna Wintour lunch story was an example of being able to have an idea and take it so far - too far! I just had so much fun with it.

Georgia: Do you think Anna Wintour is aware of that story?

Emilia: I think she’s aware of everything, so I’d never assume that she isn’t, but if she did think about it, it would have been for a total of half a millisecond and then she went on with her life. I don’t think it affected her at all - but it affected me.

Georgia: And is there a piece that you wish you'd never written?

Emilia: Oh god, so many! 

Georgia: Who are some other writers that you admire?

Emilia: Being able to work alongside Cathy Horyn was a total dream. I still pinch myself. What a legend. Like everybody else, I also love Rachel Tashjian. I love Matthew Schneier, who’s now killing it as the food critic for New York Mag, and what Laura Reilly’s doing with her newsletter, Magasin. So many good Substack writers: Amy Odell, Emily Kirkpatrick. I love Veronique Hyland - she used to be at The Cut before I was there and wrote the ‘Millenial Pink’ story. Gosh, there are so many people to name, I could be here all day. The people who don’t get enough praise, though, are editors. I would not be the writer I am today without Erik Maza and Izzy Grinspan. And I’ll write any story Katy Schneider and Bonnie Wertheim assign to me! 

Georgia: What are you going to wear for Halloween? 

Emilia: I’m having a crisis because I love Halloween and it’s my favourite holiday, but I don’t have any ideas this year. The fact that I don’t have an idea that I’m super excited about is really upsetting because this is a personality trait for me. My backup is always just Cher. If I can’t think of anything, I’ll probably just be, like, Cher’s Christmas album or something. She’s my North Star.

Threads of the week

The closest I’m getting to a Halloween costume this year, feat. my f*** ass bob.

Loose Threads

Miuccia + ironing = interesting.

Appreciated The Guardian’s unpacking of the Swiftie era.

Went down a YouTube rabbit hole of teenage vloggers talking about their experiences getting off social media. (No, the irony isn’t lost on me.)

As a pun enthusiast and lapsed francophile, this amused me.

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Tell me about the dish you’ve chosen.
Pick-up [vegan] saltfish with pressed fried green plantains.

Now tell me about the outfit you’ve paired it with.
I just did a pop-up at Pasero and I wore a lot of football shirts. The outfit that I’m pairing my dish with is my Jamaica Reggae Girlz kit that I got during the Women's World Cup. Football has always been a massive part of my life, so it felt right to wear this kit for my first restaurant service since 2019. [You can read more about the connection between football and fashion in this Threads of Conversation feature.]

Why did you pair these two together?
I think the kit represents the food that I made at the pop-up! Really playful and vibrant. 

How would you describe the food you make? 
I describe my style of cooking as intuitive. I love to be creative in the kitchen, and when I do pop-ups I tend to make up a brand new menu. I’m most excited about the dishes/ideas that I haven’t made yet. I love to explore my ideas and push myself to make new things all the time. 

How would you describe your style?
Playful, vibrant and fun. I love fashion and dress according to my mood. It’s an extension of my personality and so my wardrobe has so much range! I have a few vintage designer pieces, a lot of things from the brand Lazy Oaf, and I enjoy a suit. 

Do you see any connection between the creative process of cooking, and the creative process of styling yourself?
I think how I express myself in all mediums is the same. I also make music and there is a thread there with how I make food. It’s just another way of communicating how I feel. All of my dishes tell a story and I put a lot of contrasting textures and flavours in each one.

What do you usually wear in the kitchen?
I'm definitely not a ‘chef’s whites’ kind of chef. There’s something about it that feels really restrictive. I think if I opened my own restaurant, I’d design a really fun and structured two piece to wear.

Where do you get your ideas? For food and for outfits.
I think both of them are influenced by my mood. I’m very playful when it comes to styling myself, even down to accessories. I love mismatched earrings and getting fun nail art. My food veers towards fusion cooking, as it’s definitely more of a modern take on the Jamaican food I grew up eating. I love to honour my food memories. Nostalgia is such a wonderful place to create when it comes to cooking.  

What would your last meal on Earth be?
Ackee, Callaloo, roast breadfruit and fried dumplings on Frenchman’s Cove beach in Jamaica. Heaven on earth!

And what would you wear to eat it?
Ideally a semi-wet/dry bathing suit.

Threads of the week

Punk rock o’clock this week. I fulfilled all my tween dreams and went to see Blink-182 live in concert, hence the leather pants, Doc Martens and angsty denim. Also figured out how to turn my selfies into PNGs (lol). Feel free to save it and send it anytime anyone sends you a !punk ass! whatsapp.

Loose Threads

Speaking of the emo/ punk throwbacks, Jimmy Butler is an icon.

I’m really excited to read Natasha Stagg’s new book. Here’s an interview with her.

A conversation between Dev Hynes and Zadie Smith, (in which she reveals she sleeps in a custom Lil Nas X t-shirt.)

Lastly, I got a dramatic haircut this week. I was scared of this but instead I got this!

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