Author: Umer
A question that the fashion industry hasn’t quite figured out how to answer yet is somewhere in a case that was secretly filed in a federal district court: who gets to own the dress if it was created by a machine? It is no longer a hypothetical. AI generation tools are being used by designers at every level of the industry, from luxury firms employing generative software to run experimental collections before a single piece of fabric is cut to independent labels doodling concepts late at nite. Additionally, the ownership question has a very clear and perhaps uncomfortable solution under…
The fifteen or twenty steps between a team bus and a locker room door are where a certain kind of performance takes place. It is shorter than a minute. No one applauds. Nevertheless, it has quietly grown to have a greater impact on menswear than the majority of Hollywood’s annual red carpet events. In retrospect, the origin of this is somewhat comical, so it’s worth remembering. David Stern wasn’t attempting to create a fashion wave in 2005. In an attempt to improve his reputation, he issued a direct memo outlawing Timberlands, heavy chains, and baggy t-shirts. It makes sense that…
The experience of visiting a sneaker consignment store in any big American city today is not the same as it was three years ago. There are more items on the shelves. The costs have decreased. The deadstock Air Jordan 1s that were selling at two or three times the retail price in 2021 are priced at levels that the resellers who hoarded them would have thought were unattainable. And others who used to stress over drop dates on the Nike SNKRS app are wearing something completely different, usually a flat leather loafer in a black or cognac color that wouldn’t…
Someone in what appears to be central Berlin, Shoreditch, or Fitzroy is wearing cowboy boots with a tailored blazer and straight-leg jeans, and the comment section is either utterly unconcerned or mildly scandalized. This particular moment keeps coming up on fashion TikTok this year. The same thing is confirmed by both responses. The boot is now somewhere it wasn’t before. For the most of its history, the cowboy boot has been connected with the American Southwest, country music, rodeos, and a very particular bond with horses that most urban wearers have never experienced. The boot’s current popularity isn’t the only…
Portobello Road smells like coffee, damp canvas, and the unique mustiness that sticks to old leather and wool that have been kept in someone’s attic for thirty years on a Saturday morning in late spring. By nine, the stalls beneath the Portobello Green canopy are already packed. A young woman wearing platform boots checks the seams on a 1990s Carhartt jacket by holding it up to the light. A sixty-year-old trader observes her silently from behind a table piled in silk scarves and buckled leather bags. She purchases it. He relocates to replenish. On one of London’s most well-known streets,…
It doesn’t appear to be much material. Nanoporous polyethylene, which comes from the same family of plastics used to wrap groceries, resembles a finely woven mesh under a microscope. It is transparent in visible light and perforated at a size measured in nanometers. To put it succinctly, it is the last thing you would anticipate serving as the foundation for a very noteworthy textile innovation. However, research from Stanford’s Yi Cui group over the past few years indicates that this material may be able to achieve something that no fabric in the history of clothing has been able to do:…
Not too long ago, a hoodie with the Supreme box logo made sense as a financial tool. You would get up at six in the morning, battle through a bot-infested online drop, possibly lose, possibly win, and by Thursday, you would have something worth two or three times what you paid for it. There was a logic to the entire ceremony, even a sense of community surrounding it. In long lineups outside the Lafayette Street store, people made true friendships. That was important. Technically, it still matters. However, the lineups are shorter. The mid-tier hype pieces’ StockX resale valuations have…
It’s difficult to avoid feeling a bit of déjà vu as you stand on King’s Road on a Saturday morning. The Barbour jacket was waxed. the pearls on top of a rugby shirt with stripes. The Hunter wellingtons on a person who hasn’t been in a real field in a long time. These are indicators of a certain British kind that seems to have quietly faded from cultural significance for a spell in the 1990s and 2000s. They have returned. And standing directly beside them is the person shooting it for TikTok. In their 1982 handbook, journalist Peter York and…
If you pull a pair of yoga pants from the rack of any sports brand, the label will almost definitely tell you that they are made of 78% polyester, 22% elastane, or a combination of those materials. The chemistry remains constant despite the quantities changing. The component that gives contemporary sportswear its second skin sensation is elastane, which is also marketed as spandex or Lycra, depending on the chemical manufacturer. It springs back without deforming after stretching 500% of its initial length. That is not something that occurs naturally. And that has been the issue. For years, the fashion industry…
The pattern is recognizable if you walk into practically any apparel store in January. There are red and white 40% off banners, racks pushed to the middle of the floor, and the distinct smell of a store that has too much of the wrong item and needs it removed before the spring collection arrives. For over a century, the January clearance sale has been a staple of Western shopping. Customers look forward to it, bargain hunters make plans around it, and brands secretly fear it since it truly means that someone made a mistake. The conventional model incorporates the guessing.…