Capsule #104 ft. chlo3pie

Hello!

Coming to you live with a last minute issue of Capsule after I got a surprise invite to Wimbledon yesterday. Excited to share the details with you!

Scroll further for this week’s news, Hot & Not, and cultural recs for the weekend. Between a new Lena Dunham show and a surprise Justin Bieber album, there’s a lot in the air…

Enjoy your weekends,

Holly x

˚ ༘🎾 ೀ⋆🎾｡˚Capsule goes to Wimbledon─★˙🍓 ̟ !!

I was prepping a totally different issue of Capsule for you (coming soon!) and then I got a last-minute email inviting me to Wimbledon with evian. 

I will be honest, my first thought was I have too much work and nothing to wear. I’m glad I only entertained that narrative for around five minutes before accepting the invite, vowing to worry about the rest later. Capsule at Wimbledon… who would have thought…

The hour after receiving that invite looked a lot like this: 

I also scrolled through some celebrity Wimbledon fashion, which was fun, but maybe poorly timed in terms of setting a mad standard for a Normal Girl Panicking The Night Before. 

The above messages culminated in this:

• Cycling to my friend’s gf’s house to collect her house keys

• Cycling back to that friend’s house to let myself in and try on some stuff

• Getting a Zipcar to drive back to her gf’s house to return the keys, with suits in tow

• Driving from there to my other friend’s house to try on a bunch of skirts and dresses

• Driving home from there to quickly eat some pasta

• Walking then from my flat to my cousin’s to pick up another bag of options

• Cycling back from there with another haul

Kind of like a triathlon for the girls. The dress code in the email said “Summer Smart & eco-conscious,” and what could be more eco friendly than spending four hours sweating across south London to find a pre-owned outfit? The Zipcars were electric too. 😇

***

And now it’s Thursday. My first learning of the day came within five minutes of getting out of my Uber and it is this: bring a comfortable pair of shoes. I felt good in these silver slingbacks until I realised that the roads around the event are closed, which gives you a bit of a walk to find your gate to get in. Suddenly I was really aware of my feet, already expanding in the heat, but trying to walk with the elegance of my fellow Wimbledon ladies. I longed for my Birkenstocks many times throughout the day.

I’ve never really tried to imagine the footprint of Wimbledon, but the whole thing was bigger than I expected. Traversing courts felt like walking around a football stadium or concert arena, except more twee. I loved the quaintness of it all - the staff in perfectly prim uniforms, the ball girls and boys giving us a lesson in doing the most all of the time, and the charming umbrellas used to create shade in this wide open space. The fact that all of the flowers are purple, white, and green. I spoke to a few members of staff there, and despite being incredibly hot, they gushed about the event, joked with me, and seemed genuinely pleased to be there. The pristine detail reminded me of Disneyland; in a lot of ways the site felt fake, like a film set pretending to be the real thing.

But of course what makes it real is the people everywhere. Sweet dads with shirts and chino shorts and a just-bought trilby. Women in ankle-grazing dresses and designer sunglasses asking their husbands to take a nice photo please. Kids, loads of kids, running between gift shops and water fountains and touching the plant walls. This is a perfect place to be with people you love, and like all cool opportunities that come via work, sharing it with those people is the main thing that could make it better.

I arrived to the evian suite and was handed, you guessed it, a big bottle of evian. I clutched that thing with my life in the heat throughout the rest of the day. I also took some pictures in the cute photo opp areas. I don’t think any of us love doing this but you’re always glad when you get home. Your parents also thank you for it.

As for the tennis… It was awesome. I watched the men’s doubles on Court 1, and my internal monologue went something like this: Wow they are really good. They hit the ball so fast. Wait, this pair are from Australia and the Netherlands, do they even know each other? How often do they practice with that distance? Oh the clock is chic. Challengers was a good movie. Remember when Zendaya came here. Charli xcx actually wore black to Wimbledon. My mum will be watching this on the TV but I’m too small to see. My friend once told me Pimm’s gives her a headache and it’s done the same for me ever since she said that. Deuce is a good word. I can feel sweat dripping down my back.

When you watch Wimbledon on TV, the crowd always looks too hot. That perception is extremely true. The heat was quite difficult to deal with; smart people had hats and hand-held fans but there’s only so much that can do. If you ever notice that there are often empty seats in the crowd, it’s because people head inside after sets to cool off even for a minute. The court gangways are filled with red-faced people taking deep breaths, looking at each other without needing to explain. Melting. There were also more people receiving medical attention from the heat than I expected to see, that bit was rough.

After the match I headed back up to the (air-conditioned 🥲) evian suite for afternoon tea. Finger sandwiches and strawberries and cream made me think that England is quite a nice place to be in the summer. The same thing felt true at Glastonbury.

Full of cream and tea, I made my way out of the event and ventured towards a Zipcar. My feet hurt so badly at this point but I waited until I was officially out of the Wimbledon zone before taking my shoes off and walking barefoot on the pavement. The most real moment of the day. The heat of the concrete was better than the pain of the silver shoes. But that singeing, barefoot walk was a grounding moment in more ways than one. I felt lucky to be experiencing new things, and even luckier to be able to show up to them alone and feel okay. I know that’s not always the case.

And then I set off home, a 40-minute trip perfectly timed for my first full listen of the Lorde album while driving. I love this album so much that I’m finding each new setting for listening extremely momentous. I felt lucky again, this time to be able to confidently drive home in an unfamiliar car on my own, something I could not do a few years ago. “Since '96, been looking for a grown woman” indeed.

I spent four and a half hours at Wimbledon in total, which is not as long as I spent preparing for the event. My mission to acquire clothes the night before was an almost four-hour affair, plus an hour of trying stuff on when I got home, and another hour trying different combinations of clothes in the morning. Last week I wrote about reaping the rewards of the effort you put into an event, and the same is true here. I felt good in my outfit which was crucial to enjoying the day. But the bigger lesson this time was about spontaneity. It was tempting to rule myself out of attendance for being “too busy,” but when are we not? I cannot remember a time in my working life where I haven’t felt busy. But when opportunities arise, it’s worth pushing back against those default dismissals. You hardly ever regret carving out the time. And now to spend the next 24 hours in Birks.

And finally…

News from the Capsule universe this week:

• This week’s man of the hour

• Olivia Rodrigo is a good person

• Glenn Martens made his Margiela debut at couture week. The initial reaction was positive and these upcycling details are sick. And here’s Matty Healy and Gabbriette at the show

• But this was the moment of couture week

• Outfit of the week: Lorde in some final Demna Balenciaga

• Or maybe it’s this: OIivia Dean in Fendi

• Jane Birkin’s original Birkin bag sold for a huge amount

• Good Wimbledon content

• Erm…

• And the new Lena Dunham show is taking promotion very seriously…

This week, chlo3pie popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

chlo3pie is an up and coming artist based in the UK. Her debut single ‘little dress’ is out now.

📺 Watching: Too Much on Netflix of course, Lucy Dacus on Cosmo’s Blind Date with Willah Bennett, and this episode of Icons on Icons with Lorde, which is so much better than this genre usually is, and I think a good way to spend five minutes if you have it.

📖 Reading: The Anne Hathaway Vogue profile, and this New Yorker article from Kyle Chayka on why we aren’t sharing as much of our lives on social media anymore.

🎧 Listening to: ‘June Guitar’ by Alex G, ‘Fuck Me Eyes,’ the new Ethel Cain single, Lena Dunham on the Girls Rewatch podcast, and Justin Bieber surprise dropped an album. It is called SWAG in the year 2025 but it’s worth a listen, like this lovely song, produced by Mk.gee and Dijon.

A summer trend we can all get behind, brought to you by sweet Gallagher: Google searches for “black flip flops” are currently at an all-time high and “havaianas sandals” are the top trending related brand over the past week. Flip flop season is here and it’s ours for the taking.

If you’d like to adopt Gallagher or one of his friends, click here to learn more.

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See you next week 💋

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