Capsule #90 ft. My Own Garms

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Today’s issue makes the connection between some collections I loved at Paris Fashion Week and MAYHEM, the new Lady Gaga album. I’m also sharing back your thoughts on fur from last week, some weekend recs, and a great Hot & Not from Thomas Griffin aka My Own Garms.

Enjoy your weekend!

Holly x

Connecting Paris Fashion Week and Lady Gaga

A lot happened at Paris Fashion Week. Sarah Burton made her Givenchy debut, to some people’s joy and other people’s disappointment. Her collection triggered a heated debated about women in senior positions in fashion, who seem to be given fewer opportunities generally and a smaller window in which to prove themselves.

Debates about gender continued when Dutch designer Duran Lantink sent a top with bouncy silicone breasts down the runway. Again this was divisive — to some, like designer Dilara Findikoglu and fashion editor and influencer Brenda Weischer, the design landed badly: a joke made in poor taste, mocking the female form when fashion is supposed to do the opposite. Others found Lantink’s design to be innovative, fresh, and a sentiment I kept seeing: “what happens when you don’t follow the algorithm or ChatGPT”. I think it’s worth pointing out that there was a male equivalent, Action Man style top on the same runway, and that the use of prosthetics and shapes to exaggerate silhouettes is a big part of designer fashion. But I think it was something about this particular set of boobs - perfectly formed, centred nipples, jiggling almost comedically down the runway that didn’t sit right for a lot of people. Like seeing male gaze slapstick comedy in an environment you weren’t expecting.

But it wasn’t the headline grabbing moments that really stayed with me this season. All of that stuff felt somewhat chaotic, if I’m honest, and I noticed what many people have been saying about the social platforms, particularly X, for a while: that the loudest, most extreme opinions win. The online chatter about Paris Fashion Week at large was all about winners and losers, and neither of those things speak to what I love about fashion. But when I skipped that stuff, and looked closer at the collections, I found some stuff that did. And that’s what I want to share with you.

Throughout the week, I kept saving images of looks that had many shared features. Black was the common denominator, plus dark lace, leather, tailoring, and tassels. I collected the photos with a range of accompanying words, like gothic, dark, emo. Looking at the clothes, these words are accurate. From designers like Ann Demeulemeester, McQueen, and Dior, we saw form-fitting lace worthy of a great Victorian gothic novel, a near eclipse of colour, and a hardened exterior, held together by buckles and buttons. But when you take those words - gothic, dark, emo - at face value, they don’t really encapsulate what these looks actually make me feel.

On the surface these looks are a sullen winter, but as they move their softness emerges. Ruffles of lace peek out from a strong silhouette, soft chiffon tendrils follow as the women walk, leaving a delicate playfulness in their path. Stefano Gallici, Ann Demeulemeester’s creative director, said of his collection: “I always love to lose my path during my collections, because when I lose my path, I find new roads, and this brings me to new places that excite me, that get me emotional.” I think that gets to the core of it — what feels like one thing at first glance actually has a tender underbelly.

Similarly, for his latest collection, McQueen’s Seán McGirr was inspired by Charles Dickens’s Night Walks, in which Dickens is “an insomniac and ends up strolling around London until dawn.” Spotting a darkly dressed figure roaming the streets at night would be a bit of a jump scare. But finding out that person is too alert from the experience of being alive? Very soft indeed.

Something similar is at play in MAYHEM, the new Lady Gaga album. The early stages of the campaign - the release of ‘Disease,’ a song about trying to overcome your demons and realising they’ll always be there, plus the album title and dark graphics of black and red, dripping like blood - led us to believe we were getting a dark pop album.

It’s not entirely untrue; in this record there are devils, fears and death, pulled out with big 80s synths and grungy guitars. There are songs titled ‘Killah’ and ‘The Beast’, in which the pursuit of passion is akin to murder. But as I searched for the dark, grittiness we expected, the inner core presented itself, softer and softer.

In ‘Vanish Into You’, which I think is a total masterpiece, Gaga details a love so all encompassing she wants to meld into her partner, becoming one, suspended in joy. ‘It was cold in the summertime / We were happy just to be alive’ I think is one of the best lyrics on the album because it shows a real emerging out of a dark cloud (Gaga has been open about her mental health struggles throughout the Chromatica era). Depression makes you need the life force of summer and sunshine so badly; on hard days you sink deeper when the sky is grey. But here is Gaga now, cold in the summertime, and not debilitated but floating in air. Not wishing for death but comforted by a love that will last beyond the grave.

In interviews, Gaga credits falling in love with her fiancé Michael Polansky for her shift in feeling. Early in their relationship he told her: “I know you could be a lot happier than you are,” and progressed to make that his mission, by going on long walks, repeatedly cooking recipes they liked, and learning about her family. This back-to-basics approach to happiness is epitomised on ‘Blade Of Grass,’ a song on the album about Polansky proposing to Gaga, following a comment she had made prior: “just take a blade of grass and wrap it around my finger.” In the song, she confesses how lonely she’d been in the industry prior to meeting him, “fighting a battle with no shield.” For an artist who has talked openly about struggling to make friends, the safety from this connection is vital.

MAYHEM is about a lot of things - Gaga advised imagining the record as one chaotic night out - but ultimately this is an album about what it means to make art from a place of love and security. This reminded me of Margaret Qualley talking about David Lynch after his death:

Lynch viewing suffering as a restriction rather than a gateway to greatness is a sentiment echoed by Gaga:

In a world that rewards the most extreme opinions and decidedly provocative content more generally, I’m pulled to art, be it fashion or music, that dares to have a soft inner core. It teaches us that there isn’t a choice to be made between creative fulfilment and the happiness that stems from calmness and security. You can wear a lot of black and skip trends and have a lot of to say; you can write about feeling good and have a lot of depth. I’ve always thought that feeling safe is a great foundation from which to grow — it’s not that risks cannot be taken from such an environment, but that your entire wellbeing doesn’t hinge off their success. It might mean slowing down, resisting a hot take, or sitting out of a trend, but in the long run, I think it breeds more conviction in what you do have to say. And what’s more aspirational than that?

A few more PFW favourites and moments worth seeing…

This colour palette and styling at Chloé. Just very beautiful!!!

The jackets at Saint Laurent. Mwah…

A quiet farewell to Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe, or what we think is his last collection. It was a bit sad to see a faceless presentation with mannequins instead of models. Where’s the standing ovation and the flowers!

Loads more fur and fur accessories. Like at Miu Miu:

Last week I asked for your fur thoughts: 42% of you said you’d only wear faux, 38% said you’d wear vintage real fur, and 14% said you’d wear anything. Some builds on your feelings:

And finally…

Other news across fashion and pop culture you may have missed this week:

• The girls turned out for Saint Laurent

• The TV adaptation of Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk a) stars Emma Mackey and b) is coming to Mubi this July

• Putting Justin Bieber’s Prada jacket on the mood board

• After 27 years, Donatella Versace is stepping down as creative director of the brand. Loving the throwbacks (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga)

• Gucci has appointment Balenciaga’s Demna to turn the brand around. Luxury analysts aren’t super sure

• Choosing Demna for Gucci and replacing Donatella with a man has led to a lot of this

• Lena Dunham has started a Substack for book recs

• The Mail Online journalist called out by Millie Bobby Brown has spoken out and resigned

• The Eusexua tour looks so good

• HAIM are back

• And I care about the sofa in their music video

This week, Thomas Griffin (aka @myowngarms) popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Thomas is a content creator, model, and host of the My Own Garms podcast. He’s from Yorkshire and currently resides in Yorkshire.

📺 Watching: I’m Still Here in the cinema, Picture This on Prime, and a rare Mina Le vlog, which I liked for its telling of how she reads and takes notes.

📖 Reading: The first installation of American Style, Biz Sherbert’s newsletter. She looks at the style of middle America by going to Disney World. I was also featured in this BBC Culture article about the jacket and tie resurgence this week. 👔

🎧 Listening to: Two big new singles: ‘Relationships,’ by HAIM and ‘The Giver’ by Chappell Roan. And this episode of the Polyester Podcast about the Ozempic era.

Accessories news from Jasper: Styling for the new Damson Madder collection and the Sandy Liang AW25 show had something in common: rosettes. We’ve done bows and now we’re doing a full celebratory rosette. This is a fun one if you want to get involved, and I’m pretty sure the DM version is just a repurposed scrunchie.

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

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See you next week 💋

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