Capsule #39 ft. Sophie Lou Wilson

Hiii everyone,

I believe it’s International Women’s Day today, and I believe most of us in the Capsule universe are women, so well done to us for being us. Thank you for spending this sacred day opening this newsletter. I hope it’s worth your while. I found out this week that Berlin (and maybe other places?) takes IWD as a public holiday 😩 the rest of us have a way to go….

This is your last proper fashion week issue for a little while! We’re zooming in on Miu Miu and the notion of dressing for your age, looking at some other key trends from the season, and then shifting gears to explore how to document memories.

Sophie Lou Wilson is also here to share her Hot & Not with you, and it’s a great one at that! 💿

Enjoy your weekends, especially if you’re in Berlin!

Holly x

P.s. if you click one thing in this newsletter, let it be the link when you get to the Kaitlin Chan section. You won’t regret it x

“Every single morning, I decide if I’m going to be 15-years-old, or a lady near death.”

Those were Miuccia Prada’s words as she appeared at the end of her Miu Miu AW24 show in Paris on Tuesday. To set the scene, the show opened with a short film called Reception! from artist Cécile B. Evans, exploring what happens to the memories we keep on digital devices after an apocalypse. We lose them, of course, as demonstrated by a VHS camera floating across the screen, lost in space. The fashion show that followed played with ageing, memory, and the importance of clothing in visually expressing identities throughout our lives. 

Models of all ages walked the runway (from Four Weddings and a Funeral actress Kristin Scott Thomas to musician Ethel Cain), in silhouettes ranging from the refined (a lady near death) to the innovative (15-years-old). 

It’s interesting to see a brand that was created to appeal to a younger consumer (Miu Miu is Prada’s sister brand primarily targeting women in their 20s and 30s, with a cheaper price point) playing with ageing, or in the brand’s terms, “the span and scope of people’s lives”. It solidifies something we all feel: even when we’re young, we’re thinking about being older. We look at older women and wonder if we’ll be like them too. We wonder how we’ll dress, how our makeup routine will shift, what we’ll do with all the grey hair. By showing a collection that puts ‘mature’ garments (pencil skirts, suit jackets, pearl necklaces) alongside more youthful looks (bright colour, non-conventional tailoring, the excessive layering needed for a chilly beer garden), Miu Miu has risen above the current, saturated trend of nostalgia. Instead of choosing a decade and simply rehashing all the styles to revive it, this collection feels more like a trip down memory lane, wandering into the past to choose the bits you’d like to bring forwards. When that’s done, an invitation awaits, to admire all the women you might become and the armour through which you’ll shine.

While we’re here, I should also tell you that skinny jeans were in the collection. You’ve been warned!

If you have space for a little more Paris Fashion Week…

I rounded up some of the most fun (and accessible, you could say) trends from the Paris shows for Instagram.

Particularly here for the charcoal dresses, the affirmation that knee high boots are worth investing in, and big bags. Many of us are done with tiny bags and we just want to carry our stuff with ease. Not that Jacquemus is listening… 

Moving on! 

I enjoyed discovering Wild Memory Radio this week, a new project by Seb Emina for WePresent. It’s an ‘audio museum’, and features contributions from a range of artists who share memories from significant or vivid moments in their lives. Author Lisa Taddeo speaks of the attic she wrote from in Topanga Canyon, California; designer Rick Owens shares snapshots from his summer condo in Lido, a village near Venice; poet Kayo Chingonyi recounts a memorable evening on a dancefloor in Sheffield. These are more than just voice memos - each piece is packaged with fleeting visuals and soundscapes to help place us in the moment with the speaker. 

My favourite piece is from an illustrator called Kaitlin Chan. She shares a memory connected to a bench in Treviso, Italy. It’s under three minutes, and I hugely recommend you listen. It’s the link most worth clicking in this entire email.

A gorgeous thing about this artistic project is that we can try it ourselves, and while it may feel a bit sincere, I encourage us all to have a go when the time feels right. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than musing on your memories and committing them to paper in some form. A journal entry, an attempt at a poem, maybe even a haiku. An Instagram post, an email to a loved one or yourself. A printed photograph with a note scrawled on the back. A voice note saved in a folder with future ambition to add music or ambient sounds. 

You might uncover your entry by asking yourself a few questions/prompts: 

• What’s a moment that encapsulates how you felt in your early twenties? 

• Have you ever had a fixation on an object? What does it mean to you? 

• Think about a trip you were not looking forward to but ended up feeling glad you went. Why was that?

• Think of a time when you felt like time paused or moved more slowly. Explain what happened and how you felt

• Think about a photograph or artwork you really love. Why do you like it?

• When do you feel authentically yourself?

• Was there a moment you discovered something core to who you are? What happened? 

• If you could hit pause on all responsibilities and commitments, and head back to a moment in your life to experience it again, where would you go? Why? 

Enjoy. And if this headspace is speaking to you right now, make time to see Perfect Days if you haven’t already. The small things matter!

And finally… 

Around 80% of you said you’d like the Capsule quick hits of news (which will always be relevant to fashion/celeb/trend/culture stuff, not hard news). My apologies to the 3% who aren’t keen, I see you, I’m proud of you for saying no. But alas majority rules! So here goes… 

• People are excited about Coperni’s new Air Swipe bag, which is a) 99% air and 1% “glass” and b) capable of holding your iPhone. But it’s not glass as we know it, it’s silica aerogel, AKA the lightest solid material on planet Earth 

• In excellent casting news, Ice Spice, Solange, Hayley Williams and Grimes are the new faces of Heaven by Marc Jacobs

• SZA announced a big Hyde Park show so we’re all eyes on her for Glasto now too, which I’ve been speculating since this totally unrelated farm photo

• The British Museum tried to convince the girlies that they could meet single men at their Roman military exhibition. It didn’t go down too well… 

• We found out Taylor Swift is a distant relative of Emily Dickinson, and I have to wonder if Ms D would also be so into the constant re-releasing of new stuff with (tiny) tweaks to churn out more content. I’m looking at you, “File Name": The Black Dog”

• And Reneé Rapp did a cover of ‘Linger’ by The Cranberries on her UK tour. Gorgeous as you’d expect. And while we’re here, listen to how loud the crowd was for ‘Poison Poison’. A star!

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

Sophie is a fashion and music writer for publications including Vogue, i-D, Dazed, The Face, Vice and more. She is currently based in Brighton and working as Social Media Editor at Crack Magazine. She co-founded and edits Fourteen, an independent zine that focuses on stories about growing up, coming of age and nostalgia. Sophie also writes fiction and poetry.

📺 Watching: Perfect Days in the cinema. And in light of The Brit Awards last weekend, I also recommend Raye’s interview with Louis Theroux if you haven’t seen it yet! Also the video of Dua Lipa visiting her old primary school made me feel happier than I expected.

📖 Reading: What is a ‘writer’, anyway?, a dialogue essay from Divya Venkataraman (former Capsule special guest) and Diana Reid’s Substack, and this interview with Dakota Johnson for Bustle, in which she chats about sex, shame, and blended families. She’s great. 

🎧 Listening to: I’ve been enjoying If I Speak, the new podcast from Ash Sarkar and Moya Lothian-McLean, which features chat about the messiness of contemporary life and advice on listener dilemmas. And on music, Keeper of the Shepherd by Hannah Frances is worth your time. Plus two big releases for us to dive into, from Bleachers and Ariana Grande.

Sharky is a little exhausted from fashion month, but has retained one key thing to pass on to you, and that’s dresses with hip cutouts. From Valentino to Loewe, the cheeky waistline reveal was all the rage. Best accompanied with a cardigan in colder climes…

If you’d like to adopt Sharky 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 💋