ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, arriving in your inbox every Saturday morning.

This year is challenging all the clichés, including that of the mid-seasons. At least in Milan, the warmth of late summer has started to fade into evening coolness, which then spread to the daytime. Now, whether it’s sunny or cloudy, the day remains sweetly tempered, even if the warnings of the impending cold can be felt everywhere. In short, the mid-seasons are very much here. And all of us, fashionistas and not, are engaged in that strange ritual that is the seasonal change. Away with the summer remnants, relegated to bags, boxes and attics; and make way for the sweaters, the jackets, the heavy trousers. Every year we rediscover clothes we had forgotten about, others we have grown tired of, and still others that we end up giving away or selling.

All changes, selections, second thoughts that anticipate the seasonal change taking place in fashion itself. And the first autumn leaf to fall was that of Anthony Vaccarello who, just yesterday, announced his departure from Saint Laurent after ten long years. Who will come after him? And where will he go now? The rumors are as many as the mysteries. But the season is only just beginning, the colors of the trees will have to change and who knows which way the winds will blow. For now, let’s just prepare for the seasonal change.

• Now that Vaccarello’s era at Saint Laurent has come to an end, we have listed here the five most iconic moments of his career at the brand. What are yours?

• Levante’s new album has just been released. We met her to get her to tell us a few behind-the-scenes stories: you can find the interview here.

• Have you noticed how far-right politicians are increasingly present in strange political propaganda videos made with AI? We have, and we discussed it with Professor Donatella Della Ratta.

• Blond men are unfairly underrated in life and in romantic media. The truth is that if dark-haired is handsome, blond is better. We talk about it here.

• GINORI 1735 is a brand whose pieces we all would like to have at home. And after seeing those of the new “Fortunae” collection we want them even more.

• Enough with floral perfumes. Enough with oud, which has become a cliché. This season we want to smell like a brutalist building: concrete, metal, paint and more. Discover our favorites here.

• The best antidote to AI slop? Imperfect things, the traces of the author and, of course, the signals of effort. If you’re wondering what they are, read here.

• October, seasonal change and also a change for your nails. But what are the latest seasonal trends? We’ve collected them in our monthly list.

• Design is beautiful but the new frontier is re-design, which gives new life to old clothes. Vogue Business talks about it here.

• On the pages of Jing Daily, it is explained why luxury should focus more on the “silver generation” than on the young.

• Years ago, list sites had become slop. In the year of slop, lists have become our new favorite thing. The New Yorker talks about it.

• Our favorite interview of the week is the one that the one and only Marc Jacobs gave to BoF. Read it because it’s worth it.

The history of the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella dates back to 1221, when twelve Dominican friars were granted the use of Santa Maria inter Vineas, just outside the walls of Florence, and created a botanical garden intended for the convent’s infirmary. More than eight centuries have passed since then. In 1612, the pharmacy opened to the public, and in 1871 it officially became a private company under the name it still bears today. The Officina continues to operate in the same locations in Florence and has built much of its image precisely around its continuity with that past. This is why the appointment of Formafantasma, the design and research studio founded by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin with offices in Milan and Rotterdam, as Creative Directors feels rather unexpected, at least at first.

If there is a brand that seems to know exactly who it is, it is probably the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. And so the question comes quite naturally. What is a creative director supposed to direct when the identity they are faced with has already existed for more than eight hundred years?

Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, founders of the Formafantasma studio, will work on products, packaging, communications, retail spaces and events—essentially, everything that allows the Officina to present itself to the public today. The two have explained that their work will start from what already exists, seeking to understand what has allowed the company to remain relevant for so long and how that same history can continue to work today. And this is precisely where their appointment becomes interesting even beyond the world of design. A creative direction role of this kind operates in a territory much broader than traditional design. It encompasses branding, communications, retail, image and strategy, here applied at the scale of an entire company. At the same time, this appointment also explains why a brand like the Officina is choosing to establish a creative direction now. The beauty industry continues to be a growing market and, in particular, fragrance and perfumery are growing globally. The Officina therefore finds itself in a particular position, with an already very strong identity but still plenty of room to grow and become more international. At this point, creative direction also serves to understand how to support that growth without losing consistency.

In recent years, we have talked extensively about creative directors in fashion, the constant changes at major Maisons, their transformation into public figures and the increasingly important role they play in shaping the perception of a brand. The role has meanwhile expanded so much that the collection has become just one of the many things they have to hold together.

It would be a stretch to interpret this appointment as the moment when the creative director leaves fashion behind for the first time. Since September 2023, Formafantasma has also overseen the creative direction of Gruppo Rubelli, the historic Venetian company operating in the world of textiles, furnishings and coverings. What has really changed, then, is the weight of the role. The creative director has gone from being primarily a technical figure, often working within the company, to becoming a name with an identity of their own, followed almost like a director, musician or artist. Their fame can exist outside the company they work for and, when they move elsewhere, they bring with them an audience, an imaginary and a set of expectations.

The examples go far beyond European luxury Maisons. In 2025, Ray-Ban appointed A$AP Rocky as its first Creative Director, entrusting him with a role spanning collections and campaigns through to the design of the stores themselves. In 2021, FWRD had chosen Kendall Jenner as Creative Director, giving her responsibility for the platform’s image, brand selection, marketing and activations. The model has even reached football, where for the 2025/26 season RSC Anderlecht entrusted Mosaert with its creative direction, in a project encompassing jerseys, music, campaigns and the club’s identity. At that point, the creative director becomes something more than a figure who decides how things should look. They are responsible for the brand’s image, but also an ambassador and increasingly a public representative of the brand. It is a shift we had already begun to explore during Design Week, when this figure was described as a cultural platform, capable of moving across different disciplines.

Today, the Officina is much more than the romantic image of a Florentine pharmacy frozen in time. Italmobiliare entered the company in January 2020, and in recent years the brand has accelerated its retail and international expansion. In 2025, it reached €74.4 million in revenue, with growth of 6.3%, while in the first half of 2026 revenue reached €34.7 million, 6.7% more than in the same period of the previous year. Today, it is present in more than 30 countries with 40 directly operated stores. It is therefore already an international company, but it is at a stage where its scale could change considerably.

The market is helping too. McKinsey forecasts that beauty will grow by around 5% annually through 2030 globally, and that fragrance will overtake makeup, becoming the third-largest beauty category by size. For a company with perfumery at the heart of its identity, this means operating within a market that still offers considerable room for growth. This is where creative direction begins to have a very concrete meaning. The more markets, stores, products and channels increase, the more points of contact there are through which the brand’s identity can expand.

The official statement shared by the Officina about Formafantasma’s appointment points in exactly the same direction. They are described as “careful curators of the knowledge that the Officina has safeguarded for eight centuries”, a heritage made up of ingredients, formulas and gestures, with the task of understanding how this heritage can continue to evolve. The word curators probably describes better than any other what creative direction means in this case. It means understanding what should be carried forward from such a long history, how to tell that story and how to make it work in ever-changing contexts.

This is probably also why Formafantasma are such an interesting choice. For years, their work has revolved around the processes behind objects, raw materials, supply chains and systems that normally remain hidden. Their first monograph, published by Phaidon in 2026, follows the same approach. The book reconstructs the research, conversations and relationships that generated the projects, rather than simply lining up the objects produced over more than fifteen years of work. Applying this approach to the Officina means having centuries of formulas, ingredients, packaging, archives, spaces and stories to examine before even thinking about something new. Creative direction thus increasingly resembles less the gesture of an author imposing their own style and more the work of someone deciding what to bring to the foreground, what to connect and what to carry forward.

In recent years, the creative director has become an increasingly common answer to the problem of identity. The channels through which a brand communicates have multiplied, from retail to social media, from e-commerce to collaborations, while the relationship with the public has also changed. Today, audiences expect a continuous, recognizable and consistent presence. At the same time, competition has become much broader, making it increasingly difficult to stand out through the product alone. For this reason, identity can no longer be left to individual moments or separate departments, but needs someone capable of bringing together image, tone, spaces, content and the way the brand presents itself.

In fashion, creative directors are asked to make huge Maisons recognizable, to continuously produce cultural moments with enormous media reach. In the case of Formafantasma’s appointment, something different—and perhaps even more interesting—is happening: the identity already exists and is probably the company’s most important asset. Having more than eight hundred years of history, however, does not automatically determine what a store in New York should look like, how packaging should appear online, or how to introduce a new product without turning the past into mere aesthetics.

Formafantasma’s appointment is the first sign of something larger. If a company with more than eight hundred years of history feels the need for a creative direction, it is easy to imagine that in the coming years more and more companies outside fashion will do the same, entrusting a single figure with the task of bringing together product, image, culture and public presence. If a creative director can serve luxury Maisons, eyewear brands, football clubs and centuries-old pharmacies, how long will it be before the role stops being associated with fashion and simply becomes one of the central roles of any contemporary brand?

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, arriving in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Every season, before the Paris shows, we forget what fashion can be. Then Paris Fashion Week begins and we feel like Cillian Murphy in that scene from Oppenheimer who, with his dark glasses, watches through a porthole as the blinding flash of an atomic bomb detonates. If in Milan we see beauty and competence, alternating with moments of forgettable mediocrity, Paris remains the homeland of the wow factor. Among the most incredible shows of the season we had all the usual suspects: the colossal (but sartorially more insecure) Matièrés Fécales, the incredible and imposing Saint Laurent, the opposite worlds of The Row and Rick Owens, the post-modern Hollywood fantasies of Dries Van Noten and the hedonistic and scorching ones of Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford. And the weekend hasn’t even started yet.

In the midst of these thundering cannonades, we also saw excellent but not outstanding performances, debuts and second collections still in a state of transition, especially because many rumors circulate around the city of imminent and merely guessed farewells, of thrones that tremble, of tensions behind the scenes. But what better stage for these dramas than Paris? Buttoned-up Milanese fashion may offer us a more stable picture, but never one so lively. All we can do, then, is admire how in Paris fashion fires on all cylinders.

• Beyond Paris Fashion Week, the big news of the week is the new collection that John Galliano has designed for Zara. Opinions are already divided: here’s what we think.

• The groups of girlfriends we always see in our favorite TV series — are they a real thing or not? Perhaps the stories we consume sell us a very simplified version of relationships between women.

• On October 15 Ploom arrives in Milan with Flavour Garden – Something New Is Growing, an event dedicated to music, creativity and discovery that will take shape in the spaces of Superstudio. The protagonist of the evening will be Ernia.

• Removing the condom by surprise is, well, more than a betrayal. It is actual violence. And here are the data.

• If the world of mega-luxury invests in the mega-boutique, indie brands do not give up experimenting with their stores. And perhaps in more interesting ways.

• It’s October, we’re in a new season, and it’s time to experiment with your music and your make-up. Here’s our October Beauty Playlist.

• Of course, Paris Fashion Week is still ongoing. But that doesn’t stop us from studying the trends seen in Milan. Here are the five we’ve identified.

• And to end our roundup on a high note, here’s our October horoscope to start the month in the best possible way.

• In a world of smaller homes and Swedish furniture, designers are looking at another area of lifestyle: perfumes. Domus talks about it.

• More and more musical artists are banning phones at concerts. The New York Times examines the pros and cons.

• In The Cut, Emilia Petrarca has written a brilliant piece that asks: can you break up with your favorite fashion brand?

• Is fashion losing touch with youth culture? Of course it is at those absurd prices. But if you want a more nuanced take, here’s a great article from Vogue Business.

The day after the Bottega Veneta Milan show, whose closing look was a sweeping dress draped around the body and held in place by a clasp at the shoulder, creator Angelica Hicks posted a TikTok parodying the look by wrapping a black bedsheet around her body and simulating, with tights and a black silicone oven mitt folded under her arm, the accessories worn by Kendall Jenner. Beyond the humorous aspect of the video, it’s curious to note that there’s a kernel of truth in the joke: several garments seen on the runway in London, Milan, and even in the very first days of Paris were all drape, with minimal or barely visible construction, and a tendency to envelop the body in a way that is total yet fluid.

Of course, these garments were not all alike, but they were grounded in a more or less common principle: the movement or flou of the garment in question was loosely controlled, almost deliberately naturalistic, since these pieces, in their various ways, were made up of masses of fabric dramatically draped and wrapped around the body. In many different cases ornamentation was minimal, as the knot, the folds of the fabric, and the astonishing lengths that resolved into a cape were the protagonists.

The trend is particularly curious. What aspect of our modern culture, or what market demand, has pushed so many different designers to propose garments of this kind? Garments built with little or no internal structure, where the fabric is simply wrapped, folded, knotted, or left to fall freely over the body? More than a true trend, this sheet-dress phenomenon seems to be a kind of recurring concept — always essentially the same — that different designers arrive at by their own separate routes. But let us proceed in order: in which collections have we seen this garment?

Beyond the Bottega Veneta show, the sheet-dress appeared in an early form at Boloria‘s pre-summer show, as a variation on the halter dress, paired with a sheer black gauze shoulder cover. In New York, Brandon Maxwell showed one in heavy blue satin, knotted at the model’s left collarbone, while in London we saw several, particularly at Paolo Carzana and Roksanda, while Simone Rocha reinterpreted it as a kind of cocktail dress complete with a lace hem, like a genuine bridal trousseau sheet.

Moving to Milan, the style multiplied and varied in many different ways. Certainly the Gravity Dress that closed the Gucci show, constructed with a single seam and held in place by a metallic droplet acting as a weight, pendulous behind the left shoulder, was one variant. At Jil Sander we saw an atypical variation — a balloon dress inspired (as @insidethemood revealed) by Norman Norell, which therefore had a precise shape of its own but became a kind of sheet at the back, billowing with air.

Maximilian Davis at Ferragamo didn’t quite make a garment of this kind, but he did send down the runway two outfits whose sleeveless jacket opened into a drape thrown diagonally across the chest, then falling into a train at the back. More interestingly, Galib Gassanoff based more or less his entire collection on this theme, drawing inspiration from the kelaghayi — the traditional headscarf of his native Azerbaijan, which local women drape over their heads and torsos — and which Gassanoff transformed and reworked into a series of looks that are highly covering yet extremely fluid. Other notable examples appeared at Tod’s and Moschino, as well as at Diesel, Marques’Almeida, Blumarine, and MaxMara.

In Paris, a variant appeared at the latest Dior show and another at Marie Adam Leenaerdt. We also saw hyper-draped looks at Matières Fécales, most notably in the form of a large white tunic bearing the word “Resist,” and at Maison Margiela, where actual construction was present but a cascade of fabric creating concentric drapes masked the entire body. Finally, at the grand Saint Laurent show, several closing looks consisted of an enormous length of organza knotted and wrapped around the body.

Now, this type of “loose” garment — long, devoid of defined shape or structured silhouette, entirely draped and minimally constructed — has a long genealogy in fashion. Paul Poiret was the first to create Directoire-style dresses without a corset and therefore unstructured; in Italy, the creations of Fortuny could be considered forerunners. It is impossible not to mention Madeleine Vionnet and Madame Grès and, decades later, Geoffrey Beene and above all Halston. In the 1980s, the “A piece of clothing“ philosophy was applied by Issey Miyake, while later a similar taste for loose volumes appeared in Phoebe Philo’s Celine and at Rick Owens. But why is this look returning now?

One thing to note is that this type of garment tends to reappear at historical moments of rupture with structured, constricting fashion. The French Directoire style arrived after the Revolution and rejected the à-la-Marie Antoinette silhouette; Poiret and Fortuny wanted to free women from the many layers of nineteenth-century fabrics, just as Vionnet and Grès wanted to liberate them from corsets and crinolines. In the 1970s, a similar instinct for liberation prevailed, with an extra touch of hedonism. But today? The sheet-dresses seen this year could be a response not so much to market demands as to a set of cultural tensions we are living through right now.

The first concerns the control of the body. Compared to form-fitting garments, shapewear, hourglass silhouettes, and Ozempic dressing, pure drape does not impose a silhouette but instead follows or conceals that of the wearer. In Foucauldian terms, it is a rejection of “technologies of the body.” After decades of gym culture, filters, and bodies optimized for social media, these garments restore the idea of a body that wants to become “private” again, free to move without being defined by a shape. Furthermore, draping requires — by virtue of its very simplicity — careful, if minimal, fabric selection and construction, which means it could be linked both to the return to materiality in fashion seen in recent years and to the idea of effortless fashion. What could be more “effortless” than a sheet wrapped around the body, as if one had just gotten out of bed?

The same logic explains why the fashion of the past fifteen years — so “photographic,” designed to be seen and posted — is beginning to make room for an anti-screen aesthetic: draping derives its value from the weight of the fabric, from the way it changes as one walks, from the tactile experience rather than the image. It is a small return to the lived body as opposed to the represented body, as well as an enveloping form that functions like a cloak or a kind of soft armor. One might also hypothesize that, in an era when the conservative world relies on the aggressively feminine aesthetic of Mar-a-Lago and its vamps with stilettos and feline faces — dominated by the male gaze — a garment that dissolves the body also renders it less classifiable, and this ambiguity takes on a cultural and political significance, beyond the purely aesthetic.

Finally, draping could function as a status signal. In an era when brand rhetoric is returning to an emphasis on quality and when manufacturing is becoming increasingly vertically integrated to enhance the perceived value of labels, these garments also speak of alternative tastes and an interest in concrete craftsmanship. The return of the sheet-dress may therefore express a desire for clothing that is less normative, less performative, and less tied to a “managed” body. These are garments that promise protection, freedom, and simplicity — three things that, in uncertain times, feel like a luxury.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, arriving in your inbox every Saturday morning.

We are in the midst of Milan Fashion Week, an edition that, as often happens with the women’s calendar in September, is very rich and well-stocked. This year the shows are all very enjoyable, the events packed, the stars sparkling, and the double appointment of Vogue World in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and the CNMI gala at Palazzo Reale, where Giorgia Meloni was among the guests, have made the first days of the schedule nothing short of juicy. On Tuesday the new Digital Cover of nss magazine was released, titled The Intern, which collects the stories and archive photos of some of the most iconic designers on the Italian and international scene. On Wednesday and Thursday there were then the first two appointments of The Other Way, the cycle of talks and meetings organized by nss magazine that brought the public into contact with Francesco Risso and Eugene Rabkin. Meanwhile, yesterday, between Gucci and The Attico there was no shortage of equally brilliant shows, while the weekend awaits us with many other appointments all worthy of attention.

Sure, perhaps a great moment is still missing, an extraordinary instant capable of elevating everything beautiful we have seen these days into the realm of excellence and iconicity. But we came close. Fashion needs a bit of desire, madness, recklessness and joy. The signs are there, but maybe the right moment will be next season.

• The robots present at Vogue World have been the hot topic of these days: were they needed? Were they not needed? They certainly got their publicity. Here you can find our analysis.

• Here’s what went down at the Audemars Piguet event at AP House Milan. For the second consecutive year, the brand hosts the hottest party of Milan Fashion Week

• Increasingly loved by industry professionals and the public, Milan Beauty Week is starting to become a second Fuorisalone. But how did it manage to do so?

• The American Express Milanese Itineraries event arrived at nss edicola: here’s how it went.

• Removing the labels from one’s beauty products: why do it? The practice is called debranding and we delved into it here.

• Law Roach is everywhere lately, he has announced his next job at ASOS and has Kim Kardashian as a new client. But when does knowing how to sell yourself turn into selling yourself short?

• After years of greater inclusivity, the number of women directors and showrunners in Hollywood is starting to plummet again. Why?

• Liu Jo brought its new retail concept, Liu Jo Circle, to Milan. To celebrate the occasion, the brand invited its community to its Milan store. Here’s how it went.

• Just like a good wardrobe, good skincare doesn’t require crazy budgets either. Here you can find some tips for taking care of yourselves without damaging your wallet.

• Afterparties are the daily bread of fashion insiders. Too bad that every now and then they are a bit boring. That’s why Vogue wonders: how do you make one that turns out perfectly?

• Dazed analyzes an interesting phenomenon in the world of easy-to-consume books: after novels about workplace romances, the new wave of romantic stories concerns blue-collar workers found in every city.

• Has fashion solved its (uncomfortable) sweatshop problem? BoF explores the issue.

• The ever-valuable Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times explains to a reader how to inform oneself about the quality of clothes to better understand something during shopping.

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Donatella Versace is perhaps the most famous living fashion designer on the planet. There are certainly other celebrated ones, but her look, her hair, and her nature as a public figure are all signs of an iconicity that goes far beyond fashion and belongs to pop culture as a whole. It is perhaps for this reason that, as her first personal project following her creative directorship at Versace, the designer has entered into a joint venture with American group Revolve for a new brand whose name has yet to be announced and which will operate across several spheres: clothing, beauty, and even entertainment. But something doesn’t add up.

We know neither the name nor the general identity of the brand, which is perfectly understandable given the timing. But what is more interesting is that we already know when the first products will arrive, what kind of products they will be, and, above all, where they will arrive. And here is the intriguing part: the first product from this new brand built on the celebrity of an Italian fashion designer will be a beauty product, and it will be distributed virtually everywhere in the world except Europe, reaching the US and Latin America, the Asia-Pacific region (i.e., China), and the Middle East.

This business decision may leave idealists puzzled, but it actually makes sense. And its very peculiarity helps give us a picture of what it makes sense to do today for a business operating in that ambiguous melting pot now referred to as “lifestyle” — encompassing more or less all those everyday objects and experiences that can plausibly be associated with a particular creator. None of this is new to fashion: exploring areas beyond clothing in the strict sense has been common practice since the 1980s. But it is curious both to see how those external areas have become more prominent than fashion’s core business itself, and how today the global launch of a product with European allure (the selling point, after all, remains Donatella Versace’s role) can, in practice, bypass Europe entirely. But why?

The exclusion of Europe from the release rollout is no accident. As revealed by the Bain-Altagamma study presented in mid-2026, total global spending in the sector reached approximately €1,443 billion in 2025 and is expected to range between €1,440 and €1,470 billion in 2026, with growth of between zero and 2% at constant exchange rates. More specifically, the personal luxury goods segment (which includes fashion, leather goods, watches, jewellery, and beauty) closed 2025 at €358 billion, down 2% at current rates compared to 2024, but is estimated to expand by 2–4% in 2026, to between €365 and €373 billion. Within this picture, however, Europe represents the weakest link.

According to Bain-Altagamma, the European personal luxury goods market fell between 1% and 3% at current rates in 2025, settling at around €108 billion. And in 2026 things are no better: depressed demand, the disappearance of aspirational consumers, and rising retail rents and energy costs have made the continent the laggard in terms of commercial importance for fashion. The Americas are today the engine of personal luxury goods consumption, and the US in particular — given that the bulk of European sales comes from spending by American, Chinese, and Middle Eastern visitors in Europe, which this year, according to Bain, has also fallen by around 20% year-on-year, with spending by Gulf consumers declining between 15% and 25% due to regional conflicts.

Even for the major European luxury groups, in the first six months of 2026, Europe carries ever less commercial weight. For LVMH, Europe (France at 8% plus the rest of Europe at 17%) accounts for a combined 25% of revenue, compared to 25% for the United States, 29% for Asia excluding Japan, 8% for Japan, and 13% for other markets. For Kering, Western Europe represents approximately 30% of revenue, down 2% on a comparable basis, while North America accounts for 24% and is growing by 9%, the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) for 30%, Japan for 7%, and the rest of the world for 9%. For Richemont, meanwhile, Europe accounts for just 24%, compared to the Asia-Pacific region’s 32%, the Americas’ 25%, Japan’s 10%, and the Middle East and Africa’s 9%.

One can therefore say that the Old Continent remains a market of considerable size — somewhere between 20% and 30% of revenue for the major groups (except for Puig, for which it represents 52% of sales) — but it is not a truly significant market in its own right. One might even venture to say that, without tourist spending, these percentages would be nothing short of disastrous. And perhaps this is why the new Donatella Versace brand will not initially be launched in Italy — perhaps also following the example of mega-celebrity brands such as Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, which arrived in Europe four years after its founding, and Beyoncé’s Cécred, which has yet to arrive at all. This opens up a further line of reasoning: since when has Donatella Versace been in the beauty business?

At the end of 2025, a Bain report showed that the beauty category represents the largest market share in luxury, surpassing both clothing and leather goods by one or two billion euros. While these latter two categories are stable or even slightly declining, beauty is in fact set to grow further. According to Fibre2Fashion, in the all-important Chinese market, beauty was the top-performing category of the year, while fashion and leather goods consumption fell by between 5% and 11%.

By mid-2026, the picture is more ambiguous: jewellery is leading growth and the fragrance category is performing strongly, while cosmetics is holding its own but growing far more slowly. It is not suffering as much as leather goods and footwear, the segment hardest hit by the downturn. Overall, however, beauty as a whole represents the most profitable bet for a brand entering the global market with a celebrity founder. According to the State of Fashion 2026 report by McKinsey and BoF, «the beauty sector shows the greatest propensity for increased spending across all markets and all market segments, with particularly strong momentum in China».

And the Chinese market itself represents that enormous treasure chest of wealth that almost everyone is after and for which, if you will forgive the expression, a designer-celebrity like Donatella Versace could be the skeleton key. At this point, it is reasonable to hypothesise that, given the countries that will be first to see this new product, and given that this product will fall into the beauty category, the new Donatella Versace brand will want to go straight for the profits in the fastest and most direct way possible. There is no other way to explain the logic of “signing up” an Italian fashion designer (at one point also of Haute Couture with Atelier Versace) for a brand that gives no priority to fashion and will not even launch in Italy. But fashion has accustomed us to this and more.

ESSENTIALS is the weekly newsletter from nss magazine, arriving in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Fashion month has just begun and between New York, Madrid, and London, we’ve already somewhat lost our bearings in the newsroom. But while some of the world’s biggest fashion cities (plus the increasingly relevant Spanish capital) were bringing explosive collections to the runway, finally sensual again, finally with something to say, equally exciting news has ruffled the feathers of the fashion industry. First and foremost, the announcement of Dario Vitale as Creative Director of Emporio Armani and Giorgio Armani Accessories, followed by the rumour of Gucci potentially joining the Haute Couture calendar and the appointment of Alexandre Arnault, LVMH’s nepobaby, to the board of directors of Nike. In short, it’s been another eventful week for fashion. At this point, all that’s left to do is make ourselves comfortable, pull out our notebooks, and see what happens next, as we approach Milan Fashion Week.

• The Olsen twins have been nominated for the Designer of the Year Award. Alongside Matthieu Blazy, Sarah Burton, Haider Ackermann, and Anthony Vaccarello.

• Bob Mackie didn’t dress the stars, he created them. Just days after the American designer’s passing, we revisit his most iconic creations.

• The paradox of influencers’ “day in the life” videos when they lead ordinary lives: becoming famous thanks to your work and then no longer being able to leave it behind.

• The very long history of the buzz cut, the men’s haircut that comes back every September.

• We need friends we can argue with, psychologists say so too.

• The “skinny epidemic” is just the latest manifestation of extreme thinness ideals. It’s not just nostalgia; there’s also something more insidious at play.

• It’s time to try gourmand skincare: beauty takes inspiration from the most indulgent foods.

• What we know so far about “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story”. The first female lead of the Netflix anthology series.

  

  • Time has published, for the first time, the list of the 100 most influential people in the art world. And there are only two Italians.

  • Ed Sheeran, Macklemore, and the new politics of Palestinian solidarity. An analysis by Dazed.

  • Why should fashion ban wool? Vogue Business explains, following Peta’s intervention at New York and London Fashion Week.

  • A new interview with Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, in the Financial Times.

There is an ever-growing difference between the designers of the past and today’s creative directors. Whereas in the past, only the most outward aspects of figures such as Yves Saint Laurent or Valentino were known, the designers who now lead major Maisons live much more public lives. A new trend that has emerged in recent years is to reconstruct not only the private lives of these celebrity designers, but also to build their myth from the very beginning.

And while in the past a designer’s success seemed more immediate (after this or that relatively low-profile job, they would found a brand and achieve fame almost immediately), today the mechanisms of the industry are better understood. Just think of the backstage photos that are so frequently published during and after a show at Fashion Week, something that decades ago would only happen on very special occasions. But understanding the evolution of the designer myth or of the way we perceive it also means understanding the evolution of fashion and the way it is woven into contemporary culture.

In the past, the term designer was on the same level as painter, author, or artist. Today, however, we have to settle for the title of creative director, at most an artistic one. The term reflects the generational shift that took place around the 1990s and early 2000s, during which the founders of the Maisons were succeeded by other designers who worked under them.

The difference between the two terms implies a subtle evolution of roles: the designer was once conceived as a creative genius who, shut away in their atelier, created beautiful clothes and collections. Their personal identity corresponded to that of the brand and, even if they had entire ateliers at their disposal, it was almost as if every look that walked the runway came directly from their own hands.

Today this illusion has partly faded: we know that entire teams of designers work on every product category within a much more corporate structure. The role of the creative director has become diluted because it has expanded, moving from individual creators to companies distributed around the world, with the addition of the CEO role and an army of other professional figures. By now, in our disillusionment, we also know that there is another designer, namely the merchandiser, who redesigns what has appeared on the runway to make it producible at scale and sellable in stores.

While this transformation was taking place in ateliers around the world, it also happened that brands and creative directors multiplied exponentially. Today there are countless brands to follow during Fashion Week in New York, London, Milan, Paris (as well as Copenhagen, Madrid, Tokyo, Seoul, and so on). For this reason, it became necessary to make creative directors recognizable figures through social media, interviews, front-page features, scoops and, ultimately, guides tracing designers’ moves from one brand to another.

In 2010–2011, two serious incidents shattered the myth of the designer. The first concerns the now-famous outburst by John Galliano at La Perle in Paris, which forced the entire world to publicly acknowledge that the mythological creative directors were considerably more problematic figures than everyone liked to believe. Lee McQueen’s suicide the following year further revealed that the glittering world of fashion could be far less glamorous than people believed.

But the real moment when we became interested in the genealogy of designers came with the phenomenon of Virgil Abloh and the various designers who came from Kanye West’s Donda Academy. Suddenly, a cluster of new brands had appeared, innovative and youthful, but above all detached from the game of the major Maisons. Their cross-disciplinary talent was embedded in a new way of working, in a new concept of dialogue and transparency with the community. Suddenly, fashion could be a hoodie, and it was the same one the creative director wore at the end of the show.

After lockdown, with Abloh’s passing and the beginning of the great creative carousel that would define the following years, this modus operandi also reached the upper echelons of the industry. When Daniel Lee arrived at Bottega Veneta, many compared his work to that of Phoebe Philo, with whom the designer had worked. When Sabato De Sarno arrived at Gucci, the public discovered the existence of the Design Director and, perhaps for the first time in the history of the industry, a short film was created literally titled Who is Sabato De Sarno?

With the arrival and success of Matthieu Blazy at Bottega Veneta, a new type of storytelling emerged. To convey the extent of his talent, people began telling the story of his past for those who did not already know it: he too was a former collaborator of Phoebe Philo, and later the gray eminence behind the famous FW13 of Maison Margiela. From there, fashion began trying to establish which creative director of today had worked with which creative director of yesterday.

This genealogy obsession now serves a dual function. On the one hand, it serves to justify the status of these new names as creative authorities and the value of their products themselves: demonstrating that a designer “comes from” something, that they have passed through a school, an atelier, a hierarchy of apprenticeship, has become a way of legitimizing their authority. On the other hand, this same genealogy makes it possible to construct genuine elective affinities, almost like families or creative clans: the emblematic case is that of Phoebe Philo’s “ex-alumni,” an informal group of designers who are recognized precisely by virtue of a shared formative experience, and for whom having worked under a designer considered so essential represents, in itself, a public validation of their talent.

Meanwhile, the fashion audience is more informed about the mechanisms of the back office, while social media has led these same designers to become known in their own right. And also through a process of identification, given how difficult it is to find work in this industry, we have perhaps become interested in knowing how these people who were so important became so important. Photos of young Matthieu Blazy and Michael Rider, taken before they were famous, began surfacing online, offering the ever-useful and sentimental hook of “They were just like us.” Finally, it cannot be ruled out that the brands themselves have fueled this phenomenon in order to turn creative directors into celebrities.

It has also happened that, without becoming creative directors themselves, certain Design Directors have become celebrities in their own right thanks to Instagram: this is the case of Thibo Denis, who emerged during his years at Dior and, now at Louis Vuitton, is almost a niche star among industry insiders. Or Edouard de Weissenbruch, menswear designer at the “new” Celine, who in just a few months has become a true reference point thanks to social media. In this case, however, we see the mechanism come full circle: if the designer of the past, remote and sublime, could not survive the social media era, the designer of the present thrives thanks to it and reconstructs the same myth with the same building blocks, but within a completely different framework.

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Fashion month is officially back and, after a few rather low-key seasons, New York Fashion Week seems to have finally found its energy again. More shows, more media attention and, above all, more to talk about: between large-scale productions, awards and a new wave of emerging talent, the Big Apple seems to have reclaimed its place as an integral part of the circuit. But the fashion system wouldn't truly be back without the season's first major rumour. Kicking off the usual round of creative director speculation is Saint Laurent, where various reports have begun to cast doubt on the future of Anthony Vaccarello. The designer has been at the helm of the Maison since 2016 and, after ten years, may have reached the end of one of the longest creative tenures in contemporary fashion. In short, we're only at the beginning of fashion month, yet the SS27 season already looks set to deliver more movement than expected.

• NYFW opened with Ralph Lauren SS27, reminding us of the importance of lightheartedness.

• Liu Jo unveils the second drop of the Liu Jo feat. Elodie capsule collection.

• Fashion wants to take over the film industry, and the new collaboration between Dior and A24 confirms it.

• What are the perfect songs for a back-to-routine playlist? Here are some of our favourite tracks.

• Adéla, Bad Bunny, Zara Larsson, Lisa, the Katseye: our favourite pop stars are no longer American.

• From girlhood to the pink pill: the risks of social trends for women.

• Is Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” the best film at Venice 83?

• A timeline of the beauty GRWM that, from YouTube to TikTok, has reinvented itself countless times without ever disappearing.

• Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons are back with a new interview in the Financial Times.

• According to Vogue Business, brands are betting everything — and too much — on rage bait.

• Hermès wants to make its mark in watchmaking, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the Birkin’s popularity could get in the Maison’s way.

• No one is curious anymore, and that’s why we’re not happy — an analysis by The Atlantic.

Last April, as part of its new expansion strategy in the Chinese market, Kering acquired a minority stake in Icicle, a ready-to-wear brand founded in Shanghai in 1997 that falls under ICCF Group alongside the French maison Carven. This is Kering’s most recent investment in China, following another in the jewellery brand Borland at the end of 2025 and the acquisition of another jewellery brand, Qeelin, which took place back in 2013.

Five months after the investment in Icicle, ICCF Group appointed Sabato De Sarno — who served as creative director of Gucci from January 2023 to February 2025 — as the brand’s new creative director, with his first collection expected for autumn 2027. Incidentally, this luxury brand that has existed for thirty years and has owned a design studio in Paris for over a decade only made its runway debut in March 2025. A decision that, with hindsight, should have signalled that something was in motion.

Icicle has always moved with great caution in Europe: its first European store opened in Paris in 2019, six years after establishing a studio there; it was followed by three more locations in the city and a store in Dublin over the course of seven years. Now, more than a decade after the brand’s arrival on this side of the world, it has a creative director: not only is he high-profile and relatively “new” among luxury brand designers, but he also comes from the luxury group that invested in the brand just a few months earlier. It is impossible not to see a strategy in this choice. But which one?

@nssmagazineMARKGONG presented its FW25 collection yesterday at Shanghai Fashion Week, proving that the brat era isn’t over just yet. #brat #charlixcx #guess #musictok #fashiontiktok #tiktokfashion #shanghai #markgong #shanghaifashionweek #fashionshow #finale #markgongfashion

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The puzzle that the luxury industry has had to solve (and has yet to solve) over the past two years concerns China and its consumers. For years, this great superpower managed to account for 35% of the global luxury market, according to Bain estimates. Today that figure stands at around 22%. The Covid-19 crisis played a role, but so did a series of broader shifts on the economic and social front that have led Chinese consumers to spend less, buy secondhand fashion, and above all to invest far more in Chinese fashion, bringing Shanghai Fashion Week to new prominence.

Everyone is hoping for a recovery in Chinese luxury spending, yet just this week Barclays, as reported by MF Fashion, forecast that fashion consumption fell by a further 10–15% in July alone. Barring exceptional cases, then, it seems unlikely that China will return to consuming the vast quantities of luxury goods it did before Covid-19. But European reports suffer from “survivorship bias” — they speak of declining Chinese consumption with regard to European brands, while saying nothing about local brands, for which the story is very different.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in 2025 clothing expenditure rose by 3.2% year on year. And of this titanic market worth 1.52 trillion renminbi, according to Frost & Sullivan data, Chinese brands account for 87.5% of consumption. This year, People’s Daily Online reported that Chinese national fashion, riding a wave of nationalism known as guochao (literally “national tide”), has created a market worth 100 billion yuan and a distinctive stylistic language rooted in the country’s cultural traditions and its brand ecosystem. And this brings us to the crux of the matter.

As explained by ThinkChina last April, local premium brands have been growing faster than their Western rivals for some years now. Commercially, Western luxury brands remain dominant in their segment, but Chinese premium brands are eroding market share, particularly among young consumers and through digital channels. The insight that may lie behind Kering’s decision to invest in Chinese fashion (something no other European luxury group has done so far) could be an attempt to capture precisely that growth. In short, those who want to profit in China must invest in China. And Sabato De Sarno’s appointment at Icicle is the perfect checkmate in that regard.

So, we have Icicle: a brand that has existed for thirty years with a powerful retail network of 200 stores, long specialised in fine fabrics, particularly cashmere. A brand perfectly suited for a creative graft, being split between two design studios, one in Shanghai and one in Paris, for over a decade. It is a brand extremely well known to the Chinese public, yet minimalist and chic enough to seduce a European one. Enter Sabato De Sarno: a name already laden with meaning for audiences and press on both continents, a creative whose story has captivated many, and a designer who has become known for his minimal approach. What better host?

His appointment is exactly the kind of hook that can propel the brand to new levels of relevance. Beginning to show on the runway is always a sign that a brand wants to elevate itself. Whereas the show of an unknown Chinese brand, however storied and solid at home, with an equally unknown designer in the West would have attracted limited coverage, hiring De Sarno as creative director guarantees coverage and curiosity. Not so much because Icicle has become familiar to Western audiences, but because De Sarno already is: the attention the brand will receive is, therefore, the attention the designer brings with him. By the same mechanism, Kim Jones‘s collaborations with Bosideng and Kris Van Assche‘s with Antazero introduced those brands to a European audience that had never previously heard of them.

Indeed, the somewhat uncomfortable truth is that the European press takes an interest in fashion brands primarily through a lens of cultural belonging: one follows more naturally those perceived as part of one’s own frame of reference. There is, today, no Chinese brand that is truly desired by the Western fashion audience in the way that French, Italian, or even Japanese brands are. Not because they lack quality or ideas, but for a matter of structural exposure: today it is more likely that press and buyers will know indie brands like Rier or Berner Khul, still unknown to the general European public, than an actual Chinese brand.

The idea that Kering wants to try to capture Chinese spending by investing in local brands, rather than selling Western brands in China or watching Chinese funds buy struggling Western houses, corresponds to a broader market trend. In recent years, Anta’s acquisition of a majority stake in Puma, that of Golden Goose by HSG, and Youngor’s acquisition of Bonpoint have all placed emphasis on the transfer of heritage and expertise, and on preserving the creative and operational independence of the acquired brand. Under Anta, Arc’teryx has nearly quadrupled its revenue since 2018 while keeping its creative direction outside China.

The failures on the other side of the ledger are equally instructive: Fosun’s Lanvin has lost roughly a quarter of its revenue since the acquisition; SMCP’s ownership under Shandong Ruyi collapsed into years of legal disputes and forced restructuring; Alyx was acquired in 2023 and has vanished from the radar; Sonia Rykiel, bought by a Hong Kong group with ambitions to expand in China and the United States, ended up in liquidation. The common denominator of these failures is the purchase of a Western brand in the belief that Chinese capital alone, combined with a well-known name, can guarantee success.

The Kering and Icicle move has flipped the script: it is a Western group investing in a Chinese brand that already knows its target market intimately, and introducing it to Europe with the assurance of an already well-known designer. At the same time, the prestige and visibility of Paris Fashion Week seem to promise an international expansion and recognition that will reward the brand in its home market. Whether this will become a replicable model, or remain an elegant solution to a one-off problem — namely, a prestigious designer who happened to be available at precisely the right moment — cannot yet be determined. The show has not yet gone on.

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This week, forces of all kinds around the world have started to warm up their engines. First and foremost, the Temple of Speed in Monza, which is getting ready to welcome another edition of the Formula 1 Grand Prix (with Kimi Antonelli in the spotlight, alongside stars and celebrities who will gather around the Circuit this Sunday to cheer on their favorite team); secondly, the fashion capitals, ready to kick off a new eclectic Fashion Month. Will New York, London, Milan and Paris be ready to discover new creative directions, emerging designers and trends? It will all depend on the weather, which, hopefully, won’t leave us as sweaty and overheated as it did last June.

In other news, congratulations are in order for Julie Kegels on winning the 2026 LVMH Prize. The designer and creative founder of the eponymous brand, who was a finalist alongside Anil Padia, Colleen Allen, Gabriel Figueiredo, Galib Gassanoff, Zane Li, Petra Fagerström, Harry Pontefract and Daniel del Valle Fernandez, has been awarded a €400,000 prize and one year of structured mentorship with the group’s teams.

• In conversation with Julie Kegels, the Belgian creative who has taken the Paris fashion scene by storm (and won the 2026 LVMH Prize).

• Even creative directors want a soft launch. Because a red-carpet teaser is often better than a debut, full stop.

• Who comes out on top from the cancellation of John Galliano’s Met Gala show? There was plenty of pressure on the designer, but now he’s more popular than ever.

• Intimissimi took over the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. With Stella Maxwell, Alessandra Ambrosio and many others, the brand reinterpreted the theme of transparency.

• Five books to understand Gloria Steinem. Her ideas, her context, her complexities.

• What to do, see and listen to in September 2026. Exhibitions, albums, concerts, films and series to survive the back-to-routine month without immediately slipping back into everyday life.

• How to get your hair back on track after summer. All the steps to follow for hair that needs nourishing and rebalancing.

• Goodbye, laminated brows. After years of brow lifts, natural-looking brows are back in fashion.

• Has the sports world benefited from hiring creative directors from the fashion industry? That’s the question BoF is asking.

• How do you run a successful vintage fashion business? Vogue Business explains.

• The rise of Eco-Hobbies, explored by PolyesterZine.

• The war on polyester is going too far, says The Atlantic. Because garments made from natural fibres aren’t always better.

There’s a generation of fashion critics who have seen better times. Literally. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s they lived through a different kind of fashion: freer to take risks, more independent, more accessible, more imaginative. Today things have changed a great deal. Between investment funds and quarterly reports, entire administrative departments that have descended on the creative world with all the chill of bureaucracy, and economic obstacles springing up on every side, fashion has entered a new and strange phase in which this dream factory has progressively lost its soul.

We notice it every time the runways fill up with names, hype and collaborations, and every time we ask ourselves, with a mixture of weariness and nostalgia, where that uncomfortable and rare thing once called vision has gone. Few observers have managed to bring this disorientation into focus with the sharp lucidity of Eugene Rabkin, founder of the magazine StyleZeitgeist and for years a dissenting voice in a system that prefers compliments to uncomfortable questions. After many years spent in the trenches of fashion, Rabkin has published his first book, Torn: Fashion And Postmodernism, in which he offers a comprehensive and unified look at a global industry whose mechanisms he has had the chance to explore at length. The volume is published by Zer0 Books, the London-based publishing house founded by the late philosopher Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative.

This interview, which we publish today, actually dates back some time: we conducted it precisely when Rabkin was writing his book, as he himself told us, and it seemed natural to present it in this new context now that, with the new volume, Rabkin’s discourse has found its most complete home. His theses on postmodernism as a key to understanding the creative impoverishment of the sector, on the short-circuit between image and substance, on the power that has eroded authorship anticipated with surgical precision a debate that today, between one red carpet and another, we hear erupting again at every fashion week.

Rereading it now means discovering how little, in the end, has changed and how much we still need voices willing to call things by their proper names.

In an interview you spoke of a time when a designer’s pieces could be understood only by those who listened to a certain kind of music, who belonged to a certain kind of culture, and only those who knew that culture, that music, could grasp the references and understand the aesthetic. Nowadays this kind of concept, this connection, is completely blurred. What do you think?

Yes, that’s right. I’ve just finished writing a chapter of my book about it. I think that over the last 20 years the relationship between fashion and culture has gone from symbiotic to parasitic, in which fashion—especially luxury—clings to the arts in order to create meaning. To literature, for example, out of the blue, to infuse sense into clothes that no longer have any, because they are merely commodities. When the relationship was symbiotic there was a genuine connection between the designer, the artist, the musician, whoever it was. Today it happens very rarely, and it’s a very sad story, because I fell in love with fashion when I realised that there could be genuine cultural connections between fashion, music, art and literature. Before that I thought fashion existed only to flaunt status, which, however, is absolutely true.

I believe that some brands are at the same time trying, perhaps out of nostalgia, to recreate this connection, almost reconstructing the subculture from the outside, but in an artificial way.

I think it’s all fake and you can see it. You see, it’s the typical postmodern attitude. Because historicity is missing; you don’t remember, you don’t know where things come from. You don’t know the history. So all that remains is to plunder the past for aesthetic suggestions and you create this pastiche, you know, because you don’t know where things come from. I founded the StyleZeitgeist Academy for this reason, for the same reason I started teaching a course on the History of Contemporary Fashion at Parsons.

So that students would have the tools to understand, to analyse reality.

All these companies making cold calculations on consumer data—another expression of a neoliberal mentality, where a non-human entity, such as a brand, is endowed with human characteristics. And the fact that kids can’t distinguish the real from the fake is a victory for neoliberalism. It’s a victory for late capitalism. In other words, companies exist for one reason only: to make money. They answer only to their shareholders. They answer to no one else. Everything else is PR.

As independent media, do you think a media outlet with an agency behind it, which therefore interfaces directly with brands, is still capable of doing criticism, or whether it ever essentially was even in the past? No negative comments on any show, open dislikes aside and justified by some slight or transaction. Do all magazines follow the same pattern?

It’s not possible if you find yourself in the situation you’ve just described, where you constantly have to work with the brands. Because brands today have become incredibly sensitive about their image and it wasn’t like that at all before. Everyone forgets what criticism is for. Criticism exists because the goal is to improve. We just need to go back to recognising this very simple point.

And will it ever happen?

I think we’ll all realise it soon. We’re in the middle of this realisation: that if fashion becomes boring, it applies to the entire industry. It was Galliano and McQueen who made LVMH interesting, not the other way around. The kids (who are the aspirational customer, the pivot, the base) are starting to notice; they’re moving away from fashion, they’re choosing to buy vintage. And this should send a signal to the entire industry: you’re not making exciting things and if you keep making boring things you’ll lose people, because no one likes feeling their intelligence insulted.

I think this uniformity we see in campaigns, in collections—all these white backgrounds with huge logos and ordinary clothes—is a blatant sign that creative directors are scared, scared of having a vision, of taking a stand. All this nostalgia because they’re afraid of the future.

And do you know why they’re afraid? Because they want to appeal to as many people as possible, only to end up with this boring, bland mass.

Journalism too is a boring, bland mass.

The rise of influencers is killing the editorial side. There’s no more journalism, there’s only “content.” And when people confuse journalism and “content,” it’s a serious problem. Because “content” is not journalism. I just came out of a show before sitting down at this café: I was amazed by the number of influencers in the front row and editors in the second row. I was fascinated by how many people were looking at their phone screens while filming instead of looking at the clothes. But that’s their job—to record and broadcast to the public, certainly not to think. What brands want is a broadcasting channel, a mere amplification of their message. They don’t want any kind of response. They don’t want any kind of intelligent conversation. But then do influencers really sell? Question mark. In fact, I have a question for influencers: if your entire audience is made up of 13-year-old kids, who do you plan to sell the expensive clothes you film to?

Let’s talk about independent journalism and new media. I know you’re using Patreon a lot; in Europe maybe Substack is more common. How are you finding it?

I love Substack and I’m glad it exists. It allows journalists to bypass the magazine system and speak directly to their audience. Now the task becomes: how do you build a following without the support of a magazine? But it can clearly happen—think of Amy Odell, for example. I’ve never been against the Internet in general. I’ve never been against these platforms. I mean, that’s why I’m here. At the end of the day, the question is about the quality of journalism. The next generation of journalists will perhaps use Substack. The big problem here is: how will they make a living? I think young people are not used to paying for the content they want to consume. Young people need to be educated to the fact that for the price of a cup of coffee (French, not Italian) you can support an author on Substack, contributing to a journalistic ecosystem that can become richer thanks to you.

To conclude: a piece of advice for young people (designers, creatives, thinking people).

Take your laptop and throw it into the nearest body of water. Go to the library, go to the bookshop. You’ll discover incredible things.

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

For pop culture, it hasn’t been the most cheerful of weeks. While the end of August marks the big return of workers from their city holidays, as well as the return of brands that this week launched all their new seasonal campaigns, the last few days seem more dedicated to major farewells. First of all, we lost Dolly Parton, an immense musician, philanthropist, and monumental icon of country music; we lost Tim Curry, the legendary face behind Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pennywise in the first It, as well as hundreds of other roles. And the announcement was made of the passing, which actually occurred in mid-August, of the great Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, best known to most for her legendary collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Not exactly a smooth end to the summer, even if, shortly, with Fashion Month about to begin, a new sense of anticipation pushes us to look ahead.

• The farewell to Dolly Parton reminded us of when Alessandro Michele, at Gucci, homaged her on the runway.

• Where does our morbid interest in hyper-visible plastic surgery come from? We thought about it here.

• In the Del Vecchio household the air is tense, so much so that the most famous of the heirs, Leonardo Maria, has resigned from Luxottica. But what’s going on?

• After the loss of Tim Curry, a reflection on the subversive and liberating power of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• It’s true: the sexy-but-reassuring aesthetic of Abercrombie & Fitch is once again fascinating us like the ghost of summers past.

• September is approaching and it’s time to see what the stars have in store. You’ll find our horoscope here.

• Why does Justin Bieber want to put an MP3 player on the market? Here’s our analysis of the new project from his brand SKYLRK Audio.

• Now that summer fragrances have gone back in the drawer, read our recommendations here for the best scents of this season.

• The New Yorker analyzes the end of one of the most famous phenomena of the early 2000s: the celebrity sex tape.

• What role should fashion brands play in arts patronage? Vogue Business gets into the issue.

• The New York Times talks about the new trend spreading: climbing shoes.

• Interviewed by The Atlantic, Bill Gates talks about the risks of AI.

At the end of 2017, Alphabet — in other words, Google — had a market capitalization of around $730 billion. LVMH was worth $147 billion and Kering, which at the time still included Puma through the Artemis fund, $159 billion. Combined, the two companies that sell desire were worth 28% of the company that sells the order in which search results appear. Flash forward to the end of last July: Alphabet is worth around $4.2 trillion. LVMH is worth €234 billion and Kering €35 billion, or just over $300 billion combined. 7.5%. Publicly listed French luxury has gone from being worth just over a quarter of Google to one thirteenth in nine years. So is it really luxury?

One number deserves to be singled out because it needs to be read twice. Kering today is worth less in dollars than it was at the end of 2017, when Puma was still part of the group. In nine years, it has divested Puma, acquired 30% of Valentino, built a billion-euro eyewear business from scratch and raised prices by roughly 15%. The net result of all that work is less than zero. Meanwhile, Google has created €3 trillion in value, eleven times the combined value of LVMH and Kering. And it did so without warehouses, creative directors or unsold inventory, but with a simple index that updates itself every night, for free, and has never depreciated by a single cent. Luxury has spent nine years explaining that value comes from scarcity. Meanwhile, value went where there was neither scarcity nor even a product. The point, though, is that the money did not evaporate: it changed hands. But whose hands?

The latest half-year reports from the two groups are honest: they contain no lies, they are certified by people paid not to trust anyone, and each runs to more than a hundred pages. They contain plenty of data and reassuring-sounding numbers, but they do not contain the number of garments produced, sold and left unsold; nor average prices, nor the millions of units written off.

It is an entire exercise in euphemism that, in the best Orwellian tradition, relies on a vocabulary designed to manipulate the narrative and blur certain uncomfortable truths. The term “normalization,” for example, means a return to reality, presented as though reality itself were the anomaly. “Positioning elevation” means that groups raised prices by 150% in the wake of Covid and sold far less, keeping revenues high enough for it to be called a strategy while also devastating Italy’s manufacturing ecosystem. Then there is the “aspirational customer”: the vast majority of consumers who live on limited means, cannot really afford luxury and who, at a certain point, simply stopped buying.

Other terms? “Inventory discipline” means markdowns and write-downs. “Network rationalization” means closures. “Distribution ecosystem” refers to outlets. “Creative renewal” means: “we have changed creative director for the third time in five years and this time it will work — at least in the outlet.” Meanwhile, “resilient” means the business is doing badly, but not badly enough to have to write it down explicitly. Things are worse for the smaller brands, reduced to fractions and administrative subdivisions, which lately have started being sold off.

None of these expressions is false, and that is exactly the point. The perfect omission does not lie. It replaces a number with an adjective and relies on nobody asking uncomfortable questions. Let’s call it an “Omissey”: not an omission, which would imply fault, but a long journey through a series of perfectly legal absences, at the end of which the reader returns home convinced they have understood everything.

Here, then, is the thing neither half-year report says, not because saying it is forbidden, but because there is no line item where it lands. Fashion division revenues doubled between 2017 and 2026. Units sold fell by around 40%. Nine years of growth came entirely from price increases applied to a shrinking customer base. That means 29 million units a year no longer leave the stores, as if one of the two companies had shut down its fashion division without telling anyone.

The stock market understood it before the financial statements did, as usual, and withdrew the premium. It did not so much stop believing in luxury as it stopped believing in luxury’s scalability, which is far more serious, because scalability was the only reason a handbag company could ever be worth as much as a software company.

On July 29, the point became visible to the naked eye. In the same trading session, Hermès — the company that does everything right in luxury — lost 11%, while Kering gained 16.9% because Gucci had fallen by 2% instead of 8%. The market punished the company that grew less than expected and rewarded the one that fell more slowly than expected. Neither reaction had anything to do with a garment. Nobody tells us who bought those Kering shares. Nobody tells us who is actually making money.

Twenty-nine million is a number, and numbers have the unfortunate habit of looking like answers. This one is actually a question: were they customers? Because a unit sold and a customer are not the same thing, nor have they ever been. In 2017, a garment could leave a maison’s books in five different ways, and only one of them required someone to actually want it and pay full price for it.

It could be sold directly to a customer. It could be invoiced to a multi-brand retailer, which was itself a customer: even if the item remained unsold and was later heavily discounted, on the maison’s books it remained a unit sold at full wholesale price. It could pass through an outlet, which appears in the accounts as a retail sale just like any other. It could end up with a stockist, which appears in no presentation and absorbs whatever the other channels failed to absorb. Or it could be bought on Via Montenapoleone by a daigou who purchased ten units to resell in Shanghai: in the systems, those were ten sales; in reality, it was one person with a very large suitcase.

The real question is not how many units we lost. It is how many of those units, even in 2017, represented something other than a genuine direct sale. We do not know because there is no line item where that figure is explicitly disclosed. We can, however, set three benchmarks, and each tells a different story.

If every lost unit corresponded to a customer who bought twice a year, the number of lost customers would be 14.5 million. Out of a customer pool that industry presentations estimate at 400 million people, that is 3.5%. Which is already remarkable in itself: losing three customers out of every hundred cost these two companies a third of their market capitalization. It is not credible. A couple of generations of consumers have disappeared here. It is as if Apple had lost €16 billion in revenue over ten years. The luxury industry, dependent on China, no longer knows how to capture new customers.

If, on the other hand, the loss were concentrated among aspirational consumers — those who buy one item every two years and were the first to stop when the cost of money doubled — the figure would be almost 60 million people. Fifteen percent of the declared customer base, gone in nine years without a single press release ever recording it. In fact, financial statements would do well to show negative figures clearly: they would be far more revealing.

Finally, if most of those 29 million units were never really customers but channels, then far fewer customers have disappeared. That is the comforting version, which is precisely why it deserves closer scrutiny. But channels are hybrid and very often off-price. Which means that if a significant share of the units sold in 2017 did not end up with customers but with channels, then the starting base was inflated. Not false in the strict sense, merely quantitatively distorted.

And if the base was inflated, then so were the industrial plans built on that growth, the production capacity sized around those volumes, the store openings decided on those projections and the prices raised by 150% in the belief that demand would hold. There is no good version of this answer. Either 14 million real customers disappeared, or there were never that many of them in the first place.

Let’s start with who did not pay, because that is the shorter list. Neither controlling shareholder paid: they lost wealth, not power. Nor did the executives who set the prices, devised the 2021 expansion plans and then the 2025 closure plans: almost all of them left with multimillion-euro severance packages, the only line item in the luxury industry never to have experienced destocking. Nor did the analysts, who are already selling studies on how to get out of the crisis they had previously predicted would never happen.

Now to everyone else, in ascending order of how little they were consulted. Most of the value destroyed sat in index funds, meaning the retirement savings of people who have never bought a luxury handbag. They financed the opening of a flagship on a street they will never see and paid for its closure four years later. In the industry’s narrative, the shareholder is an abstract and vaguely irritating entity. In reality, it is almost always someone who needs to retire.

Then there is manufacturing. Across Tuscany, Marche and Veneto are the workshops that physically produce what the two groups call craftsmanship. When demand falls by 40%, almost all of that decline is passed down to the link in the chain without a multi-year contract. In 2026, Kering’s Italian factories saw strike participation rates of between 70% and 100%, figures Italian manufacturing had not seen in decades. A clear indication of what is happening to Made in Italy.

Then there are the sales associates. The cost structure per unit sold is virtually identical for the two groups: €392 versus €383. That includes rent, visual merchandising, fit-out depreciation and in-store sales staff. When volumes decline, three of those four costs are contractually fixed for years. The fourth — the sales staff — comes with thirty days’ notice. And selling costs more than producing.

Another category hit is multi-brand retailers. Between 2000 and 2020, fashion moved from wholesale to direct retail, telling its long-standing clients that it was a matter of controlling the brand image. The real intention, however, was to capture the retailer’s margin while also taking on its cost structure — a bet that worked only on the condition that volumes kept growing. When they stopped growing, the multi-brand retailer that could have absorbed part of the risk was no longer there, because the brands had shut it out while explaining that it was for its own good.

Then there is the customer, who paid twice: first at retail, 150% more than in 2017 for iconic leather goods; then again when they discovered, on any resale platform, that the product was actually worth a third of that. Neither the press nor a financial statement explained it to them. The secondary market did, publishing the effective value of every reference every day and becoming, in practice, the only transparency mechanism this industry has ever had. Nobody designed it, which is probably why it works so well.

And finally there is the trade press, which surrendered to flattery, rigged interviews and clueless influencers. It burned through a new generation of talent, using them as cushions for unscrupulous PR departments. Most importantly, it lost all bite and critical instinct. Fabrizio Romano has a firmer grip on reality than Business of Fashion.

We will read that the sector is resilient. That local customers are showing signs of selective recovery. That positioning elevation is proceeding as planned and that the second half will benefit from a more favorable comparison base — again, we are below 2017 — which is an elegant way of saying that last year was so bad that this year it does not take much to look better.

We will not read how many garments are sitting in warehouses, because companies are not required to disclose it. And they are not required to disclose it because the perimeter of financial reporting was designed for an industry that sold machine tools and is now being applied to an industry that sells perishable desire. The problem could be solved in ten lines, using data from systems that already update those figures every night, because otherwise nobody would know what to ship to stores on Monday morning: units produced, units sold at full price, units sold at a discount, units in inventory, average realized price.

It will not happen, and the reason is that the average realized price is not merely a data point: it is the business model. It is the distance between what the customer believes they are buying and what the company actually collects, and it is on that distance that brand value rests. It is like asking the innkeeper to print on the label exactly how much water he added to the wine. Technically simple, commercially inconceivable. Less luxury, more minestrone.

There is, however, one detail that brings the whole thing full circle. Knowing how many people actually buy is precisely what vertical integration was supposed to solve: it is the argument this industry used to shut out thousands of multi-brand retailers, spend tens of billions on directly operated stores, and build CRMs, apps, clienteling systems and customer-recognition tools at checkout. They have the data, but it appears nowhere. Twenty-five years and tens of billions invested to acquire one piece of information, which happens to be the only one that is never published. The data is not missing. The willingness is. Above all, what is missing is the courage to understand that a crisis can only be solved through a revolution.

The latest major luxury studies from Altagamma tell us to move towards experiences, hospitality and fine dining. In practice, they are telling us to abandon ship and climb into the lifeboats. Ultimately, LVMH and Kering will have to study the path taken by Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi and BMW. They are sitting there waiting for the Chinese, after consuming them, to eventually eat them outright.

Then, unexpectedly, the moment for extreme cuts will arrive: first the designers, then the managers, then the stores, then entire departments. But it was all written already. A few got rich; many lost their way. Returning to fundamentals would mean talking less and working more. The long Arctic night has only just begun. The dinosaurs will disappear, but who will rise again?

That is why financial statements should never be read for what they say, but for what they leave unsaid.

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

As August settles in, amidst deserted cities and automated “OOO” replies, even the fashion world seems to be slowing its pace. Copenhagen Fashion Week SS27 has just concluded, and its street style will keep us inspired until we return to the office. While Copenhagen reaffirms its status as the world’s most livable city, we’re learning to survive the summer with a few common-sense rules: from flip-flops to wear with tailored trousers to classic restaurant style faux pas. For those spending their holidays hunting for inspiration, Japanese vintage finds on Vinted might be the perfect starting point. Meanwhile, between dips in the sea, there’s time to reflect on our true selves with Ricky Gervais’ new animated series or test your knowledge with nss magazine’s first-ever fashion crossword.

• The Q2 Lyst Index captures the summer’s mood: it’s the heatwave defining our wishlists now.

• Time to quit the “optimization” mindset. The obsession with “-maxxing” has spiraled out of control; perhaps it’s time to rediscover the simple pleasure of doing things halfway.

• “The Last House“ proves that Netflix loves to entrap its characters. The sci-fi thriller starring Wagner Moura and Greta Lee is streaming from August 7.

• Mercury enters Leo: the season of (the good kind of) drama is here. Significance and impact on every zodiac sign.

• Why are vinyl records being released incomplete? Between cut tracks and tentative messages, the “Vinylgate” saga has engulfed everyone from Charli xcx to Olivia Rodrigo and Raye.

• Five perfumes for the Night of San Lorenzo, inspired by dreams and constellations. From Maison Margiela to Astrophil & Stella, here is how fashion houses interpret the starry night.

• In 2026, luxury in Asia is a gamble: between China and South Korea, Gen Z is prioritizing investments in spirituality.

• From funfetti to seaglass: the essential August 2026 manicure trends.

  

• The Guardian ponders: is nostalgia a crutch or our survival mechanism in an increasingly fast-paced world?

• According to the BBC, Hollywood has rediscovered desire: after years of restraint, cinema is finally embracing the “hot” again.

• Variety explores how video games are working to reshape their reputation.

• The Bratz celebrate their 25th anniversary, and Domus reveals they were ahead of the curve: their hyper-constructed aesthetic anticipated many of the visual codes dominating Instagram today.

Under a beach umbrella, with a pencil in one hand and a slice of watermelon in the other, doing a crossword puzzle has a whole different feel. Whether alone or with friends, it’s the perfect pastime for the hottest days of the year. But if, until now, there had never been a crossword puzzle entirely dedicated to the fashion industry, here it is: forty clues inspired by the greatest designers and brands of all time, to solve with fellow fashion enthusiasts or explain to those who know nothing about it.

The newsletter will return to its regular schedule soon. In the meantime, you can play our very first crossword puzzle:

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

August. The sea. Summer holidays. And yet fashion never seems to take a break. July came to a close on a high note with LVMH and Kering‘s financial results, offering a glimmer of hope in what has been a turbulent period for the fashion industry. Among all product categories, accessories continue to stand out as a reliable source of profit. With such a scorching summer, staying dry has become the new status symbol. But if you’re looking for an alternative to the now overused linen, don’t worry. There are plenty of options to choose from. And speaking of sustainability, Fendi has even launched a denim collection made using banana fibres. For many people, August remains the slowest month of the year. Gen Z, on the other hand, has decided to fill it with new hobbies such as birdwatching. Then there are weddings, the inevitable highlight of the summer season. They may never be as iconic as they once were, but if you happen to belong to a certain elite, there’s still a chance you’ll have a memorable time. The only rule for surviving August? Don’t document your holidays. Nobody cares about vacation content anymore.

• For anyone who can’t stand long days at the beach, or simply doesn’t have a board game within reach, nss magazine comes to the rescue with the first fashion crossword puzzle.

• Discovering London with the new Samsung Z Fold 8. We tested Samsung’s new device on the streets of the English capital, here’s how it went.

• The path to diagnosis may finally become shorter for one of the world’s most underdiagnosed chronic conditions. Two new tests could transform the diagnosis of endometriosis.

• This is the delightfully light summer of balloon pants. The story behind the trend, from the origins of the salwar to the Spring Summer 2026 runways.

• The August 2026 horoscope has arrived. This month’s planetary transits, predictions and lucky days for every zodiac sign.

• Here are the films not to miss at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. Plenty of Italian titles, comedic mockumentaries and acclaimed auteur cinema, but very few women directors in competition.

• Why do so many celebrities end up joining cults? Hannah Murray’s memoir reveals the real answer.

• Is Gen Z afraid of love? Red flags, reality dating shows and shame. Why romance has lost its sense of faith.

• The hidden side of perfume. The documentaries worth streaming, featuring master perfumers, exceptionally rare ingredients, investigative stories and journeys through the world of fragrance.

  

• The New York Times reports on publishing’s latest obsession. AI written books are flooding Amazon, and the real issue is no longer whether they are good or bad. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell who actually wrote them and who simply generated them.

• Being a tourist is overrated, especially if you’re flying somewhere only to do the same things you could do at home. Perhaps the real holiday is learning to see your own city with fresh eyes, according to The Atlantic.

• The Financial Times explains how the luxury industry is learning to adapt to consumers who are less willing to spend. Because today’s true luxury seems to be convincing someone to make a purchase at all.

• After serving as the home of the gods for thousands of years, Mount Olympus may soon become a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well. The Guardian tells the story of the latest chapter in the ascent of Greece’s most famous mountain.

For many years, the tank top was the garment that nobody really wanted to admit they loved because it was considered too simple to be called fashionable and too ordinary to become an object of desire. It was there, in everyone’s wardrobe, but it never received much attention: hidden beneath a shirt, worn during workouts, chosen on the hottest days when the only rule was surviving the heat. Then, as so often happens in fashion, someone decided to take a closer look at what seemed the least interesting, and that is how the tank top became both the most democratic and, at the same time, most talked-about piece of the summer.

A garment that can cost just a few euros or become a luxury product, one that can be associated with manual labour, the gym, ‘90s minimalism, or the runways of the world’s biggest fashion houses. And this year, those very maisons confirmed the tank top’s evolution from a basic staple to a central element of the wardrobe. The interesting point, however, is something else. The tank top appears to be a neutral garment, almost devoid of personality. Yet simply changing the cut, the fabric, or the way it is styled can transform it completely. So, does a tank top really say who we are?

Let’s start with the most recognisable one. The gym bro tank top is not simply sportswear. It often features technical fabrics, cuts designed to allow greater freedom of movement, and a fit intended to enhance the physique. Its original function is practical, but in recent years fitness aesthetics have moved beyond the gym, making their way into streetwear and everyday fashion. With Balenciaga’s Resort 2026 collection, Pierpaolo Piccioli revisited the founder’s construction-focused approach to create a series of luxury athleisure pieces, including a look featuring a sporty tank top that follows the body’s anatomy.

In FW26, Gucci, the tank top was reinterpreted through a more sensual lens, using glossy, textured surfaces that distance the garment from its athletic origins. Tank tops with a silicone-like finish, with shiny, almost liquid-looking surfaces, blended seamlessly with the models’ physiques, following the contours of their muscles and transforming the garment into a futuristic second skin.

A more minimalist approach comes from Courrèges, the maison that has turned the tank top into one of the defining pieces of its wardrobe. In the SS26 collection, the classic tank top was reinterpreted through stretch cotton styles, both jersey and ribbed, while preserving the maison’s signature language of clean geometries, body-hugging silhouettes, and a sensuality built on the relationship between skin and fabric.

This type of tank top belongs to the kind of person who might start a conversation with “I’m bulking” even though nobody asked. Or to someone who spends more time in front of the gym mirror than under the barbell. Behind this aesthetic lies an important cultural shift: the world of sport has profoundly influenced contemporary fashion. Sneakers, leggings, technical fabrics, and athletic silhouettes have become everyday staples, making the line between the gym and the street increasingly blurred.

The classic white tank top looks like the easiest garment in the world to wear, and perhaps that’s exactly why it’s one of the hardest to pull off. When a piece of clothing is extremely simple, every detail becomes essential: the quality of the cotton, the shape of the shoulder, the length, and the way it falls on the body. The ribbed tank top has arguably undergone the most interesting transformation. More classic than its sporty counterparts, it carries with it an aesthetic rooted in manual labour and the men’s wardrobe.

Yet today, brands have reinvented it by creating a vintage-inspired aesthetic that looks to the past without truly trying to recreate it. It’s a filtered version of the past, where the tank top is paired with tailored trousers, statement jewellery, oversized blazers, and luxury accessories. Its strength lies precisely in this contradiction: it is the perfect example of how contemporary fashion loves to take everyday items and turn them into symbols.

White tank tops appeared in both Fendi’s Haute Couture collection and Balenciaga’s, while Vetements, Saul Nash, and above all Dolce&Gabbana and JW Anderson also brought them back in their SS27 collections. A white tank top also peeked out from beneath unbuttoned shirts in Tom Ford’s Pre-Fall 2026 collection, in Stella McCartney’s Resort 2027, and in Bottega Veneta’s FW26.

Looking effortless often takes a great deal of effort. Loose and relaxed, the oversized tank top immediately conveys a sense of ease. It is the answer to an era in which a wardrobe is no longer expected simply to flatter the silhouette, but also to express a certain attitude. The rise of this style is closely tied to American streetwear in the 2010s, when brands like Yeezy transformed the concept of basics into an exploration of proportions.

And then there’s the extra-oversized version. While the first retains the garment’s recognisable structure, simply making it wider through the torso and softer in shape, the second pushes volume to the extreme. The almost endless armholes inevitably recall the tank tops worn by construction workers in August: hanging off their shoulders, stained with cement, and completely soaked with sweat by eleven in the morning. The difference is that, in the fashion world, that very same silhouette is styled with tailored trousers and £1,000 trainers.

Versace, in Dario Vitale’s debut and final SS26 collection, reinterpreted the oversized tank top through a far more relaxed sense of sensuality, with exposed torsos and silhouettes inspired by the maison’s archives. Throughout the SS27 season, oversized versions also appeared at Yohji Yamamoto, Kiko Kostadinov, and Rick Owens, each with its own avant-garde interpretation. More decorative and embellished were those by Dries Van Noten, Egonlab, and Simone Rocha during her Florence show. A white tank top made of ultra-light organza also appeared in Chanel’s Spring Haute Couture collection.

Of all the tank top’s transformations, the lingerie version is perhaps the most elegant. It reflects an important shift: what once had to remain hidden can now take centre stage. Silk, lace, sheer fabrics, and delicate straps are no longer invisible layers.

This interplay between underwear and outerwear is one of the recurring themes of contemporary fashion. Lingerie is constantly being reinterpreted because it allows designers to create contrasts: something delicate paired with something structured, a feminine garment combined with a masculine element. Lingerie worn as outerwear is the new obsession inspired by the 2000s style of celebrities and similar cultural figures.

We are talking about one of the strongest womenswear silhouettes of the season, presented, for example, in Dior’s Resort 2027, Chloé, and sacai, as well as in Saint Laurent’s Pre-Fall 2026 collection and in Miu Miu’s FW26, which is perhaps one of the brands most specialised in lingerie designed to be worn externally. Perhaps even more interestingly, a deconstructed version also appeared in Maison Margiela’s SS26 collection.

There is a tank top that is never worn on its own but serves purely as a styling element. It is the one that appears as soon as temperatures rise above thirty degrees and the asphalt begins to melt. It can be made of linen, lightweight cotton, or crochet, perhaps in neutral shades: white, light blue, sand. It is the tank top of someone who, even if they are still in the city, is already mentally by the seafront. It belongs to an ideal wardrobe that includes oversized sunglasses, soft trousers with a tailored feel, and an open shirt worn over it.

Similar versions appeared in Jacquemus’ SS27 collection, presented in Corsica, where the tank top was reinterpreted through more sophisticated versions made from thin paper-effect leather, bonded crêpe, and organza-crafted details. It is the tank top of someone who, while on holiday, allows themselves what would seem out of place in the city: a particular texture, a brighter colour, a more precious fabric.

It is one of the most interesting versions because it describes a very intimate relationship with clothing: it wants to simply suggest a feeling. A slow afternoon. A sunset spritz. A day without schedules. In practice, a better life than the real one.

Perhaps no other garment better represents a contradiction of contemporary fashion. Spending a lot on something that, at first glance, appears extremely simple. At a time when luxury is increasingly shifting towards the appreciation of materials, construction, and quality, with a designer tank top the price is worn openly on display.

From Prada to Miu Miu, passing through Loewe, The Row, Toteme, and Saint Laurent, the designer tank top has become an everyday small luxury as well as a highly profitable category. Prada uses its most recognisable element: the enamelled logo triangle, generally placed on the chest or side of the tank top, or a simple triangle applied on the back. Miu Miu often embroiders or applies its own logo in a smaller format on cotton pieces; Loewe identifies its most recurring symbol as the logo made up of four interlocking “L”s, which can appear as tone-on-tone embroidery or a discreet detail on the fabric. Saint Laurent, on the other hand, adds the Cassandre logo, the three interlocking YSL letters created by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre in 1961, as a small metallic detail or embroidery on tops and tank tops.

Often true luxury works in reverse: it is something noticed only by those who know. It is the same logic that has led the fashion world to reassess jeans, white T-shirts, and other everyday garments, based on the idea that what matters is not how complex a piece is, but how carefully it has been made.

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

August is so close you can almost touch it. Summer is also looming for the fashion industry, and, in fact, the only news making headlines these days are the announcements of the runway schedules for Fashion Month at the end of September. Yet there’s a less creative, but no less important, side of the fashion world that’s buzzing right now: the analysts. In fact, all the major publicly traded groups are currently presenting their half-year or second-quarter results. And this year, they seem promising: Richemont, Moncler, and Zegna are all showing growth. We’ve come to take Hermès’ success for granted by now. But we all know that the results that really matter to us, the ones that tell us something, are those from LVMH and Kering. Because in the end, that’s what fashion is all about: results, results, results…

• “Lidl Hug - A Hug of Convenience” is the campaign that captures how we do our grocery shopping. Discover more.

• Zendaya’s press tour for Odyssey has set the make-up trend of the summer and (spoiler) it should be nearly invisible.

• Prada will open the next Milan Fashion Week, which is unusual for a brand typically very set in its scheduling habits. Could it have something to do with Vogue World coming to town?

• In the midst of all this, Leo season has begun. Read here to find out what to expect in the coming days.

• We’ve listed all the films not to miss at the upcoming Venice Film Festival. Study the list from your beach towel.

• Everyone loves niche fragrances. Everyone loves Italy. But does everyone love niche fragrances made in Italy? We found the most beloved ones you may not have known about.

• What does it mean to be a teenager today? We asked ourselves that starting from the world’s most famous teenager: North West.

• The usual boors left the usual boorish comments because Ghali uses skincare products. But if a hyaluronic acid serum makes you feel less masculine, the fault is certainly not the serum’s.

• Amy Odell is among the most intelligent fashion commentators working today. And this week, in the New York Times, she gave us another gem: the problem of fashion slop.

• The Guardian tackles something nobody in Italy has the courage to say out loud: when a restaurant has a woman making pasta in the window, it’s a tourist trap. Not that tourists seem to mind.

• Fashion’s clientele has finally figured out that polyester is best avoided. According to BoF, we are in the worst moment for the fabric that dominates fast fashion across half the world.

• Jing Daily has also clocked that wealthy spenders drop serious money in boutiques, but half the market is made up of aspirational customers. So how do you solve the problem?

This year Pitti Uomo 110 kicked off during one of the worst heat waves ever recorded in Europe. In mid-June, while the city of Florence was burning under nearly 37 degrees Celsius, editors, buyers and influencers tried to present the best version of themselves in front of dozens of photographers fully equipped to capture the best street style looks of the season. Faced with an endless number of fans and just as many sweat stains in Florence’s showrooms and squares, one cannot help but wonder whether fashion is doing enough to protect its customers from extreme heat. Will a linen suit really be enough?

We don’t know if you know, but it’s almost impossible to convince a peacock at Pitti to leave at home the tailored jacket they planned to wear for their favorite event of the year. Judging by the weather conditions of the latest edition, however, sooner or later even they will have to abandon the suit in favour of a T-shirt: according to the latest report on Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC), given current emission levels, by 2030 the world will exceed the critical temperature threshold needed to avoid the irreversible effects of climate change. In short, in four years peacocks will have to pose in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius.

While on one hand fashion is not doing enough to fight the climate emergency - so much so that in recent years it has actually reduced efforts and investments in sustainable initiatives - it seems to be starting to take an interest in producing collections engineered to combat heat, protect from the sun and guarantee breathability. This is the case with the TechWear from Balenciaga’s Pre-Fall 26, which includes breathable, antibacterial, quick-drying garments with integrated sun protection, or Claudent, an emerging clothing brand creating UV-protective apparel that is beginning to gain attention among American celebrities and the like.

«As temperatures rise, the idea of technical garments as urban luxury feels not only plausible, but increasingly inevitable», confirms Nick Paget, Senior Menswear Strategist at WGSN. Clothing designed for extreme heat represents the next growth opportunity for European luxury, adds the expert, also because until now the sector has generally focused on creating garments that protect against cold and precipitation - see the water-repellent linen from Loro Piana Rain System® and the treated fibre from Middle Distance, the Glasgow-based brand that collaborates with Stone Island, Massimo Osti and C.P. Company, among others.

To develop highly functional wardrobes, with breathability and integrated sun protection, luxury will have to take inspiration from sportswear, which has already made enormous progress in the field. Just a few days ago, Norwegian athlete Stian Dahl Sommerseth won the Eiger Ultra Trail 100K in the Swiss Alps wearing Satisfy, a brand founded in Paris in 2015 from the need of founder Brice Partouche for sportswear that was highly performing but not boring. Among the specific technologies launched by Satisfy this year is HeatCrush™, a type of mesh and micro-jersey developed in Japan that is sweat-reactive to enhance cooling during physical exertion.

Breathable fabrics, temperature-regulating materials, UV protection and monitors for sole wear and hydration levels are becoming essential elements for outdoor training enthusiasts. But you don’t need to run 101 km with 6,700 metres of elevation gain under the July sun to appreciate protective clothing: the trend is being driven by technical brands such as Satisfy, but it is also influencing those positioned between sportswear and urban lifestyle, such as Lululemon, Arc’teryx and Gramicci. According to analysts’ forecasts, the protective clothing market is growing rapidly, valued at $1.74 billion in 2025 and expected to reach $3.34 billion by 2034.

Soon, consumers will look for the same performance offered by sportswear in luxury clothing, and this is the result of the new positioning that the world of sport has achieved internationally. «For Gen Z especially, fitness and wellbeing have become synonymous with luxury: the luxury of having the time, space and resources to stay healthy», adds Paget.

While being able to afford the right clothing for training has become synonymous with luxury, more and more athletes are entering the fashion world, with the most recent example being Erling Haaland and his collection of Hermès bags. Meanwhile, more and more brands are becoming interested in sport-inspired aesthetics, from tennis to Formula 1. The boundary between the two worlds is becoming increasingly blurred, and their respective wardrobes are merging as well.

«Consumers now expect clothing to work much harder - continues Paget - A garment needs to feel comfortable on the couch, support performance in the gym and still look considered in social settings. It signals a kind of successful, wellbeing-led lifestyle». According to this new status symbol, casualwear is no longer casual, but developed with next-generation materials, even when it comes to a pair of sweatpants worn while watching television on the sofa, post-workout. Using Moncler as an example, Paget adds that «performance as status is already deeply embedded, especially among urban consumers who may not technically need extreme performance gear but still value what it represents».

In short, very soon breathable shorts and UV-protective T-shirts could manage to replace designer shirts and sunglasses, transforming events such as Pitti and Fashion Weeks into survival competitions, where the winner is the one who sweats the least. However, as demonstrated by the hailstorm that hit Milan during Bad Bunny’s show last Saturday, sun protection might not be the only type of protection that fashion will have to bet on.