ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

The world no longer seems the same. And while the President of the United States appears so unhinged that he is clashing with the Pope himself, and while truces and wars continue in a chaotic whirlwind, the rest of the West finds itself living with an ever-deepening cognitive dissonance. People are returning to dance at Coachella and debating on social media about the behind-the-scenes beef on Euphoria, but on the other side of the world, missiles are falling. Preparations are underway for the Cannes red carpet and Design Week, yet the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Fashion thinks about sponsoring, runway shows, and expanding, but the very pillars of the earth are shaking beneath its feet. It’s a mad, mad April. But even madder is our indifference to a world out of control—one to which we have now become numb.

• The headlines were too dramatic: Stefano Gabbana did not resign from the brand he founded; he simply is no longer its president. But why?

• Swimsuit season is approaching (some call it dismorphia season), but according to us, being sexy today feels frustrating. What do you think?

• Both on the runway and off, distressed clothing has made a comeback. But as fascinating as we find it, when the wear and tear is entirely artificial, we have to call it performative.

• With its ability to dream up other worlds and new sciences, the sci-fi genre increasingly seems like the ideal showcase for talking about women’s rights and the problems of the present.

• Ploom and nss magazine present “A Study of Milan and its AURA,” an investigation into the contemporary cultural codes of the city.

• If you fall in love, do you stop straightening your hair? Take a moment to hear the latest (and strange) TikTok theory.

• Coachella has begun in America. Today the festival is no longer so popular, but ten years ago we dreamed of it across the world as a utopia: a dream that also passed through the boho style of which it became the symbol.

• The beauty world is not just chemistry or marketing. There’s also the essential part of packaging, which the war in Iran is now making absurdly complicated.

• Why do men love Stone Island? The Financial Times answers.

• The always brilliant Rachel Tashjian wonders, on CNN, how Maison Margiela will maintain its intellectual appeal while trying to become a global brand.

• Sincerity is the new social currency of the decade, and that’s why, according to Dazed, overly perfect and correct answers no longer inspire trust.

• With the rise of “advanced contemporary” brands, which we define as middle-market or premium, Made in Portugal shoes are becoming increasingly famous. WWD explains this expansion.

In the latest trailer for the highly anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2 we see the character of Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, styling Andy Sachs by pulling pieces from various brands out of a large wardrobe: the first is Fendi, quite predictable; followed by Brunello Cucinelli (“We loooove that,” comments the character) and finally Toteme. A significant choice, since these are the only brands mentioned in a trailer that in just over 48 hours has surpassed 6 million views and that, therefore, enjoy extremely high visibility in the film’s communication.

The only other brand mentioned is Chanel, whose garments Andy Sachs has given away because they were too “important” for her editorial job. A choice that Miranda’s new assistant comments on with shock: “Who gives away Chanel?” But in a film with such high impact, whose filming involved Milan Fashion Week itself, a Vogue cover in which Meryl Streep posed alongside Anna Wintour, and product placement worth tens of millions (we’ll have to see how much of a blockbuster the film will be, but it looks like it will be), the name-dropping of brands reflects the change taking place in the world of luxury.

While in the 2006 film screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna mentioned fairly conventional brands, later immortalized by the film’s most famous lines, the brands cited in this sequel’s trailer speak of a new luxury world in which it is no longer just the big fashion houses dominating the scene, but a multipolar ecosystem of brands. The hegemony of the major names appears to have weakened in favor of a more fragmented scenario. But what picture of today’s fashion does The Devil Wears Prada 2 seem to offer?

In the first The Devil Wears Prada, the brands mentioned were highly institutional: Chanel, Dolce&Gabbana, Valentino, Calvin Klein, and Hermès are the first that come to mind, in addition to Prada, of course. Along with Miranda Priestly’s vintage pieces by Bill Blass and Dennis Basso, it was a relatively mainstream and recognizable fashion that spoke of pop brands in a rapidly expanding industry: it was the prosperity preceding the 2008 crash, the moment of the it-bags, flashy accessories, and bling.

In the sequel, some things have remained the same but many others have changed. Would a brand like Brunello Cucinelli have had a place in the first film? Probably not, but now that it has become a global player, it has launched its own it-bag, and above all is increasingly cited and mentioned in the ultra-luxury discourse, its inclusion makes perfect sense. The inclusion of Toteme is also indicative: the Swedish brand is among those that, riding the quiet luxury wave, have expanded the most in recent years, first becoming a commercial success, then the emblem of a contemporary luxury alternative to that of the big Parisian and Italian brands.

The fashion landscape that the film now seems to describe is much broader than in 2006. Alongside Dior and Armani garments, the new trailers are full of pieces by Dries Van Noten and Rick Owens; there’s a Phoebe Philo t-shirt and a sacai skirt, as well as pieces by AGOLDE, Gabriela Hearst, Monse, and Ulla Johnson, to name just a few. These choices demonstrate that, in the golden age of magazines, the truly famous brands were the most canonical ones, while today we see a fragmentation of the market — that is, a transition from a concentrated industry driven by a few mega-brands to a multipolar landscape, where dozens of micro-markets coexist with different logics of price, identity, channel, and perceived value. But what has changed?

@newtakefive„We definitely need an embroidered two-piece #Toteme set but not the terracotta because you‘re SO pale.“🫢 #thedevilwearsprada #annehathaway #stanleytucci #devilwearsprada2

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If, thanks to social media, fashion has become practically part of the entertainment industry (a phenomenon that the 2006 The Devil Wears Prada effectively helped create), the new digital media that appeared between the original film and the sequel have led to an extreme fragmentation of the luxury landscape. At the time of the first film, it made sense to focus on the most mainstream names, because brands like Maison Margiela, Helmut Lang, or Comme des Garçons would have been unknown to a large part of the audience, even though they were just as relevant as Valentino, Armani, Fendi, and all the others.

According to a report by the Boston Consulting Group, Gen Z, which represents 40% of fashion spending in the US, buys on average from 15-20 brands per year compared to the ten per year they bought in 2005. They discover them mainly through social media and influencers and are 1.5 times more likely than those over 28 to discover brands via social media and 1.3 times more inclined to judge a brand’s status based on follower count or social engagement. Above all, the new generation makes product-driven choices rather than brand-driven ones, preferring parameters such as price, quality, durability, and comfort over mere heritage or brand history.

Already a year ago, McKinsey’s The State of Fashion 2025 report indicated that only 29% of Gen Z’s wardrobe came from the same brand, while for those over fifty the percentage rose to 52%. Only 33% of the latter had said they explore and buy new brands, compared to 50% of Gen Z. Therefore, not only is an increasingly high percentage of new consumers effectively indifferent to heritage, but what analysts see as market fragmentation represents for many a plurality — that is, an increase in valid options to choose from.

It is no coincidence that Brunello Cucinelli and Toteme are two extremely product-driven brands, recently popularized by influencers. In this sense, the film already seems to describe from the trailer a double parallel trend that is dividing the fashion market. The first is the polarization between high-end and aspirational luxury. Product-focused brands, just like Brunello Cucinelli but also Hermès or The Row, are growing at double-digit rates at a time of crisis for mega-group luxury. The other is the rise of the segment defined by BoF as “advanced contemporary”.

Toteme is in this sense the symbol-brand of that mid-market luxury which, according to the latest The State of Fashion 2026, «is the fastest growing segment, replacing luxury as fashion’s main value creator». In Andy’s wardrobe, this trend is also signaled by the inclusion of Golden Goose boots and several pieces from the New York brand TWP by Trish Wescoat Pound. Even Miranda wears Jacquemus heels, which BoF includes among the best-known brands in the accessible segment, along with Aritizia, another brand seen on Andy Sachs.

Then there is the world of the major brands, represented in the trailer by the name-dropping of Fendi and Chanel. Fendi is a brand that, let us remember, despite generating low organic media buzz outside viral moments like the centenary show or Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut, remains absurdly popular on social media thanks to secondhand: the Baguette is among the 10 most searched bags of 2025 on Fashionphile, while a few days ago Vogue described how the Spy Bag has become more expensive and thus more sought-after on The RealReal after its reintroduction on the runway.

Meanwhile, Chanel is mentioned by Andy Sachs when she says she gave away (resold?) her old pieces, indirectly mentioning the existence of a secondhand market. Elsewhere, among the costumes of Andy Sachs seen in paparazzi photos there is a second-hand 1990s Jean-Paul Gaultier suit and an 1980s Coach Metropolitan Briefcase. Could it be that the film’s costume designer, Molly Rogers — who is once again replacing Patricia Field, as she did with And Just Like That — wanted to tell us something about the state of contemporary fashion through the scenes of a film that precisely talks about generational change and fashion at the crossroads between traditional print media and new digital media? We can only hope that the screenplay lives up to the wardrobe.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

Amid the less fortunate news surrounding the looming energy crisis and the worsening clashes in the Middle East, there are also updates that bring a sigh of relief - at least for a moment. In Shanghai, during the local Fashion Week, several independent designers such as Mark Gong and Samuel Gui Yang are bringing a fresh wave of creativity to the runway. The two designers draw inspiration from European style but infuse it with a highly personal touch, offering a new perspective that the fashion industry greatly needs. During the same week, Glenn Martens presented his new creative direction for Maison Margiela in China, with a show that certainly made an impact, polarizing both the press and the brand’s fans.

In short, amid all this disorder, fashion is still managing to find a glimmer of hope - just in time for the Easter weekend, when it can finally get a bit of rest.

• In Milan for the Easter weekend? Here are 5 things to do, from flower shopping in the Brera district on Easter Monday to 14 hours of clubbing.

• What is the April Theory and why do so many relationships change or end in April: between psychology, social media, and new awareness.

• Are we ready to have fun again? Funmaxxing is the new direction of digital communication.

• The 10 hashtags that (really) sell on TikTok Shop.

• The journey and rebellion of the Antwerp Six on display at MoMu.

• Presented at Cosmoprof Bologna, This is Bellezza aims to enhance the Italian cosmetics system through innovation, exports, and identity.

• An update on men’s footwear trends - and we’re not just talking about men’s ballet flats.

• The “reptile boyfriend” phenomenon: charming, knowledgeable men with snakes and reptiles, between pop culture, social media, and romantic archetypes

• AI is raising major concerns about job losses, but it is also creating new opportunities. The Wall Street Journal discusses this

• Why do video games cost so much? The Guardian asks, questioning the prices of new devices.

• Brand names are in crisis. The Cut criticizes the absurd titles that celebrities give their companies.

• Is American Gen Z really returning to Christianity? The Atlantic reveals data suggests otherwise.

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Cities change, habits change, and clothing changes with them. Since its foundation in 1971 by Massimo Osti, first under the name Chester Perry, C.P. Company has approached design as a way of reading the present through function, research and material experimentation. Over the decades, the brand has become one of the defining names in Italian sportswear, not for following trends, but for turning the realities of contemporary life into garments.

It was precisely this research-driven approach that made possible one of the brand’s most significant eras: Urban Protection, a collection that redefined what clothing could mean in the modern city.

When Moreno Ferrari was appointed Creative Director in 1997, he shifted the collection’s focus away from the garment-dyed natural fibres that had defined much of the label’s identity, towards a harder, more industrial vocabulary, one better suited to the anxieties of a city approaching the new millennium.

Where earlier C.P. Company collections had interpreted everyday life through utility, colour, and fabric research, Urban Protection reframed clothing as a system of defence: a response to the instability, pollution, and social fragmentation of the late 1990s metropolis. Ferrari’s starting point was the street itself:

That observation led to a rigorous process of material research. As Ferrari explained, the work began from a deep analysis of safety workwear and the relationship between fabric and polluted environments. The result was Dynafil TS-70, an oil-proof, stab-proof and rip-proof black nylon developed for industrial environments, which became the signature material of the collection and the foundation upon which its entire visual language was built.

From there, Urban Protection expanded into a fully formed universe of garments and accessories conceived for urban survival. Gas masks, emergency alarms, torches, pollution detectors, and headphones were not applied as futuristic decoration, but integrated as functional devices, each one evoking a particular aspect of the modern city as a site of tension, vulnerability and adaptation.

At the centre of this vision stood the Metropolis jacket, first released in SS99. More than any other piece, it crystallised the collection’s central proposition: that clothing could operate as an interface between the body and the urban environment, mediating between exposure and protection, visibility and anonymity. But in the collection, two other objects capture this vision particularly well, each from a different angle.

The Rest, from FW00, was a backpack that converted into a stool. Designed by Ferrari for waiting in the modern non-spaces of contemporary life - airports, transit zones, the anonymous thresholds of the city - it treated urban endurance not as a metaphor, but as a practical problem to be solved.

The Beekeeper coat, from Autumn/Winter 2000-01, operated on a different register entirely. Modelled on an apiarist’s garment and dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini, it introduced a poetic dimension to the collection, born from the tension between rural and urban, between a disappearing Italy and the dystopian city he was designing for.

Together, they define the range of Urban Protection: rigorous and functional on one side, culturally aware and deeply personal on the other.

Urban Protection’s underlying questions soon pushed Ferrari beyond the boundaries of conventional outerwear. The Transformables range, first released in Spring/Summer 2000, pushed that research into entirely new territory.

Made from transparent polyurethane or a rubberised rip-proof two-layer nylon derived from competitive cycling rain shells, the Transformables were objects that refused to stay still. Vests became backpacks, capes became hammocks, jackets became inflatable chairs, kites, sleeping bags, or tents. Ferrari described his ambition in a conversation with Cristina Morozzi in 2000:

Each Transformable carried a deeply personal association. Ferrari was particularly fond of the jacket that transformed into a sleeping bag – for him, a symbol of freedom, independence and nomadic experience. The tents, meanwhile, were inspired by a scene from the French arthouse film Corps à Coeur, directed by Paul Vecchiali, in which a man waits outside his beloved’s house in a tent. That image was enough to convince Ferrari to design an entire range of objects around the emotion of waiting. The jacket that turns into a kite, he says, is «my soul.»

Ferrari’s creative era at C.P. Company remained a defining moment in the brand’s history, but its underlying questions never disappeared. Decades later, the brand returned to that same proposition with Metropolis Series, relaunched in 2020 and named after the jacket that had come to define the original collection.

The premise remains one of protection, but the terms have shifted. Where Urban Protection responded to a specific moment of late twentieth-century anxiety, Metropolis Series reframes that concern in more architectural and enduring terms. Clothing is conceived not as a mask, but as a shield: a structure that allows the wearer to move through the urban environment while preserving discretion, autonomy, and identity.

The collection resists the rhetoric of hyper-visibility that defines much of contemporary fashion. It proposes instead a quieter idea of presence, one grounded in continuity and function rather than spectacle. To understand what Metropolis Series is trying to do, it helps to think about clothing differently.

The cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan argued that garments are not merely coverings, but extensions of the skin itself: mechanisms that regulate exchange between the body and its surroundings while defining the social self. Metropolis Series takes that idea, translating it into a language of essential forms, resilient construction, and purposeful protection.

Where fashion often celebrates transience, Metropolis Series insists on endurance. Clothing conceived not as a seasonal statement, but as infrastructure: built to last, designed to support life in the city with intelligence, resilience, and measure.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

With an energy crisis looming not too far on the horizon, the fashion dream shows no signs of ending. Some have compared the Western markets in recent weeks to a car speeding toward a wall in the hope that, at the last moment, the wall will vanish into thin air. We don’t yet know when the impact will occur, but the first reports are already circulating online about the cost, logistics, and store closure issues in the Middle East that brands will have to face. Could such an unfortunate situation plunge the fashion markets into even greater chaos than that seen in 2025? If this is truly the calm before the storm, we’d better keep track of which way the wind is blowing.

nss G-Club is now on Substack. Subscribe for interviews, opinions, trends, updates, and reflections on the world of beauty and wellness, starting with Under The Beauty Radar, a format dedicated to beauty artists in all its forms.

• With the Strait of Hormuz closed and the energy industry in a panic, the fashion industry’s recovery could prove to be much more complicated than expected.

• It’s been twenty years since the Hannah Montana phenomenon, and Miley Cyrus celebrated the milestone in perfect style.

• Let’s revisit the viral moments of the constitutional referendum that, following the “no” vote’s victory, is shaking up Italian politics.

• Will slathering our faces with products help us look younger? With the right approach, it certainly seems so.

• More and more luxury designers are collaborating with the world of fast fashion. Is it just about money, or are creatives trying to make their work more accessible?

• But how did the phenomenon of “digs” on social media come about? We tried to figure it out here.

• Is Italian publishing still Italian? Let’s just say it’s complicated.

• Does our nose define us? Perhaps. But then, what does getting it redone mean?

• BoF wonders whether the use of AI is at odds with the concept of luxury. But is that even a question?

• Tinder has turned the dating world into a metaphorical burning dumpster. But can the app now fix what it originally destroyed? Wired asks this question.

• In The Cut, an analysis of the recent trend that has seen so many singers turn to acting.

• AI can do many things, but can it have good taste? According to The New York Times, the answer is no.

Chanel has just launched a new campaign directed by Michel Gondry for the CHANEL 25 bag, starring Margot Robbie. The actress from Wuthering Heights meets all the versions of herself on the street, each wearing a different iteration of the French maison’s new bag.

Recently, the theme of clones, especially digital ones, has returned multiple times in fashion: just think of Prada’s Ritual Identities campaign for the Galleria bag, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Scarlett Johansson, or H&M’s advertisement from last March featuring 33 pairs of “digital twins” created with AI. In all three cases, the common denominator is the clone. Each project tells in its own way not only a different aspect of fashion, but also of the times we are living in.

@chanelofficialThe CHANEL 25 Handbag Campaign​ ​ Starring Margot Robbie and directed by Michel Gondry, the film of the CHANEL 25 campaign unfolds as a contemporary take on Kylie Minogue’s video "Come Into My World". The pop icon herself makes a special appearance in the film, 25 years after the release of her track.​ ​ #CHANEL #CHANEL25​

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Twenty years after the release of the music video for Come Into My World, French director Michel Gondry returns behind the camera to present all the versions of Margot Robbie, each with a different CHANEL 25. As a tribute to the 2002 video, singer Kylie Minogue even makes an appearance in the video, on a set that recalls a Parisian neighborhood.

One might infer that the connotation of the song’s title, together with the choice of Margot Robbie as the protagonist, represents an invitation from Chanel into the new imaginary of Matthieu Blazy. In this sense, the clone device represents two values: the plurality of the Chanel woman imagined by the maison’s new creative director, combined with a surrealist cue that does not hide but rather enhances the sense of technological artifice, bordering on surrealism.

In Ritual Identities, Scarlett Johansson, who already starred in Jonathan Glazer’s 2024 short film, returns to act for Prada, this time directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. From the creative encounter between muse and creator emerges a sort of microcosm in the form of a feature film: Scarlett Johansson performs complex and mysterious rituals, unusual actions in archetypal settings of modern life and, during these processes, she duplicates and meets countless versions of herself. The film explores the concept of fluidity of personality, starting from the actress and then shifting the focus onto Prada.

In this context, the Galleria bag embodies and replaces reality just like a clone, making us think that the focus of the campaign is on Scarlett Johansson and Yorgos Lanthimos, when in truth the real protagonist is the bag itself. Prada, a brand that has always made intellectual collaborations its strength, stages the different identities of the contemporary woman as interpreted by Johansson, reproducing a theater of the everyday in which we all vent, through objects, small neuroses or peculiar gestures that tend to define us as human beings.

The theme of duality and the clone made headlines again last year with a controversial H&M campaign. Starting from the digital scanning of real models’ bodies, the brand created 33 pairs of “digital twins” to replace the “real” ones in the new advertising images. As we might have expected, the project sparked criticism and controversy among both industry professionals and the public, demonstrating how the use of new technologies in fashion remains a sensitive issue.

It is ironic that a reflection on the copy, albeit unintentionally, emerges from an H&M campaign, whose products are often “dupes” of luxury brand items: a short circuit that almost turns AI into a trap, worsening its position as a brand associated with lower-quality copies. Moreover, all this happens at a time when the creative industry is experiencing a certain anxiety about AI, seen as something that could become more performant than humans, even replacing them.

The campaign seems to address this tension lightly, playing on a duality that does not truly put digital and real in conflict, but rather creates complicity: the models joke about having “digital twins”. At the same time, it does not dwell on the deeper issues: can Digital Twins be paid? What is the point of the model figure if she is duplicated or replaced? Is it just a matter of cost-saving or is there something more? The campaign, similar to those created with AI by other mass-market brands, has helped make artificial intelligence not only an ethical issue, but also a legal one: New York’s Fashion Workers Act, which protects models from mistreatment and abuse, now also includes protection from the use of AI.

In a period in which AI has invaded our lives, it makes us question everything we see, from advertisements to the news itself. In response, brands leverage humanity (Prada’s intellectuality, Margot Robbie’s insistence for Chanel, the real-yet-fake models for H&M) to appear credible. Even though, in reality, all three brands have made use of new technologies, AI or not.

Multiplying Margot Robbie, one of the most beloved actresses of the moment, whose very presence - as in Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie - already takes a stance on a complex socio-political context, means reaffirming a precise intent. Reproducing her once, twice, three, five times is not a simple visual device, but a conceptual gesture: Chanel, like many other brands, seems to want to talk about authenticity through contemporary technologies, suggesting that what sells today is precisely authenticity - or, more precisely, its construction.

After all, every day we ourselves are responsible for producing copies of ourselves: continuous adaptations that allow us to adapt to everyday contexts. This is where the discourse becomes even more interesting, at the point where advertising and identity both converge in the same tension toward authenticity. Because, ultimately, a copy is nothing more than a reiterated concept, which finds its affirmation in repetition, or, in the most distracted cases, its dissipation in the multitude.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

Have you ever experienced a reality check that suddenly opened your eyes? On the global geopolitical chessboard, balances are shifting rapidly. The conflict in Iran is threatening international trade, and politicians across half the world are, or should be, in a state of panic. In Italy, the reality check takes the form of the referendum closing out the week, for which the government has launched a broad and controversial media campaign. In fashion, as entry-level jobs disappear, Kering is cleaning house, cutting underperforming brands and doubling down on jewelry, while Chanel, after drawing global attention to its boutiques, has fully realized the influence Mathieu Blazy can exert over its clientele.

nss G-Club is now on Substack. Subscribe for interviews, opinions, trends, updates, and reflections on the world of beauty and wellness, starting with Under The Beauty Radar, a format dedicated to beauty artists in all its forms.

• After the end of award season, we can now say that everyone loves to hate Timothée Chalamet.

• DeMellier brings the it-bag of the moment to Stockholm with a weekend of celebrations.

• Ozempic has made some content creators even more dangerous.

• “Make-up trends come from people, from what you see on the street”: interview with Manuele Mameli.

• Is fashion the only survival tool for emerging Hollywood stars?

• Camper and the Vitra Design Museum celebrate thirty years of Hella Jongerius with “Whispering Things”.

• As niche perfumery embraces unconventional scents, who can actually afford to smell bad?

• Cosmoprof Bologna 2026: what really happens behind the scenes of beauty.

• Has a “Gapaissance” arrived? The New Yorker interviews GAP’s new Chief Creative Officer, Zac Posen.

• Dazed reminds us how to have personal taste in the era of AI slop.

• The New York Times analyzed every designer's bow at the end of FW26 runway shows.

• According to WWD, the unexpected accessory of spring will be watch rings.

There’s a line outside Chanel. A consideration that in itself doesn’t seem shocking but which, in the current state of fashion, has something almost revolutionary about it. Of course, in fashion districts around the world, a bit of a queue outside luxury boutiques is normal, perhaps less so in these times of crisis. But the fact that the arrival of a collection in stores worldwide drew so many people to line up to buy accessories costing thousands of euros has something extraordinary about it: it gives the feeling of having returned to more prosperous times.

The news of Chanel-mania in fashion circles has been covered by many international fashion publications: it’s rare, in a moment of sales crisis and sky-high prices, for the arrival of a collection in stores to become a phenomenon in itself. But perhaps the fascination this news has generated concerns its analog nature: it’s a fact that is not taking place online, it’s not an abstraction from a quarterly report but a human, physical, crowd event. But how did it develop?

The absolute debut of the collection was in Paris on March 5. The timing was perfect: not only was every person who mattered in the industry there, not only was anticipation for the Chanel FW26 show sky-high, but the collection had finally arrived in stores, you could literally go and pick it up. The stores were stormed. This is where the Chanel-mania narrative was established: the first reports from editors, stylists, and influencers arrived; the first stories of celebrities spotted in the store and accounts of fabulous and mysterious historical clients booking exclusive appointments and clearing out shoes and bags. Then came the show with all its media buzz.

A week after the absolute debut in Paris, now that everyone around the world who wasn’t in the city was eagerly waiting, the collection arrived in stores in London, New York, Beverly Hills, Bal Harbour in Florida, and also in Asia. The creator Laura Jung, in a video posted on Threads five days ago and three days ago on Instagram, said she went to Japan, to the Ginza store in Tokyo, where there were no kilometer-long lines and all sizes were in stock, unlike in Paris.

Beyond the huge attention the collection received, and the many stunned comments from journalists and online commentators, it’s easy to see how the progression of releases, gradually wider, seems to have been intentionally designed to create an initial frenzy with international resonance, pushing both potential clients and mere curious onlookers to want to visit the store and be part of the collective experience. Instead of publicizing this roll-out, the brand let the public do it themselves.

A semi-organic approach to the timing of releases that turned the public itself into the advertising medium, so to speak. Let’s say the approach is semi-organic because on one hand it was planned, but on the other it heavily relies on user-generated content, not based on media materials but on the tangible, in-store product. Indeed, the tangibility of the experience (the lines, the clothes tried on, the fitting-room photos, and so on) was the real novelty of this commercial roll-out. And so we can’t help but wonder: has Chanel’s in real life success made us realize that the rest of fashion is a bit too online?

@claudialijohnsonThis felt like a monumental moment. Although the bags didn’t really do it for me. Loved the RTW shoes and accesssories #chanel #matthieublazy

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For decades, fashion has relentlessly tried to conquer mass culture. The problem, however, is that it’s difficult to advertise to the masses and then sell to a narrow elite. This has led in recent years to the disappearance of aspirational clients who, amid dupes, premium brands, and second-hand platforms, have bought fashion everywhere except in luxury boutiques. And perhaps that’s fine with the brands too, always anxious to position themselves high in the market. By doing so, however, they have turned fashion into a more visual than tangible phenomenon: for those unfamiliar with boutique shopping, fashion is largely incorporeal.

Beyond the wealthiest clients, who are necessarily few, the vast majority of the public consumes fashion only on a visual level: runway videos, photographs and archive magazines, museums, and so on. All the ritual of boutique purchasing and customer service, but also the simple act of holding products in one’s hands, are aspects of fashion alien to those who don’t have the budget to enter a boutique. The same goes for the hidden world of client-only events, collection previews, dinners, and various exquisite experiences that ultimately represent the concrete luxury experience beyond the mere purchase.

@_misomelonboots on the ground journalism #matthieublazy #chanel #ss26 #nyc

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If fashion can be bought through shortcuts, the concrete experience of luxury remains inconceivable for the non-client public: a situation that has led to a kind of disaffection between brands and the general public. Important clients remain, but casual visitors disappear. This is also why, in their latest drops, Chanel but also Dior and Gucci have addressed the pricing issue by producing more bags under the €4000 threshold and expanding entry-level products such as belts, scarves, and wallets, as illustrated by BoF. Prices haven’t exactly dropped, but the price range has broadened to also entice clients who simply came in to browse.

Both with Chanel and with Gucci, where the first press reports are starting to arrive, turning the arrival of merchandise in stores into an event dissolves hesitations and effectively pushes new potential clients into the store. Once inside, even those who don’t normally spend those amounts find something extremely expensive but accessible—particularly true for shoes, which have indeed been among the most talked-about products overall.

The current hype around Chanel isn’t coming from viral campaigns or meme moments. There are people in stores who are actively buying and sharing their shopping experience with the entire world. Above all, the product is front and center. In the various reports being read, one notices the presence of an extinct species: aspirational clients. Young professionals, or anyway clients making their first Chanel purchase, but also simple curious people who went in to see everything in person.

What makes this phenomenon rare is that it almost never happens for a collection to be so anticipated that it pushes people (and not just wealthy, revered clients) to go in person to touch and feel the products. The “miracle” of Chanel-mania is that it broke down the invisible barrier that often prevents non-experts from entering boutiques and, in general, separates those who look from those who buy. And here we get to the point. By bringing the narrative down to the store level and the product on the shelves, Chanel made the collection real for a much wider audience than regular clients, solving (perhaps unintentionally) the disconnection that fashion has with real, flesh-and-blood people.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

The fashion month, which this time seemed like it would never end, has just come to a close, bringing with it the final shows in the French capital and a few last-minute musical chairs. The week opened with Chanel, where Matthieu Blazy presented the FW26 collection by rethinking the contemporary Chanel woman, creating the impression of witnessing a kind of telepathic dialogue between the designer and his clientele. Next came Miuccia Prada with the FW26 collection for Miu Miu. The Signora has always maintained that the purpose of a brand in the contemporary fashion landscape is to create «real clothes for real people.» And it is precisely reality that Miu Miu speaks about – a reality shaken by recent political and social developments, whose expectations for the future appear less bright than once imagined.

The final week of this dense fashion month then closed with both bad news and good news. The bad news is that just a few days ago it was announced that Marco De Vincenzo has stepped down as creative director of Etro. Beginning in June 2022, De Vincenzo’s tenure marked the brand’s first creative chapter developed without the guidance of a member of the founding family. The good news, however, is that after weeks of anticipation Alessandro Michele finally unveiled his FW26 collection for Valentino. He chose Rome as the stage for his dramatic presentation.

And with that, the fashion system can finally allow itself a bit of well-deserved rest.

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Fashion loves drama. It is what it was born for and what has allowed it to endure through the centuries, from the gossip at the court of Versailles to the feud between Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. The problem is that today, with the digitisation of the most exclusive shows and the rise of accessibility as a trend, controversy has become a more dangerous weapon than ever. At a time when the industry proclaims itself increasingly democratic and inclusive, the boundary between personal visibility and collective cause is becoming ever thinner.

On the one hand, controversy brings publicity - as the endless examples from Demna’s era at Balenciaga have shown - but on the other, if poorly planned, it risks compromising the reputation of its creator. For this reason, in the contemporary fashion industry, it is always better to avoid turning collective initiatives into an exercise in personal branding.

During this latest Fashion Month, one issue in particular stirred the waters among editors, content creators and the like: watch parties. A few days ago, following Vogue’s announcement of a streaming event dedicated to Balmain’s new show, digital creator Lyas lashed out on social media claiming that the media outlet had stolen his format. For about three seasons, the French creator has been documenting on Instagram “La Watch Party,” a show-streaming format which, starting from small French bars with just a few dozen people, now involves many fashion enthusiasts and Lyas’s followers. The project has grown to the point that some shows have been hosted in theaters with the support of sponsors and the brands themselves: many of them, such as Zomer, Willy Chavarria or Jacquemus, have even allowed some participants of La Watch Party to attend the show live.

@nssmagazineBottega Veneta hosting a watch party outside their show venue for their fans. Fashion is slowly becoming more inclusive again. #bottegaveneta #milanfashionweek #watchparty #fw26

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What created controversy was not so much the dispute raised by Lyas against Vogue, but the statements made by the content creator about the format. Editors, journalists, other creators, fashion enthusiasts and commentators have brought to light interesting aspects of the issue, from the true origin of fashion watch parties (does an owner, an inventor, really exist for this type of event?) to the purpose they should pursue. If the goal of a streaming event during Fashion Week is to make fashion more democratic and accessible, distancing itself from the voyeurism of the front rows, from talents and celebrities under the photographers’ spotlights, why should a single person take credit for it, not only claiming it but also monetising it? How can one attack the system if one then so easily accepts gifts and sponsored content on social media from the very same brands being criticised?

For Philippe Pourhashemi, author and fashion critic, egocentrism has no reason to persist when the goal is inclusivity. Moreover, the fact that a format dedicated to accessibility has also been supported by an established media outlet should be interpreted as the achievement of the goal itself, not as an affront. Just today, Valentino announced that their show will be broadcast live in the streets of Milan, Rome, and Naples. But the problem of individualism within the star system began long before watch parties and press gifts infiltrated the industry. «Fashion has the tendency to take political and societal issues and treat them as a trend, make them gimmicky and remove the politics,» Pourhashemi says. «It’s very nice that outsiders are pressuring the fashion industry to make it more democratic, but at the end of the day, it’s about actions,» he adds, emphasising that if the real reason why inclusive parties are organised is to gain fame and establish oneself in the industry, then the mission not only loses its meaning but ends up supporting what it was fighting against.

The problem does not concern only outsiders trying to break through and the system, Pourhashemi states, but a general tendency within fashion to exploit alternative powers to reinforce the establishment. «If you look at what’s been going on lately, runway shows, people being hired at houses, the lack of diversity, this obsession with very, very skinny bodies, it really feels like we’re going backwards to a conservative vision of fashion,» the critic observes. «Of course, brands are very smart, so they jump at the opportunity for press,» he adds. Recalling the time when Lyas complained on his social channels about not being invited to the Dior show, only to then be welcomed by Jonathan Anderson himself at the show’s re-see and receive a Maison bag as a gift, the critic underlines how, despite the conservative period, brands still enjoy involving outsider and alternative figures, especially when the result is publicity.

The real question, faced with a format born for people who do not have access to luxury but now transformed into a marketing stunt that feeds the very system it criticises, is: «are you against the system, or are you collaborating with them?». Certainly, one cannot blame a single creator for having turned a democratic project into an advertising platform; in fact, Lyas himself, by directing all this attention toward himself, risks jeopardising his own reputation. What will happen when brands have exhausted the popularity of these events, or worse when they claim the credit for them, turning them into yet another inaccessible service? In the end, it may be wiser to set individualism aside and dedicate oneself to the cause, even celebrating the media outlets that decide to support it. After all, isn’t that what would truly make fashion democratic and inclusive?

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter of nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

In Paris, returns, farewells, and new creative director debuts have brought big questions to the runway. Antonin Tron questioned the Balmain woman with a collection more restrained than the dramatic vision of Olivier Rousteing; meanwhile, Matières Fécales, by Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, returned to examine the true meaning of luxury with The One Percent, a collection worn by two symbolic personalities: Bryan Johnson, obsessed with beauty and longevity, and the iconic Michèle Lamy, who couldn’t care less about traditional beauty. Two different worlds, those of Balmain and Matières Fécales, that nonetheless raise the same question: what is luxury today, really? Obsession or freedom?

On other runways, there were also a few tears. At Pieter Mulier’s last show for Alaïa, before the creative director moves to Milan to lead the new Versace, the emotion shown by Raf Simons (the designer’s former mentor and boss) and Matthieu Blazy caught the attention of everyone present. Sitting front row and jumping to their feet to applaud Mulier at the end of the show, they charged the moment with a sense of emotion that has been sorely missing at a time when tension and stress seem to rule not only Fashion Week, but the whole world.

In short, if this week has left us with one lesson, it is that even luxury sometimes cries.

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What struck most about this past Milan Fashion Week was sadness. A black suit reaching mid-calf is all that Maria Grazia Chiuri’s new Fendi left us; Kate Moss in the Gucci G-string, designed by Tom Ford in 1997, is the only novelty Demna brought to the Maison for his first show in Milan.

Against the backdrop of escalating conflicts in the Middle East, all-black outfits, somber atmospheres, and a halo of nostalgia transformed the shows from marvelous spectacles into dramatic performances. While the aesthetic gloom of luxury reflects the low expectations of contemporary society - trapped in a poignant, repetitive cycle seeking comfort in the grandeur of the past - it simultaneously deprives the fashion industry of its most important value: creativity.

Of course, it is difficult to dream in a broken world, yet the attempts by fashion houses and creative directors to bring current events to the runway seem driven less by a desire to comment on them than by the aim of exploiting them to keep selling. After all, luxury has, in this war, a single, sad concern: the shrinking of active markets in cities like Dubai, Riyadh, and Doha. And if fashion can only bring to the runway what it experiences firsthand, then today all luxury can convey is the fear of being forgotten.

Meanwhile, the identity of historic brands is crumbling, crushed by commercial demands, the pressures exerted by luxury executives on new creative directors, and perhaps by the latter’s fear of going unappreciated. Fendi, Dolce&Gabbana, and even Gucci have retreated into all-black looks, a lack of artistic risks, and the revival of past designs, disguised as careful archival research.

But the minimalism of quiet luxury and vintage aesthetics in 2026 have run out of steam: consumers and fashion insiders - still fans of timeless elegance (a term overused in recent seasons, even by this writer) and of the most iconic collections in fashion history - crave innovation. All-black and all-beige looks may sell well and provide financial support, but if a brand relies solely on them to stay afloat, it risks losing its uniqueness.

Demna’s Gucci seemed poised to bring a ray of light to Milan. The Georgian designer, known worldwide for his creative acumen, this time left too much room on the runway for marketability and nostalgia. Demna essentially presented everything Gucci already represents: Italian drama, Tom Ford’s grandeur, and the accessibility of the previous decade’s street style. The show - sensational in its theatricality thanks to the participation of niche stars (allow us the oxymoron) like Nettspend alongside international icons such as Kate Moss - felt more like a documentary than an original piece. A film already seen, a once-glorious era that today offers nothing but the comfort of revisiting it.

To show their gratitude, comply with the wishes of top management, or perhaps simply play it safe and avoid missteps that could cost them their newly acquired positions, new creative directors increasingly return to the roots of the brands they have taken the helm of. It is a commendable effort, given the commitment and dedication required to research an entire brand’s history, but sometimes revisiting the past feels indistinguishable from copying. Moreover, in this vicious cycle, creative directors can no longer exercise the creativity for which they were hired - a paradox that transforms them from pioneers into mere imitators. This applies not only to new creative directors, such as Demna at Gucci or Meryll Rogge at Marni, but also to veterans in Milan.

At Dolce&Gabbana and Prada, the designers chose to focus on the concept of identity: the former by celebrating its own aesthetic, rooted in Sicily, tailoring, lace, and the color black; the latter by revisiting femininity through wardrobe archetypes. What made the shows special was not so much the collections, which featured the brands’ most iconic designs, but the styling, taken to the extreme and made the true protagonist, as the models - only fifteen in number - removed a piece before walking the runway again. Both, like the younger creative directors, brought to the runway what the audience already knows and admires about these brands.

At this point, one has to wonder whether luxury brands still benefit from showing collections on the runway. If creative directors can no longer exercise their imagination - so much so that most shows have lost their titles and merely follow the corresponding season - and consumers are satisfied with collections that reiterate already-popular stylistic codes, the show’s sole purpose becomes advertising. In hindsight, perhaps hypebeasts were right: in Milan, artistic innovation and technical progress lie in the hands of independent and emerging brands; for luxury maisons, all that remains is the logo. This might explain why, of all the pieces this Fashion Week, the accessory that moved people most was Gucci’s GG Web belt bag.

essentials is nss magazine’s weekly briefing, landing in your inbox every Saturday morning.

A busy, very busy, Milano Fashion Week has been unfolding right before our eyes. Not only because the third stop of fashion month is taking place at the same time as the Sanremo Music Festival, but mostly because Milan finally feels exciting again. Three major creative debuts marked the week, from Maria Grazia Chiuri’s homecoming at Fendi to Meryll Rogge stepping up at Marni, and Demna’s first official show for Gucci.

But the calendar is so much more than debuts, because, for once, this truly feels like an attention-worthy fashion week - between Jil Sander’s incredible sexiness, the anticipation for Trotter’s sophomore collection at Bottega Veneta, and Vivetta Ponti’s newest brand, Venerdì Pomeriggio. What can we say? MFW is so back.

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To explain what the Sanremo Festival represents today, two moments from the 76th edition of the song contest hosted by Carlo Conti are enough: Mrs Gianna Pratesi, 105 years old, recalling her first vote in 1946, and the AI moment in which both host and audience are artificially turned into ducks to the tune of Nilla Pizzi’s classic Papaveri e papere (a blatant piece of product placement, as well as a frightening and unsettling gimmick, disturbing in the same way as a sequence from a David Lynch film).

This clash between past (Mrs Gianna) and future (artificial intelligence) played out on the Ariston stage, which, compared to Amadeus’ tenure, continues to take steps backward in terms of spectacle, interaction, and entertainment. Conti seems to be in search of a renewed sense of rigor for this year’s Italian Song Festival, dedicated to one of its founding fathers, Pippo Baudo, who passed away last year. The problem, however, lies in the friction between the two souls of a show that knows it cannot forget what Sanremo has been in recent years, yet tries to reclaim a sense of austerity. This translates into a lineup of thirty competing artists (too many), a broadcast running from 8:40 p.m. to 1:20 a.m. (too long), and little effort to offer anything that feels truly recreational for the audience, including a large portion of the songs themselves.

A meme from the Instagram profile Crudeliamemon, posted on the opening day of the festival, sums up the shared sentiment rather well. If Amadeus’ vision was a roller coaster whose overall impression could be summed up by the memorable sequence from The Hangover, Carlo Conti’s comes across as a seriousness that strains to appear witty, finding its only moments of humor in poking fun at the host’s desire to keep all the contestants on schedule. Contestants he himself selected, and whom he chose to keep at an undeniably excessive number. One of those things that really would have benefited from change, and yet, apparently, when something is kept, it is always, and only, the worst part.

That said, it is not strictly necessary to miss Amadeus’ now past hosting, which ended two years ago. As with all things, it is easy to speak in hindsight and remember the past with a certain sense of nostalgia. Still, it is also true that Conti’s work felt more like a dutiful assignment than a genuine celebration, mirrored in the ballad-heavy spirit of many of the songs, which only occasionally dare to stray from the trajectory of the classic festival-winning tracks. The hosting style, moreover, appears even more rigid when contrasted with the precise yet light-hearted preparedness of the evening’s first co-host. A Laura Pausini who, oddly enough, did not sing—despite owing the start of her career to the festival—but who at least acted as a counterbalance to what should be Carlo Conti’s composure, which often turns, especially alongside his co-hosts, into misplaced severity.

A showcase for the singer whose latest “scandal” involved snappy replies posted by her team under the comments of a video of the cover Due vite by Marco Mengoni, performed as a duet with French singer Julien Lieb – an episode that nonetheless allowed her to win back the audience’s affection. Pausini also carved out a few good Samaritan moments, repeatedly stressing the importance of world peace (to put it briefly), while also delivering some of the more light-hearted slips, from the microphone she had “in hand” to the memory of Belén’s infamous butterfly in 2012.

Viewers were already captivated, instead, by this now almost mythological presence in Italy, Can Yaman, arrested a few days ago in Turkey and released shortly after, as he himself explained during the official press conference. Another protagonist of a conciliatory interlude between past and present, when the new Sandokan met the legendary Kabir Bedi, who portrayed the iconic character for six episodes back in 1976. An encounter, unfortunately spoiled by the ill-advised arrival of Carlokan, complete with a decidedly out-of-place photomontage.

The 76th edition of the Sanremo Festival therefore gets off to a subdued start, as we wait for the songs to grow on us and gradually find their way. In the meantime, praise goes to the female contestants, the most daring on stage, as well as to the good taste of the male contestants, all impeccably dressed. The best of the night (and perhaps we can already say of the festival?) are precisely those artists who manage to reconcile tradition and youth within themselves: Fulminacci, in his accountant-style suit, singing Stupida sfortuna, and Maria Antonietta and Colombre with La felicità e basta, the singer wearing a dress that pays homage to Nada’s 1969 look from Ma che freddo fa.

What we are happy to have left behind from previous years? The singers’ obsession with scoring points in Fantasanremo. As for the rest, «it’s a gliding flight», as Loredana Bertè sang in ’82, so we shall see who lands on the podium of a rebuilt, rethought, and cleaned-up festival, one that would not be Sanremo, or Italian television for that matter, if, at the most socially and historically significant moment of the evening, with Mrs Pratesi and her vote for the abolition of the monarchy, the word “Repupplica” had not appeared on screen.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

An alternation of rain and almost spring-like sun seems to anticipate the way fashion attention will furiously oscillate between two fires next week. On one side, Milan Fashion Week; on the other, the Sanremo Festival, a true cyclone that promises to sweep away every other news story. It’s the first time this overlap has occurred, a kind of alignment of the stars that will bring two worlds (one small and one gigantic, one elitist and one national-popular) almost to touch, separated by a minimal and insurmountable distance. Needless to say, our attention will do somersaults to follow both. But don’t let all the weekly commitments distract you from the calendar of meetings and events that nss has prepared for the coming week: parties, activations, and above all, the landing of Fuorimoda in Italy’s main fashion universities to comment live on the new collections together with tomorrow’s talents.

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This season’s Fashion Week calendar is different from usual. With the exception of Bottega Veneta and Roberto Cavalli, no brand will show after 7 p.m. If for international media the decision seems strange, for the Italian press the news comes as a sigh of relief. Split in two, the Italian fashion system will have to choose whether to attend the most glamorous week or the most pop one of the year; the international crowd, instead, simply had to book food and accommodation earlier than usual - to avoid the drama of last summer, when the Paris Olympics blocked traffic and hotels during Couture Week. Yes, because this week, in addition to the ongoing Milan Cortina Winter Games, Northern Italy is hosting the Sanremo Festival, the holy week of Italian pop culture.

Between Sanremo and Milan, an intense flow of stylists, designers, project managers and influencers is forming, moving from Liguria to the Lombard capital to manage two of the most important events of their careers. On one side, the Italian Song Festival, patron of the country’s pop culture as well as a fabulous stage for talent seeking recognition on the creative scene; on the other, Milan Fashion Week, seven days of spotlights shining on the new stars of Italian fashion. There’s only one question: who will take care of the lights shining on Milan?

The Italian Song Festival cannot be compared to Coachella, Lollapalooza, let alone the Grammys or the Brits. There are no line-ups announced a year in advance, no overplayed song performances, no camping areas or recreational drugs - at least, not that many. For five days, from Tuesday 24 to Saturday 28 February, one of the most historically absurd, lengthy, camp and at the same time trashy programs of Italian television takes place at the Ariston Theatre. And the entire Italian audience - not to mention Eurovision viewers - whether jokingly or passionately, stays glued to the TV that week to watch it.

The rules are simple: thirty of Italy’s most important singers take the Ariston stage and perform an unreleased song, competing in a contest whose outcome is decided by the press, radio juries and public televoting. The winner will then represent Italy at Eurovision. The best song, the most talented singer or the most deserving artist does not always win - and that is precisely the point. A large part of the audience, exhausted by the end of the week and red-eyed after spending hours in front of the television, often pays less attention to the competition itself than to the gossip, the looks and the dynamics surrounding it.

Captured by the competing songs and their jingles, by the memes that emerge online during the special guests’ comedic segments (we are still stuck on that time when John Travolta performed the Ballo del Qua Qua to promote a pair of shoes, with rather unfortunate results), during this holy week viewers become so absorbed in the Festival’s lore that they forget everything else. On the streets people hum the choruses of the competing songs, online they repost the most embarrassing moments from the previous night, while commenting with friends on the latest performances, remembering who sang off-key and who was badly dressed. Someone even invented a fantasy game that became so popular it ended up involving the Festival’s own participants.

The Sanremo Festival’s main strength lies in its media engagement. As the most relevant event in Italian pop culture, bringing together artists of different ages, genres, categories and styles, it is able to reach extremely diverse target audiences, from children to the elderly, from the LGBTQIA community to more conservative groups. And while during the 2010s the Festival had lost some traction, in recent editions - thanks in particular to the artistic direction of former host Amadeus - the involvement of social media and increasingly younger artists has turned the event into the most watched ever.

Just consider that the latest edition’s share (that is, the percentage of viewers tuned into the channel) reached 73.1%, totaling 16 million people, while online the Festival came close to one billion social interactions. FantaSanremo, the game invented by a group of friends working in the entertainment industry, has in just five years attracted millions of players, with the latest edition surpassing 5 million teams.

Beyond the numbers, the reason why Milan Fashion Week will not be the same as usual this season lies in a small detail that foreign passport-holding fashion insiders might overlook: the involvement of stylists, designers, brands, make-up artists, talents, content creators and pop stars in the Festival. With the entire Italian fashion scene gathered in Sanremo to follow the competing singers, who is left in Milan for the runway shows?

Days, if not weeks, before the Festival, competing singers work together with maisons, creative directors and stylists to create custom looks for each night they perform, often also organizing outfits to wear during their free time or for press interviews around Sanremo. Moreover, brands and media take advantage of the tourist influx in the Ligurian city for promotional activities, with pop-ups, temporary stores and dedicated installations designed to keep audiences engaged during the day as well.

For brands and stylists, the Festival represents a unique platform on which to showcase their artistic direction, even more than a red carpet - perhaps even more than a fashion show itself. By dressing some of the most relevant artists in the Italian music scene at crucial moments in their careers, they can expand their cultural imagery and present it to an extremely wide audience. And the strategy does not involve only the competing singers: in 2021, for example, Achille Lauro was a recurring guest at the Festival and, together with long-time stylist and collaborator Nick Cerioni, staged performances in which he embodied some of history’s most important icons, always in full Gucci looks. A remarkable showcase for the Italian maison, which in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic found itself in front of an audience of nearly eight million viewers.

While waiting for this new Fashion Week, we feel like offering some advice to fashion insiders who, having arrived from abroad in Milan, find themselves immersed in Italy’s most pop-filled days. Do not despair if many brands have chosen to show in the morning rather than in the evening in order to watch Sanremo; do not complain if Milan’s after-parties lack enough people to network with.

This is the perfect moment to discover new Italian talents to bet on, to better understand the dynamics that drive the Italian entertainment system and, why not, to take a trip to Sanremo and discover firsthand why the event attracts such a large audience. This holy week must be seized in the moment: for us Italian media professionals, scattered between the Sanremo press room, Fashion Week, the Olympics and a thousand other events, all that remains is to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning.

As the women’s fashion month kicks off in New York, and before the moveable feast of editors, buyers, designers, and models lands in Europe in a frenzy of shows, the first economic results of the year have arrived. At LVMH the situation appears stable, at Kering there’s a timid recovery, and in general for Italian fashion, the darkest hour seems to have passed without the crisis being resolved. All forecasts, in short, seem to point to a 2026 of convalescence for a luxury industry that in recent years has given itself no respite, ultimately collapsing on itself. And between Bad Bunny’s success at the Super Bowl and a series of more or less mysterious absences in the Paris Fashion Week calendar, a light at the end of the tunnel is starting to become visible. But will fashion manage to find the exit?

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When Kris Van Assche launched his line in 2005, he was following a well-trodden yet still unusual path: that of a Belgian designer working in Paris. Although he had already helped shape Dior Homme, his sensitivity in blending tailoring and casualwear anticipated how men would dress over the next twenty years. But what I remember most is not the collection as a whole, but a single garment that became a subtle signature: a wool V-neck sweater twisted at one point, with a four-leaf clover stitched onto the chest in place of a logo. It was a piece that felt familiar and yet new at the same time – the kind of clothing I love.

I reached out to Kris on Instagram after many years of admiring his work. Yes, that’s right: the power of social media – so often mentioned in a negative light – made it possible for two people who appreciated each other’s work to talk as if they already knew one another personally. And in the end, we managed to do it in person thanks to nss magazine.

Eugene Rabkin: How did you enter the world of fashion?

Kris Van Assche: It’s one of those things that happened to me when I was very young. At some point, I realized that clothes didn’t just grow inside the wardrobe and that someone had to put them there. I was very young and lucky to have a grandmother who was the person with good taste in the family: she made her own clothes and introduced me to patterns, cutting, fabrics, and everything else. When I was 12, I think, we made my first pair of pleated trousers together.

Eugene Rabkin: What path led you from those first trousers with your grandmother to entering the Antwerp Academy?

Kris Van Assche: Well, when I was 12, all I heard about was the loud fashion coming out of Paris: Mugler, Gaultier, and those brands that were making a lot of noise. I come from a very small Belgian town; there was no social media or internet. I could maybe get my hands on Vogue if I ordered it three weeks in advance. Then, at 15, I discovered the Antwerp Academy. That made it something concretely possible, because as a child, Paris felt like the other side of the world, whereas Antwerp – half an hour by car from where I grew up – somehow felt more realistic. So at 18, I took the entrance exams, and things went that way. I had absolutely no artistic background at all, apart from my grandmother making her own clothes. It was quite a challenge for me.

Eugene Rabkin: What was your time at the Academy like?

Kris Van Assche: It was the best time of my life. I was lucky enough to be part of a group of students where real friendships were formed. Because the Academy, like any academy, can become very competitive. We worked hard, but we also partied hard.

Eugene Rabkin: What year did you graduate, and how rigorous was the Academy?

Kris Van Assche: The Academy was tough, really hardcore. In a way, I think I didn’t learn enough technical skills, since the Academy was very focused on building your personality. But aside from that, it truly felt like already having one foot in the real world. I learned that if you don’t make things happen by yourself, they won’t just fall from the sky. That said, I think it has changed quite a lot over time. When I was a student, there wasn’t even a single working sewing machine – we had to do everything at home.

Eugene Rabkin: Tell us about your graduation collection and how your aesthetic was taking shape.

Kris Van Assche: It feels like a century ago, but it was womenswear, because I actually graduated in womenswear, and my entire career is a mistake. A lucky mistake, but a complete coincidence. It was the idea of power dressing for women: tailored jackets, white poplin shirts, and ties. I was 22, and I have absolutely no regrets.

Eugene Rabkin: What did you do immediately after graduating?

Kris Van Assche: I graduated in ’98. One of the jury members was Suzy Menkes, who at the time was the most important fashion journalist. For three full days, I felt at the center of the world. Then the fourth day came, and I realized I had to find a job. So I applied for internships and ended up at Yves Saint Laurent, but in menswear, where a certain Hedi Slimane – still not so well known at the time – was doing his first stint. I was afraid menswear might be a bit boring for me, but I was happy to be in Paris, and I wanted to find a real job. Hedi hadn’t done his first show yet. I had no idea it would turn out to be such an incredible experience. It wasn’t even a proper men’s fashion week yet, more like a few fashion days.

Eugene Rabkin: What was it like to be part of the launch of Dior Homme from the inside?

Kris Van Assche: It was the best place I could have been. I was incredibly lucky. How many opportunities do you get, as an assistant, to experience a launch like that at such a level? This wasn’t about launching a small label – it was about launching the menswear division at Dior, which didn’t exist before. You had to create a new silhouette, but you also had to figure out what the stores would look like, what the hangers would be like, what the packaging would be, what the linings would be, and what the buttons would be like. Everything had to be designed from scratch. Usually, when you enter one of those big maisons, everything already exists, but Hedi was very hands-on, and for me, it was the best learning process imaginable. That said, I have no memories of my personal life from 2000 to 2004, as if nothing else happened. Was it hard? Yes. But you really learn this way.

Eugene Rabkin: Do you think that kind of deliberate friction – not trying to please everyone – has disappeared from fashion today?

Kris Van Assche: Yes. But there’s a big difference between launching a brand when you practically have no customers to lose and taking over a brand that makes 10 billion dollars. That’s a lot of customers to lose, and you can’t really compare the two situations. Still, it was a very radical and fantastic moment in fashion. Then I left, and in 2005, I did my first show for my own brand. My mother thought I was crazy to leave such an amazing job.

Eugene Rabkin: What pushed you to leave Dior Homme and launch your own brand?

Kris Van Assche: I had worked for six years on Hedi’s vision. I was working day and night, and it was the best learning process imaginable. But I hadn’t gone to the Antwerp Academy to learn how to support someone else’s vision. For six years, I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to do differently. It was literally like jumping into a black hole. I had a minimum amount of financial support but almost no money, and it didn’t even scare me. I don’t know how, it’s strange, but I jumped. And it felt just as natural to launch my eponymous brand with menswear, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my vision.

Eugene Rabkin: What was the aesthetic vision of Kris Van Assche?

Kris Van Assche: At the time, I loved tailoring, but it felt like a closed world. Meanwhile, the cool guys I met in clubs were wearing baggy jeans and sneakers. Luxury hadn’t started borrowing from that world yet. When I launched my brand, I felt it had to be the best of both worlds. My iconic look, if I may say so, was a tailored three-piece suit paired with baggy trousers and white sneakers. It generated a lot of buzz in the press. The idea was to have 15 clients, 15 stores buying the collection – that was what we hoped for – but we ended up with 45 in the very first season. That’s when all the problems began, because we didn’t have the money to produce all those pieces. It’s the problem of success: the more you sell, the more you have to finance production upfront before you get paid back. I thought that if I ran my brand for two years, I’d be happy, and instead, we stayed there for 11 years. We must have done something right.

Eugene Rabkin: How did the opportunity to return to Dior Homme as creative director come about?

Kris Van Assche: When I left my role as an assistant to launch my own brand, I had accepted the idea that the luxury world wasn’t for me. I would become a small, independent Belgian designer living in Paris. Two years later, the president of LVMH called me to ask if I would take over as creative director of Dior Homme. It was completely unexpected.

Eugene Rabkin: Why did you ultimately decide to close your brand in 2015?

Kris Van Assche: It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. When I launched Kris Van Assche, I never thought we would last more than two years. But once you reach your eleventh year, it’s not something you can end without consequences. The team we worked with was made up of loyal people. At first, I liked the idea that my brand was young and low-budget. We almost had to sneak around during Fashion Week, always finding solutions for a venue or for the music. The low budget kept me grounded, while at Dior, there were much larger budgets and far more possibilities.

At first, I enjoyed that contrast, but after all those years, it became a problem. I had grown accustomed to quality, to beautiful materials, to the best manufacturers, the best shoes. When I realized that my low budget was really starting to limit my creativity, I no longer enjoyed it. People always thought I had more freedom in my own brand than at Dior, but creative freedom comes with a certain price. If you don’t have the money to develop things or to work with the people you want, that can seriously limit your creativity. Still, my experience was fantastic. If you want to work with a certain fabric, you can. If you want to collaborate with a specific embroidery specialist, you do it. If you want A$AP Rocky in a campaign, you do it.

Eugene Rabkin: What drew you to Berluti in 2018?

Kris Van Assche: In 2018, I moved from Dior to Berluti after 11 years at Dior. It was right after the whole Louis Vuitton x Supreme affair. And I felt we were living through a confusing moment between high and low, street and luxury. I was already a bit confused at that point. Even though I had never really been interested in the brand, I felt the challenge was real: they wanted it to become the most luxurious menswear brand within the group, and that’s what attracted me.

Eugene Rabkin: How did you approach the modernization of Berluti?

Kris Van Assche: Well, when you work at Dior, the archives are so vast that even after 11 years, I had probably only seen about 10% of them. There is no such thing as a blank page when you work at Dior. If you can’t find inspiration, you walk through the archives, open the first drawer you come across, and you’ll see something that sparks an idea. There are a billion collections you can make with those archives. When I arrived at Berluti, I asked to see the archives, and they placed on my desk the very first shoe ever made by the brand. And that was it, nothing else. It was a huge shock. The true DNA of the brand is sartorial and technical craftsmanship. It’s something that is truly hardcore to modernize. Let me know if you manage to do it.

Eugene Rabkin: What do you see as the biggest changes in fashion over the course of your career?

Kris Van Assche: I think what has changed is what’s at stake. When I launched my brand, there wasn’t much to lose; when Dior Homme was launched, it was a startup – there was nothing to lose. And that gave me a lot of freedom. Now, in the past five years, all these Maisons have gone from maybe 500 million a year to 10 billion a year. That means there’s so much to lose that, obviously, young designers don’t get the chance to take on those roles, because no one wants to put an inexperienced designer at the head of a 10-billion-dollar company. That has been the biggest change, and it also affects how we view young emerging designers. Now there’s this perfectionist system in which everything has to be fully organized and marketized, everything has to be instantly perfect.

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Even though Haute Couture week has just drawn to a close, this week feels less like an epilogue and more like a kickoff. The spotlight shifts yet again from Paris to Italy, where the Milano Cortina Olympic Games officially begin. Elsewhere, culture and politics intertwine once again, with Bad Bunny set to perform at the Super Bowl on Sunday, turning one of America’s most-watched stages into a global statement platform. Between Olympic ceremonies, creative reshuffles, and pop spectacles loaded with political subtext, this week proves that fashion never really stops. It just changes the field of play.

• NuOrder bets on the power of community to change the wholesale industry.

• Silvia Semenzin asks the unspeakable question – is it true that the internet is not a place for women?

• Melania shows that the synergy between fashion and politics ends with MAGA.

• Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and here are 5 perfumes to wear on your date.

• In Italy, Fabrizio Corona keeps on blurring the line between content and journalism.

• Ever wondered which it-bag you are based on your zodiac sign? Here’s the answer.

• Our favorite winter comeback is the duffle coat, but with a 2026 twist.

• Cloud Dancer Nails are among the best nail trends of the year, and it barely started.

• The 2026 Winter Olympic Games just started – but how did the Cortina residents react? The New York Times reports on it.

• Dazed shows how more and more young people are okay with being estranged from their parents.

• We cannot go back to 2016 without talking about hype fashion brands – a Financial Times analysis.

• The Hollywood fan service is becoming quite annoying, as stated by The Post.

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Are we still able to watch television? To really watch it, without doing anything else, without a phone in our hands? Today, most people scroll while the TV is on, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand whether this habit stems from our shrinking attention spans or from a content ecosystem that has grown progressively more mediocre. The streaming industry has noticed this shift, obviously. Netflix, for example, has reportedly started asking screenwriters for simpler storylines, where characters openly explain what they are doing, making it easier for viewers who are only half-paying attention to follow along. A small but telling glitch, one that has contributed to the emergence of a new content category known as casual viewing. Shows designed to be watched while doing something else.

As streaming platforms adjust to an audience that is increasingly distracted and accustomed to multitasking, Meta and TikTok are pushing in another direction, attempting to bring social media directly into the living room. As if carrying it in our pockets were no longer enough, the next step is to meet us on a larger screen, feeding us an endless stream of short-form videos.

In December 2025, Meta launched Instagram TV, a dedicated Smart TV app designed to bring Reels onto home screens. It was a move TikTok had already made back in 2023, but one that clearly signals a shared ambition: to conquer lean-back viewing, that moment when viewers sink into the couch and simply want to consume content passively, whether alone or in company. If apps like Instagram TV were to establish themselves, we might be witnessing the definitive shift toward a new form of television.

Social platforms are becoming increasingly less “social,” with only a small portion of their activity actually devoted to communication between friends and family. Today, more than 80% of the time spent on Facebook and over 90% of the time spent on Instagram is dedicated to watching videos created by users we don’t even know. A major switch if we consider that, back in the day, they were used to keep in touch with one’s social circle.

In Everything Is Television, Derek Thompson describes how media is converging toward a single format - a kind of continuous, uninterrupted flow. Whether we call it social media, streaming, or short-form video makes little difference: everything is gravitating toward the same shape, built around short videos designed for passive consumption. And the word passive increasingly appears to be the common thread linking this evolution to the growing use of artificial intelligence.

The response from streaming giants, however, does not seem to lie in producing better content to win back our attention. If anything, their efforts appear focused on acquiring control over the entire production chain. Netflix is reportedly seeking approval to acquire Warner Bros, Amazon has already purchased MGM, and Disney owns 20th Century Studios. Netflix’s CEO has been explicit in calling exclusive theatrical releases «not consumer-friendly,» questioning the logic of waiting 45 to 90 days to watch a film at home when it could be available immediately. It’s difficult to predict what this will mean for the film industry, but the outlook is unlikely to be positive.

The last frontier of traditional television seems to be sport, a phenomenon that continues to bring fans together in front of the screen and which Netflix is already eyeing up for its business. The platform is moving to occupy this sector too, with CEO Reed Hastings stating on several occasions that he wants to expand into sports streaming.

However, there are other ways in which some platforms are managing to keep even the least attentive viewers connected: on the twentieth anniversary of High School Musical, Disney broke the entire film down into 52 clips and published it in its entirety on the official Disney+ account on TikTok. Millions of people watched the clips and commented with other users, unexpectedly creating a new “social” experience. Tattle TV, on the other hand, has announced that it will stream The Lodger, a silent film produced in 1927 and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, on its vertical platform. This is one of the first known cases of a classic feature film being completely reworked for vertical consumption.

Microdramas follow a similar logic. These are mini series made up of one-minute episodes, shot vertically and built around romance-drama narratives. Their appeal does not lie in storytelling quality, often undermined by amateur acting and low-budget production, but rather in a business model that closely mirrors the addictive mechanics of mobile games. Eric Wei has compared them to «OnlyFans, but for women,» referring to their suggestive structure: just as a scene begins to escalate, viewers are asked to pay in order to continue watching.

The market believes in this format enough to invest hundreds of millions. TikTok has launched PineDrama as a dedicated app, while the startup GammaTime has raised $14 million from investors, including Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian. What makes the model even more scalable, and potentially more profitable, is its compatibility with AI. Linear storylines and relatively low production values make it possible to generate new episodes at speed, especially when artificial intelligence enters the process.

Before declaring cinema obsolete, however, it’s worth paying attention to what is happening inside theaters. According to the 2025 annual report by Cinema United, attendance among Gen Z audiences increased by 25%. Even more striking is data from the National Research Group, which shows that 59% of Gen Alpha prefers watching films in theaters rather than at home. In other words, those who grew up with iPads and YouTube Kids are consciously choosing the cinema.

Platforms like Letterboxd and niches such as #FilmTok have encouraged people not only to see more films, but also to approach them with a critical mindset. More importantly, streaming was never the revolution for these generations that it was for those born before it existed. For viewers who have never known a world without streaming, it offers no particular sense of novelty. Cinema, by contrast, becomes an experience, with a capital E. As a result, many theaters are rethinking moviegoing as something more luxurious and exclusive, introducing reclining seats, in-theater dining and cocktails, and collectible merchandise aimed at true enthusiasts.

The future is still unwritten. What will happen if Netflix completes its acquisition of Warner Bros, or if microdramas evolve into formats capable of competing in terms of narrative depth and production quality, remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that the central dilemma no longer lies in what we choose to watch, but how much attention we are still willing to give.