This is my attempt to separate the two. I go through the data (search, sales and social signals), scroll more than I’d like to admit, and pick the five trends that are worth your attention. For each one, I’ll tell you what it is, the proof that it’s real, whether it’s rising or about to burn out, and what it actually says about us.

This month’s mood: we’re buying less, playing more, and judging ourselves harder than ever.

Here are the top 5.

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This was something that was bugging me for quite some time. Every time I was looking for something online and after having scrolled for hours on Vestiaire Collective, I would decide to take a look on Vinted where I would surprisingly discover that the price range of this something I was looking for was actually better and I would spend another good hour to find out the exact item I was looking for to end up extremely overwhelmed having saved more than 100 items that not at all what I was looking for and end up buying nothing. “This has to stop here” I said to myself and I decided to solve this problem of mine once and for all.

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How did I do that?

1. I identified some of the brands I usually search lean into.

2. I identified a few item categories: jackets, dresses, rest of clothing, shoes, bags, small leather goods, accessories.

3. I identified some personal favourite second hand platforms: Vinted, Vestiaire, TheRealReal, Depop, Poshmarket, Rebag, StockX, eBay.

4. I started APIing the hell out of each of them.

5. I tag the items depending their age: Re-Sale if they are less than 15 years old, Vintage if they are older (I know the Jeffrey Campbell Lita shoes are already vintage).

6. I present you my results.

Many of you will say that Grailed does exactly what you describe BUT unfortunately they haven’t reached the perfect keyword research yet, like Vinted has for example, so I personally find it hard to find what I am looking for in Grailed so I always end up looking everywhere else.

However, I do have a business idea that I should pitch you soon.

After having analysed all the different re-sale websites this is the final ranking and let’s start from the highest level possible: which is the most expensive re-sale e-shop? Rebag is consistently the most expensive across all the samples taken while the Depop is the least expensive across all categories.

What is the most interesting to know here is which brand costs what in each of these platforms and where you should search what when you look for a specific brand. Here I have made a list of brands that I usually search for but if you want to know for more I could extend this exercise to more since I had so much fun doing it.

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Above you will find a comprehensive and most of everything interactive bar chart which will tell you the median price of each brand for each platform. I’m not very familiar with the website Rebag, which happens to be an outlier in this case, however for the rest of ones there seems to be a clear coherence in prices. I assume that Rebag has mostly bags which is the reason the prices of Hermes are landing so high compared to other platforms that have Hermes accessories and clothes too.

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Last but not least and the main reason why I originally started this exercise was the following: which category is cheaper in which platform and the answer will be seen below. As previously mentioned Rebag does only sale bags and it seems like it’s not the most expensive for it, where in the category TheRealReal is the front runner of highest price-tags. In the rest you can see that Vinted and Depop are usually the cheapest options to look for your luxury brands.

I hope you enjoyed this exercise and you found it useful. I would love to hear if there is any brand you would like to add to this exercise and I can make a part 2 with more brands and more platforms. Until then you can find my ShopMy shopping list from second hand platforms here. :)

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As usual this is the time of the year that I’m more interested than ever to check the upcoming trends. September is my fashion resolution moment and that’s why I start analysing the trends of the season, creating mood boards to organise my upcoming purchases and getting excited about the fashion month following the runways like my life depends on them. And as usual, I started by analysing the most famous e-shops (MyTheresa, SSENSE, Net-a-porter etc). However, this is never enough. It does give me a general understanding of what people tend to buy and this is usually a very monotone — slightly disappointing — gamme of colours. This year as many years we have a series of khakis, beiges, blacks and greys that they parade on the “New In” sections of these pages.

But this is never the whole truth. The e-shops “New In” section is the last, most conservative stop, in a much longer railway of amusing fashion terminals. This time I decided to trace the whole subway map of fashion industry, collecting clues from fashion blogs, journals, journalists, runway pictures, influencers and substackers. Be aware that if you have the slightest fashion interest I’M WATCHING YOU.

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Why e-shops’ “New In” section is not the truth teller?

"New In" grids measures what buyers already decided to commit budget to, which happens to be based on a market analysis that is of course combined with a trend analysis. Having worked on e-shops and online marketing my whole professional life, I can reassure you that trends and art are all fun and games, but a business is looking for the money at the end of all it. What happens is that when they look on Conversion Rates on previous seasons, and of course seasonality matters the most on that topic because you don’t have the same parade of khakis, beiges, blacks and greys during Summer, they realise that this red pump is cool and fashionable but the black one is sold out. Retail buying is deliberately risk-averse. It's the filtered end of a pipeline, not the source.

Runway

What designers actually showed, unfiltered by commercial sense. Fall/Winter 2026 collections, read via runway recaps and direct show imagery.

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Demand

What people actually search for, right now, in their own words measured independently of what anyone is trying to sell them.

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Retail Buyers

What actually landed in "New In" grids the version of the trend a buyer judged safe enough to commit inventory $$$ to.

The actual trends

From the full analysis I conducted the last couple of weeks, I ended up with some specific colours and trends that I will share with you and they are the main reason why I named this article “Trends don’t disappear, they reinvent themselves”. In terms of colours we have a pattern that continues the last couple of years: RED, PURPLE. This year to spice things up red is in a more saturated shade and purple is the actual purple and not the burgundy or the lilac version. What was also very cool is that we saw them worn together. But let’s dive on all the trends one by one.

SATURATED RED

• AS SEEN IN: Tom Ford, Celine, Balenciaga, Chanel etc.

• DEMAND: The strongest. "Red dress" was the single biggest mover of every term we tested a sharp spike, still elevated well above its year-ago baseline.

• RETAIL BUY: Present, but as wine/burgundy, Mytheresa's suede pumps and Roger Vivier bag, a darker, safer read of the colour actually surging.

PURPLE

• AS SEEN IN: Jil Sander, Balnciaga, Chloé etc

• DEMAND: Strong. "Purple dress" searches spiked hard in spring 2026 and haven't fully returned to baseline a real, sustained lift, not a one-day blip

• RETAIL BUY: Essentially absent from my Aug 26 sample across all four sites. Not one purple garment in ~330 tiles.

STATEMENT SATIN

• AS SEEN IN: Named the #1 fall buy across shopping guides "fresh silhouettes and colors" in camisoles, skirts and bags.

• DEMAND: Moderate. “Satin skirt” rose in step with the purple spike this spring and held above baseline smaller than red, but genuine

• RETAIL BUY: Present at both Mytheresa (Pucci crêpe de soie) and Net-a-Porter (Balmain silk-charmeuse maxi), one of the few trends retail actually stocked early.

BROOCHES AND STATEMENT PINS

• AS SEEN IN: Khaite's florals pinned to black lapels, Simone Rocha's rosettes, oversized blooms at Dior and Chanel; independently named "Brooched" in Pinterest's 2026 forecast.

• DEMAND: Real. A genuine, repeatable rise in "brooch" searches, smaller than red or purple, but a real signal, not noise.

• RETAIL BUY: Fine jewelry shows up at Mytheresa but isn't styled as a grid-wide statement anywhere yet.

TARTAN & BOLD CHECKS

• AS SEEN IN: Chloé, Polo Ralph Lauren, Dries Van Noten etc.

• DEMAND: Flat. "Tartan skirt" stayed essentially flat across all 12 months, no lift around fashion month, no lift now.

• RETAIL BUY: Shows up as texture, not headline, Dries Van Noten lurex plaid trousers, a Chloé check tote.

LEOPARD & ANIMAL PRINT

• AS SEEN IN: Celine and Jacquemus

• DEMAND: Flat. "Leopard print coat" shows no growth over baseline, an evergreen category being relabeled as news, not an actual spike.

• RETAIL BUY: Present but small, one leopard calf-hair bag at Farfetch was the only clear example across the whole sample.

TWO-TONE SHOES

• AS SEEN IN: Chanel's cap-toe styles; named the #2 fall buy ("wedges are out") in shopping-guide editorial.

• DEMAND: Small. The flattest line of every term tested, no search lift at all, before or after the shows.

• RETAIL BUY: Not spotted once across ~330 sampled tiles.

STATEMENT FUR

• AS SEEN IN: Gucci's belted fur coats, Chanel's multicolored furs, Schiaparelli's fur trousers, Valentino's "heirloom closet" furs.

• DEMAND: Ordinary based in season. "Fur coat" ticks up every winter regardless of runway news, this year's rise looks routine, not a breakout.

• RETAIL BUY: Shearling trims and clogs (Chloé, at Farfetch), a muted, functional version of runway's maximalism.

OVERSIZED, COCOON SILHOUETTES

• AS SEEN IN: Volume-first coats at Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton, sculptural trains at Loewe and Kallmeyer; echoed in Pinterest's "Poetcore" and "Glamoratti" forecasts for 2026.

• DEMAND: N/A. Not testable as a single search term, silhouette trends don't map to one query the way a colour or item does.

• RETAIL BUY: Lauren Manoogian's capote coats and Rick Owens Lilies' column dresses anchor SSENSE's entire new-arrivals grid.

Shop the trends

You can buy every single one of these trends using my shopping list, which I will update regularly in case you want to pin it and come back later.

The money makers

And now to finish this trend analysis I wanted to include items that are already sold-out or at the verge of being sold-out. Which in my opinion is a good indication of “What cool girls wear”. For this analysis I went a bit further with more mainstream e-shops like Zara, COS, Massimo Dutti etc. First and foremost what’s going on with this COS flap bag? Probably their season hit. Another big success of this Fall but as well as the previous one is the embellished sling-backs from Prada which I will admit that I have it on my Wishlist in green for some time now so if PRADA is looking to expand their content creator connections I will gracefully accept them as a gift. Next is this suede red pants from topshop which I hope for your own good they are not completely sold out when you read this article, but I can’t get over how good these pants will look with my white pumps and my leopard jacket. I’m so close on recreating a runway iconic Celine look. Also this checked mini dress by MiuMiu, I absolutely love it, almost sold-out. Last but not least the checked trench coat by Massimo Dutti and this COS checked wool jacket.

And that’s it, that’s a wrap. If you liked the content, don’t be shy, share with your crowd and of course subscribe it’s for free. If you didn’t like it just let me know why.

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Have you ever thought about what was cool for us millennials in our early 20s? I went into a spiral of thinking about it while reading the memoir of “Famesick” because at some point she mentions that “Girls” found her at the time that the term “Girlboss” was kind of a trend. I don’t know if GenZ is aware of this term, I assume they are, but it’s a term that emerged by and her memoir “#GirlBoss” referring how she turned her ebay shop into an empire. Basically she girlbossed so hard that she ended up owning NastyGal and having an adaptation of her memoir shown on Netflix.

However, this was an era that girlbossing was not an option. To not be a hard worker was a reason for the society to frown upon you and it was even shameful for many people to ask for days-off or to even imply that work life balance was important to them when they were interviewed for a new job. Because, yeah, what’s more shameful than wanting to come back home to your family prior to 22:00, I KNOW SHOCKER. Business was everything and I am sure there are many millennials out there that still today cannot make time for themselves, because not being productive is not an acceptable state of being.

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But, this seems to be something that Gen Z kind of left in the past. The generation that invented “Quiet Quitting” will replace the generation that invented “Burnout” and that’s, at least for me, the best thing the new generation could have offered us.

Let’s sit in a circle all together, hold hands and repeat in one voice: Being always busy is not a personality.

It’s been a couple of years that this shift is reflecting on what we wear as well. I remember (in a grandma’s voice) on my early 20s the mode was blazers. Even in many students’ parties the dress code was smart casual, which at the time was translated to brogues and blazers. Crazy, right? I wish I was wearing the micro-skirts, that I so much love right now, when I was 20 years old, but no, fashion was more “business oriented” back then.

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Things are different now. The power-suit made a small cameo on Saint Laurent’s collections since Anthony Vaccarello took over, and that’s I guess because the spirit of the brand is hiding behind the phrase of Yves Saint Laurent himself “Chanel freed women, and I empowered them.” We cannot judge the views of a guy that lived his prime creative years before the millenium turned. However, this is my substack and you read my personal opinion, which is this: you don’t need to dress like a man to feel empowered. And this is not a judgement towards Vaccarello’s collections for Saint Laurent, quite the contrary I loved so much the sharp edges matched with the baby-doll aesthetic. It’s more to say that when I envision an empowered woman, she usually wears Celine by Phoebe Philo or Chloé by Chemena Kamali or Marc Jacobs by Marc Jacobs or the laced baby-dolls of Anthony Vaccarello. The clothes become feminine and they don’t read “don’t talk to me, I have no time to lose” but more “I’m open to whatever the day will bring upon my plate.”

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And even when the blazer structure comes in, like in Celine F/W 2026 collection, it comes with a feminine touch that is allowing us to lighten our presence. I am a big fan of Kat from finance an instagram creator that is posting mirror selfies with her office looks, which happens to be a business in finance. I find her looks so refreshing, even when they are more structured you can see the creativity that a power-suit is lacking. It’s not that we are erasing power-suits from our wardrobes, it’s more that we are accepting more than that in our corporate environments.

This mentality of “I’m open to whatever the day will bring upon my plate” seems to have imprinted itself on some pop-culture discussions and popular social media profiles. My feed is full of girls strolling around spending their days doing things they want or enjoying a precious moment with their friends. Slow living has become the trend and I am so absolutely happy for this. Countries in Europe are considering the 4 days a week as the norm for working (praying to all gods available for this) and bars and cafes are popping up like mushrooms. People drink lattes and not espressos like a shot anymore, because they prefer to make time to enjoy it instead of rushing back to their dark desks. One of my favourite Instagram accounts is depicting the exact meaning of “slow-living” by capturing the Mediterranean (and beyond) life, how people enjoy long days by the beach, under the sun, reading a book or playing on the water. I know it’s a very European thing to drink and talk with friends and I know it because once I saw someone’s TikTok that was saying something along the lines of “I don’t understand why Americans idolise the European way of living. They are lazy people sitting, drinking and talking all day long”, but this became a thing in New York now, so maybe it’s not a “European thing” anymore.

And if we have learned something from the Fall/Winter 2026 collections it is that structure can be fun and femininity is so cool. Making time to spend with the people you love, or just for yourself is AMAZING. There is no deadline important enough to make me sacrifice the good lazy moments during my day.

The last few months bookclubs appear like mushrooms in a European forest during a rainy November, and I am not saying that with any judgement but quite the opposite, with an admiration for how times have changed. What I noticed is that bookreading has become cool again it started making the book covers more and more fashionable.

It’s kind of chic to sunbathe with a beautiful cover between your hands.

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Summer is the perfect moment to achieve your goodreads challenge even if you are so far behind till then; when June hits you know it’s your last chance to triumph at the end of the year and avoid feeling the condescending virtual eyes of your peers looking at your failure on the virtual library of goodreads.

I started my summer with the “Famesick” which I am pretty sure if you haven’t read yet you might as well have heard about it and I strongly recommend starting it TODAY. The book cover is the definition of the preppy it girl outfit: yellow bubble skirt, white tights and black velvet Mary Jane… the whole outfit reminded me of a new-age snow-white. In this case the poisoned apple was her will to not let anyone even imply that she wasn’t good enough for the success Girls brought into her life and the prince was the call to direct the pilot episode of the show Industry, in UK. If you have read the book you might already know that these ballet flats and this bracelet with this ring could also be a great match on her flamboyant personality. However I can also see her wearing Marc Jacobs while having a glass of wine or a cup of tea with Marc himself somewhere in Manhattan.

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Next came the “Butter” by Asako Yuzuki. A story that I don’t know how to describe without making it sound boring, which when you read the book it fascinates you in an addictive way. The cover is as fascinating as the story itself and it looks like the cover of a butter stick. If this book was an outfit it would be a red midi dress paired with these sunglasses and maybe this pair of ballet boots.

Now this was a fun book to read. I am very embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know Nora Ephron before this book came into my life. My friend, recommended “I feel bad about mu neck” and while reading it I felt I could hear Nora Ephron’s voice in my head even though I have no idea how she sounds; her voice in my head had the accent and the vivid intonation of Robby Hoffman’s voice. If I head to pick an outfit for this book would be something simple but functional and of course chic. I would pick the perfect pair of jeans (read the following with Nora’s voice): not too long so there is no shoe that will make them touch the streets of New York, but not too short because nobody wants to look like they got a handover pair of pants. I would pair it with the perfect cashmere cardigan and a nice scarf because we all feel bad about our necks after reading this. I would match this with an ankle boot not too high but not flat.

In my last book & fits recommendation I left “Eurotrash” by Christian Kracht. That’s the perfect book for winter holidays by the sea but maybe I am biased because that’s how I read it. This is a story of an old money european decadent and if it was a fit it would have been this: this oversized faux fur, a pair of horse-riding boots and a silk white shirt.

Now this is what I have gathered till now but I kind of like this books & fits theme so I might as well come back with more. What do you think?

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This year we decided to visit Ioanian islands with the initial dilemma being between Kefalonia and Ithaca. It’s been many consecutive years that Cyclades was a non-brainer. Coming from western Greece, I have spent most of my childhood Summers in Ioanian islands and the idea of a blue & white island seemed more appealing even exotic to me. That’s also the reason that after 10 years with my husband, he has never seen ANY IOANIAN ISLAND! However having a baby, the proximity of the Ioanian islands and how easy is to just take the boat from my own hometown, was literally unbeatable.

So this year, matching perfectly the timing of Nolan’s Odyssey, we decided to visit the island of the epic book of Homer. But enough with my holidays, the point of this article is to do a deep dive on Nolan’s Odyssey press tour and movie and where it stands when it comes to the Greek Bronze Age dressing and my holidays to the island-destination of the main character of Odyssey was what inspired me.

Was the Greek Goddess dressing one of this year’s INs?

“Fashion is Art” was this year’s MET Gala theme and some of the showstoppers were the fits of the Jenner sisters dressed like Nice of Samothraki (Kendall for Zac Posen) and Venus of Milos (Kylie for Schiaparelli). They were actually showstoppers, very beautifully made white/off-white dresses almost looking like raw marble and equally beautifully hugging the two young women’s curves exactly like the actual sculptures. That was a good prequel of what we are currently having with Zendaya on the Odyssey press tour.

At the New York premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, Zendaya arrived as a modern Nice of Samothraki wearing a winged dress by Matières Fécales, that they kept for two years for this occasion. Her appearances during the press tour kept being equally impressive and equally what a western designer thinks of, when they are inspired by Hellenic times, which might not be accurate but works miracles.

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What they actually wore in ancient Greece

Let’s start with the basics, Ancient Greece was not actually Greece, but the geographical area where Greece stands today split in smaller states, which were completely independent and usually in war with each other. For example, Athenians and Spartans, whom are rightfully considered Greeks on today’s world, at the time they were each others’ archenemies which led to the so called Peloponnesian war. On the one side we had the intellectual posh Athenians and on the other side we had the military driven, disciplined Spartans.

The Odyssey is supposed to happen even earlier than this time of Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), the scene of Homer is set during the Bronze Age, when the main characters of that times in the geographical area of today’s Greece were:

• Cycladic Culture (c. 3000–2000 BCE): Flourished in the central Aegean islands, famous for minimalist marble figurines and vibrant maritime networks.

• Minoan Civilization (c. 2700–1450 BCE): Centred at Knossos on Crete, characterised by sprawling unfortified palace complexes, colourful frescoes, and an undeciphered script called Linear A.

• Mycenaean Civilization (c. 1600–1100 BCE): The first Greek-speaking civilisation on the mainland, known for militaristic kingdoms, massive Cyclopean citadel walls, shaft graves, and the Linear B script.

Mycenaean is where Odysseus comes from and Agamemnon the king of Mycenaeans. The Mycenaean women were wearing the tiered, flounced skirt with a fitted bodice open or cut low at the breast. What we picture, the peplos, the chiton, the himation etc, appeared much later in the Archaic-Classic period of Greece and mainly Athens. The tricky part here is that Homer is narrating a story that was a heroic legend that takes place many centuries before his time, so what Homer does is what we now call anachronism, he is describing details that belong more to his time than the time that the story happens.

The usual misconceptions

Two beliefs are just beliefs, because both are load-bearing for the fantasy.

The first is that any of it was white. It wasn’t. Greek sculptures were painted vividly, and the pristine-marble ideal we inherited is an 18th-century invention, the aesthetic gospel of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the Neoclassicists who wanted antiquity to be as clean and cerebral as they were. Real dress ran to saffron yellow, to the eye-watering expense of murex purple, to woven patterned borders. The white column is not what the Greeks wore. It’s what a much later Europe decided they should have worn.

The second is the helmet. The sculptural, crested, full-face Corinthian helmet, the one your brain files under “ancient Greek soldier”, doesn’t appear until around 700 BCE, a good five centuries after the Odyssey‘s setting. What the text actually describes, over in the Iliad, is a boar’s-tusk helmet: rows of split tusks sewn onto a leather cap, handed to Odysseus like an heirloom. And we know that because the real ones have been pulled out of Mycenaean graves (one of them situated literally 1km away from the house of my parents’ where I grew up). It’s one of the rare moments where Homer’s description matches an object you can go and stare at in a museum in Greece, a genuine Bronze Age memory, preserved by oral tradition across centuries and then, in 2026, quietly swapped out for the more photogenic broom-crest.

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How to actually dress like an Odyssey real-life character

Searching clothes is actually what I enjoy as much as researching for these historical pieces, so I couldn’t leave you without sharing some recommendations of modern designers that match the style of a Mycenaean. You can find the full shopping list of pieces inspired by the heroes of Odyssey here.

To conclude, the greek goddess might be indeed a modern invention but it’s an invention that I personally try to replicate on my holidays, because it’s so flattering to wear a white top on a tanned skin with a blue background. So as I previously mentioned there is no shame towards any styling decision, just observations and to prove that here are some of my holidays outfits for your judgement.

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Once upon a time (yes, we’re doing this properly), six art students in Antwerp accidentally invented modern fashion branding. No money, no connections, and, the important part, no internet. What they did have was chaos, glue sticks, and zero chill. Here’s how six kids with nothing turned themselves into “the Antwerp Six,” a name so sticky it’s still stamped across a museum wall today.

Where it all started

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp had been around since 1946, teaching the usual: painting, sculpture, the serious stuff. Fashion design wasn’t even a class until 1963, when they finally let a former painting student, Mary Prijot, teach it. Old school didn’t begin to cover her; she made students copy historical costumes by hand, in pen and black ink, before they were allowed to design anything of their own. Two of her students, Marina Yee and Ann Demeulemeester, just... didn’t do it. Refused, flat out, until the rule quietly disappeared. And honestly, that’s the whole story of the Antwerp Six in one paragraph: give them a rule, and their first move is to break it politely until it goes away.

Walter Van Beirendonck (an original member) and Martin Margiela (NOT an original member, but I will never not think of him when this story comes up) both signed up in 1976 after reading about the course in a magazine. Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee showed up the year after and landed in the same classroom. Six teenagers, one strict teacher and one very messy shared future ahead of them. By graduation they’d already won their first fight, insisting on real models and a real show instead of whatever the department was suggesting.

This rebellion reflects on their style since then.

1. Ann is the black and white master with designs that take your breath away and a unique way to shape.

2. Walter Van Beirendonck is the punk anarchist that has decided that unconventional couldn’t even begin describing him.

3. Dries Van Noten is the master of patterns and pleats and textures (and accessories and shoes in general).

4. Marina Yee had the talent to make minimalism look flamboyant.

5. Dirk Bikkembergs introduced the concept of athletes off duty attire.

6. Dirk Van Saene, now a sculptor, had always the eye for the human form.

How they crashed every party in Paris

Here’s my favourite bit: none of them had a name yet, no press knew who they were, and they still got into the actual Paris shows: Saint Laurent, Mugler, Montana, the designers they worshipped… by copying invitations. Dries Van Noten’s dad ran a menswear shop with the right contacts, and later Linda Loppa (their new department head) helped too. But a lot of it was just... faking it till making it. No RSVP link, no assistant to email, no comms team standing between them and the door. If nobody was going to invite you, you made an invitation that looked like the original, and you walked in like you meant it. And to be fair the show invitations at the time were so boring that even a middle-schooler could replicate them.

The other unofficial cheat code was the Golden Spindle, a government-funded design contest meant to save Belgium’s textile industry, of all things. Not exactly glamorous. The first edition in 1982 was a video of sixty outfits, that’s it. But the six of them treated it like a launchpad anyway, by 1983 it had turned into an actual runway show at Brussels City Hall (Dirk Van Saene won), and by 1984 the finalists were on a government-paid trip to Tokyo, watching a Comme des Garçons show and realising fashion wasn’t just clothes, it was the whole ecosystem: photos, catalogues, the shop itself. A boring textile subsidy accidentally became their first trip abroad.

Check the shopping list I prepared only for you here.

They made invitations a whole personality

Once people started paying attention, the Six turned every piece of paper they touched into a whole moment. There’s a wall in the exhibition just for their invitations, and it’s honestly the most “them” part of the show. Van Beirendonck turned random objects: a torch, a watch, a keyring, into mascots for each collection. Demeulemeester printed hers on Bible paper, so they felt fragile and a little holy. Bikkembergs started with a horseshoe (there was a Horses collection, make of that what you will) before going full glam. Van Saene did collage. These were printed in tiny numbers, handed only to press and buyers, and most got binned right after the show, which, obviously, is exactly why the ones that survived are worth something now (you’ll spot a few if you ever wander into Ephemera). Nobody told them invitations mattered. They just decided they did and probably they are the reason why invitations are a thing today.

The flyer that saved the whole trip

March 1986, London, the group finally gets a booth at the British Designer Show, a real deal, buyers, press, the works. And they get stuck with sixty-four square metres on the second floor, wedged in next to the bridal section. Nobody ever is visiting their booth there. So what do they do? Design their own flyer, print it themselves, and go hand it out on the show floor like it’s a street team promo. And it worked?! Dries sold his whole collection to Barneys New York off the back of it. Everyone else picked up international orders too, and by the next season they were all over The Face, i-D, Elle UK, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Queen. Possibly the single best marketing decision of their entire careers, and it cost them a print run and some nerve.

Nobody actually named them “the Antwerp Six”

Funniest part of this whole story: they never picked the name. It first shows up in a Belgian newspaper in September 1985, covering a runway show they threw themselves in a warehouse by the river, three thousand people paid to be there, which is wild for six people barely out of school, and the paper just casually called them “the infamous Antwerp six,” like that was already a known thing. Two years later in London, they each had their own booth, own logo, own collection, but one shared sign that said “The Six Belgian Designers.” International journalists took one look at six unpronounceable Flemish surnames and gave up, and “the Six” became the easy version everyone used instead. So the most famous name in Belgian fashion history was basically invented by lazy headline writers who didn’t want to learn how to spell Demeulemeester. Nobody in that room sat down and branded themselves. It just happened to them.

Three years into being “the Antwerp Six,” things got messy. In September 1987, someone actually broke into their publicist’s office and stole almost everything, Demeulemeester and Yee’s whole collections, most of Bikkembergs’, half of Van Noten’s. Gone. No clothes left to shoot for that season, so they missed a whole round of press. And then, because giving up was apparently not an option, in 1988 they threw together a guerrilla runway show in London anyway, with no official backing, funded through their own contacts, catwalk built out of six wooden boxes because that’s what the budget allowed. It was a hit with the press and a headache for London’s fashion establishment, who basically told them: commit properly or don’t bother. So they picked Paris instead. Bikkembergs went solo that September; the other five did one last show together that October. And that was it, the “Six” as one unit was done after about three years.

What actually gets me about this whole story isn’t that six people became famous. It’s that nobody handed them a single thing. No platform, no PR machine, no algorithm doing the work while they slept. They forged their way into rooms, turned a yarn subsidy into a world tour, printed their own flyers when nobody would print one for them, and built a catwalk out of boxes when they were broke. And somehow that’s the version still on a museum wall thirty-nine years later, not the polished one.

They all went their own ways after. Van Noten built the biggest, most commercially successful house of the group before stepping back in 2024 and opening his own foundation in Venice. Van Beirendonck stayed loud and weird and eventually ran the very department that trained him. Van Saene quietly swapped clothes for sculpture. And Marina Yee, who left the spotlight earliest and spent years teaching instead, passed away last November, the exhibition mentions it in the same plain tone it uses for everything else, no big send-off, which honestly feels like the most Antwerp Six way to end a story: no drama, just the facts, next paragraph please.

If any of this made you want a piece of it you can find their pieces on my list.

It’s this time of year indeed, the time when you paid for the tickets to a seaside destination eight months ago, that you were longing to go to while the temperature was barely climbing above 20 degrees Celsius in your hometown, and the time you thought making a bag for a week would be so easy because “it’s summer clothes, they take less space, I can survive with just a cabin bag,” but then the items you “absolutely need” pile up. I’m here to tell you: you don’t absolutely need everything. Actually, you just need sixteen items (only ten of them being clothing) that can work for various occasions.

Starting with the logic

When I make a bag, I use this system: everything should match everything else in colour and style, and everything should be able to be worn on any occasion (except a wedding, because that needs special handling). And this is the way it should go. Your travel tote should be a beach tote, your clutch should double as a tote pouch, your beach shoes should be comfortable enough to be worn on your city strolls, and your pareo cute enough to be worn as a skirt during sunset cocktails. If you keep that in mind, you’ll have the simplest life you could ask for.

What’s in the bag

THE FIXED SET · EVERYTHING EARNS ITS PLACE

SWIMWEAR

• Regatta swimsuit by Miraclesuit or the Jacquemus pink one

• bikini

• pareo long or short depends on your preference. I love the brand aeraki because they are doing the design and production all locally in Greece.

CLOTHING

• Jenni dress by Miraclesuit

• baby tee which I love so much that I could see any of those working like a charm

• white shirt

• silk, linen or linen-blend pull-on pants or a pair of jeans if you are not the silk type

• shorts

SHOES

• Havaianas or Birkenstocks or any comfortable flat sandal like this (depending on your preference)

• flat sandals: any of those would work

• heeled sandals

BAGS & EXTRAS

• beach tote this or this

• a simple or more luxury clutch but please no monograms are allowed in summer destinations

• silk scarf

• sunglasses

• gold jewellery but mix in some fun ones too.

The math. Sixteen pieces, worn ten ways or more, and several refuse to do just one job. The swimsuit becomes a top, the scarf becomes a top, a headscarf, and a bag accessory, the poplin layers over swim or dress, and one Jenni dress carries you from the market to the fancy dinner. I won’t mention the basics, of course, underwear and beauty products, but you know what you need there. Also, I find that at a summer destination you need as little make-up as possible, because the glow the good life gives you beats any Rhode product. But you definitely need a perfume that fits all like this or this.

Here are some of the possible combinations but sky is the limit.

Daylight

1. Travel day — silk pull-on pants, baby tee, Havaianas, beach tote, sunglasses, silk scarf

2. City & sightseeing — Regatta swimsuit (worn as a top), silk pants, flat sandals, scarf on the head, sunglasses

3. Beach & pool — bikini or swimsuit, pareo, poplin shirt, Havaianas, beach tote

4. Lazy lunch — shorts, poplin shirt, flat sandals, beach tote, sunglasses

5. Market & wander — shorts, baby tee, Havaianas, beach tote, headscarf, sunglasses

6. Daytime dress — Jenni dress, flat sandals, headscarf, sunglasses

7. Shopping — silk pants, bikini top, poplin shirt left open but tucked in, tote bag

After dark

8. Dinner — silk pants, silk scarf (worn as a top), heeled sandals, clutch

9. Fancy dinner — Jenni dress, heeled sandals, gold jewellery, clutch

10. Sunset drinks — Jenni dress, poplin shirt (layered), gold jewellery, heeled sandals, clutch

11. Aperitivo — silk pants, baby tee, heeled sandals, gold jewellery, clutch

Is this too little to ask? I personally have found the perfect ratio of things needed for a trip with this combo. Where are you travelling this summer? I would love to help you make your bag :)

P.S. While I was preparing this piece I roamed on instagram and saw this amazing baby-tee that my friend posted and thought to do a shoutout.

I tracked 30 art references across the 2026 red carpet, specific artworks, movements, periods, institutions. Then I ran a second dataset: virality scores, built from appearances across every major best-dressed list published in the 24 hours after the carpet closed. What I found was a gap as big as the one between the columns of Parthenon (you see what I did there).

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PART ONE: THE SAFE BET AND THE STRANGE BET

The most-worn art movement at the 2026 Met Gala was Classical Antiquity. Five separate looks referenced ancient Greece, marble statues, Nice of Samothrace, draped goddess silhouettes. It is, in the language of trend forecasting, a very safe read of a brief. Ancient Greek sculpture is taught in every art history 101. It photographs well. It flatters. Nobody gets it wrong.

The internet did not care as much though.

Beyoncé’s skeleton dress, abstract, surrealist, nothing you could point to in a textbook, scored a 10 out of 10 in virality. Every major outlet named it the look of the night. Eileen Gu wore Iris van Herpen with actual bubbles drifting off the fabric as she walked; surrealist, conceptually rigorous, completely unplaceable in a single movement, also top five, making Iris Van Herpen going viral second year in a row with rather an outsider as a model. Emma Chamberlain wore a Mugler gown that looked like a Van Gogh painting had been poured over her body; Post-Impressionist, yes, but *felt* heavily cited.
The data point here is simple and a little devastating: frequency does not equal virality. Classical references appeared five times. Their combined virality score: 10. Surrealism and abstract references appeared three times. Their combined score: 17.

The carpet chose safety in numbers. The internet chose strangeness.

If Beyoncé’s skeleton and Eileen Gu’s bubbles taught us anything, it’s that the algorithm rewards feeling over citation. Here’s what surrealism looks like when you actually have to go to work on Monday.

• A Jacquemus sculpture like this midi dress worn with a surrealistically small Le Chiquito bag. It also works as a perfect colour combo.

• A Pleats Please Issey Miyake anything.

• A Fenty beauty highlighter to give this iridescence from another world.

• A scarf by Dries Van Noten.

• Also this dress I found by The Garment and it’s spectacular.

PART TWO: THREE WOMEN, ONE PAINTING, AND WHAT THAT TELLS US

Let’s talk about Madame X.

John Singer Sargent painted her in 1884. She scandalized Paris. She is now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the very building the gala was held in. And on May 4, 2026, three separate celebrities independently decided she was the reference. Lauren Sánchez Bezos. Julianne Moore. Claire Foy.

This is not coincidence. This is a mood board going viral.

When three people arrive at the same painting independently, it means the painting has been circulating, on Pinterest, on the stylist call, on the reference deck. The artwork has become a *trend*. And that distinction matters, because it means what looked like art literacy was actually trend diffusion wearing the costume of art history. The red carpet didn’t discover Sargent. The red carpet confirmed that Sargent was already having a moment.

This is, incidentally, exactly how fashion works with everything. The piece that appears “suddenly everywhere” was circulating in the underground for 18 months before you noticed it. The Met Gala just made it legible.

The Sargent cluster is the most Chaotic Data data point of the night, not one woman but three, all arriving at the same painting. The look: dark, draped, portrait-ready. The question: who sent the mood board first?

• The Rotate Birger Christensen black gown.

• A dark lip by Westman Atelier.

• Totême black dress (the Sargent woman IRL).

• Or the maxi dress by Miracle Suit (shapeware in a dress form, two birds one stone).

• A pearl drop earring.

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PART THREE: THE CANON HAS A GEOGRAPHY PROBLEM

90% of art references on the 2026 Met Gala red carpet came from Western European sources. The Louvre. The Met. The Uffizi. The National Gallery. Artists born in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Greece.

The remaining 10%? Angela Bassett in Laura Wheeler Waring, Harlem Renaissance, Smithsonian collection. Law Roach in a hand-painted commission by Gabonese artist Naïla Opiangah. Karan Johar in Raja Ravi Varma.

These were, some of the most thoughtful interpretations of the brief. Angela Bassett described her look as being about “stepping into your power.” Law Roach wore a living artist. Karan Johar brought an entire colonial history into the building.

In case you’d like to, here’s where to start with some non-western items:

• Ahluwalia is a London-based but Nigerian-Punjabi heritage, perfect for your identity piece.

• Bode made from eBay up-cycled garments.

PART FOUR: WHAT THE DATA ACTUALLY SAYS

Pull back and you have three findings that are, together, a complete theory of how fashion culture operates in 2026.

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1. The carpet leans toward safety: canonical Western art, well-lit, widely taught. Classical Antiquity was the most-worn movement. Three people wore the same Sargent.

2. The internet leans toward strangeness but only within a familiar tradition. Beyoncé’s skeleton works because you can feel that it’s riffing on something even if you can’t name it. The bubbles work because they create spectacle within a legible art-object frame. Completely unfamiliar traditions, no matter how beautiful or thoughtful, don’t register the same way, because the algorithm can’t place them on a syllabus it already knows.

3. The most viral looks weren’t referencing a specific museum or collection at all. “Various / no fixed address” won the virality chart. What went viral was a *mood*: surrealism as texture, post-impressionism as color language, cinema as medium. The internet doesn’t care about provenance. It cares about feeling.
   
   Which brings us back to the gala’s own curator, Andrew Bolton, who said the exhibition was about putting “the body back into discussions about art and fashion.” The data suggests the internet agrees, but only for certain bodies, and only for certain art.

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   For the full collection click below:

On April 28th, on a sun-soaked runway in Biarritz, the place where Coco Chanel first built her codes a century ago, Matthieu Blazy sent models down in what the house called a “barefoot heel cap.” Thin straps wrapped around the ankles, a small covering at the heel, and that was it. Not quite barefoot, not quite a sandal. Technically a shoe. Optically a foot-fetishist dream.

The internet, as expected, went mental. “Recession indicators: half a shoe from Chanel,” someone wrote on Threads. Others called it freakish, foot-guy’s dream, absurd. The romanticizing-poverty discourse followed swiftly, the idea that luxury fashion was once again aestheticizing scarcity, turning the visual language of not having into an expensive costume for those who have everything. Like idolizing skinny when you have access to all type of abundance.

I hear you but I have my own opinions.

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Because here’s what the barefoot heel cap is actually telling me: it is a shoe designed for someone who does not walk.

At least not in the way the rest of us walk. Not on pavements, not through airports, not across the gap between the subway platform and the carriage. Not in the kind of accumulated, mundane, physical life that the majority of the human population moves through every single day. The heel cap makes total sense if your feet never truly touch the ground, if you go from a temperature-controlled apartment to a waiting car, from a car to a private entrance, from a private entrance to wherever it is that extremely wealthy people spend their time. For that life, the heel cap is not incomplete. It’s perfectly calibrated. It’s a “in-your-face I have money moment”.

This is not a new observation dressed in new clothes. There’s a detail from the costume design of Succession that I keep returning to. Michelle Matland, the show’s costume designer, noted that none of the Roy family ever wear actual winter coats. Not because Michelle doesn’t do a good job, but because people at that level of wealth are almost never exposed to weather. They move between sealed, climate-controlled environments, the penthouse, the SUV, the lobby, the jet, without ever standing outside long enough to get cold. The coat is a garment that solves a problem they simply do not have.

The heel cap is fashion’s version of that logic. It is not romanticizing poverty. It is revealing the invisible infrastructure of extreme wealth, the ecosystem of convenience that means your feet, like the rest of us, are permanently insulated from consequence.

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Thorstein Veblen, writing in 1899, gave us the concept of conspicuous consumption: the idea that luxury goods signal status through their visible expensiveness. But the heel cap operates on something slightly different, something we might call conspicuous non-function. It doesn’t signal status by being expensive. It signals status by being useless to anyone with a real life. The item proves wealth not through a logo or a price tag, but through the implied circumstances of its wearer.

And this is where it gets interesting. Because this kind of accessory doesn’t just reflect extreme wealth, it encodes it. It is legible only to those who understand what it requires to wear it comfortably. It is insider language for a very specific body: one that does not sweat, does not rush, does not encounter the texture of ordinary life. In that sense, it is more exclusive than any logo. A logo can be copied. The circumstances required to genuinely pull off a barefoot heel cap cannot.

Don’t tell me you don’t imagine the Kardashian sisters wearing this accessory on one of their Cabos trip.

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Blazy himself told WWD that even his own team initially pushed back: “At some point, someone told me, ‘It’s too much.’” He disagreed, and he was right, not because the shoe is wearable, but because the best runway pieces aren’t supposed to be worn. They’re supposed to say something. And this one, whether intentionally or not, says something very precise: luxury is no longer performing aspiration. It is performing distance. And how else are the actual rich people show off their richness when everyone holds a Kelly nowadays?

They need to distance from practicality, distance from pavement, distance from the version of life where you need your shoes to actually do anything.

The old luxury fantasy was that if you saved enough, worked hard enough, you too could access this world. The new luxury language is increasingly interested in reminding you that you cannot, that the gap is not just financial but structural, logistical, physical. You cannot wear this shoe because you have places to be and ways of getting there that this shoe was simply not designed for. You cannot because no matter how much money you make you are still not that rich.

Coco Chanel built her house on the radical idea that women should be able to move. A century later, on the same stretch of French coastline, her house sent out a shoe for women who don’t have to. For Coco Chanel the woman moving was the luxury of the time and for Mathieu Blazy luxury is to not have to move.

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The performance aspect

A wedding is one of the most loaded social occasions in existence, which means getting dressed for one is never just getting dressed. Erving Goffman (1922 - 1982), the sociologist who spent his career arguing that all social life is essentially theatre, would have so much fan analysing the wedding guest. According to Goffman, in the presence of others, individuals try to influence the situation by presenting themselves in a favourable way, clothes being a central tool of this let’s call it “impression management.” At a wedding, the audience is maximum, the stakes feel high, and the rules are simultaneously rigid and completely unwritten. You must look appropriate but not boring. Festive but not attention-seeking. Like you tried, but not too hard.

The specific anxiety of wedding guest dressing is that you are performing for multiple audiences at once, the couple that honoured you with an invitation, their families, your own social circle, people you haven’t seen in years, people you’re about to meet for the first time. Goffman’s distinction between the “front region”, the social role people adopt publicly, and the “back region”, where they relax their appearance, is particularly sharp here. A wedding collapses the two: it’s formal enough to demand a front region performance, intimate enough that the back region self keeps coming out. The perfect dose of formal meets personality.

Why is it that stressful?

Weddings often bring extended family together, and psychologists note that family dynamics frequently resurface old conflicts and unresolved tensions, during major life events like these. Which means the outfit isn’t just clothing it’s your armour which you wear to meet that aunt that considered you a failure for not becoming a doctor. It’s the thing you put between yourself and a room full of people who have known you at various unflattering points in your life, plus a collection of strangers who are forming their first impression of you. It’s like a red-carpet event with photographers and people interviewing you on life points, and if that’s not stressful then what.

There’s actual science behind why getting dressed well for this kind of occasion matters beyond aesthetics. Adam and Galinsky’s research on “enclothed cognition” (not the first time I talk about it) the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychology ,proposes that this works through two factors: the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them. In simple terms: wearing something that feels right doesn’t just make you look more confident, it makes you feel more capable of navigating the room. The dress is doing psychological work.

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Etiquette to add on the anxiety

The real difficulty with wedding guest dressing is that the rules are socially enforced but rarely explicitly stated. Dress codes on invitations “beach formal,” “black tie optional,” “garden party” are famously unhelpful. Misunderstandings around wedding dress codes can cloud relationships and turn joyous occasions into tense affairs, which tells you everything about how much weight these choices actually carry socially. I will never forget my friend thinking that is totally fine to wear a white lace dress on my wedding day. She was totally clueless on the topic and hopefully she discussed it with me beforehand but imagine how she would have been seen if she decided to go for it without asking for an advice.

The implicit rules are roughly: don’t wear white (still, yes, always), don’t outshine the couple, don’t underdress to the point of seeming like you don’t care, don’t overdress to the point of seeming like you’re making it about you. Within those constraints, you are entirely free. This is why it’s so hard, unlimited freedom within glass walls.

What to wear based on the venue

This is where the practical payoff lives, structured around the psychological insight from above. The framing: pick an outfit, that is the version of yourself you want to perform that night. So the question isn’t “what’s appropriate”, it’s “what do I want to communicate, and what will make me feel most like myself while doing it?”

The formal / black tie wedding The occasion where enclothed cognition works hardest in your favour. This is permission to go full “front region” structure, formality, something with weight to it. You want to feel like you belong in the room, which means dressing to the level of the event rather than down from it. The good news are that STAUD has amazing sample sales, and an extra 30% or 35% till 27 April. Don’t walk, run… But here are some black tie recs from the STAUD sales.

• The Elodie blue dress

• The Cadence dress or in this delicious gold color

• Paloma for a pop of color

• Brigitte mule in any color goes with every option above

The outdoor / countryside wedding The trap here is romanticising comfort at the expense of looking like you tried. The psychological move is to pick one elevated element, a heel that works on grass, a fabric that reads formal even in a relaxed silhouette, and let the rest be easy.

• The cutest floral dress or in this shape and color.

• Calluna dress in every possible color

• Or any organza option

• And I wouldn’t say no to this cute linen one.

• And don’t forget to go either for flat or for block heels since the heel might dip in the grass or soil.

The city hall / intimate wedding Counterintuitively the hardest to dress for, because “relaxed” reads as “didn’t bother” without intention. The brief is: dressed up, just quietly. Think something with an interesting cut or colour rather than obvious formality.

• Love this one in yellow, the one shoulder shows an effort

• I’m obsessed with this pink for this wedding season

• A little cutie for a more urban vibe

• And for the cool girl option here you have it

• Again any Brigitte would do but I would also see it with a kitten heel thong.

The destination / summer wedding abroad /*insert Europecore piece*/ this is exactly the territory of Faithfull, Doen, Eres we saw on my previous article. The brief is “effortless” which, as we now know, requires significant effort. Fabric weight matters enormously, you want something that travels and doesn’t read as crumpled by ceremony time.

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SECTION 1 | Slim Aarons invented this feeling

This is the origin of the aesthetic. After witnessing the violence of World War Two, Aarons took a sharp turn and began documenting the affluent lives of the Hollywood elite, eventually relocating to Rome and creating a glittering world of rich Americans on holiday in Europe (HASTA). The fantasy was never European in origin, it was an idyllic American vision of escape from instability, recession and the traumas of war (HASTA). See Audrey Hepburn, a Belgium born actress, that made her career as a Hollywood actress, starring in movies that were selling the intellectual and aesthetically pleasing time spent in big European capitals (Roman Holidays, Funny Face, Secret People etc) and of course having the leading role dressed from head to toe with the latest designs of the biggest European Haute Couture designers. But, back to Aaron and what endures about Aarons’ photography is not its aestheticism but its acknowledgement of an idealised fantasy (Varsity), and that fantasy has never really stopped circulating. It just keeps finding new vessels.

SECTION 2 | The fantasy goes mass

From Slim Aarons’ pages of Life and Holiday magazine to TikTok. The current obsession with “Europecore” runs deeper than a trend, after years of political upheaval, many young people are rebuking American culture, which is reflected in how they dress. “Planning outfits for my European summer to escape current reality,” posted one New York creator. (Nylon) The aesthetic is explicitly escapist, and spring is when it peaks, seasonally, emotionally, commercially. The clothes aren’t really about Europe. They’re about the desire to be somewhere that isn’t here, doing something that isn’t this.

Participating in Europecore is about wearing flirty, frivolous clothes you’d feel comfortable wearing on vacation but wouldn’t usually wear at home, it represents the idea of a European vacation more than it reflects actual European fashion trends. (Nylon) Which is the tell. Actual Europeans, myself included for what it’s worth, are largely wearing the same things everyone else is. Because we all buy from this big universal market.

SECTION 3 | The brands and what they’re actually selling

This is where the brand analysis lives. The interesting thing about this cluster of brands is that almost none of them are actually European, and the ones that are have carefully constructed a version of “European-ness” that is more legible to an international consumer than anything locals actually wear.

• Faithfull the Brand — designed in Australia and made in Bali (RUSSH), selling perpetual Mediterranean summer. The irony is structural and almost beautiful. Faithfull the Brand very strategically knowing their crew named some of their summer pieces of their new collection “Playa” or “Sable” is that a coincidence? I doubt.

• Doen — Californian, deeply committed to a soft, romantic, vaguely old-world aesthetic that reads as “European” through the filter of Northern California light. Like this Doên top that is called “traveller top”. If that’s not micro signalling of escapism then what is?

• Sézane — genuinely French, but has exported a very specific version of French femininity that is arguably more about the international appetite for Paris than about Paris itself. Its slogan “je ne sais quoi for all” tells you everything about the transaction. (BrandRated). Tell me that you see this dress and you don’t imagine yourself walking on the narrow streets of a Mediterranean island.

• Rouje — the most “authentic” in origin, founded by Jeanne Damas, but also the most self-conscious about performing Frenchness for an international gaze. For example, I don’t remember having ever seen a Parisian wearing this nonetheless beautiful bag with a matching scarf top. I wish I had both but that would still not make me more European.

• & Other Stories — Swedish-owned, Paris-designed, aesthetically very South of France, completely untroubled by the geography. Is there something more Europecore than a gingham dress… don’t think so.

The point isn’t that any of this is fraudulent. It’s that the “effortless” is always constructed, and the “European” is always a projection. The brands that sell it best are the ones who understand they’re selling a feeling, not a place.

SECTION 4 | Why spring specifically

Chaotic data

When the shoppies hit

I heard this term from a reel that Esther Eve Shechtman shared on her stories and which I can’t find the original anymore to give proper credits, but it’s a term that I decided to keep because it describes my whole psychosynthesis at the moment. I have the shoppies…

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7 months ago · 1 like · Elisavet Fakou

The sociology of the seasonal spike as we discussed on a previous article. Spring purchasing is driven partly by genuine wardrobe need and partly by a collective emotional reset, the desire to shed the weight of winter, literally and metaphorically. The European summer fantasy feeds directly into this because it offers not just new clothes but a new self: lighter, slower, somewhere with better light. Research on seasonal affect and consumer behavior supports this, spring is when aspirational purchasing peaks precisely because we are most hungry for transformation. The brands know this. Their campaign timing, their lookbook locations, their linen drops in March, all of it is calibrated to meet us at our most escapist.

SECTION 5 | The close

Come back to the image from the opening. The linen, the terrace, the light. Ask whether it matters that the fantasy is constructed. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe that’s what fashion has always done, offered us versions of lives we want to try on. But there’s something worth naming about the specific hunger this aesthetic meets right now: the desire for slowness, for ease, for a life that doesn’t require so much. The European summer fantasy it’s just a fantasy, we all work here, but you can join for the vibes.

You can find the full Europcore inspired list here.

There are weeks that everything feels fine and calm and then there are weeks when I open ten different browser tabs, before even my morning coffee. There are insomnia nights that find me scrolling on the Ssense sales and lazy lunch breaks that find me on the Vinted feed scrolling and scrolling not because I need something but I would like to have something fresh. That’s the shoppies.

I don’t know if this is a feeling related to Spring, when the nature rebirths, my wardrobe also needs a breathe of fresh air. Or maybe it’s because I love this season and I find it the nicest period to get dressed. Could it be because brands do mid-season sales at this period? Maybe this is a “who came first the egg or the chicken” type of question, do I get the seasonal shoppies because of the brands suggesting mid-season sales, or the brands know about the seasonal shoppies and they throw a bait by doing mid-season sales?

So as you can imagine, I decided to go with the flow and start buying, but before telling you what I bought, I will tell you what I found out on the seasonal shoppies and if it’s actually a thing.

Long story short seasonal shoppies it’s a thing…

• Sunlight has a measurable positive effect on mood, from seasonal depression to seasonal shoppies, this can’t be a coincidence, and people do spend more when they feel upbeat according to the research of Kyle Murray on his piece The effect of weather on consumer spending. Sunny days actually correlate with higher foot traffic in stores.

• Web traffic for dresses is 16% higher in spring than in summer, and lawn and garden traffic surges a remarkable 61% during spring break week. It’s something about the season that makes people want to buy.

• In psychology today we read about the psychological aspect of a shopping spree and that even the simple thought of buying something, can trigger changes in our neurochemistry.

• According to post on the topic, buying items reduces sadness 40 times more effectively than just window shopping.

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And after this long intro, which had as a purpose to make me and anyone with shoppies reading this piece to feel slightly less guilty here is what I bought on my seasonal shoppies.

1. ALPACA-BLEND CARDIGAN FROM & Other Stories

2. and a sheer long sleeve top again from & Other Stories

3. The highlight of the year my Red Light mask which you can find here if you are in EU or here if you are in US. And if you have puffy eyes… run don’t walk.

4. I bought the limited edition tights of Leandra’s collection with Swedish Stockings I guess they are already sold out.

5. I also bought a second hand but never worn (bingo!) Balenciaga dress from Vestiaire Collective which looked a lot like this one. I wore the last 2 together with a pair of black sandals I already had.

6. But I bought these Melissa clogs because I thought they will look great with my new tiger legs.

7. I also bought a similar with this pair of golden sandals.

8. A similar skirt with this asymmetric one, I got it in white.

9. And these pair of pants that I was eyeing them for so long.

10. On a moment of clarity last fall I bought this parka from uniqlo which now feels like second skin.

11. And here is a comprehensive list of everything I didn’t buy but I would like to so you might buy it instead of me.

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The feeling before the thought

You’re scrolling through a brand’s new collection, let’s say 7 for all mankind for the sake of this paradigm, and something stops you. A low-rise waistband. A chunky platform. A goth vibe that has no business being this specific and yet feels so familiar. You can’t quite place it, and then you can. You were 15. It was 2007. You are watching Gossip Girl and Jenny Humphrey is wearing the exact same outfit.

This is not a coincidence. This is the fashion industry doing what it has always done, with a precision that borders on science.

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The 20-Year Rule

If you are here you might already know about the “20-year cycle”, the idea that trends return roughly two decades after their original moment. But in recent years, researchers have started to take this seriously.

Psychologist Cristel Antonia Russell, who studies nostalgic consumption, argues that nostalgia functions as a temporal self-appraisal tool, we don’t just miss the past, we use it to make sense of who we are now. When a generation comes of age economically (i.e., gets disposable income), they reach back to the era that shaped their identity: their early teens.

The math is almost embarrassingly clean:

• The 1990s were everywhere in the 2010s

• Y2K (early 2000s) exploded in 2020–2022

• 2010s aesthetics (normcore, Instagram maximalism) are already creeping back in 2025–2026

This isn’t just nostalgia as accident. It’s nostalgia as business model.

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Why the Brain Is Complicit

Neuroscience adds another layer. Nostalgic memories are stored differently from regular memories, they are encoded with stronger emotional charge, often during adolescence, a period of intense identity formation. According to research published in the journal Memory, nostalgic recall activates the brain’s reward system in ways that ordinary positive memories do not.

This means fashion houses aren’t just selling clothes. They are selling neurological shortcuts back to a felt sense of self. The dopamine hit is real. The purchase almost makes sense.

Psychologist Constantine Sedikides, one of the leading researchers on nostalgia, describes it as “a yearning for a personally experienced, valued past” and crucially, one that reduces existential anxiety. In periods of collective uncertainty (a pandemic, an economic downturn, a general sense that everything is moving too fast), nostalgia surges. It is psychic armour dressed up as a trend.

The Industry’s Dirty Secret

Here is where it gets uncomfortable.

Fashion has always claimed to be about the new. The avant-garde. The future. But the structural reality of the industry is that genuine innovation is expensive, risky, and slow. Nostalgia is the opposite: cheap to reference, pre-tested by the market, and emotionally pre-loaded.

When Miu Miu brought back the micro-mini in 2022 and the internet lost its collective mind, it wasn’t because Miuccia Prada invented something new. It was because she handed millennials (whom coincidentally have come to economic age) a direct sensory link to the year 2000, the year they were forming their first real fashion memories, wrapped in enough irony and luxury positioning to make it feel fresh.

The cycle is also accelerating. What used to take 20 years now takes closer to 15, and in micro-trend culture (driven by TikTok and fast fashion algorithms), we are seeing compressed nostalgic loops: aesthetics from 2014 are already “vintage” to Gen Z in 2025.

Is Originality Dead?

The honest answer is: it was never really alive in the way we pretended.

Fashion has always been a game of recombination. Even the most radical moments, Chanel freeing women from corsets, Yamamoto dismantling the body, McQueen redefining theatre, were in dialogue with what came before, even when they were rejecting it.

What has changed is transparency. We can now see the cycle clearly, name it, and still be emotionally moved by it. We know Y2K is back because it is back, not because we have forgotten it. And yet we still buy the low-rise jeans. That is not stupidity. That is the extraordinary power of embodied memory, the idea that clothes don’t just reflect identity, they store it.

Sociologist Fred Davis, in his 1992 book Fashion, Culture, and Identity, argued that fashion oscillates between nostalgia and futurism as a way of managing collective identity ambivalence, our simultaneous desire to belong and to differentiate. Every nostalgic revival is also a negotiation: what do we want to keep from who we were, and what do we want to leave behind?

The Loop as Mirror

So the next time you find yourself reaching for something that looks suspiciously like what your older sister wore to a school party in 2001, don’t be embarrassed. You are participating in one of the most consistent patterns in human cultural behaviour.

Fashion’s obsession with nostalgia isn’t a creative failure. It’s a reflection of something deeply true about how we construct identity, not linearly, not forward-only, but in spirals. Always returning, always slightly changed.

The decade gets recycled. But you don’t come back exactly the same.

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Sources & further reading: Cristel Antonia Russell on nostalgic consumption; Constantine Sedikides & Tim Wildschut, nostalgia research, University of Southampton; Fred Davis, “Fashion, Culture, and Identity” (1992); research on nostalgia and memory encoding, journal Memory.

It all started with a long-planned family trip to Mexico. We were headed there for my friend Rocio’s wedding, staying three weeks in total. The goal was to be present for a friend’s happiest moment while enjoying our first holiday as a family outside of Europe, a "two birds, one stone" type of situation.

Everything was planned to perfection. We would start in Mazatlán for the wedding and New Year’s Eve, move to Baja California Sur for five days, then hit Mexico City, Tulum, and back to Mexico City before flying home.

As you can imagine, this involved multiple internal flights. If you have ever traveled with a one-year-old, you know that strategic luggage planning is both difficult and vital. This “strategic planning” often found my husband and me bickering over a few grams of weight or whose belongings were taking up more space. But eventually, we settled on a plan that was simple, elegant, and fit our schedule:

• The Hub: Arrive in CDMX with one large suitcase and two cabin bags.

• The Locker: Leave the “Big Bag” in a city locker.

• The Spokes: Rotate through our destinations, returning to the locker to “refill” our small bags with the appropriate gear for each climate.

Genius, right?

Well, in Greece, we have a saying: “When man plans, God laughs.” In our case, God was LMAOing at us. When we arrived in CDMX, after last-minute cancellations and twelve hours on a plane with a toddler, our bags were nowhere to be found. They were among 21,000 suitcases stranded at Schiphol Airport due to a massive system disruption.

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My airplane outfit suddenly became my "everywhere" outfit.

With the wedding only two days away, KLM customer service reassured us our bags would reach Mazatlán by Monday morning (the day of the wedding). We went to a shopping center to buy some emergency underwear and a few items "just in case," but we truly believed we’d have our belongings by the Big Day.

Long story short: the bags never arrived. We spent €60 on customer care calls and €700 on basic necessities, the maximum our insurance would cover. That sounds like a lot, but it disappears quickly when you’re packing for three different climates, a formal wedding, and a baby who needs a gazillion outfit changes a day.

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In Mazatlán, I scrambled for wedding attire, makeup, and hair products. In our hotel room, we found a beautiful surprise: a care package from the bride’s mother containing diapers, water, and clothes for our daughter. It was one of the kindest gestures I’ve experienced in years.

As the days went by, our wardrobe became a curated collection of survival and style. I sought out unique Mexican pieces: amazing boots from Condesa, an embroidered vest from Tulum, a woven bag from Baja California. Laundry services became our best friends. In CDMX, I even accidentally dyed my only pair of warm pants in a laundry mishap. Instead of throwing them away, I re-christened them my “Acne Studios” pants and wore them with pride.

By the time we headed home, my entire inventory consisted of my flight outfit and my new Mexican treasures: lace pants, a satin pink skirt, red heeled sandals, cowboy boots, and my final “emergency” purchase, a Gucci jumpsuit bought the day I learned my original bag had been sent back to Brussels and of course I didn’t expense to our insurance since I have reached our 700 euro limit long ago.

Looking back, I would have loved to have my things when I needed them. I wanted to celebrate my friend in the beautiful Ganni dress I had carefully picked out. I wanted my Dries Van Noten pants for a night out in Tulum, and I was actually looking forward to showing off my post-baby body in the Pucci bikini I’d packed.

None of that happened.

But in the absence of my curated wardrobe, I discovered something else: I can survive on very little. In fact, I actually had fun. There is a strange, creative joy in styling the same 15 items over and over again, trying to make each look feel new. After all, that time I did have an excuse to buy on holidays.

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I recently lost a lot of wait so I had to do a wardrobe cleaning and even get rid some of the items that were almost second-skin the last couple of years. However my current economical status and the fact that having a baby while leaving in a European capital can be an actual luxury status, made me not be able to replace the items with new ones, but live with what I have left and potentially haven’t worn for ages.

The struggle became bigger considering that I recently changed career path and my new role needed me dressed a bit more “corporate”, which I hate and of course I don’t own anything that can be considered corporate. So one day walking around the streets of Brussels I found in one of those street book nests (basically a bird-house-looking stand but bigger, where people can leave books they don’t want anymore for others to pick) a book describing rituals of “modern witches” and I couldn’t just let it go. I took it home and started going through it’s pages until I found the fashion chapter. The author was describing that she decides what to wear based on her birth chart, moon phase and the tarot card of the day. Just WOW!

I don’t own any tarot card deck (yet) but I own a phone that has an astrology app in which I can draw a tarot card per day. Also by not having a tarot card deck (yet), I don’t really know the meaning of the tarot cards, or the moon phases per se. Basically the only thing I actually knew from this combination that helped the author to choose her outfit daily was my birth chart because I’m an astro-head and I love feeling special based on the moment and place I was born.

Like that I decided that I should try her approach but since I lack multiple information I started a new conversation inside my already existing Gemini Gem, which I called “brujeria” which means witchcraft in spanish, and it had as description “anything that has to do with tarots, rituals, manifestation, astrology etc you are the witch that knows about it”. I had to go with Google Gemini since I’m a Gemini with Venus in Gemini which apparently affects a lot my way of dressing. You see what I’m doing there, right?

First experiment: Dinner with friend’s. On a random Thursday. Nothing special.

First prompt: “Based on my birth chart, the moon phase today and my tarot of the day being the hanged man what should I wear for a low key dinner night at a neighborhood restaurant with friends?”

Gemini: Since we’re heading to a low-key neighborhood restaurant on February 19, 2026, the energy is a fascinating mix of fiery impulse and spiritual pause. The Moon has just moved into Aries (a 10% illuminated Waxing Crescent), but your pull of The Hanged Man suggests today isn’t about rushing—it’s about seeing things from a new angle.

Here is your spiritually aligned lookbook for dinner and dancing:

1. The Vibe: “The Enlightened Rebel”

The Hanged Man represents suspension and a shift in perspective. Because you’re going to a neighborhood spot, you want to look effortless but “tapped in.”

* The Silhouette: Go for oversized or asymmetrical pieces. Since The Hanged Man is literally upside down, an asymmetrical hemline or an off-the-shoulder top perfectly mirrors his “flipped” perspective.

* The Fabric: Silk or Satin. These materials flow and move as you dance, representing the fluid, non-resistant nature of this card.

2. The Color Palette: “Fire in the Dark”

* Primary Color: Deep Burgundy or Muted Red. The Aries Moon craves red for confidence and passion, but The Hanged Man is more internal. A dark wine color balances the Aries fire with a more grounded, neighborhood-friendly feel.

* Secondary Color: Indigo or Violet. These are the colors of the Third Eye and the “halo” often seen around the Hanged Man’s head, perfect for tapping into your intuition while you’re out.

3. The Details (The Magic)

* Footwear: Since you’re dancing, choose block heels or high-quality boots. In the card, one of the Hanged Man’s feet is bound while the other is free—try an anklet on just one leg to subtly nod to this spiritual “tether”.

* Accessories: Wear Gold Hoops (Aries energy) and a layered necklace to draw attention to your throat chakra—perfect for all that dinner conversation.

* Manifestation Tip: Carry a piece of Carnelian in your pocket. It will help you transition from the “waiting” energy of your tarot card into the “action” energy needed for the dance floor once dinner ends.

Summary Checklist:

* [ ] Top: An asymmetrical or off-the-shoulder top in a deep red or plum.

* [ ] Bottom: Well-fitted dark denim or a satin midi skirt (easy for moving).

* [ ] The “Twist”: One specific accessory (like a ring or anklet) that feels unique or slightly “reversed” to honor your card.

Would you like me to look at your specific Sun and Rising signs to see if we should tweak the fabrics or fit even further?

What I ended up wearing? A red Samsoe Samsoe shirt with a dark silk pair of pants and a pair of cowboy boots. I went a bit further and I asked it to make it a bit funnier and the answer was a bit meh but it inspired me to add some silver gloves. Maybe not so Aries moon, or hanged man, but definitely worked for me and my mirror.

So having succeeded on it’s first assignment I decided to continue and ask it on a daily basis. I kept the prompts on the same chat so it could keep track of my previous outfits and decisions, because I was always ending the conversations with what I actually wore so I could train the beast.

Me: “I’m going on a stroll with my husband and baby, we will do some shopping and stop somewhere to grab some food. My tarot card of the day is the chariot and considering it’s a rainy day what should I wear?”

Gemini: 1. The "Armor" (The Outerwear):
You need a structured trench coat or a high-end technical parka.
* Why: The Chariot is about a "vessel." Your coat is your vessel today. Go for something in Black, Slate, or Deep Navy. If it has a hood, even better—it mirrors the canopy of the Chariot card.
* The "Hype" Twist: An oversized, boxy fit feels very "neighborhood-appropriate" and allows for layers.
2. The "Willpower" Layer (The Top):
Underneath, wear a fitted turtleneck or a high-neck bodysuit in a "speed" color like Silver or Stark White.
* Why: Silver represents the lunar energy of the Chariot. A high neck keeps your "throat chakra" protected from the damp, rainy air, keeping your energy internal and focused.
3. The "Stability" (The Bottoms):
Go for Technical Cargoes or Water-resistant tailored trousers.
* Why: You need pockets for shopping and ease of movement for the stroll. Avoid the "bland" denim today; you want fabrics that feel "ready for anything."
4. The "Chariot Wheels" (The Shoes):
Since it's rainy and you're strolling, this is the day for your chunky, lug-sole boots or waterproof "hype" sneakers (like Salomon or a Gore-Tex collab).

What I ended up wearing: My cargo Alex & Mill pants in black similar to this, a black turtleneck, an oversized shirt on top in white with black stripes, a Bimba y Lola khaki rainproof cape, a pair of rubber black boots and a light blue baseball cup. How relevant is this with the proposal? Not totally but did the AI inspired me to go for something that I felt super uninspired to pick? Totally!

I kept doing this for a month and a half and every time I was picking and choosing what I liked on its recommendation and what not. The more I continued this experiment the more it started registering my existing pieces so it kept recommending me based on what I have, which was not at all what I wanted so I had to specifically mention that I need the recommendations to stay generic and not based on my items. After all the whole purpose of it is to use my imagination to pick my outfit based on what I have available while testing the limits of technology.

Most of the times the resulting outfit was an outcome of a series of back and forth with the platform; sometimes I didn’t have anything of what it was suggesting and some others I didn’t like it’s suggestions. After a while I decided to create a dedicated Gem for my closet named “closet recs” and I will give it as description the following: I want you to help me decide on my outfit daily based on the moon phase, my birth chart, the tarot card of the day that I will give you and of course why I am getting dressed. I also want you to keep in mind that I really like the way they dress the following people: Alexa Chung, Leandra Medhine and Chloe Sevigny. I want you to be my personal style assistant when I need to buy something new or when I get dressed. I also fed it with some pictures from some Pinterest boards. And there we go again.

The assignments were exactly the same: what to wear for this occasion based on the moon phase and the tarot card, but the answers were sooooo different. It kept on giving me three different options one for Leandra, one for Chloe and one for Alexa and they always had the same recommendations: a tight cardigan or the wrong shoe theory for Leandra, a blazer with jeans for Alexa and an oversized shirt with shorts for Chloe… SO DISAPPOINTING.

I had to put structure to my gem and feed it with actual information that personal shoppers actually ask when they do interviews with clients, only to realize it was worse. If I was going back to the open chat I had inside “brujeria” I realised that this was much funnier and unique recommendations compared to something that is supposed to be specialized on the topic of fashion styling. Having stopped with this experiment I only go back to eat when I want to have some fun with my clothes so if you are at the same place totally recommend it.

It’s 1908, and the streets of New York City are flooded by 15,000 women who demand better pay, shorter hours, and the right to vote. It was a movement born of the labor strike, where the slogan “Bread and Roses” symbolized not just the struggle for economic survival (bread), but the right to a dignified, beautiful life (roses).

In solidarity with them, communist activist and politician Clara Zetkin proposed the celebration of “Working Women’s Day,” approved at the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen. The following year saw the first demonstrations across Europe, and eventually, Vladimir Lenin declared March 8th as International Women’s Day in 1922. The holiday was later promoted by the United Nations in 1977.

While the revolution took over Europe, it was in the UK where members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), aka the Suffragettes, decided to create their own visual identity. They chose a specific color palette to create a recognizable brand in the streets: Purple, White, and Green.

These colours weren’t random, they represented loyalty and dignity (purple), purity (white), a tactical choice to counter the media’s portrayal of feminists as “draggled” or “unclean”, and hope (green). When a woman wore a purple sash over a white dress, she was signalling her defiance and her support for the movement.

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The evolution of the armour

Years later women have established… rights, certainly haven’t reached total equality, the focus of our wardrobes shifted from the streets to the boardroom. By the time the 1980s arrived, the women’s empowerment signaling was not a purple sash on a white dress but rather a masculine choice of a power-suit. To be taken seriously, women adopted a silhouette that mostly resembled to a man’s body structure: shoulder pads, rigid tailoring and boxy shapes. A shape that demanded space on a room that wasn’t built for us but for men that were there before us and had bad time to share it with dresses.

On the 1990s we already see the shift to more casual feminism. Women had a skirt suit and they were “allowed” to look more and more feminine and still to be taken seriously by their men (and women) counterparts.

This lasted for couple of decades where women and men in corporate environments were bound to a dress code that was keeping them “prisoners”. Women had to wear heels and tights not dare to show their personalities through their work attire.

The 2026 shift: Soft Power

Fast forward to 2026, and this corporate dress code has finally loosened up. We’ve moved away from the defensive tailoring of the 80s toward what we now call “Fluid Power.” We no longer feel the need to hide our forms to prove our function. We see more and more influencers from the corporate world like @katfromfinance daring to show their personalities through their dressing for work. As someone working on the finance world I will never forget my manager’s feedback about the way I dress at work “I am so jealous of how confident you look” she once told me, as herself is sculpted in an environment that looking yourself was not the point. But we aren’t armouring ourselves against the corporate world anymore, we are dressing to command it on our own terms.

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The new symbolic palette of soft power

Just as the WSPU chose purple for dignity and white for purity, our color choices today carry a new weight. We are moving beyond the standard navy and grey “safety” colors of the past and the catwalks indicated the purple variant of the violet hue, instead of white they chose canary yellow and the green appeared in a softer lime version. Colour blocking is the new power suit of 2026.

There is this old saying “don’t dress for the job you have, but for the job you want” and right now we have the jobs we want and we dress for ourselves. Soft power is a strategy, the confidence to wear a lime silk blazer in a room full of grey wool, and pair it with a purple flowy pants to contrast the black ties.

To celebrate this day I have built a storefront for the corporate girlies that struggle to get inspired when surrounded by uninspiring glass buildings. It’s basically a wishlist for myself with items only from resale because what is a women’s day without women supporting women :).

Happy women’s day!

Abraham Maslow has developed the theory of the pyramid of needs, he basically taught us that human needs have an hierarchy that goes from Physiological (basic needs) to Psychological till Self-Fulfilment and individuals must satisfy lower-level basic needs (physiological, safety) before progressing to higher-level growth needs (love, esteem, self-actualization). The core concept is that unmet basic needs hinder the pursuit of personal growth and fulfilment.

I was only 16, in the class of business administration in high school, when I first learned about this pyramid of needs theory and I can safely say that it became my guide in most of my decisions in life, yet when it comes to consumerism and shopping for clothes, I find myself leaning away from it. And it’s not just me it seems like the pyramid that has been violently flipped on its head. We have become a culture of consumers who are buying the "Lamborghini" of status before we have even built the "House" of quality. We can’t hold ourselves from buying a $2,000 designer bag while wearing synthetic, one-use only undergarments that most probably are bad for our health. We are seeking Esteem while our Physiological foundations are crumbling.

The Consumerism Glitch

There is a curious paradox in our spending. Data reveals that the average shopper at ultra-fast-fashion giants like Shein isn’t necessarily someone with limited means often, they are earners with stable, middle-class incomes. The “glitch” is that they are spending 60% more than the (US) national average on clothing, yet they own nothing of substance.

There is a profound generational shift at play here. While Gen Z is often the face of these “hauls,” the financial engine is fueled by Millennials and even older demographics who have more disposable income but less “material literacy.” We have entered an era where socioeconomic status has become untethered from quality. A high-income earner may generate 76% more clothing waste than a lower-income shopper, using the “Esteem” level of the pyramid to buy temporary relevance rather than permanent safety.

They are stuck on a Hedonic Treadmill, buying 50 polyester shirts in a desperate attempt to reach the “Belonging” and “Esteem” levels of the pyramid, only to find that the satisfaction evaporates before the package even arrives. As Thorstein Veblen noted in his Theory of the Leisure Class, we have replaced utility with “conspicuous consumption.” We aren’t buying clothes; we are buying the idea of who we might be.

The Loss of “Material Literacy”

In a sociological sense, we are witnessing what Jean Baudrillard called the “System of Objects.” We no longer buy a jacket for its warmth (Physiological) or its durability (Safety) we buy it for the sign, the social currency it provides.

The social tragedy of the modern wardrobe is that lower-income shoppers are often the ones trying to treat these flimsy, synthetic garments as “Safety” items, wearing them 50+ times out of necessity, while the affluent consumer treats them as single-use “Esteem” props. We are “full” of clothes, but none of them actually nourish our need for heritage, comfort, or long-term security.

To reclaim our relationship with our wardrobes, we must rebuild the pyramid from the ground up.

Level 1: The Physiological Foundation

This is the “Skin” level. It is the most intimate part of your wardrobe, yet the most neglected. These items exist to regulate your temperature and respect your biology. In this category we include the comfortable underwear, a white t-shirt, a wool coat or a puffer jacket, and a pair of all-occasions sneakers.

Level 2: Safety and The Armor

Safety is the security of knowing your clothes won’t fail you. It is the trench coat that truly repels the rain and the leather boot that can be resoled a decade from now. It is the level where craftsmanship meets survival. If your coat is purely “for the look” but leaves you shivering, your pyramid is unstable. This level also includes the sunglasses that will protect you from a daily exposure to the sun, a pair of jeans that will be tough enough to keep your legs safe, a pair of gloves and a beanie for the cold climates.

Level 3: Belonging

We dress to signal our tribe. True belonging isn’t found in a viral TikTok trend, it’s found in pieces that connect us to a lineage. A traditional mule or a denim jacket tells a story of community and shared history. It’s also the items that will show your personality to your social encounters. The jacket, the earrings or the bag is always a personality trait that can leave your mark on a social interaction.

Level 4: Esteem and The Statement

This is where we seek recognition. The sharp tailoring of a blazer or the architectural line of a well-made bag. The difference? When you have built Levels 1 and 2, your “Esteem” pieces feel like an extension of your power, not a mask to hide a lack of quality.

Level 5: Self-Actualisation

This is the peak of the pyramid, where fashion is not utility anymore, but it becomes a pure manifestation of power and identity. At this level, you aren’t just dressing for your soul, you are dressing from a position of absolute freedom.

This is the luxury of the “Unidentifiable.” When you can afford anything, you no longer need the loud logos. Instead, you seek the status of the rare: a 1920s archival silk piece, a bespoke coat hand-stitched in a hidden atelier, or a vintage watch with a lineage known only to collectors or just to enter an haute couture house and buy a dress for THAT occasion or for everyday.

The status here is profound because it is visible to those “in the know” and intimidating to those who aren’t. It makes you feel better because it is a total alignment of your internal world and your external resources. Others see it not as a brand, but as an undeniable aura of quality and exclusivity.

If we continue to build our wardrobes from the top down, we will always feel “fashionably poor”, rich in items, but poor in comfort and soul.

Long story short: Stop buying the Lamborghini. Start building the house.

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if you don’t get the reference then you are probably not speaking greek. when i first heard her podcast i couldn’t understand how someone can have all this knowledge about fashion and yet there she is deep diving in big personalities of fashion while she is juggling among her karavan roles. her name is margarita and i’m so happy she agreed for this interview.

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EF: do you remember when your thing with fashion started? was it about clothes or just observing people?

: i think it was always about the clothes. dressing was a way of existing for me, not showing off. i remember being three or four, walking around in my mom’s dresses, her jewelry, her sunglasses. i wanted everything to feel a bit grande. i was always a bit of a drama.

there was this old series on tv about princess sissi, i saw it as a kid and thought, okay, that’s it, that’s the life i want.

EF: you were already building characters.

MG: yes! i was obsessed with what i’d wear to school. i’d think about my outfit for the first day from july. even now i’m the same. i wake up and the first thing i think is what am i wearing, how do i want to feel in it. it’s not superficial. it’s just how i understand myself.

EF: and when did you realise it could be more than a personal thing?

MG: in high school. i was studying philosophy, psychology, theatre, all the things i still love. i used to read vogue instead of my textbooks. one day a classmate asked me, “why do you know all this?” and i just said, “why don’t you?” and she goes, “you should do this as a job.” and that was the first time it clicked.

EF: it must’ve felt far away back then, in crete.

MG: so far. in the late 90s, in a small town, working in fashion basically meant being a designer like aslanis. he did everything, design, styling, production. there wasn’t even really a stylist profession yet. i never saw myself as a designer anyway. my hands don’t have that patience. i loved everything around it, the people, the storytelling, the way a collection can be like a diary.

EF: so you were always more of a storyteller than a maker.

MG: exactly. and i’ve always believed your work is as good as your references. if you don’t read, don’t watch films, don’t listen, your eye dries up. even now i judge people by what they watch.

EF: that’s so true. so how did florence happen?

MG: my mom found this european program, leonardo da vinci, that helped young people find an internship abroad. i applied and ended up in prato, near florence, working in an atelier. i was twenty and it was like discovering life again. i saw how clothes breathe before they’re finished. i fell in love with the rhythm of it.

EF: that sounds like a turning point.

MG: it was. i didn’t speak italian, didn’t have money, but i knew that was where i needed to be.

EF: but you did it anyway.

MG: (laughs) i did it! i went back home, worked everywhere, dj, café, anything, studied italian at night, took drawing lessons. saved every euro to go back. when i finally applied, there were two hundred people for thirty places. i was sure i’d failed. then i saw my name third on the list. i thought i was third from the bottom, but it was the opposite. they gave me a scholarship.

EF: that’s amazing.

MG: when i was there i studied like crazy, costume history, architecture. worked nights in kitchens, did fairs. i had no internet then, so i’d go to this small video library and watch three films a day. i think that’s how i learned to see. cinema was my pinterest before pinterest existed.

EF: when you came back to greece, what was the plan?

MG: honestly, i didn’t have one. i just knew i wanted to be around clothes, people, stories. i started working anywhere i could, styling, assisting, freelancing. there weren’t many options then, and fashion here was still… small.

but i loved it. i loved being around people who cared about aesthetics even when we were all broke.

EF: when did the idea of karavan come in?

MG: later. i’d already been through different jobs, magazines, creative agencies, and then met maria katsouni, who’s the founder of karavan. we clicked immediately. she has this balance between intuition and madness that i really admire. she designs like a woman who understands other women, and that’s rare.

EF: i think that’s why people connect so much with the brand. it feels emotional.

MG: yes, because it is. the way we work, everything starts with how we feel. there’s no big marketing formula. it’s always what’s happening to us right now? what’s the mood? what’s the collective feeling? we ask questions like what phase are we in? are we tired of being categorized? are we rediscovering ourselves?

last season our theme was “return to myself”, what it means to come back to who you were before all the labels.

EF: that was the airplane campaign, right?

MG: yes. the idea was, what if this return to yourself was like a flight? and the flight attendants didn’t tell you safety instructions but emotional ones, “how to come back to who you are.” we printed those messages on the clothes.

EF: that’s beautiful.

MG: we always say: the product has to be good first. product first. it has to be kind, well-made, intentional. we never do it just for the story. the story grows out of the feeling behind the clothes.

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EF: you also host a podcast.

MG: yes. i started it because i couldn’t find any fashion conversations in greek that went deeper than surface level. it began as a letter to my younger self, the girl who loved fashion but had no access, no money, no connections. i wanted to create something that anyone could listen to and learn from, whether they worked in fashion or just loved it. i think we’re in a moment where people want meaning again. and we can’t all shout opinions online all the time. if you have something to say, say it with intention. otherwise, listen.

EF: it’s rare to hear someone talk about fashion with that kind of tenderness.

MG: for me fashion is emotion. the industry will always push extremes, to be louder, faster, crazier. but you can also move people through quietness. through the feeling that something was made with care.

EF: you once said, “a good story has to be a little dirty.” what did you mean?

MG: (laughs) i mean that truth isn’t clean. a brand’s story can’t just be about beauty, it has to have the cracks, the chaos, the contradictions. only then does it feel real. when you dare to show your messy parts, people trust you more.

EF: and that connects to what you said about greek identity, that it’s not this polished ancient-white thing.

MG: exactly. our identity isn’t marble. it’s messy, mixed, full of color. it’s middle eastern, venetian, balkan, minoan. we’re a beautiful hybrid. i always say: greece is full of salt and dust and texture. that’s our magic.

EF: do you think greek fashion is starting to embrace that?

MG: i think slowly, yes. for a long time everyone tried to sell the postcard, the island, the ruins, the goddess. but that’s not who we are. when you look at the old family photos, the embroidery, the gold crosses, the 90s furniture, it’s all part of the same story. that’s where the real aesthetics are hiding.

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EF: it’s nostalgia, but grounded.

MG: yes, nostalgia but not decorative. honest nostalgia. and that’s what i love about carαvane too. it never tries to be perfect. it plays with taste, with kitsch even, and somehow it becomes elegant.

EF: and then there’s this phrase you and maria use, “we are all daughters.”

MG: yes. it’s something maria said once and it stayed with me. it’s true, we’re not all mothers, not all sisters, not all wives, but we’re all daughters. it’s the one thing that connects every woman. it carries tenderness, rebellion, everything. i think that’s why our clothes resonate, they speak to that part of us that still remembers being someone’s daughter.

EF: i love that. it’s such a strong closing thought.

MG: me too. because in the end, fashion is memory. what you wore when you were five, what your mother didn’t let you buy, what made you feel beautiful for the first time. that’s what shapes your eye, not the trend report.

EF: it’s the emotional archive.

MG: exactly. and the older i get, the more i realize, that’s the only archive worth keeping.

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Denim aka your oldest friend, is the most popular item on the runways right now. Everyone wants a piece of it and all of us are looking at them like “why did I stop wearing you?”. If you are a millennial the skinny jeans was your remedy and if you are a gen z you probably make fun of us while wearing your wide jeans, but from whatever generation you may come from the truth is that jeans are the main character of the upcoming season and in none of the forms that the two generations were fighting for.

You might have noticed already that so many brands have a special “Denim” category in their website, to indicate the importance of this trend this season. Sandro, Maje,

Zara are all serving full denim outfits. I consider this reinvention of denim a result of the reviving of the 70s in the runways and the fact that the last 5 years we have the fastest recycling of older styles we have ever seen.

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According to the dictionary of fashion the denim appears in the following styles with almost all of them having characteristics from one another and all of them together appearing to various collections of SS25, sometimes even in the same brand’s collection you will be able to find various different styles of denim. For example I decided to take a look at the Sandro website and try to find a style of jeans per category below.

• Cow-boy

• Rock & Roll

• Rockabilly

• Teddy Boys & Teddy Girls

• Emo

• Indie

• Grunge

• Festival

• Kidcore

• Normcore

• Beatnik

• Hippy

• Hipster

• Skate

But let’s talk with data and not just with observations. I had to look on the trends and how they changed the last 12 months. I was looking mainly for three terms and how much they were searched lately. It’s obvious from the graphs below that we have a consistency between all different type of denim trends. I didn’t include the ripped jeans in my trend results because it seems like the majority of people searching for jeans haven’t captured the upcoming trend yet, however based on my algorithm more and more fashion editors/writers and influencers are mentioning the ripped jeans. Mark my words this will be your next denim obsession.

However the beauty of this season is that we see the denim coming in different forms and versions, we see it on dresses and trousers and shorts and skirts and hats and bags and shoes and everything you can imagine.

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Fun Facts About Denim

1. Denim Wasn’t Always Blue: Originally, denim was a brown fabric made for laborers. The signature blue color comes from indigo dye, which only coats the outer threads, allowing the fabric to fade beautifully over time.

2. Levi’s First Jeans Were for Miners: In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented riveted jeans to make them durable for gold miners. The copper rivets prevented pockets from tearing!

3. Denim is Named After a French Town: The word “denim” comes from “serge de Nîmes,” a durable fabric from Nîmes, France. Over time, “de Nîmes” became denim. That’s the reason that Jacquemus name many of their jeans Nîmes.

4. The Oldest Pair of Jeans is Over 140 Years Old: A pair of Levi’s 501 jeans from the 1880s was found in an abandoned mine and sold for $87,400 at auction in 2022.

5. Jeans Were Once Banned: In the 1950s, denim was banned in schools and theaters in the U.S. because it was associated with rebellious youth and rock & roll culture (think James Dean & Marlon Brando).

6. Denim Can Be Recycled: Old denim can be turned into insulation for houses! Programs like Cotton’s Blue Jeans Go Green collect old jeans to create sustainable materials.

7. The World’s Most Expensive Jeans: The most expensive jeans ever made were the Secret Circus Jeans, encrusted with diamonds, and sold for $1.3 million. 💎👖

8. Japan Makes Some of the Best Denim: Japanese selvedge denim, particularly from Okayama, is handcrafted on vintage looms and is considered some of the finest in the world.

9. Astronauts Wore Denim in Space: In 1973, American astronauts aboard Skylab wore denim flight suits, proving that jeans are literally out of this world!🚀

10. Denim is One of the Most Worn Fabrics on Earth: It’s estimated that over 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced every year, and at any given moment, over half of the world’s population is wearing denim.

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