Capsule #15 ft. Lucy Q

Hello hello,

By the time you read this I’ll be on the tube on the way to London Fashion Week 🎀. Excited to share some fun bits with you. Full debrief next week, but I’m going to a few shows and will be doing some behind the scenes fun on IG stories as I go. Follow @capsule.world if you aren’t already 🥰 

For now, we’re chatting about dipping into your friends’ wardrobes, some gorgeous rules to live by, and of course some thoughts on NYFW 🗽

And Lucy Q (@lostwithlucy) is here to share her Hot & Not with us :)))

Have a stunning weekend! Unleash your inner Taylor at the VMAs if you need to…

Holly x

There’s so much we could say about…

New York Fashion Week. Anna Delvey’s house arrest show (some are saying white privilege, others are saying cool to use the spectacle to platform an emerging designer), Julia Fox and Zazie Beetz as brides (gorgeous), Hayley Williams’s many looks (all so good).

But I think so much of what we care about more broadly right now is summed up in the Collina Strada show. Headed up by Hillary Taymour, Collina Strada is a New York-based fashion house known for playful silhouettes, clashing patterns, and bold commitments to doing the right thing (investing in the circular textiles economy, using eco-friendly fabrics). To quote a 2022 interview: “we’re just trying to make fashion a little less horrible.”

The show hit on a few things worth talking about:

1. Doomed smiles

In a Chinatown studio a few days before the show, Taymour said: “Everything sucks. We’re all doomed. The world’s on fire, but we’re doing a fashion show because that’s what we know how to do.” For the actual show, musician Oyinda sang the words “Why are we here, the earth’s on fire,” as models came down the runway bearing forced, sinister grins. The inspiration was the ‘This Is Fine’ meme.

It’s all fairly self explanatory, but feels more contemporary than, say, when the major fashion houses stage “protests”. It’s not commonplace for designer fashion to be so in dialogue with the internet, but doing so feels like an easy way to welcome young people into the fold.

2. Intelligent design

The brand used AI to design the collection. I think this is the first label to do so, unless the big dogs have been keeping it quiet (unlikely!). The team fed previous Collina Strada designs into the AI, letting it churn out ideas for what should come next. After seven weeks refining ideas (feeding new prompts?), the final designs were chosen. How does this make you feel? Once you find out, I feel like you can tell: the looks have a collagey feel to them, like witnessing in real-time the AI chopping past bits of Collina aesthetic and spinning them into new styles.

As Vogue points out, there’s obviously an anxiety around AI in the creative industries, but a few things are clear in this example: the designs are not possible without the brand’s rich design archive, and so much of the skill lies in the refinement of ideas, and ultimately the execution. It’s easier to construct something when the original idea came from you; you’re already thinking about fabric weight and how the material moves on a body. Taymour is excited about the technology and, after this show, I think we have permission to feel a bit of that, too.

3. Beauty sans standards

Okay these are still models not normies like you and I, but the runway diversity (not just in the areas we’re more attuned to notice like ethnicity and body shape, but also age, gender, and physical ability) is really a joy to see. As is the use of Starface stickers (the little stars to cover spots), and I’m not just saying that because my skin is bad today. :)

Grateful for…

Kind friends with good wardrobes. As you’d expect, I had the fashion week WTF do I wear panic this week and a friend said I could come and explore her wardrobe (thank you Mia). She has a great eye for vintage, some super playful pieces, and way more shoes than I do. I think it’s easy to forget that swapping with friends is an option - you might feel bad for asking even though most of the time people want to help you. It also gets rid of that sickly feeling that comes after a post-work panic purchase in Zara. You know you don’t want it long term. Evidence of these fits will be on IG stories…

Did we all see…

Sienna Miller’s excellent preggo look at the Vogue party last night??? We have to give a big shout out to Rihanna here. The dial is moving.

And finally…

I want to leave you with these rules to live by from Kimberly Drew, a curator and creative force. Flats literally are an option (to all the besties stressing about wedding attire).

This week, Lucy Q (aka @lostwithlucy) popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Lucy is a born and raised New Yorker with a penchant for chaos and/or leaving the country at a moment's notice. Join her on a trip that's guaranteed to be iconic…

📺 Watching: Olivia Rodrigo’s VMA performance, followed by Britney’s 2001 MTV Awards performance of ‘Slave 4 U’ with the snake. 🐍

📖 Reading: This profile on Reneé Rap after a friend suggested I dive deeper into her music. For the uninitiated, she played Regina George on the Broadway version of Mean Girls, and starred in Sex Lives of College Girls, before leaving to focus on music. More on Ms Rapp in the coming weeks…

🎧 Listening to: How Do You Sleep At Night, the new album from Teezo Touchdown. He describes his music as “Rock & Boom! R&B with the intensity of rock, the penmanship of Hip-Hop and a boom that will shake the world”. I can’t argue with that. It’s good! Ignore the Pitchfork review.

As Tatlock was doing her weekly scroll of Diet Prada, she was reminded of a forgotten truism: ballet pumps give you dirty feet. Your soles are so close to the grime of the city. No real breathability. Are we about to usher in Athlete’s foot Autumn? Tatlock has warned you… 🩰

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

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, please forward on 🥺

See you next week 💋