In January, we questioned whether anyone takes drugs at work in fashion anymore. Once upon a time, design studios were supposedly rife with narcotics. “You’d go to the bathroom, and there’d be a big bowl, and you’d just lift it up, and there’d be lines drawn,” one designer told us. “It was more for the creative director and the stylist, I guess, but everybody knew it was there and that it was like a mountain.” Now? “People are just so aware of health, and it’s cool to be healthy now. Even the smaller things like smoking cigarettes are becoming less and less common.”
Then, as the revolving door of creative directors grew faster and faster, we spoke anonymously, again, with the in-house teams whose jobs keep being thrown into chaos by these big changes and how they play out behind closed doors. At one house: “They kept the young people, especially boys who are good-looking. It was just too much of a coincidence.”
In February, we reached out to big design schools like Antwerp, FIT, and Ravensbourne to ask for the gender split on their fashion courses, deducing that women make up around 74% of fashion courses, a huge contrast to the 12% of creative directors at major fashion brands. Speaking with a handful of key industry figures like Lucien Pages, Lauren Sherman, Katie Grand, and Anja Cronberg, we unpicked why the creative director situation only seems to be getting worse. As Pages puts it: “We will know there is equality when there is an incompetent woman as creative director – just as there have been plenty of incompetent men.”
We also questioned what LFW was doing to support its emerging designers as its relevancy continues to shrink, speaking with key stakeholders about what they think needs to change most urgently. It’s great to see, just the other day, the new BFC CEO, Laura Weir, announce a number of concessions for designers to address some of the issues mentioned in this piece.
In March, we wrote about the tedious repetition of luxury fashion and how the rich archives of brands like Valentino, Dior, and Schiaparelli are currently compensating for a lack of bold new ideas. Sure, an ‘iconic’ vintage pull guarantees acres of coverage, so naturally the brands were always going to capitalise on that. But now fatigue has set in; a nagging concern, at least among commentators, that legacy is being prioritised at the expense of imagination, the past tasked with compensating for the stagnation of the present.
Then, in our most subscribed-to piece to date, we took a deep dive into the murky area of intern pay at luxury brands, as well as what perks these internships offer and how many hours on average they’re expected to work. While we didn’t speak with HR teams directly, a variety of designers, course leaders, students, and former interns have verified the accuracy of these responses. In short, they’re not paying much.
In April, we made a list of the best spots in London to buy design supplies according to those in the know. Fabrics, buttons, zips, shoes… if you’re starting a design course in London next month, or you just need a helpful reminder of where the best IYKYK spots are, look no further.
We also, as part of our ongoing series AI’m Scared, considered how taste is now the ultimate currency in the age of AI. It’s no longer about generating ideas; it’s about knowing which ideas deserve attention and why. We used to live in a world where the hardest part was making something: writing code, designing covers, composing music. Now, those barriers are collapsing. AI doesn’t just help; it executes faster than humans ever could. But it still lacks the why; it cannot decide where or why to begin or what to pursue next. It reflects what’s been done before; it’s a mirror, never a compass.
In May, we published an in-depth conversation with Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe: the Belgian designer who mastered the art of influence without fame. It’s a very long chat, but, given his unique eye on the industry – having worked under some of the most respected names and shaping some of their most revered collections – we could barely cut any of it. Van Ommeslaeghe offers a blueprint for the kind of fashion career many should be striving for. “To this day, I’m more or less a cult designer. Barely anyone knows of me or my work. But the in-crowd always knew, those in the know of avant-garde fashion, which was all that mattered to me.”
Later that month, for our new series on slow fashion, we spoke with Oliver Church on how he makes a comfortable living off creating just 200 garments a year (not styles, garments). At capacity for orders since 2022, Church has found a comfortable space that allows him to create at the pace he wants, an enviable position in an industry built on the premise that expansion and scale are the only path forward.
In June, we asked 10 recent grads on their expectation vs. reality of the industry. One year after leaving school, we were interested to hear what these budding young designers had learnt about fashion. Whether working freelance, in-house, or still looking for the right fit, their reflections challenge romanticised notions of the “first big break” and reveal the many shapes a creative path can take.
We also got nosy again about the finances of people in the industry. Ever been curious about what freelance fashion people claim as expenses on their tax returns? Here are a few candid answers – anonymously, naturally – on the most egregious claims.
And finally, in July, we asked: if London pioneered fashion imagery once upon time, how come these days all the work has disappeared? Feeling as though a shift had occurred but no one had really explained it properly, we spoke with photographers, agents, producers, and more to gain a better sense of when and why Paris overtook London as the industry’s epicentre. The answer is a mix of different failures that have never been properly addressed by the UK government.
We also pondered the rise of full-look policies and how they’re (just one more thing) sterilising fashion and street style. “If you borrow [from a brand] and don’t do full-look, then they put you on pause,” one stylist told us.
