Capsule #49 ft. Caoimhe Ní Bhroin

Hello hello,

Firstly, welcome to all the new subscribers this week! Largely from The Know 🫶. So happy to have you here. I hope you are all doing really well!

Capsule is for busy people who love stuff like fashion and pop culture but simply do not want to spend all day scrolling trying to keep up. That’s where I come in, plus a sprinkle of feel-good stuff for good measure. Life is hard! But this is supposed to be a nice thing in your Friday every week.

On the menu today: lessons learnt from my recent trip away, a heart-warming new trend, and the colour guaranteed to improve your mood (and how to wear it!).

Thank you again for being here and reading - it means a lot to me.

Holly x

First things back…

I am just back from a week in Mallorca so of course I’m raring to go with snippets of advice and learnings from my time away. This is the stuff I always learn on a trip but literally never remember for the future. Here’s to the continuous process of learning!

1. Pre-holiday anxiety can present itself in so many different ways

It’s definitely not cool to admit you get anxious before good things happen but here we are. Here are the tell-tale signs:

• Not sleeping well the week before

• Feeling too busy to properly “prepare” for your trip (whatever that means), and that your lack of preparation will impact your ability to enjoy it

• Saying stuff like “it doesn’t feel like I’m going away”

• Already thinking about the next trip, because you feel like this one could be a write-off

• Feeling like you need to BUY THINGS to feel better and increase your chances of enjoying said trip

Which brings me onto…

2. You do not need to buy a bunch of new stuff

We’ve all been there. It’s two days before you’re trip and you’re on ASOS trying to do the math on whether the speedy delivery will get here in time. What if I get it delivered to the office! That could work. Now there are a bunch of maxi dresses in your basket. A few bits from Topshop, propelled by nostalgia because it worked when you were younger. And sunglasses. Seven pairs of them, because you need to try.

The best piece of advice I can give here is to close the tab. You simply do not need it. Your time is so much better spent relaxing, tidying your home, creating your list of things to do tomorrow. If you have any genuine emergencies (e.g. your sunglasses break on the trip), I am convinced you’ll be able to solve it there, and will have fun in doing so.

That said, there are a few essentials I think will make dressing on your trip smoother and more enjoyable. So…

3. These are your holiday essentials

Okay these are my holiday essentials but they are pretty universal. Yours might include some other bits (stick with those!), but a good hack is to make sure that your colour palette is complimentary of all your different components.

• A loose shirt that you can wear over a bikini or use as an evening layer. I like an oversized linen/linen blend, like this one from Weekday or this one from Massimo Dutti

• A long dress, that’s easy to throw on and comfortable enough to wear all night. This one from Zara is great, as is this from Mango. Hang them in your room to feel glam and air out the creases

• Birkenstocks. I don’t need to convince you at this point. And if you’re anti-Birks for whatever reason, your comfy sandal of choice

• A bag that isn’t leather, because it gets too hot in the sun, and is big enough for your essentials: suncream, book, pack of cards. I like this one from Free People

• A statement necklace, which is the quickest way to make your vest tops feel more elevated. This Mango one is great, as is this one from Cos 

Of course your suitcase is filled with more than this, but I use these core staples time and time again, and secretly think to myself, if I ever travel with just a backpack, I’ll know what to do.

And finally…

3. Less is more

The most important aspects of a holiday are 1) being in a different place and 2) stepping out of your usual routine (work, or whatever else that might be). Anything more is a bonus. These two things are the key to unlocking everything else, and they are kind of connected to the aforementioned pre-trip anxiety. That’s because when you’re in your regular routine, you can’t really imagine what it will feel like not to be. It’s easy when you feel relaxed and joyful on holiday to look back at your worried self and think, I wish I could have told her that it would all be good, great even, regardless of how many activities we planned ahead or how wonderful you feel in your body and clothes. For some even deeper cuts, I shared some of my journal entries on Instagram this week that touch on these same feelings.

Next up…

I have lost of count how many times I have heard (mainly light-skinned) people say I can’t wear yellow. True, it is a notoriously difficult colour. Now I don’t want to go all colour theory on you, but not all shades of yellow were created equal. And there’s one that’s having it’s time in the sun right now, and rightly so: butter yellow. 🧈

In my world this category was first introduced by Harling Ross, who coined “stick of butter” dressing while at Man Repeller in 2018. That was, dressing head-to-toe in whites, ivories, and pale, buttery yellows. The trend has come back around, part due to runway looks from brands like J W Anderson, Philip Lim, and Sandy Liang, part due to our clichéd, seasonal approach to getting dressed. ☀️

Some fun ways to wear it:

Links: Waistcoat (Aligne), jeans (Cotton On), sunglasses (Messy Weekend), bag (Mango)

Links: Cardigan (Sister Jane), shorts (John Lewis), vest top (Levi’s) necklace (Harris Reed x Missoma)

Links: Dress (Zara), bag (Free People), sandals (Arket)

Okay have you seen…

This TikTok trend where people ask their parents to show them how they would have danced to ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat in the 80s. My parents are real Bronski Beat/The Human League/Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark heads so this one really got me. Some gorgeous examples here, here, and here.

@mmolllyy

#80s #80smusic #80sdance

And finally…

News from the Capsule universe to keep you in the cultural loop:

• Reality TV isn’t dead: Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are rebooting The Simple Life

• Dua Lipa is doing what relatively few big pop stars have done to help build their empire: learning languages. Cue the Dua Lingo comments…

• Rosalía is the new face of Dior, which is making some people lament her OG style of dressing

• Hunter Schafer won the Capsule Chic of the Week award. See why

• Sophie Turner is on the cover of British Vogue. In the article she talks about mum-shaming, which is worth a read, and says stuff like “Thank fuck for Gen Z”

• Now that Hailey Bieber’s pregnancy is public, she’s sharing the fun bits like wearing that Blumarine butterfly crop top with a bump

• And Julia Fox has a new show on E! called OMG Fashun, where indie designers compete to make unique garments for her. Law Roach is a judge!

This week, Caoimhe Ní Bhroin (AKA Rita’s Vintage) popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Caoimhe (pronounced Queeva) is a true Irish princess and vintage seller and stylist specialising in 90s to early 2000s clothing and accessories. She handpicks everything, and sells solely in-person at events as she loves connecting with people. As she says: Life's short, so why not play dress-up everyday?

📺 Watching: La chimera in the cinema, and the HBO series of My Brilliant Friend on streaming (very good).

📖 Reading: This excellent profile on Charli XCX by Hannah Ewens. Every profile Hannah writes is 💯 and this is no exception! Also Alice Munro’s short story “Axis” - but technically listening on The New Yorker: Fiction podcast. Munro died aged 92 this week, and was a real pioneer in the structure of short story writing.

🎧 Listening to: Atavista, the reworked version of the latest Childish Gambino album, complete with song titles. Pay attention to ‘Human Sacrifice,’ an unreleased song fans have waited six years for. Also the new Billie Eilish album is here. Let’s all do our homework!

Lola foresees the mesh ballet flat trend dying out just as quickly as it arrived. A novel thing to add to your basket when dreaming of summer, sure, but difficult in practice. They get sweaty in the heat, and your feet get wet in the rain.

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

Quick question - and no hard feelings…

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 💋