Capsule #67 ft. Chloe Laws

Hello hello!

Firstly welcome to our new subs this week who largely came from Deez Links, Delia Cai’s newsletter. For your benefit, I’m Holly, I’m based in London, and I started Capsule for people who like fashion and pop culture but find it hard to keep up. You have a job, you’re busy, and sitting on TikTok all night doesn’t feel good. Capsule should be a weekly treat that gives you a good slice of the stuff you enjoy, without losing hours to the algorithm.

The format is as follows:

• Open tabs: A few core things worth engaging with from the week, plus a quick list of news

• Special guest: each week a (dare I say it) cool person shares their Hot & Not list

• Adding to queue: Stuff to read/watch/listen to

• Culture clairvoyant: a future trend prediction from a weekly mascot

This issue and the next couple are focused on fashion weeks, but in future, expect a good mix of celeb stuff, interrogating trends, outfit inspiration, and random feel-good stuff I feel compelled to share with you.

If you reply to this email I’ll always come back to you - I love to hear feedback or requests or just a hello if something resonates.

Have a great weekend!

Holly x

The Spring 2025 shows, London Fashion Week, September 2024

A couple of days before London Fashion Week began, my boyfriend asked me to rank each of the fashion weeks, based on “clout”. I said confidently that Paris was way ahead, and has the largest portion of the big names you’ve heard of, that Milan and New York are somewhere in the middle, and that most people would agree that London is at the bottom. It’s not bad, of course, it just lacks some of the gravitas you see elsewhere, and our biggest creative exports graduate onto showing in Paris (see: Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, Stella McCartney). I also said that London was the city least likely to have mega influencers pop up at shows (although we did see Rihanna fly in to promote Fenty Hair at Selfridges this year). The Google search data tells a similar story:

But as you learn more about London Fashion Week, its origins, and support, it grows on you. London is home to the British Fashion Council, and it’s NEWGEN programme, which takes funding from the UK government to support small and emerging designers. The NEWGEN programme has given us Alexander McQueen, JW Anderson and Simone Rocha in the past, and is presently supporting the likes of Chet Lo, DI PETSA, Tolu Coker, AARON ESH, and Sinéad O’Dwyer.

What London lacks in clout, it makes up for in creativity, which is always felt in the best shows. A few for to acquaint you with…

🧷 CHOPOVA LOWENA 🧷

Chopova Lowena, the brand of designers Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena, has had a great year. They won the ‘New Establishment Womenswear' Award at The Fashion Awards at the end of 2023, they just won the 2024 British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, and their tartan carabiner skirts have become a symbol of cult coolness for women in London and beyond.

Their spring 2025 show in London brought us the classic Chopova staples - folk elements, tartan, big skirts and trainers with extravagant socks and tights - but with new points of inspiration. Before fashion month began, we thought two big themes would be America (especially in New York, ahead of November’s election) and sports (after a summer of Olympic fun in the fashion capital). Chopova Lowena did that but in an unexpected, authentic-to-them way. Instead of cowboy references and tracksuits, they drew inspiration from female folk heroes of the Victorian American West. Not a traditional icon of Americana, but exactly who the Chopova girl would be in that context. For the sports references, they looked to rhythmic gymnastics, specifically the Bulgarian and British Olympic teams from the ‘80s and ‘90s, inspired by “all the prints and the sequins.” Emma Chopova spent her formative years in the US, and has Bulgarian parents, and Laura Lowena is from the UK. Their inspirations are so connected to who they are that they never feel random or out of touch; they feel closer to world-building for an audience truly invested in their output.

A common recipe for a memorable collection is some sort of playful element, and the Chopova Lowena show had that too. Models had cutlery in their hair, wore horse braces, and necklaces with little toy horses on them. The accessory you’ll hear most about is the Margaret bag. Like the brand’s Sofia bag, which has special sections for little essentials and is described as “your girlhood survival kit,” this bag is designed with a specific woman in mind. It features an antique spoon and a jar of mayo, a tongue-in-cheek homage to condiments, tapping into the current fixation on food (Chicken Shop Date, celebrity Erewhon smoothies, Chamberlain Coffee, Hot Ones, Gabbriette’s cooking videos) and playful cult products (Anya Hindmarch Digestives bag, MSCHF boots, Balenciaga Crocs, JW Anderson frog clogs).

Chopova Lowena’s success is what happens when you receive funding, and make things for an audience you understand and care about.

🪡 ERDEM 🪡

Erdem is not new and upcoming but I thought the spring 2025 show was too good not to share with you. The collection is inspired by the novelist Radclyffe Hall, who wore suits and wrote The Well of Loneliness (1928), a formerly-banned, seminal work of lesbian literature, and her femme partner, Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge.

Love the Savile Row tailoring for women, love the gowns (and I’m not a gown person!!), love the styling of the masculine and feminine components together. Like the chilly evenings of a wedding when you need a groomsman’s blazer to keep you warm outside, and you suddenly feel more chic than you have done all day. If I had money…

🏠 TOLU COKER & AHLUWALIA 🏠

I’m often touched by fashion shows that bring us into the designer’s heritage — they feel personal, you find yourself thinking about their parents and how proud they would be, and you’re given new colour to cultures and regions you may not know a tonne about. History and heritage is always a big theme at London Fashion Week, and this season, the Tolu Coker and Ahluwalia shows were standout.

The Tolu Coker spring 2025 show was called OLAPEJU, a tribute to her mother, whose Yoruba name means "where wealth gathers.” But this isn’t about riches in the traditional sense. From a set designed to look like a late ‘60s, early ‘70s British-Nigerian living room, complete with warm carpets and busy wallpaper, Coker presented a collection of heirloom, intergenerational pieces. Sharp Sunday best looks with playful new additions. Coloured leather in contemporary colours, sculpted to the body as holding decades of wear. And models danced and embraced, celebrating their community and welcoming anyone into it. The collection is brand new but looks vintage, encouraging us to search in our family closets and remember that the best pieces have heritage and a story, a kind of wealth that cannot be replicated with money and newness.

Ahluwalia’s collection was called ‘Home Sweet Home,’ a phrase stylised on a door mat ahead of the show. Of the inspiration for the collection, creative director Priya Ahluwalia said:

As she says, home isn’t always tangible. It’s a feeling - of safety, pleasure, warmth. But this is a fashion show and Ahluwalia is tasked with turning these emotions into something we can see, wear, and touch. Here’s what she came up with:

Crocheted doilies, a runway lined with North African and Turkish rugs, and like Tolu Coker, prints reminiscent of wallpaper and other textures from the designer’s Indian and Nigerian heritage. Home is a feeling but it has signifiers, and they pop up everywhere. That sense of belonging is felt strongly in jumpers with ‘Ahluwalia’ emblazoned on the front — this is about pride and connecting to your tribe via a uniform. I thought the final menswear look (5th image above), the cream suit with the pink ribbon slicing through, was a great metaphor. You might look fairly conventional, like other people, but that connection to home will always find a way, sometimes right on the surface, a strand demanding to be seen.

Also drawing on themes of home and heritage this season at LFW: Jawara Alleyne’s ode to the Cayman Islands, Karoline Vitto’s Rio Carnival-inspired collection, and Chet Lo’s ode to his mother.

And here are some more of my favourite looks from the week, some thoughts on attending for Capsule, and what I wore. Swipe to the end for a Capsule treat… 👔

And finally…

Other news from the Capsule universe you may have missed this week:

• Self-Portrait has launched a new residency programme, with Christopher Kane as its first guest designer, which means… affordable(ish) CK designs?

• Another collab: Kacey Musgraves for Reformation. Giddy up!

• Not news just Chloë Sevigny wearing Phoebe Philo

• Tyla will headline the new Victoria’s Secret show, confirmed models include Gigi Hadid, Paloma Elsesser and Tyra Banks, and this star will also perform…

• The Sweat Tour with Charli xcx and Troye Sivan is underway. The best bit is the spotlight Apple dance cameos from fans

• Dua Lipa explained why her songs are not super personal

• Dress codes for concerts are a thing now (cc: Chappell Roan), and the latest guides are for Sabrina Carpenter

• And Milan Fashion Week has begun… more on that next week!

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

Chloe is a freelance journalist, poet and gender equality campaigner. She is the founder of @fgrlsclub, a platform that campaigns against misogyny. She writes about beauty culture, body image, politics, feminism and culture, for places like Grazia, Marie Claire, Stylist, Dazed, Glamour and more.

📺 Watching: The Substance in the cinema and The Perfect Couple on Netflix. Also caught up with some Florence Pugh cooking videos because they are just good - this one for Vogue, and this one with Nick Grimshaw for Dish. And the gorgeous video for ‘Eusexua’ by FKA twigs.

📖 Reading: Two great profiles: Emma Chamberlain by Biz Sherbert for The Face, and this Florence Pugh by Raven Smith for Vogue. And Jessica DeFino’s latest Ask Ugly column for the Guardian, which is about a woman receiving unwelcome comments as she stops dyeing her hair to cover greys.

🎧 Listening to: ‘Insect Song’ by Elke and Carter Ace, ‘The Things We Say’ by Nieve Ella, and My Method Actor, the new album from Nilüfer Yanya.

Important cultural news from a very tired Koda today - two of the top cultural trends from Google search data from the last week were “crochet pumpkin” (which apparently spikes every September) and “pumpkin spice latte cake,” which is the top trending pumpkin spice search. You know what to do….

If you’d like to adopt Koda 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, do refer them! 🥺

See you next week 💋