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Category / Fashion for Dummies

The Strange Anatomy of ABBA’s Infamous (Tax Deductible) Wardrobe

What do house cats, Euro pop, and the ingenious tax savvy have in common? Owe Sandström, that’s who. As the flamenco-dancing-zoologist-designer behind the costumes of ABBA, Sandström certainly played his part in helping the Swedish supergroup reach fame in the 1970s – where they have remained ever since. In fact, a deeper dive into the…

I Accidentally Accumulated the World’s Largest Archive of ’80s Esprit Merch

Ask any ’80s and ’90s kid at heart, and they’ll tell you: Esprit just did it right. The colour-blocking sportswear, the street-casted campaigns, the cutting-edge collaborations with designers that defined the ’80s. Even the brand’s commitment to environmentalism was so ahead of its time. “Esprit was an ethos,” says Michelle Koza, the woman behind the largest…

If Fanny Packs made a comeback, surely the Parasol Can Too

For the average person, stepping out with an elegant sun parasol in western society today would probably feel like stepping out in cosplay. You might as well be wearing a corset too. Sadly, not since our grandparent’s generation has carrying a parasol been commonplace, but akin to the disappearance of men’s hats from everyday fashion,…

The Lost Art of “Scrap Book” Fancy Dress

At the start of the pandemic, we looked at some people-repelling fashion statements of yore and wondered whether the surreal measures of a socially-distanced world might impact the future of fashion. Fast-forward several months and an article in the New Yorker this week has declared our current fashion mood as the “the Slob-Chic Style of…

The Day the Black Supermodels Stormed Versailles

There’s a “Battle of Versailles” they don’t teach you about in history class; the event that transformed the world’s most iconic château into a star-studded battle royale between French and American fashion designers in the fall of 1973. The guest list was legendary, with Josephine Baker, Princess Grace, Andy Warhol in the audience to name…

Doomsday Fashion of the Azores Islands

Somewhere in between the Handmaids Tale and the Grim Reaper, there were the unnerving ladies of the Azores Islands. “Enveloped in their large hooded cloaks, the Azorian women seems to flit about like phantoms,” wrote Elisée Reclus in a 19th century encylopedic series on the earth’s inhabitants. With radical doomsday preppers making headlines with their…

Our Date with Diane Pernet, the Internet’s First High Priestess of Fashion

Crowned as the “original fashion blogger” by the New York Times, Diane Pernet has long been a one of a kind, spellbinding presence in the industry. She has filled so many roles – designer, filmmaker, curator, journalist and influencer (in the truest sense of the word) – that it’s impossible to reduce her work to…

In Defence of a Bad DIY Haircut before its Post-Lockdown Debut

I’m on the brink of cutting my own hair, and I can’t be the only one. I’ve been imagining that coming out of lockdown is going to look like the 1980s for hair all over again. And it got me thinking – there must have been something to those crazy perms and gravity-defying bangs for…

Olympia Le-Tan transformed “Don’t be a Tourist” Books into Clutch Bags!

As an author and purveyor of curiosities, if there was ever a collaboration to be had, this was always it! So it is with great honour that we reveal the Olympia Le-Tan x Don’t be a Tourist Limited Edition embroidered Clutch bags, now available for curious collectors at OlympiaLeTan.com.

Lovely Ladies in Lace at the Paris Races

I‘m just a little bit mesmerised by these photographs of Parisian ladies showing off their best French lace at the races. The Hippodrome de Lonchamps was the place to be seen in the 19th and early 20th century, a pre-Paris Fashion Week catwalk of sorts in the spring. The very latest modes were on parade, as modelled by these…

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