The Library
The Library
The Models
Dorian Leigh, and the invention of the model
Before there was a supermodel, there was a woman who made being photographed a profession. Dorian Leigh is the answer to a question most people never think t...
The Editors
Diana Vreeland, and the Making of the Fashion Magazine
On the editor who invented what we now think a fashion magazine is — and who watched the form she created begin to decay. Diana Vreeland was the fashion ed...
The Image
The Helmut Newton Problem
On the photograph that invented modern styling — and why we’ve been failing to imitate it for fifty years. Villa d’Este, 1975. Helmut Newton photographs a ...
The Objects
The Miniskirt, and the 1964 That Reset the Hemline
On a skirt cut by a young woman on King’s Road, a model who walked in it, and the moment women’s clothing stopped pretending to be patient. Hemlines rose i...
The Designers
Madeleine Vionnet, and the Invention of the Bias Cut
On the designer who discovered, in roughly 1922, a technique that changed what fabric could do on a body — and what women still owe her. Madeleine Vionnet ...
The Voice
Taste Is Not A Democracy
We have spent about fifteen years politely pretending that taste is a matter of opinion. That everyone’s taste is equal. That to say one thing looks better t...
The Voice
The Mirror Test
Every garment you own has to pass a test. The test is shorter than most fashion writing implies. It happens in, I’ve timed it, about fourteen seconds. You pu...