Capsule #27 ft. Eloise Hendy

Hi loves, 

Another week done 🫂

If you’re facing your Christmas shopping this weekend and need a helping hand, check out our gift guide! And do feel free to share it with your friends who might find it useful.

In this week’s issue, we’re sharing some inspo for festive outfits based on stuff you already own, chatting about Balenciaga in LA and Chanel in Manchester, and reminding ourselves to go outside. 

The lovely Eloise Hendy is also here to share her Hot & Not with us. I also recommend reading her piece for Stylist on why our generation are having kids later - it’s written super thoughtfully. 

Have a gorg weekend! 

Holly

First things first…

I’m sure your calendars are filled with work parties and festive catch up drinks, and I’m also pretty sure you’ll be feeling like you don’t have anything to wear, like you need to buy some new stuff. I’m here to tell you that you don’t! Or at least not in the way you think you might. 

We’ve pulled together some Festive Party Fits, that use basics you already own and love, and offer small but effective (and affordable) ways to spruce them up. 

1. Adding one thing to jazz up your LBD 

Don’t sleep on your trusty black dress, she’s just waiting on a fun update before carrying you for a festive spin in the coming days and weeks! Click on the post below to see all the looks. 

2. Wearing an accessory to elevate a skirt 

Same goes with your favourite skirt. It’s not broken! But we can focus on the styling and accessories to make it feel fresh. Check out the carousel below for a few ideas.

3. Jeans and a nice top (reimagined)

And finally. Some of us just want to wear jeans all the time and that is valid. Luckily for us this is not a tired trend, and we’ve pulled together some cute ways to make it feel contemporary. Again, some chic ideas in the post below!

A similar sentiment to these ideas is present in Emma Chamberlain’s latest YouTube video, which is basically an ode to the black turtleneck. It’s worth a watch and feels like a balm compared to the excessive marketing at this time of year! Pop it on to wind down from your week.

Next up…

Two major fashion shows happened this week: Balenciaga in LA, and Chanel in Manchester. Balenciaga presumably seeking redemption from their ad scandal, landing in the epicentre of celebrity life to serenade and ask for forgiveness. And it may have worked: Billie Eilish, Nicole Kidman, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and dozens more attended the show, Cardi B even walked in it. Brand mission complete? The clothes didn’t feel super fresh, leaning on Demna’s signature features: oversized silhouettes, futuristic sunglasses, lots of black. The main noise around the collection was about the accessories, like giant trainers and the very-LA Erewhon grocery bags, which slot neatly into the lineage of “the idea is the design”, to quote Dirt, that we see so often in fashion today. (Read: MSCHF’s big red boots). 

If Balenciaga knocked on LA’s door asking for celebrity endorsement, Chanel did the opposite. By taking its Metiers d'Art show to Manchester, a city with rich cultural heritage but by no means the centre of high fashion or celebrity culture, the brand stepped away from the comfort of established hierarchies and celebrated something new. Sofia Coppola even made a video montage to promote the event, which features footage of iconic Manchester greats, from Emmeline Pankhurst to the Hacienda, all against the backdrop of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’. 

The reaction from the city was a joy to watch: local news coverage with live updates (“Kristen Stewart seen leaving Salford Lads Club” was great), new media outlets like Manchester’s Finest and The Manc getting hyped on Instagram, and residents sharing snaps of the preparation and spotting celebs. And there was a PR stunt with a Kate Moss lookalike spotted in Aldi in Ancoats.

Drama Call, a Manchester streetwear brand, popped up on Thursday afternoon by the show space to hand out t-shirts using the Chanel C’s in the words “gentrification” and “Posh C*nts”, which adds to it all. It’s only right for such an event to also be documented by the underground creativity that drives the city. 

The clothes themselves featured Chanel classics like tweed skirt suits and quilted bags, but with a fresh air of practicality. Cross-body bags, flat shoes, and Baker Boy caps felt more like uniform for a gritty city than a pristine Parisian fashion house. Although Chanel has more links to Manchester than we might think, as outlined in this piece by Jess Cartner-Morley.

But the message is bigger than the clothes. To land in a new city and embrace its culture (Chanel even made football scarves and sent guests to the Manchester United game on Wednesday evening) is something we don’t often see in luxury fashion - or at least not with authenticity. I think it works because the creative direction began with the rich history of the city, using it as the springboard rather than reverse engineering a faux connection later on.

The afterparty for the show was held at Victoria Baths, but the venue was quickly turned into a retrospective exhibition, open to the public this weekend and supported by Chanel. As a Mancunian, this week made me feel proud, homesick, and energised to make new things. 

A reminder to us all…

That spending time outside in nature is super important, especially in winter. In this piece, Sam Pyrah outlines some learnings from environmental neuroscience, which seeks to explore why – and how – our brains are so profoundly affected by being in nature. At this point I have to thank John, our colleague at The News Movement, for encouraging us all to get out into nature even when it’s like, minus two degrees.

And finally…

Selena Gomez is loved up with Benny Blanco, the producer whose early contributions to the music industry include karaoke staples like Taio Cruz’s ‘Dynamite’, Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’, and Ke$ha’s ‘TiK ToK’. He also worked with Justin Bieber, around the time when Selena launched her Rare Beauty line. In an interview about a month later, Blanco disparaged “cookie-cutter pop artists” who put out a “makeup line.” Upon finding out that Selena and Benny are dating, fans raised concerns. To this, Selena says:

A nice lesson in not holding grudges? Setting yourself free sometimes? I think there’s something nice in allowing joy to overtake vulnerability.

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

Eloise is an arts and culture writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The Independent, Dazed, Vice, Elephant Magazine, the FT, Stylist, Plaster magazine, Plinth, and ArtReview magazine. Her debut poetry pamphlet, the blue room, was published by Makina Books in 2020.

📺 Watching: If you are feeling under the weather this weekend and want to sink into your sofa and turn off your brain, watch the Lindsay Lohan film, Falling For Christmas (2022). So bad it’s really good. If you want something genuinely very good, and haven’t yet seen it, watch Frances Ha (2002). Key themes: intense female friendships, renting, pursuing dream careers, chasing money, feeling behind. Relatable!

📖 Reading: ‘The Fall Of My Teen-Age Self’, Zadie Smith’s new essay published in the New Yorker.

🎧 Listening to: ‘I Saw U’ by Swank Mami, Lana Del Rey’s cover of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ (of course), and the MUNA remix of Holly Humberstone’s ‘Into Your Room’.

Womble has been rather tapped into the news lately, which means he knows that the EU just approved a ban on the destruction of unsold clothing. He’s looking forward to seeing what brands come up with as a solution. Is upcycling going to be even more on the up? And will brands charge us for it? Maybe so…

If you’d like to adopt Womble or one of his 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 💋