neon bondage
light in the face of decay
i get real sleepy on my way to any fashion week event and feel a return to my vices is well deserved after most of them. i am still, always and eternally grateful.
this season felt like fashions gender reveal. from a red velvet seat at playhouse theater that steadied some canned-mojito nausea, my week begin and i watched neon pink and neon blue clothes walk across the stage to keep walking across every stage. in some form. Ang Kiriakos FW26 collection “IMY (In My Youth),” Taottao FW26’s retro birthday party, & Blondita’s first runway each bred salad day dyes. the experience of birth (celebrating it’s anniversary), youth (missing it and remembering it), and play (childlike + adultlike).
neon also means pastel this fall/winter. we seem to be creating at opposite ends of the same thing. really I’m referring to the colors at the center of each; aquamarine becoming mint becoming cyan becoming baby blue becoming lavender becoming hot pink becoming neon pink becoming baby pink becoming butter yellow becoming the colors of spring, the colors of youth, of transformation, of sex, of birth.
it’s then loosely laced up, frayed, and decayed. tied so that the option to restrict breathe is there; to regulate the body and comfort it too. like the victorians, mournful in perpetuity. like punks testing the limits of discomfort or a body wrapped in linen bandages.
also like a newborn swaddled in this american classic:
unified in the gothic, separated by the end (death) and the beginning (youth). even those who don’t recognize color recognize light in the face of decay!
Sandy Liang referenced Studio Ghibli and Marie Antoinette. both of these ideas in action at the same time. sweetness and pastel palettes + revolutions and guillotines.
Gabe Gordon health (sport) goth. Transformation of the human form in another way; full moon triggering feral werewolf transformation.
Vampires at Collina Strada. Still the undead. Slightly pruned.
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen circling through the wombs lifecycle, pregnancy, menstruation, abortion. the bodies natural ability to transform.
Prada’s bleeding ink, constructed deconstruction, and infinite wearability.
Bora Aksu ghosts of women wronged.
i secretly wish to myself, with the teensiest bit of shame, that humanity had an all-white uniform. Simone Rocha’s opening look was inspired by Enbarr, the white horse that in Irish mythology travels to Tir na nóg, the realm of eternal youth.
Ann Demeulemeester went all nighttime my time in the way that i dream about you when you’re thinking about me. then we send each other book recs.
that’s all i have to say about fall/winter26. and i don’t want to think about winter again until barren trees decide it’s time to do so.