CategorySTYLE

The early nineteenth-century press offered readers dismissive accounts of new fashions, specifically scolding women for their “silliness” in acquiescing to “the very inconvenient custom of being without pockets.” Women were more willing to relinquish their free agency as consumers than to challenge fashion, so the charge went. Reporting on the tribulations of one such follower of fashion in 1806...

In London in 1892, everybodyor, at least, everybody who was anybodywas talking about one thing: green carnations. Nobody was sure, exactly, what wearing a green carnation meant, or why it had suddenly become such a deliciously scandalous, dazzlingly fashionable sartorial statement. All anybody knew was that one day, at a London theater, someone important (stories differed as to who exactly it...

My mother trained as a costume designer and is a self-made cinephile, so the background noise of my childhood and adolescence was the classic films channel. My sister and I grew up to the scratchy deadpan of Bette Davis; the swell of strings under Fred Astaires feet; the rapid-fire sniping of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Layered over all of that was our mother periodically calling out...

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now. In this episode, Andrew talks to Kate Strasdin, the author of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, about fashion, fabric and femininity in 19th-century England. Find more Keen On episodes and...

“I entered the forest, drawn in by the trees almost in spite of myself, it was irresistible. They were emitting such a powerful energy that I felt humbled, happy to receive their generosity. It was immediate, the pleasure I felt from stroking the grey bark; I saw a brown liquid oozing out of the tree, and the smell of balsam stopped me in my tracks. I stayed among the trees for almost an hour...

At first, Rebecca Pfeiffer (known on Instagram as Bec @luvbecstyle) seems like a momfluencer type familiar to many. She is a thin white woman with long, beachy waves. On December 3, 2021, Bec posted a photo of herself in a white marble bathroom. Shes wearing a vintage-looking T-shirt, a black beanie topped with a fuzzy pom-pom, black jeans, black Converse sneakers, and a red flannel shirt tied...

I was drinking a cup of coffee in a Vancouver hotel lobby earlier this year when I heard a few of my fellow guests talking about the Moleskine store display elsewhere in the room. One of them didnt seem entirely convinced that it was real. Is this a front? she asked her traveling companion. Elsewhere in the room, I thought of my time spent in Moleskine stores in New York City, looking through...

March 23, 2023, 10:53am Not only is Dolly Parton one of the greatest songwriters in the history of Americaand more recently, one of its foremost advocates for childhood literacyshe has also been one of its true style icons. From her classic, over-the-top signature rhinestone look to otherworldly Xanadu couture to her latest (and incredible) shattered-glass mosaic bodysuit, Dolly has always had...

North by Northwest isn’t about what happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit. The suit has the adventures, a gorgeous New York suit threading its way through America. The title sequence in which the stark lines of a Madison Avenue office building are “woven” together could be the construction of Cary in his suit right there—he gets knitted into his suit before his adventure can...

Imagine two strips of satin, unwieldy and impossibly liquid, slipping through your fingers. Through mechanical propulsion and your own gentle pressure, the fabric dips under a needle with a clicking sound, then out again, magically united by a stitch that acts like punctuation, a series of staccato hyphens. The satin waterfalls over the edge of the table, the greenest green you’ve ever laid eyes...