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On Fridays, we’ll take a breath: See below for some commentary on apparel trends I’m loving or things I’m eyeing, a fun activity to consider, and some food for thought as you enter your weekend 🙂
1/3. Food for Thought
What is your relationship with silence?
Not the loud kind, but the more nuanced and ambient kind (like the fan I hear as I write this or the sound of others typing or speaking behind you in the office)
I almost never let myself sit in quiet. Even when I’m “resting,” I’m often filling the space with sound. But earlier this week I realized I had had my headphones on for about 2 hours without ever actually turning something on and I was a bit in awe by it, simply because it was so unnatural to me. And, I oddly found a bit of excitement in my ability to go that long in silence without actually noticing it.
Sometimes, silence feels like a void I rush to fill. I’m still a bit puzzled by it, which is what led me to this question for this week.
What might you hear if you let it go quiet?
2/3. Fun!
I know most of us aren’t exactly in the trick-or-treating phase of life right now and maybe not quite in the homeowner era either (but hopefully one day I’ll be able to set up a fog machine in the yard…) Since we have at least two more weekends of potential grocery runs before Halloween, I thought it was the perfect time to try and influence us all to bring in a little festivity into the office or do a chill night with friends, if we wanted to do something different this weekend that was getting us in a Halloween spirit.
I went down a rabbit hole looking for easy treat ideas and figured I’d share a few favorites…emphasis on easy, because I am not a baker. The last time I tried to make a dessert I got in way over my head in surprising Dylan with lemon bars, spent three hours making them, and when we tried them in the morning after they chilled we ended up giggling and admiring my effort more than their taste, all in good fun though 🙂
Linked below are a few lower-lift ideas:
Peanut Butter Spider Cookies (How cute…)
Pumpkin Pretzels (The M&M adds a touch of chocolate, which I love)
Reese’s Bats (adorable, mildly impractical)
Halloween Candy Bark (can sub with yogurt bark, too!)
3/3. Fashion / Retail Therapy
Rewriting Runway
Paris Fashion Week was full of “new” but not in the way we usually think of it. A Business of Fashion podcast I listened to framed it perfectly: it wasn’t about new faces entering fashion, but familiar ones stepping into new roles. And that shift, subtle as it may seem, changed a lot.
It was a reshuffling of creative energy. Designers weren’t just debuting collections, but new eras of themselves. Take Chanel, for instance. Is the brand reinventing itself? Or is it the canvas for Blazy’s next chapter as a creative? Probably a bit of both. Many of the shows nodded to the archives, suggesting that the “new” isn’t about abandoning legacy but reinterpreting it.
Gucci’s approach was especially interesting. Demna’s debut as creative director came with mixed reviews, but it was something never done before. A couple of highlights:
One day before the show, Gucci dropped a 38-shot lookbook titled “La Famiglia” on Instagram, a strategic move to cut through the noise of so many other designer debuts. (You can view it here)
Instead of a traditional runway, Demna hosted a film screening in Milan of “The Tiger” starring Demi Moore, a satire of the Gucci family archetype (you can watch it here…I enjoyed it)
The clothes weren’t on a runway…but on the celebrity audience attending to watch the premier of the short firm. The film was the show and the audience was wearing the collection. Brilliant. (see IG video here)
Gucci made the collection immediately available in several flagship stores worldwide. Rodeo Drive saw a 53% spike in foot traffic. The performance wasn’t just conceptual and commercial.
Luxury isn’t dead. It’s just evolving. And maybe the most exciting part is watching designers evolve with it. It’s no longer just about what’s new…it’s about who’s new and how they bring product newness to life.
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