Fa l l / W i n t e r 2 0 2 6
LOUISA JACOBSON
© LACMA, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward William Carter.
© Claude Monet, LACMA, gift of A. Jerrold Perenchio.
cartier.com
Alhambra, celebrating luck since 1968
877-VAN-CLEEF vancleefarpels.com
Alhambra
Long necklace
Contents
26 Contributors 27 Masthead
On the cover: Louis Vuitton hat, 866.VUITTON.
28 Editor’s Letter
Ossessione 32 Scream And Flout Fall’s clothes are loud, expressive, and breaking every rule quiet luxury spent years making.
38 Hot List This season’s most adored.
44 Luck Be a Mademoiselle For Chanel’s newest high jewelry collection, Signes & Symboles, the house recasts Coco Chanel’s beloved symbols.
52 An Icon, Still In Motion There are icons, and then there is the Omega Speedmaster.
60 It’s a Long Story Shear refusal: Gwen Flamberg makes the case for legendary locks at any age.
64 Power Puff Vibes, bottled: Scents that set your mood.
66 Face Forward Can the humble rose be the key to your best skin ever, forever?
70 The Greats The best of fall makeup is meant to make a statement for the season. 22 GRAZIA • USA
Forza 76 Louisa Bares All As Louisa Jacobson enters her fourth season of The Gilded Age, the actress is ready to talk about... well, everything. But she’s going to do it her way.
92 Seventh Avenue Superheroines Historically speaking, in the business of ladies’ fashion, it’s a man’s world. Yet notable New York women paved the way for today’s proliferation of feminine design talent.
98 Garden of Earthly Delights Inspired by lush grounds and fantastical birds of Bunny Mellon’s Oak Spring Estate, Tiffany and Co. Blue Book Fall 2026 Collection: Hidden Garden is its own force of nature.
108 Into The Mystic In recent years, tarot, astrology, crystals, witchcraft, and other practices once considered fringe have edged into the mainstream.
112 Not-So-Naked Dressing This fall, sheer slips play peekaboo with more substantial layers.
Contents
From left: Bottega Veneta coat, hat, bottegaveneta.com; Tiffany & Co. earrings, ring, tiffany.com. Azzedine Alaïa.
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178
Moda 118 Power of You We are all in training to be the best versions of ourselves — from personal to professional — so why not flaunt that hard work in looks that pack a punch?
134 Winter Warriors This Fall, faux fur goes rogue as femme-fatale glamour stalks the streets of suburbia.
152 Suits You The black suit takes center stage – deconstructed, reimagined, and anything but boring.
162 Molto Milano Italy’s fashion capital remains the most alluring backdrop for this season’s strongest looks.
118 Panorama 172 What’s Up?
In art, fashion, and music, the battle lines are drawn.
178 Coming to America A new San Francisco exhibition charts how Azzedine Alaïa’s road to global stardom ran through the U.S.
184 Welcome Home Catherine De Orio combined two adjoining Chicago lofts to create one sophisticated yet inviting home where cinematic scale meets intimate discovery.
192 An Italian Original After 20 years, Portrait Hotels & Resorts, part of the Ferragamo family’s Lungarno Collection, is entering an era that blends its individualized guest service with the cities it calls home.
198 A Presto!
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Bottega Veneta dress, hat, bottegaveneta. com; Danimás gloves, belts, danimas.com; Nike shoes, nike.com.
Contributors
Bronx-born Leo Tiffany Reid made a career out of what she loves most: fashion, talking too much, and having an opinion. She’s styled everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow and Kerry Washington to Shania Twain, talked trends on national TV, including GMA and the Today Show. She’s traveled to nearly every corner of the globe, collecting inspiration, stories, and probably a few things that didn’t fit in her suitcase.
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Katharine K. Zarrella is a fashion journalist, critic, and lecturer based in New York. After earning her MA at London’s Central Saint Martins College, Zarrella held editorial roles at publications including Style.com, V Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Presently, she writes about all things fashion for most any publication that will pay her, including The New York Times, Vogue, and Dossier. Zarrella lectures MA fashion students at New York’s Parsons School of Design and possesses a penchant for the outrageous. When she’s not frenetically typing, Zarrella mingles with her Grand Prix horse, Frédéric; her two rabbits, Schiaparelli and Dalì; and the gaggle of Comme des Garçons-garbed mannequins with whom she shares her apartment.
Brooke Nipar is a director and photographer known for her bold uses of color, unique eye for casting, upbeat energy in both her work and her creative approach to it, and the ability to elicit exuberant yet natural performances. Born and raised in Los Angeles, educated at Art Center College of Design, and inspired by 18 years living in NYC, Nipar works across a variety of styles and mediums. She specializes in bringing out a strong sense of personality — from talent, from stories, and from brands.
Romy Soleimani, a New York-born and -raised makup artist, began her career in the late ’90s assisting Linda Cantello on Calvin Klein shoots, while also gaining experience across major fashion houses such as Comme des Garçons, Gucci, Chloé, and Yohji Yamamoto. Over the past two decades, Soleimani has become known for her signature glowing, nourished skin that has attracted clients like Julianne Moore, Tracee Ellis Ross, Alicia Keys, and Cara Delevingne. She has led makeup for numerous fashion shows such as Ulla Johnson, Carolina Herrera, Rachel Comey, and Max Mara, as well as campaigns for designers including Ralph Lauren, Estée Lauder, and Calvin Klein.
Joseph Errico
Editor & Chief Creative Officer
Christoph Radl Art Director
Giacomo Pasqualini International Art Director
Contributors Casey Brennan Features Editor
Style Features Editor
Alison S. Cohn
Shelby Comroe
Gwen Flamberg
Alyssa Haak
Faran Krentcil
Cynthia Martens
Aaron Rasmussen
Roxanne Robinson
Fiorella Valdesolo
Andrea Volbrecht
Katherine K. Zarrella
Beauty Director Editor At Large Culture Editor
Copy Editor
Fashion Editor
Features Editor
Features Editor Producer
Special Projects Editor Cultural Critic
Digital David Evan Ruff
Social Media Manager
Business Stéphane Haitaian Director & Publisher
Yulia Petrossian Boyle
Strategic Planning & Advisory
Daniela Sola
Managing Director
Cherryl Llewellyn
Sales Director, Watches & Jewelry
Marly Graubard Chief Revenue Officer
Priya Nat
Sales Director, Home & Luxury
International Advertising
Marketing
Digital
Sara Di Nunzio
International Advertising Manager, Reworld Media Italia
Reina Fontenoy Operations Director Reworld Media
Katia Ciancaglini Head Of Digital Reworld Media Italia
Francesca Brambilla Marketing Director Reworld Media Italia
EMAIL CONTACT@GRAZIAUSA.COM
Printing by Quad; Distributed by CMG Grazia USA (www.graziamagazine.com; UPC 0-74820-40390-7) is published biannually by Reworld Media US Inc. 122 East 42nd Street, 18th Floor, NY, 10168 USA. Reworld Media US is a branch of the Reworld Media Group Grazia is a trademark registered and owned by Reworld Media Italia Srl. For further details, please write to graziainternational@reworldmedia.com © [ 2025 ] Reworld Media Italia Srl. All rights reserved. Published by “Reworld Media US” with the permission of Reworld Media Italia Srl. Reproduction in any manner in any language in whole or in part without prior written permission is prohibited.
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Editor’s Letter As a world-class procrastinator, I always manage to stave off writing my editor’s letter until the absolute last possible moment — usually somewhere between “We really need to get this to the printer” and “Are we sure we can’t push the deadline?” Just before I finally hunker down to hammer it out, I like to pour over every word and take one last deep dive into all the hard work our editors have put forth to create the beauty you now hold in your hands. All the while, my poor, put-upon art director wrings his hands, watches the clock and prepares to hit send. This issue highlights forza. The Italian word translates to strength or force and is more commonly used as an expression of encouragement: Stay strong, carry on. Remain steadfast in the fight and power through to success. We started creating this issue months ago, framing our stories around this idea, but I find it especially meaningful that I should be writing this letter today, September 12, 2026 — 25 years and one day after the attack on the World Trade Center, and the day that may have given me my first real understanding of forza. For those of us who lived through September 11, we can never forget that day. Writing, talking, even thinking about it 25 years later still chokes me up and brings me immediately back to that morning. On that day, we witnessed the worst of humanity. September 12, however, revealed something else entirely: the very best of it. Heartbroken New Yorkers began the long, slow process of helping our city heal. Lines to donate blood wrapped around blocks. Thousands volunteered their skills to help. Complete strangers comforted one another on the streets. It was a profound display of our collective strength, grit, and fortitude — a reminder that even in the face of unimaginable trage-
dy, the human spirit, while badly bruised, cannot be broken. Strength, of course, can announce itself in many ways. Sometimes quite demonstratively, as it does in the fall fashion presented in these pages. Stylists Karen Levitt and Tiffany Reid show us how to channel our strength through the power of wardrobe: flaunting those hard-earned muscles in this season’s sexiest sportswear (pg. 118), or tapping into your inner femme fatale with the wildly imaginative faux-fur options fall has to offer (pg. 134). Molly Haylor presents sharp suiting as armor for whatever the day may bring (pg. 152), while Katharine K. Zarrella makes the case for dressing loud, proud and entirely unafraid (pg. 32). Other times, strength reveals itself through a quieter confidence. As Alison S. Cohn suggests, there is power in owning your self-confidence while wearing next to nothing (pg. 112) — which, let’s be honest, requires considerably more nerve than putting on a suit of armor. Or perhaps that confidence comes from having one’s entire being bolstered by wrapping oneself in the masterful creations of Azzedine Alaïa (pg. 178). There are worse places to find your strength than from inside a spectacular dress. Speaking of quiet confidence, our cover star, Louisa Jacobson, has it in spades (pg. 76). Jacobson exudes cool-girl energy that simply cannot be faked. The aplomb with which she embraces her queer identity and serves as a visible role model for the next generation is endlessly inspiring. So, too, is the way she is navigating becoming her own woman after being born into a family of acting royalty. It takes a certain amount of guts to put yourself out there the way Jacobson does. As she told writer Faran Krentcil, “Being brave is feeling afraid — or sometimes, just feeling like shit — and doing it anyway.” If that’s not some formidable forza, I don’t know what is.
“I’ve been beat up, I’ve been thrown out. But I’m not down, no, I’m not down. I’ve been shown up, but I’ve grown up. And I’m not down, no, I’m not down.”
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Joseph Errico Editor & Chief Creative Officer
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REPLUMPS RETEXTURES REVITALIZES ILLUMINATES
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Ossess ione Daring design, bold buys, jaw-dropping jewels and the best of beauty for the season. These are the things driving our collective consciousness to charge out into the world credit card in hand.
Fall’s clothes are loud, expressive, and breaking every rule quiet luxury spent years making. SCREAM AND FLOUT
O
n August 31, Vice President JD Vance told a podcaster he “would not be shocked” if we were living in the end-times and/or if the Antichrist were walking among us. He also noted that it’s “OK” if his work somehow brings those end-times about. Spectacular. Obviously, his apocalyptic assertions steered my mind toward the Fall/ Winter 2026 collections. The world is on fire — literally and figuratively. It might seem flippant to devote your energy to fashion at this particular moment. But I’d argue that the season’s sartorial statements, such as Haider Ackermann’s transparent Tom Ford raincoats with alligator-embossed leather collars, Matthieu Blazy’s sheath covered in gargantuan, clattering paillettes at Chanel, and Glenn Martens’ blinding gilded Maison Margiela gown comprising 150,000 star stickers, are among the best ways to fill your brain and your wardrobe. Step aside quiet luxury, because fall’s fashions are loud — screaming loud. And they can be viewed as armor against reality or, at the very least, delicious distractions. Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli — whose pursuit of extreme beauty was so fierce that, after her mother called her ugly, she crammed flower seeds into her mouth, ears, and nose in hopes she’d erupt into a garden — observed that,
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“In difficult times, fashion is always outrageous.” She wrote this in her 1954 memoir, Shocking Life, in the wake of two world wars. It’s since been quoted into oblivion by every fashion journalist with Google and a deadline — including yours truly, who has used it at least thrice in her career. It may now be a cliché, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Elsa’s heir, Daniel Roseberry, embodied her statement for fall, proposing suits scrunched and deformed in the most delectable ways, prim dresses slashed at the sides, and pumps garnished with furry, roaring felines. This season called for collections with teeth, and Roseberry delivered. After years of trying to dress like the taupe-cashmere-drenched cast of Succession, it would seem we are finally replacing quiet luxury with something more boisterous. “This past year I noticed a shift back to color and different materials and proportions,” said stylist Bailey Chanel Moon, whose clients include fashion darlings Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector. “People are having a little bit more fun again and making more exciting choices, which also means making riskier choices.” With risk comes reward. Moon has found that his celebrity and well-to-do clients alike are taking the plunge. “People are craving what’s different and what’s going to set them apart,” he said. Case
Photos: Getty Images
Words Katharine K. Zarrella
Junya Watanabe
O S S E S S I O N E . SCREAM AND FLOUT
in point, one of Moon’s longtime clients recently eschewed a classic black Chanel flap bag in favor of the brand’s leopard-print model. When you buy a standout piece, said Moon, “what comes with it is a vibe.” Style’s newfound courage, posits Moon, stems from a collective quest for cheer. We’re “seeking joy,” he said. Fall’s emphatic looks — faux fur dresses at Loewe by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, Jonathan Anderson’s abundance of flouncy skirts and shimmying feathers at Dior, silk fringe and immaculate embroidery at Sarah Burton’s Givenchy, to name a few — unapologetically declare, “I’m enjoying myself!” And even if you aren’t, fake it ’till you make it. It’s inevitable that, eventually, these clothes will bolster your mood. Naturally, none of this is new. Fashion historian Summer Anne Lee explained that maximalism has often been catalyzed by technology, prosperity, and youth. “In the mid19th century, for example, innovations in steel made the massive cage crinoline possible, while newly invented synthetic dyes sparked fashion trends for vivid new colors.” She also noted the influence of the street, citing “the spectacular postwar youth subcultures, whose styles pu-
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shed the envelope by challenging conventional ideas about class and sartorial convention” and the punks of the 1970s. “Vivienne Westwood famously described their approach as ‘confrontation dressing,’” she said. Lee suggested that fashion’s shift toward noisiness may not merely be celebratory escapism. The restrained “old money” and “quiet luxury” trends are closely associated with snobbery and exclusivity. “The maximalist styles we’re seeing now can be read, in part, as a rejection of that aesthetic and the elitist social structures it comes from,” she said. Given the growing backlash against billionaires and tech oligarchs, that tracks. What doesn’t quite track is how exorbitantly expensive rejecting exclusivity is. Today’s most ebullient designs can run anywhere from four to six figures, which seems absurd for ready-to-wear. “I cannot for the life of me figure out where they’re coming up with these prices,” said Timothy Lloyd Pope, a fashion and luxury consultant who’s spent more than 40 years in the biz. A pastel jacquard Dior Bar jacket, for instance, will set you back $11,500, and Schiaparelli’s shimmering trompe l’oeil dress with hands grasping at the breasts is a cool $21,500. Spending that kind of dou-
Photos: Getty Images
Comme des Garçons
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2022
Alexander McQueen Fall 2009
Christian Dior Couture Fall 2008
Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2023
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O S S E S S I O N E . SCREAM AND FLOUT
Balenciaga
Loewe
gh is reserved for the ruling class, not a protest of it. If you are going to invest in the season’s finery — or if you’re planning to channel its grandiosity with fabulous thrift-store finds — Pope cautions against adopting fashion’s full extremes. No one wears the entire runway look unless they’re peacocking at a fashion show or on the red carpet. You can be loud without screeching. “I find all of this very exciting in that there are now interesting pieces that you pluck and inject into an existing wardrobe to add some excitement,” said Pope. “They’re pieces that can go along and work in someone’s life — not just this season, but in the future. It’s not just a throwaway, loud luxury trend.” He named Chanel’s leopard statement jacket and advised teaming it with a white blouse and some high-waisted trousers. “That’s a way to go out to dinner — to feel glamorous, but not look silly.” Such pieces, he said, lend “an interesting kiss of glamour to a woman’s wardrobe.” Or a slap, depending on what you’re into.
Moon agrees with that sentiment. “It doesn’t always have to be a loud color or loud proportions. It can be something sleek that is a little bit removed from the simplicity of the minimalist, quiet-luxury era.” Consider the look he assembled for Nina Dobrev’s appearance at the 2026 Venice Film Festival, which comprised a sequin Armani Privé column gown with emerald strips of chiffon streaming from the skirt. She spent the evening twirling the panels rather than freezing into what Moon calls the typical red-carpet “T. rex pose.” It wasn’t over the top, but it wasn’t meek, either. Pope defines luxury as pieces that provide the freedom to put your best self forward. “Sometimes that’s a big statement. Sometimes that’s a whisper,” he said. Fall really focuses on the former, and thank goodness it does. If I’m going to bump into the Antichrist, I want to do it wearing something extraordinary — something that packs a punch and an opinion.
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Photos: Getty Images
“People are craving what’s different and what’s going to set them apart.”
Bottega Veneta
This Season’s most Adored Edited by Shelby Comroe
MAKE IT PERSONAL
Tod’s T Signature Bag, $3,145 tods.com. The T Signature bag has the kind of clean, polished shape that works from desk to dinner, with a roomy tote silhouette and distinctive gold-tone hardware at the front. Tod’s new My Signature service adds another layer, allowing clients to personalize the bag with their initials. It’s a subtle update that makes an already classic carryall feel a little more individual.
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THE GOLD STANDARD
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello dress, $7,800 ysl.com. Saint Laurent’s antique-gold lace dress is a study in after-dark dressing. The long-sleeved silhouette balances a plunging neckline and sheer finish, while the button-front detail adds a vintage-inspired touch. Add a sleek heel and minimal jewelry for an evening look that needs little else.
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O S S E S S I O N E . HOT LIST
SWEET SPOT
Initio Parfums Privés Oud for Grace Eau de Parfum, 90ml, $435 initioparfums.com. A fragrance wardrobe deserves a little variety. Initio Parfums Privés’ Oud for Grace introduces vanilla and praline to a woody blend of oud, sandalwood, cedarwood, and guaiacwood, with bergamot and black pepper rounding out the composition. The combination is a distinctive addition to the fall rotation, particularly for those drawn to scents that move beyond the familiar floral or gourmand.
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HOT LIST . O S S E S S I O N E
TOE THE LINE
Chanel boots, $2,475 800-550-0005 For Fall/Winter 2026, Chanel sharpens the knee-high boot with a graphic two-tone treatment. Chocolate suede runs the length of the leg before giving way to a stark white cap toe. Finished with a sculpted heel, the silhouette feels like a modern riff on one of the house’s most recognizable codes.
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O S S E S S I O N E . HOT LIST
BAROQUE THE RULES
Dior Bar Jacket, price upon request 800-929-DIOR Dior’s Bar jacket gets a full dose of ornamentation this season. The sharply fitted silhouette is covered in metallic jacquard with bursts of pink, blue and gold, while an oversized bow at the back adds one final flourish.
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HOT LIST . O S S E S S I O N E
SNAKE CHARMER
Bottega Veneta earrings, $1,000 bottegaveneta.com Bottega Veneta turns the classic drop earring into smething far more graphic. Hand-enameled resin gives the curved silhouette a snake-inspired pattern, while the gold-finished tips add a polished contrast. Bold without feeling oversized, they’re the kind of earrings that can carry an otherwise simple look.
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For Chanel’s newest high jewelry collection, Signes & Symboles, the house recasts Coco Chanel’s beloved symbols as sumptuous talismans, infused with color, contrast, and light LUCK BE A MADEMOISELLE Photography Cédric Bihr Chanel High Jewelry Imprimé Émeraude ring in 18K white and rose gold with an emerald and diamonds. 44 GRAZIA • USA
LUCK BE A MADEMOISELLE . O S S E S S I O N E
This page: Chanel High Jewelry Talisman Gabrielle ring in 18K white gold with diamonds, turquoise; Chanel High Jewelry Talisman Gabrielle ring in 18K white gold with diamonds and chrysoprase; Chanel High Jewelry Talisman Gabrielle Ring in 18K white gold with diamonds and onyx; Chanel High Jewelry ring in 18K white gold with diamonds and carnelian. Opposite page: Chanel High Jewelry Lion Emblématique Transformable brooch in 18K white gold, rose gold, and yellow gold with diamonds, yellow diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and turquoise.
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O S S E S S I O N E . LUCK BE A MADEMOISELLE
Chanel High Jewelry Symbole Camélia Rose ring in platinum and 18K rose gold with diamonds and pink sapphires.
O S S E S S I O N E . LUCK BE A MADEMOISELLE
This page: Chanel High Jewelry Symbole Camélia Solaire ring in 18K white gold with a yellow diamond and diamonds. Opposite page: Chanel High Jewelry Lion Millénaire bracelet in 18K white gold, 18K rose gold, and platinum with diamonds, rubies, and onyx. Chanel High Jewelry Lion Millénaire Transformable ring in 18K white gold, 18K rose gold, and platinum with diamonds, ruby, onyx.
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There are icons, and then there is the Omega Speedmaster AN ICON, STILL IN MOTION Words Joseph Errico
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Omega Speedmaster 38mm, 52 diamonds (1.53 carats) in steel and mother-of-pearl dial
Buzz Aldrin during Apollo 11 wearing Omega Speedmaster
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AN ICON, STILL IN MOTION . O S S E S S I O N E
F
irst conceived in 1957 for the world of speed, the Speedmaster was never designed to sit quietly on the wrist. Its tachymetric scale was moved beyond the dial and onto the bezel — a deceptively simple decision that made the watch itself part of the instrument. With its symmetrical case, Broad Arrow hands and hand-wound Calibre 321, it arrived with a look that was immediately distinctive and, as it turned out, remarkably difficult to improve upon. Then came space. Wally Schirra wore his own Speedmaster into orbit in 1962. Three years later, NASA flight-qualified it for all manned space missions. In 1969, it went to the moon. The Speedmaster had begun life measuring earthly speed; suddenly, it was measuring history.
Photo: Courtesy of NASA
It evolves without ever needing to announce that it has changed.
HERITAGE PIECES Top: Omega Speedmaster “Mark II” from 1969. Bottom left: The Omega “Speedmaster 125” from 1973. Bottom right: First Omega X-33 from 1998.
And it kept going. The Mark II reworked the original case without abandoning its character. The Speedmaster 125 introduced automatic winding. During Apollo 13, the watch was called upon to time the crucial 14-second engine burn that helped bring the crew home. The X-33 pushed the design into a new era of functionality, while the 2013 “Dark Side of the Moon” recast the Speedmaster in black ceramic, proving that even an object so deeply associated with the past could look entirely of its time.
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Photo: Courtesy of NASA
O S S E S S I O N E . AN ICON, STILL IN MOTION
SPACE EXPLORATION The OMEGA Speedmaster has been the choice of astronauts and space agencies for more than half a century. In fact, it has been associated with some of humankind’s greatest extraterrestrial adventures and has been one of the most famous chronographs in the world ever since it became the first watch worn on the moon in July of 1969.
Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch Professional watches in Canopus gold and Sedna gold
O S S E S S I O N E . AN ICON, STILL IN MOTION
The result is heritage without the nostalgia filter. This is the peculiar genius of the Speedmaster: It evolves without ever needing to announce that it has changed. Its proportions shift. Its materials become more adventurous. Its technology moves forward. Yet the essential language remains — the graphic dial, the purposeful bezel, the unmistakable silhouette. Across generations, the Speedmaster has accumulated history without becoming trapped by it. And now, that same idea comes into focus with “Speedmaster 38mm,” Omega’s latest expression of its design philosophy. Seven 38mm styles present a sophisticated evolution of the collection through refinements and color variations, bringing the Speedmaster 38mm even closer to the aesthetic codes of the iconic Moonwatch. The result is heritage without the nostalgia filter. Rounded subdials now replace the previous oval ones, giving the dial a cleaner look to emphasize the sporty character of the collection. The bezels return to a thicker style with the essential Dot-Over-Ninety that is synonymous with the Moonwatch. Because the point of an icon is not to remain exactly as it was. It is to remain unmistakably itself — while giving us a reason to want it all over again. ICONIC DESIGN Top big picture: Omega Speedmaster First Omega in Space. Bottom left picture: Omega Speedmaster “Silver Snoopy Award” 50th Anniversary. Bottom right picture: Omega Speedmaster “Reverse Panda” Moonshine Gold.
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Omega Speedmaster 38mm, 52 diamonds (1.53 carats) in steel with an ice-blue dial
Shear refusal: Gwen Flamberg makes the case for legendary locks at any age IT’S A LONG STORY
W
hen my hair starts getting accidentally tucked into the back of my high-waisted jeans, I know it’s time for a trim. And by trim, I mean what hairstylists call “a dusting.” Once, during said dusting, the editorial hairdresser Kevin Mancuso smirked, “You better be careful, or your hair’s going to get caught in the escalator at Barneys.” This should give you an indication of my age, since I, like many of my Generation X cohorts, spent my post-collegiate days in New York City hanging out at the famed (now devastatingly defunct) specialty store. They say one should cut their hair once they reach a certain decade. But to that, I say … not on your life. And this life is mine. I’ve been acutely aware of my hair since I was a small child. Growing up as a redhead forges a strong personality and a distinct self-consciousness that stems from having a mane that’s decidedly different. As legend has it, I even popped out of the womb with, as my raven-haired mother liked to recall, orange kinks all over my head. My childhood was spent with my long locks plaited into a butt-length braid, the bottom third left loose, like an impressionist’s lush paintbrush. At 14, I got recruited by a local hair salon to join a blonde-brunette-redhead trio
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of roller-skating hair models. Every Saturday, I dutifully showed up at 9 a.m. to have my hair washed, blown-dry, and set into a voluminous tumble of waves that caught the attention of every passerby in town. It was the best job I ever had. While nipple-length was my go-to before the pandemic, months in lockdown led to letting my hair grow … and grow. I liked to say that I got the last best haircut in New York City before the world shut down. I had snagged a coveted appointment with my hair guru at the time, Serge Normant, on March 12, 2020 — the day before my last day in the office. Serge is not just any hairstylist. He is the mane man behind Hollywood’s best tressed; think Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts, Amal Clooney, Cindy Crawford, you name it. Picture any major ‘90s glamazon image with hair filling the frame, and chances are Serge created the look. I always loved sitting in his chair, because unlike other stylists who would eye my length judgmentally and try to bully me into cutting, say, a lob, Serge’s love for extra-long hair matched my own. “Let’s just snip an inch, an inch-and-a-half,” he’d say. “If you can have hair that’s this long and thick and healthy, why not show it off?!”
Simone Rocha
Photo: Getty Images
O S S E S S I O N E . IT’S A LONG STORY
Six years later, my strands are not the only thing that’s grown; so has my Samson-like conviction that my strength, my zhuzh, lies in my locks. My hair has become my defining characteristic — and my point of differentiation. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that also, keeping my hair megalong has become my armor; a bit of rebellion against the trope that women of a certain age should go for the big chop. We are told — gently at first, and then with increasing urgency — that, as we age, our hair must retreat. It must shorten. It must become more manageable, ordered, age-appropriate. The unspoken message is that devil-may-care hair belongs to youth. There’s an implication, a sort-of social contract, that as we age we should choose efficiency over romance, practicality over wildness. But I am deeply uninterested in this trade. And I’ve never been one to follow convention or alter my appearance to satisfy the hegemony. I’m not alone in my zeal. I belong to a secret society, a sisterhood, of quiet power brokers who refuse to live by the hair rules. A ballet dancer in her youth, Laura Regensdorf, 42, a beauty writer for the New York Times, had to keep her hair extra long. “When I was a kid, you almost couldn’t cut your hair because you needed to be able to pull it back into a bun for uniformity’s sake,” she says. But today, the lustrous strands that graze the top of her thighs hold an entirely different meaning. “There’s a resoluteness in the maintenance,” she says, matter-of-factly. Plus, now, her hair actually sets her apart. “I think I’m a quiet person otherwise, who doesn’t usually walk into a room and tell the loudest story — so there’s something kind of powerful to have a signature that speaks for you.” For others, the feminine mystique of exaggeratedly lengthy locks — akin to the women depicted in Renaissance paintings like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus — is a gateway to reclaiming the feeling of lost youth that can be synonymous with mid-life and perimenopause. My friend Melissa Green Hewitt, a fragrance industry executive,
shakes her waist-length mane of strawberry blonde ripples over a glass of wine, the ends narrowly avoiding an anointing in merlot. “It makes me feel younger, it makes me feel more sensual,” says the 51-year-old of her epic hair. “I grew it after my divorce,” she confides. “And it made me feel more like myself. I was finding my light again. It made me shine.” From Chloe to Simone Rocha, that kind of ownership of self-assured femininity was all over the runways this season, too. And on screen, undone, ethereal Hamnet-core hair was as much a part of Jessie Buckley’s awards season-sweeping portrayal of Agnes as her nonconforming red dress. Here, untamed tresses became the embodiment of a woman both wild and soft, passionate and knowing, keen, yet unabashedly capable. Truly a representation of fully expressed, brave, untethered womanhood. “Long hair is a superpower,” says celebrity hairstylist and TikTok-favorite Clayton Hawkins. “And if you’re over 40 and have a healthy, glorious mane, rock on.” Indeed, some women choose to keep their hair long simply because they can. At a wedding in Miami a month ago, I found myself behind a gorgeous goddess waiting to go through security at the venue. From my rear view, she was wearing a one-shoulder gown that looked spectacular and had thick, luxurious, flaxen tresses that were practically to her bum. When we came face-to-face at cocktail hour, martinis in hand, I was awestruck by her 74-year-old face etched with beautiful experience. Has she ever thought about cutting her hair, I asked? She offered a one-word answer with a sly shrug, unapologetically: “Why?” Why are we demanded to be one thing or another? I defy those tired tropes like I avoid scissors. I choose to not choose to fit into any picture of who I should be or how I should move through this world, now or ever. In my fifth decade, what I want has come sharply into focus — and that just happens to be the swish of unbridled freedom, cascading with lightness down my back.
If you can have hair that’s this long and thick and healthy, why not show it off?
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Photo: Getty Images
IT’S A LONG STORY . O S S E S S I O N I
Chloé
CONFIDENT
FLIRTY
CHIC
LUSCIOUS
OPTIMISTIC
ERUDITE
A cocktail of syrupy plum, deeply reverent myrrh and musk in Bottega Veneta Velvet Steps creates an aura of self-assured intensity, practically guaranteeing a second date. ($300 for 3.3 oz, bottegaveneta.com)
Evoking the intensity of a clandestine fling, Chanel Coco Mademoiselle Crush Absolu infuses the trademark fruity floral scent with hints of lush amber that leave one wanting more. ($195 for 3.4 oz., chanel.com)
The scent equivalent of a silk blouse tucked into velvet tuxedo pants, Dries Van Noten Velvet Violet juxtaposes soft violet with earthy, grounding sesame to make you feel instantly polished. ($350, for 100ml, driesvannoten.com)
Addictive notes of chocolate mingle with rich amber and patchouli in Tom Ford Tobacco Chocolat Eau de Parfum for an aroma that’s almost good enough to eat. ($425 for 100ml, tomfordbeauty.com)
Effervescent at first whiff, Estée Lauder Glimmer Eau de Parfum Spray opens with uplifting fresh, fruity notes of raspberry and citrus, then mellows into glowy, beaming amber. ($160 for 3.4 oz., esteelauder.com)
For afternoons at the museum: Complex notes of white incense in Louis Vuitton Ink Mark conjure an afternoon discovering archives of ancestral calligraphy in Shanghai. ($350 for 100ml, louisvuitton.com)
Vibes, bottled: Scents that set your mood POWER PUFF Words Gwen Flamberg
ROMANTIC
MYSTERIOUS
SPIRITED
SWEET
SEXY
A reinterpretation of the fragrance Jacques Guerlain created for his wife in 1912, the new L’Heure Bleue captures that magic moment of possibility when day turns to night via silky iris and vanilla. ($180 for 100ml, guerlain.com)
Instantly enveloping with a certain je ne sais quoi, smoky wafts of exotic oud add decided depth to peach in Maison Francis Kurkdjian Oud Velvet Mood Extrait de Parfum. ($475 for 70ml, maison franciskurkdjian.com)
A heady dose of vanilla and almond infuses Miss Dior’s roses with unapologetic feminine strength in this revamp dressed with a grey herringbone couture bow that gives a nod to the iconic Dior New Look. ($185 for 3.4 oz., dior.com)
Spiked with juicy dark cherry and touches of cocoa and vanilla, Lancome La Vie est Belle Very Cherry Eau de Parfum will make one crave a second helping of dessert. ($137 for 1.7 oz., lancome-usa.com)
The carnal, twistingin-bedsheets aroma of tuberose layered with creamy sandalwood makes Valentino Vendetta Donna the ideal spritz for date nights and all manner of seduction. ($185 for 90ml, valentino-beauty.us)
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Can the humble rose be the key to your best skin ever, forever? FACE FORWARD Words Gwen Flamberg
A
s the word longevity gets bandied about ad infinitum, the pursuit of youth has never seemed more attainable. And this isn’t a notion that exists somewhere in the far outer reaches of the zeitgeist; it’s become ubiquitous IRL. Take, for instance, a recent dinner party at a friend’s Soho loft. In between plates of steamed spinach, lentil salad, and walnut oil-drizzled broiled salmon (heart healthy, natch), the chatter at the table wasn’t about the latest film, upcoming election, or reality show scandal but, rather, hard-to-pronounce monikers like tirzepatide, sermorelin, GHK-cu, NAD+, exactly who was injecting exactly what, and exclamations of “you look so … good!” When did peptides become the pastime du jour? It all started with Ozempic. Blame the popularity of peptides — and other complex biohacks — on the GLP-1 revolution. Suddenly, injecting oneself with wildly promising substances that supercharge all manner of systems from metabolism to mitochondrial production went mainstream. But what about our bodies’ largest organ, the skin? New science offers the promise of rejuvenating cells, no needles required. “Peptides are just messengers,” explains Soo-Young Kim Abrams, a New York City-based esthetician. “They’re short chains of amino acids that signal the body to do different things.” For instance, applied topically, peptides nudge the fibroblasts in your skin to make more collagen and elastin.
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Looking at the big picture, internal and external longevity are “extremely interconnected,” says Dr. Michaela Robbins, the founder of East x West Med. “The skin ages by the very same biological mechanisms as everything beneath it: oxidative stress, chronic low-grade inflammation, collagen loss, and the slow accumulation of senescent cells that quietly disrupt healthy tissue function,” Robbins says. It’s a tricky proposition. The key to slowing cell degradation is in a multipronged approach that aims to restore overall health while staving off a host of offenders as time marches on. So while one might assume that a crystal-clear, glass-like glow is the holy grail, “longevity skincare shifts the aim from looking younger at any cost to helping skin stay healthier and more resilient for longer,” says Roslyn, Long Island, functional medicine doctor Dr. Anita Sadaty. It’s no wonder that the notion of longevity has transcended the scientific community and become a buzzword in the beauty world. And it’s at the very heart of Dior’s relaunch of Dior Prestige La Crème. “Not only can aging be slowed down, but organisms can be partly rejuvenated and their biological age reduced,” insists Professor Vadim Gladyshev, a leading international authority in the field of longevity, who the French maison partnered with on a major skin age-mapping initiative dubbed the Dior Skin Longevity Compass. The complex biological navigation system defines 15 key aging pathways plus markers
O S S E S S I O N E . FACE FORWARD
that help determine rejuvenation. The research included not every formulation is created equal. “The catch is the study of human skin samples from people aged 25 to that peptides don’t easily pass through the skin’s outer 80, profiling 12,000 genes and resulting in “many mil- barrier on their own,” says Robbins. To the rescue: an lions of data points.” This in-depth understanding of the exclusive technology that increases permeation of active cause-effect of aging — a result of decades of research ingredients by 47 percent. Results included measurable and the establishment of the Reverse Aging Board — differences in collagen growth, boosted elastin and hyawas published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology luronic acid and a more resilient skin barrier. in March of this year. Many of the findings influenced Depending on one’s preference, Dior Prestige La Crème is available in two textures, the deeply cocooning Texture the groundbreaking new formula of La Crème. At the heart of the elegant cream is a very special spe- Riche and a luxurious gel-cream dubbed Texture Essencies of the Granville rose, a symbol that’s intricately en- tielle, each for $495 at dior.com. A little attention to detail twined with the deep history of the House of Dior. The whilst applying it can amplify the youthifying effects of bloom is the relative of the roses that grew in the garden the formula. Washington D.C.-based celebrity esthetiof Christian Dior’s childhood home. As legend has it, the cian Sarah Akram suggests smoothing a dot of cream on the sides of the neck, each iconic designer’s mother, Macheek and on the forehead bedeleine Dior, cultivated a lush fore using one’s knuckles as a rose garden at Villa Les Rhumstimulating tool, first sweeping bs, the family home where them down the neck to drain Dior’s early references grew in lymph, then moving upwards, his imagination, right there in tracing along the outer edge Granville along the rugged norof the the jaw to just under the thern coast of France. The heir cheekbones, working inwards, of a wild rose that somehow lifting and sculpting the face as thrived, perched precariously the cream melts into skin. high in the cliffs of Normandy, In this age of data, biomarkers subjected to wet, cold winds can detect tangible improveand gray skies, underwent sements in health and in the skin, ven rounds of hybridization to no problem. But the real benecreate a specimen rich in 22 fit of a high-tech treatment is in micro-nutrients, a powerful how it makes you feel — that botanical that now serves as elusive indicator that can snethe Dior cosmetic rose. ak up on you, perhaps after a Stemming from this power series of compliments, the replant is the proprietary actiThe Dior Rose de Granville Garden blooms turn of the oft-absent self-conve ingredient that powers on seven hectares. fidence. “When we support heLa Crème, Rosapeptide-3, a patented complex with three times the concentration althy, resilient skin, there’s also an emotional benefit,” of the mighty Granville rose on its own. An innovati- shares Georgia Louise Vassanelli, the A-list esthetician ve extraction method taps multiple areas of strength in who recently reopened her Upper East Side clinic as the the rose: a mega-hydrating, polyphenol-packed petal Georgia Louise Beauty Longevity Atelier. “When you feel extract, a fruit extract and a cellulose-rich essence ex- good in your skin, it affects confidence and overall welltracted from the stem. The trio of rose peptides is combi- being, which radiates happiness and often motivation to ned with two more anti-agers: a tetrapeptide that boosts focus on healthier practices.” And who knows, perhaps collagen and a hexapeptide that has a smoothing effect. at your next dinner party, when the talk turns to neeBut perhaps the most effective attribute of the formula is dles, you can share the story of the rose that, against that it’s been designed to penetrate the dermis, because all odds, year after year, grows back stronger and more when it comes to skincare containing amino acid chains, beautiful than ever.
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No shrinking violets here; the best of fall makeup, says Gwen Flamberg, is meant to make a statement for the season THE GREATS
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SOPHISTICATED STAIN
SMOOTH MOVE
Finally, a collection of (pardon the pun) posh Rouge Lipsticks makes its debut from Victoria Beckham Beauty, each bullet loaded with pigment but supremely comfortable for all day — or night — wear. ($75, victoriabeckhambeauty.com)
For a decidedly languorous swipe of ruby, stroke Byredo’s Tinted Lip Care in Celeste Nostalgia — designed by red lip connoisseur Lucia Pica — across the pout. A cocktail of shea and cocoa butters deeply nourish. ($55, byredo.com)
Photo: Getty Images
Blurred, bold lips. The look: A believable just-been-kissed blot
IT’S A WASH Whisper-light yet dramatic, a coat of Hourglass Phantom Blur Balm (here, in Mirage) leaves a just-bitten veil of color that somehow stays perfectly put for 12 hours. ($38, hourglasscosmetics.com)
FINE IMPRINT Dab on the diaphanous liquid formula of Dior Rouge On Stage Ink Blur from the center of the pout out. Creative and image director Peter Philips says, “It’s very delicate,” imparting a soft-edged, diffused finish that lasts and lasts exactly as it was applied. ($48, dior.com)
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O S S E S S I O N E . THE GREATS
SUPERMODEL SWEEP
DISCO DREAMS
Who better to front the campaign for Saie’s Supersuede Baked Eyeshadow (here in Tiramisu) than Helena Christensen, the patron saint of the ‘90s effortlessly-defined, chocolate lid look? Choose from 11 hyperneutral hues. ($24, saiehello.com)
Whether you go to the rave or just channel the party vibes, a few swipes of Marc Jacobs Beauty Born Star Cream-to-Powder Long-Wear Eyeshadow in Out Late blended above the crease will do the trick. ($29, sephora.com)
Sooty smoky eyes. Maximalist high drama creates an alluring gaze
COLOR FORMS
DRAMA QUEEN
Think Guy Bourdain power makeup made modern. The lush, dusty blues in Tom Ford Beauty’s Runway Eye Color Quad Crème kit in Iconic Smoke put a playful twist on the painted dolls that ruled the 1980s. ($99, tomfordbeauty.com)
A fashionable gaze: Runway makeup maestro Dame Pat McGrath and house artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière dreamed up La Beautè Louis Vuitton’s Limited-Edition Eyeshadow Palette in Infrarouge — a megachic mix of black cherry, graphite, and taupe. ($340, us.louisvuitton.com)
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SWEET CHEEKS
FINE WINE
The most forgiving hot coral, Giorgio Armani Beauty Dolci Blush Smoothing Cream-to-Powder Soft-Matte Balm in Apricot bounces light to smooth the appearance of imperfections. ($39, sephora.com)
As reflective as patent leather but just sheer enough, a dab of YSL Make Me Blush Hydrating Cream Blush manages to impart a next-level glow. And even the deepest shades — like Strawberry Seduction, here — are surprisingly universally flattering. ($46, yslbeautyus.com)
Photos: Getty Images
Statement cheeks. A shock of avant-garde color sculpts the face
INNER FLUSH
PURPLE HAZE
Best for blush neophytes: The balm texture of Prada Touch Cream-to-Powder Blush easily blends with fingers, then sets to a soft matte finish that lasts all day. Plus, the iconic triangle shape is to die for. Choose from eight shades, including Dahlia. ($42, prada-beauty.com)
Lightly packed pigments in Violette_FR’s Plume Blush in Souvenir de Volubilis Plume Blush counterbalance the bodacious violet shade, leading to a diffused wash of color that can be layered for intensity. ($34, sephora.com)
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Forza Inner strength, and a resilient spirit. The drive to continually forge forward and succeed against all odds. The courage to own one’s power even when appearing most vulnerable. This is the Forza that Fall/Winter ‘26 brings.
C O V E R S T O R Y . LOUISA JACOBSON
As Louisa Jacobson enters her fourth season of The Gilded Age, the actress is ready to talk about... well, everything. But she’s going to do it her way. Photography Cass Bird Styling J. Errico Words Faran Krentcil
Giorgio Armani blazer, pants, armani. com; Lady Grey ring, ladygreyjewelry. com; Tod’s belt, tods.com. 76 GRAZIA • USA
C O V E R S T O R Y . LOUISA JACOBSON
L
ouisa Jacobson has something to say, but the sky is trying to shut her up. She’s perched under a tiny bar awning in the middle of a rainstorm — the kind of tropical downpour once relegated to Jurassic Park, but now par for Central Park — and clutching a small, sloshing cup of orange wine. “I think,” she starts, then: thunder. “I mean,” she tries again, but: lightning. The rain starts coming in sheets. Her creamy Kallmeyer blouse has a damp sheen. The hem of her vintage wool pants gets wet and turns color from camel to mule. A few droplets land on her Miista fisherman sandals, making them seem almost bedazzled. “Come on!” she shouts to the clouds. Then, back to me: “OK. So. I think the strongest thing you can do is admit what you want. Even if you’re judged for it. You have to choose what’s true, or you’ll never be happy. I am still learning how to do this. That’s it.” She side-eyes the clouds again. “That’s it!” But the sky is listening now. It suspects, like many of us do, that Jacobson might be pretty interesting, even when she’s not sopping wet. HBO Max is banking on this — it has installed the 35-year-old actress as the steely point of The Gilded Age, a class-panicked soap opera about fin de siècle New York. The show returns for a fourth season on November 1. Defiantly awesome brands like Eckhaus Latta and Kallmeyer are also Team Louisa, employing the jut-cheeked blonde in ads and social media content for the fall season. In late August, Jacobson was named to the Vanity Fair Best Dressed List, joining the ranks of Nicole Kidman, Harry Styles, and Rihanna. Looking at the hoops running up both her ears, I kind of want to pierce my own cartilage with a vintage Miu Miu brooch, even though needles freak me out. She has achieved Cool Girl status on a molecular, should-I-stab-myself level. She laughs hysterically when I say so. And then there is The Challenger, an upcoming TV thriller starring Kristen Stewart as legendary astronaut Sally Ride. In the show, Jacobson plays her longtime romantic partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, who needed to stay secret in order to protect Ride’s NASA job. “I started pushing my agents to look for more queer stories,” says Jacobson, who came out
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as queer herself in 2025. “I understand actors who feel like they can’t do that. I have queer friends who still only want to play straight roles. But I’m in a place now where I really want to embrace it.” Jacobson’s easy bravery is a recent development for the Brooklyn native, and she admits it. “I was pretty lost in my early 20s. I hadn’t yet admitted to myself that I really wanted to be an actress. I hadn’t come out yet. I was afraid of being judged. … Maybe I put up some walls around things I loved.” This would be totally normal for anyone, but Jacobson had some extra Vuitton streamer trunk to add to her post-adolescent emotional baggage. Mainly, Jacobson is the youngest daughter of Meryl goddamn Streep. That means no matter how good she is at her job — and critics agree that Jacobson is excellent — the internet’s gonna internet. “I lived under this anvil of being my mother’s daughter,” admits Jacobson, who was raised between Los Angeles and Connecticut. “And my older sisters [Mamie Gummer, 43, and Grace Gummer, 40] are also amazing. So I’m already in their shadow. It’s a heavy thing.” Like Tracee Ellis Ross or Maude Apatow, Jacobson is the kind of Hollywood legacy kid who can confront her good fortune while challenging norms about female star power. She knows she is a nepo baby, and she really knows that Redditors feel “like I didn’t deserve [success] or that things were given to me.” “You know,” she says, ducking a stream of rain runoff, “they’re not wrong. But you have to stay in the room.” The challenge, Jacobson admits, is that for years she pretended she didn’t even want to be in the room. After graduating from Vassar with a psychology degree, she got a job working retail for the designer Clare V., then serving as a corporate assistant at an ad agency. “My favorite part was the focus groups,” she says, grinning. “I just was fascinated watching all these strangers come and talk about something.” But eventually, Jacobson had to admit to herself that she wanted to be a performer, even though she knew there would be some online rants about her family connections. “But I couldn’t ignore what I knew was true. I had to do this to be happy.”
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C O V E R S T O R Y . LOUISA JACOBSON
In 2017, Jacobson secretly applied to Yale’s graduate program, where after three rounds of competitive auditions, she joined fellow trainees like Stereophonic’s Juliana Canfield and the playwright and Emily in Paris scene-stealer Jeremy O. Harris. “I was thrown in with 15 other random people around my age. We all had very different life paths, and we all got to expand and learn and make mistakes and fuck up. Everyone’s doing it together. No one’s feeling more special than anyone else. It was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I think I needed that extra level of inner belief and faith in myself in order to deal with the world and how the world perceives me.” At first, that perception was glowing. After graduation, Jacobson landed roles in critically-acclaimed plays like Lindsay Joelle’s Trayf and Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding and was regularly praised by theater critics for her nuanced, robust performances. Between gigs, she worked like many actors do as a waiter, where Mike Eckhaus — one half of the cult-favorite Eckhaus Latta label — ran into her on the job. “I was at a design event during Pride at a friend’s loft in Tribeca,” he recalled. “She was working there as a cater-waiter. We struck up a conversation and made the type of plans you make when living in New York where you exchange numbers and it ends there. … She emanated good energy.” Then came her first-ever TV role as the gumption-loaded ingénue Marion Brooke on The Gilded Age. Produced by Downton Abbey maestro Julian Fellowes, the addictive and adored show follows Marion as she’s taken in by her imperious (but, the show takes great pains to insist, not racist!) wealthy aunts on Fifth Avenue. Fortunes are gambled, and marriages are shattered. There’s a lot of lamb with mint jelly. John Singer Sargent makes a cutie-pie cameo, and you keep waiting for Billy Zane from Titanic to show up. Instead, the show’s filigreed baddies are played by acting legends like Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald. The whole thing is a blast, and Jacobson knows it — she giddily makes the “zipped lips” gesture when I beg her for Season Four spoilers — but making the show’s first season in 2022 was, she confesses, a trial by fire. Even though she’s a trained Yalie, stagecraft differs dramatically from HBO’s infamously tight camerawork, which is great for dragons and zombies but challenging for actual humans.
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She was just coming to terms with her queer identity in her personal life while balancing scripts, set dynamics, and 13-hour days in a corset that, at her own insistence, was cinched within emergency-room distance of her intestines. “I was learning, and that was a very public way to learn,” she shares. “I’ll say this: I can’t watch Season One back now.” That might be because shortly after the show’s debut, Jacobson did the bravest thing that a modern actress can do: She looked at the comments on Reddit. “It was kind of like exposure therapy!” she declares. “So many of the things that people were saying about my performance [on The Gilded Age] were basically the intrusive thoughts and voices that I’ve had in my own head since I was really little. I got really depressed. I really doubted my commitment to the work. Like, could I actually do this?” But being brave is feeling afraid — or sometimes, just feeling like shit — and doing it anyway. So Jacobson slammed her laptop shut and cautiously auditioned for the part of an anxiety-shaken bride in The Materialists, the matchmaking-dilemma film starring Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal helmed by “dream director” Celine Song. She got the part, and began taking stronger steps into her adult, acting self. Jacobson also took on the role of queer advocate, albeit somewhat warily, in 2024. That’s when she announced her relationship with fashion producer Anna Blundell with a now-dead Instagram post reading “blessed to be entering this joyful New Era bb” with a flame heart and a Pride flag emoji. “The interesting thing is that I never came out!” Jacobson says of the rainbow-wrapped move. “I never said the words ‘I am a lesbian’ to the press. I posted some stuff on Instagram, like an article about lesbian fashion from the [New York] Times, and the media really ran with it. And so they decided that I was a lesbian.” But wasn’t she? “I mean, ugh!” Jacobson says, balling up her hands into little fists like the Arthur meme. “It was a lot for me to handle because I was still figuring out my relationship to my sexuality, and it felt like it got ahead of me. That was hard. But I identify as queer, and I thought it was important. Visibility is so important, and I have seen Kristen Stewart and others just be visible and out, and it’s really inspiring. I
Giorgio Armani blazer, pants, armani.com; Lady Grey ring, ladygreyjewelry.com; Trash & Vaudeville vintage boots from the collection of @thedanistahl
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Miu Miu jacket, pants, miumiu.com.
C O V E R S T O R Y . LOUISA JACOBSON
Tom Ford shirt, pants, belt, tomford.com. 88 GRAZIA • USA
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C O V E R S T O R Y . LOUISA JACOBSON
don’t think I would have even thought that I could be brave enough to do it had I not seen other people do it. So I don’t think it was necessary for anyone to know who I date, but I feel passionate about the visibility of queer people. It’s normal. Nobody should be hiding, and I wasn’t gonna hide.” The actress says she had some help and mentorship from Daniella Kallmeyer, the CFDA-nominated designer who calls Jacobson “like a little sister and friend and muse.” They met through Jacobson’s fashion-obsessed older sibling, Grace — “the shopper of the family,” Jacobson says with an exaggerated sigh — who steered Louisa into Kallmeyer’s boutique on the Upper East Side. “We caught each other’s eye; there was a knowing that was exchanged,” Kallmeyer says. “It’s not about queerness as a political identity, not gay or not. Just a being seen. Shortly after that, she came out.” She also became a willowy 5’7” vehicle for Kallmeyer’s no-gimmicks lineup of jacquard car coats, burnout silk slip dresses, and leather-on-leather suiting. “She’s truly coming into herself, in the sense of fashion but also identity and career all at the same time,” says the designer. “We chose her as the new face of Kallmeyer because she’s coming into her talent and her identity, which fully aligns with our values. We want to represent that idea of being seen, and seeing people become themselves. That’s a big deal. Also,” Kallmeyer pauses. “Louisa is really fun. She has great vibes. She was the very last person on the dance floor at my wedding. She is the best party guest — but I cannot legally say any more about that!” Jacobson admits that, like most 35-year-olds in New York City, she loves to haunt vintage stores, cram into tiny downtown bars, trawl across Canal Street in search of kitschy but cool jewelry, and hang out with her friends, a mix of Yale classmates and childhood friends (“my fifth-grade crew!”) that she continues to keep close. She is also in “constant” search for massage techniques and exercises because of her Gilded Age corset, which “really does leave you with a tight back. I mean, these Victorian standards were insane.” Jacobson remains close with her sisters — she and Grace even help each other with the grind of self-tape auditions that are increasingly common in Hollywood. “We need more support from the industry about this,” Jacobson insists. “Not everyone has a friend they can call to be an automatic scene partner and videographer. We really need a community solution.” (It’s at this point in the interview that I wonder if after The Gilded Age, Louisa Jacobson should star in a Norma Rae remake or at least run for SAG
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president.) And she is now single, although when I ask if she wants to swipe around on Raya, she winces. “I did [Raya] years ago when I broke up with my boyfriend,” says Jacobson. “I was just coming out, and it felt like a safer way to do that. But now that I have done a couple seasons of the show, and I have some standing in the fashion world, I feel a little too… I’m not famous,” she insists, holding her hands up in the universal “stop” gesture. “But I feel weirdly vulnerable. Exposed. And I’m an old-school soul, and I kind of really love meeting people in person and organically. I still have faith in that. Sorry! I’m such a romantic!” I tell her I am, too, but I picked out my boyfriend on Hinge as if he were a Dries Van Noten skirt on Net-a-Porter. Jacobson giggles but remains resolute in her no-screens policy for new loves. “This is gonna have to be a fate thing,” she says. “But please, show me all the pictures of this guy.” I take this request — and the fact that both of us are now fully rain-drenched — to ask, again, about The Gilded Age’s upcoming season, specifically the romance of it all. Jacobson seems to scroll through a contract in her mind, figuring out what she can actually share about the hotly TikTok-ed show. “I’m so proud of the work this season,” she begins slowly. “Everyone is so amazing, which you obviously already know … okay. I can tell you that Marion gets a job in a tenement settlement” — a community center for low-income New Yorkers, especially in immigrant communities, that helped with education and medical care in the early 20th century — “and I can also tell you that total social ostracization is on the line for some people because of a very bad event. The stakes are very, very high.” Through the rain, I point down Orchard Street to where my grandfather was born in a literal tenement house about a hundred years ago. “Oh wow. We weren’t here then!” says Jacobson ruefully. “We’ve got some Quakers on my mom’s side. We’ve got some Norwegian settlers on my dad’s side. We’re just very, very Midwest!” I ask Jacobson if that’s why she’s so nice. “Am I nice?” she asks the air around us. “I don’t know,” she says, turning back to me. Her eyes are bigger than they seem on TV. They appear almost translucent. “I think I’m just very honest. I think the nicest thing you can be to yourself is just radically accepting of who you are. I think, especially today, we can’t hide ourselves or who we love or what we love. We just have to own it, so that other people can be less afraid of their own stuff. Otherwise, come on. What are we doing here?”
Louis Vuitton hat, 866.VUITTON. Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon
Historically speaking, in the business of ladies’ fashion, it’s a man’s world. Yet notable New York women paved the way for today’s proliferation of feminine design talent. SEVENTH AVENUE SUPERHEROINES Words Roxanne Robinson
“T
he wonderful thing about NEW YORK’S FASHION CAPITAL being a woman and a creaORIGINS tive director is that we’re hiToday, women’s clothing drives the Ameghly organized,” mused Fforme’s Frances rican fashion industry — yet its origins Howie. Though she was talking about trace to an Englishman, Charles Frederick collection prep, the can-do attitude senWorth, who opened the first designer-led timent pulsed through pioneering Amemaison in 19th-century Paris and is crerican designers — Claire McCardell, dited with birthing the sector in the States. Bonnie Cashin, Edith Head, Anne Klein, This page: Rachel Scott, creative Decades later, the lesser-known Ethel and, later, Donna Karan. Howie describes director of Proenza Schouler and Traphagen challenged French dominanfounder and creative director a “beautiful moment of Seventh Avenue of Diotima. Opposite page: ce by championing original designs made ateliers after the war where the American Fall/Winter 2026 runway looks, in New York. Winner of a 1912 New York Look was established and American style Diotima, left, and Proenza Times design contest, the illustrator, deSchouler, right. emerged.” These women broke barriers, signer, and teacher opened the Traphagen and their influence is omnipresent. Eighty years later, a School of Fashion in 1923 (closed 1991) opposite Bryant new guard of female creatives is establishing their own Park — alums included James Galanos, Geoffrey Beene, mark in the U.S. fashion capital on the wings of those and Anne Klein (née Hannah Golofsky) — helping cement who came before. New York as a fashion capital.
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Portrait of Rachel Scott by Brianna Capozzi courtesy of Proenza Schouler; Runway photos courtesy of Diotima and courtesy of Proenza Schouler
F O R Z A . SEVENTH AVENUE SUPERHEROINES
Female designers made their own strides. McCardell, rying forward their predecessors’ independent spirit known as the mother of American sportswear, simpli- while advancing the multiculturalism that defines the fied fashion with denim, calico, sashes, spaghetti straps, fashion capital. Four female designers — Rachel Scott of and menswear touches. Emerging alongside McCardell, Proenza Schouler and Diotima, Frances Howie of FforBonnie Cashin — also a theater costume, Ashlynn Park of Ashlyn, and Camilla me designer — incorporated leather and Stærk — embody that legacy. suede into clothing and groundbreaking Understanding New York’s pioneers meaccessories design at Coach. African ans understanding what they followed: American trailblazer Anne Cole Lowe Parisian fashion. Women such as Mada— designer of the ivory taffeta wedding me Grès, Madeleine Vionnet, and Coco wore Jacqueline Bouvier to marry John Chanel set the tone for the modern warF. Kennedy — became the first BIPOC drobe. “They modernized their thinking, female designer recognized for her work applying their design philosophy to their despite facing segregation during her own bodies and tribe of women around studies. them,” said Howie. McCardell’s and CaOther trailblazers include Hattie Carneshin’s contributions have had the most gie (millinery and namesake suits), Vera enduring effect on American sportswear. Maxwell (ski, tennis, and riding essenStærk — a Danish designer whose detials), Adele Simpson (the contemporary sign influence pulls equally from her and bridge markets), Pauline Trigère (the mother’s equestrian roots and her fajumpsuit, sleeveless coat, and reversible ther’s championing of Scandinavian furcape), and Harlem Renaissance figure niture — discovered Cashin’s work duRuth Bailey who birthed the Afro-centric ring her first New York foray, interning fashion design concept. for Patrick Robinson with friend Victor Klein’s training at Traphagen positioned Glemaud. her as the leader in modern sportswear, “I found this vintage Bonnie Cashin championing mix-and-match concepts bouclé cardigan and skirt set with tiny and junior sportswear beginning in the gold buttons. Victor explained who she 1950s. Her assistant, Donna Karan — was and encouraged me to get it,” Stærk present at the 1973 Battle of Versailles fa- This page: From top: Frances said, adding that Cashin’s “treatment of shion show — shared design reins with Howie, creative director of combining leather and suede with fabriFforme; Ashlynn Park, founder Louis Dell’Olio after Klein’s death, befo- and creative director of Ashlyn; cs resonates with me because that was re launching her own brand in 1984 with Camilla Stærk, artist, designer my starting point. She made it light and and founder Stærk. Opposite the groundbreaking “Seven Easy Pieces” Page: Top left: Fall/Winter 2026 drapey, and her hardware was on point.” Ashlyn campaign image. Top essentials collection. Stærk later carried that sensibility to her right: Michelle Hicks wearing furniture designs. Stærk collection riding blazer Howie contends these early innovators’ FROM THE ‘70S TILL TODAY and skirt with lingerie set. Bottom: Frankie Rayder in influence could not be overstated. “You After the vanguard came a contemporary a Fall/Winter 2026 Fforme can’t detract from those women and what brigade whose brands remain relevant to- campaign look. they started with the modern wardrobe day: Norma Kamali, Diane Von Furstenberg, Betsey Johnson, Tory Burch, and Anna Sui, who is conversation. Donna Karen took that and ran with it,” she added, noting Fforme’s effortlessness stems from currently enjoying a revival thanks to Gen Z. Today’s New York design scene is a mix of male- and fe- that same conversation. “We don’t look at the references male-led brands, with several high-profile women car- from these women literally but rather the mentality.”
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Portraits: Frances Howie Andrew J.S; Ashlynn Park courtesy of Peter Ash Lee; Camilla Stærk HIVIDT/GLEIE. Collection images: Ashlynn by Sarah Blais, Stærk by Christian Larsen, and Fforme by Cathy Kasterine, all courtesy.
F O R Z A . SEVENTH AVENUE SUPERHEROINES
Park found inspiration from New York designers during her formative years in South Korea and Japan. Her aunt had gifted her an Anne Klein bias-cut skirt she wore religiously. “It made me realize the power of cut,” Park said. In Tokyo, she was struck by Donna Karan designs at Isetan: “There were two jersey draped dresses, structured but not stiff, that fascinated me.” Scott finds Elsa Peretti’s work still modern and influential, though women such as Ann Low Cole are also top of mind. As the first BIPOC female designer to win CFDA American Womenswear Designer of the Year and the first female creative director at Proenza Schouler, she carries the weight of the honor. “Many BIPOC women creatives came before me and paved the path. I’m not the first; others who were doing incredible work weren’t given the opportunity or recognition, which is weird,” Scott said, adding, “It’s a lot of responsibility to deliver incredible work to honor those who deserved it.” NEW YORK WOMEN BY DESIGN
These women broke barriers, and their influence is omnipresent.
The New York woman is equally an influence. “I create modern armor for the New York warrior woman. Strength is about daring to be vulnerable; New York has that,” Stærk observes. Park’s stints at Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake shaped her perspective: “Korea taught me to trust my instinct, Japan taught me construction, and New York taught me about the reality of female customers’ lives,” she explained, adding, “New York fashion is very grounded in real life.” “I love the confidence and endless appetite for beauty — it’s inspiring. Our atelier is in Soho, and it’s exciting to watch the women of New York show their style on the streets,” said Howie, describing their customers as “connected to the zeitgeist, possibly a creator and someone who consumes art and literature.” All agree that a woman-led company creates a different environment — one with more nurturing and supportive advice.
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“Figuring out how to sustain yourself is definitely a challenge; you have to take care of yourself,” said Scott, who helms two brands. Veteran designer Maria Cornejo advised her. “If something doesn’t feel right for you, then you don’t internalize that. I’ve internalized things that can make you sick, so I’m learning not to do that.” Besides the Japanese men, Park worked for Alexander Wang and Raf Simons, experiences she calls incomparable and a source of gratitude, but also “unforgiving” and lacking in female mentorship save for her role at Nili Lotan. Becoming a mom also cemented her ambition for change. “As the ‘mother,’” Park said. “I share my wisdom and help nurture a beautiful company for my team. I want to make this experience fun and not dark.” Scott concurs. “I’ve worked for both men and women; Women listen, which I appreciate. There’s a lot more flexibility and negotiation that comes with being a woman. That’s a better way to lead,” she added. NEW YORK OR NOWHERE
Both Howie and Stærk see optimism in the New York industry, driven especially by female energy. “There’s an openness to new ideas in New York as long as you know what you stand for,” Stærk notes. “There is a power and energy around entrepreneurial optimism; it’s open to ideas more than other cities. New York’s women have a confidence that anything is possible and ours for the taking. The community here gets behind something enthusiastically, and positively-that’s a powerful force,” Howie explained, adding, “We need beauty, art and fashion more than ever to feel optimistic, especially now.” For Scott, that outlook was recently embodied by the underdog New York Knicks, a spirit she compares to the fashion industry. “Don’t expect us to fall into the framework of what you think we can do; we’re incredibly determined and creative. We are the fashion underdog. I like working from that place because I love to prove people wrong.” Ethel Traphagen, no doubt, would agree.
Photos: Getty Images.
Clockwise from top: Claire McCardell and model wearing a small jacket and pleated skirt, 1949; Ann Lowe (right) adjusting the bodice of a gown she designed, 1962; Models wearing exotic earrings for an exhibit at the Traphagen School of Fashion (1953); Donna Karan and Linda Evangelista at the designer’s Fall 1991 show; Anne Klein and her Summer/Fall 1974 ready-to-wear collection; Bonnie Cashin and model wearing splash paint bloomer dress with leather piping, 1971.
Brand
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Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Fire Opal brooch. Platinum and 18k yellow gold brooch featuring a 25.14-carat free-form fire opal and diamonds, emeralds, turquoise, light tsavorite, and a faceted round and a faceted pear-shaped fire opal. Tiffany & Co. bracelet. 18k yellow gold and platinum bracelet with five unenhanced oval spessartines of 22.01 total carats, cabochon turquoise, and diamonds.
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Inspired by lush grounds and fantastical birds of Bunny Mellon’s Oak Spring Estate, Tiffany and Co. Blue Book Fall 2026 Collection: Hidden Garden is its own force of nature. GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Tiffany & Co. pendant. 18k yellow gold and platinum necklace with eight unenhanced oval spessartines of 37.58 total carats, three oval turquoise of 23.38 total carats, cabochon turquoise accents, and diamonds.
F O R Z A . GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Tiffany & Co. necklace. Platinum and 18k yellow gold necklace with five VVS–VS cushion-cut fancy yellow diamonds of 10.42 total carats, trillion-cut and round white diamonds, and round yellow diamond accents. 100
Tiffany & Co. earrings. Platinum and 18k yellow gold earrings with two D-color, VS1 pear-shaped diamonds of 5.62 total carats; marquise and round diamond accents. Tiffany & Co. necklace. Platinum and 18k yellow gold with an E-color, VS1 pear-shaped diamond of 4.03 carats; marquise and round diamond accents.
F O R Z A . HIDDEN GARDENS
Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Spessartine brooch Platinum and 18k yellow gold brooch with an oval cabochon spessartine of 66.60 carats, round and pearshaped sapphires, a faceted round fire opal, chrysoprase, and diamonds. Tiffany & Co. Hidden Garden Monarch necklace. Platinum and 18k yellow gold with three unenhanced sapphires, including two esteemed Sri Lankan sapphires of over 16 total carats, and 1,861 round brilliant diamonds of over 36 total carats. .
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Tiffany & Co. necklace. Platinum and 18k yellow gold necklace with seven sugarloaf tanzanites of 105.29 total carats, round rubies, and diamonds. Tiffany & Co. The Legendary Bird: Sapphire Edition: 18k yellow gold and platinum with 34.48 carat unenhanced sapphire and black opal doublets, sapphires, pearls, mother-of-pearl, diamonds, and rubies.
F O R Z A . GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
A triptych of the tropics where shapes, textures, and shades compete in their flamboyance.
Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Boulder Opal brooch. Platinum and 18k yellow gold brooch with an unenhanced free-form 56.53-carat boulder opal, emeralds, pink sapphires, blue sapphires, orange sapphires, turquoise, tourmalines, and diamonds.Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Purple Chalcedony brooch. Platinum and 18k yellow gold brooch with an unenhanced 35.06-carat oval cabochon purple chalcedony, sapphires, light tsavorites, turquoise, pear-shaped rubies, yellow diamonds, and pear-shaped and round white diamonds. Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Rubellite brooch. Platinum and 18k yellow gold boorch with a 60.24-carat oval cabochon rubellite, round rubies, sapphires, turquoise, diamonds, and pear-shaped rubellite accents.
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Tiffany & Co. necklace. 18k yellow gold and platinum with five emerald-cut blue zircons of 30.39 total carats, esteemed round cabochon emeralds, and diamonds.
F O R Z A . GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Birds parade in a burst of color; their nests, woven from yellow gold, diamonds, and platinum, play with graphic contrasts. Tiffany & Co. Paradise Bird Chrysophrase brooch. Platinum and 18k yellow gold brooch with a 51.96-carat cushion cabochon chrysoprase, sapphires, onyx, cabochon turquoise, round rubies and diamonds, and Tiffany Blue®, dark blue, and duck green paillonné enamel.
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Tiffany & C0. Bird on a Rock Aquamarine and Chrysoprase necklace. Platinum and 18k yellow gold necklace with chrysoprase beads and detachable brooch of a 22.60-carat cushion-cut aquamarine, round rubies and diamonds.
In recent years, tarot, astrology, crystals, witchcraft, and other practices once considered fringe have edged into the mainstream. INTO THE MYSTIC
“O
h my god, Mom, look. These cards are from 1456,” a wide-eyed teenager exclaims, steadying the phone she’s clutching to snap a picture of a delicate gold-and-silver-leafed Queen of Swords gleaming from behind a glass case at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. The card, which hadn’t been shuffled by human hands in centuries, was part of the Visconti-Sforza deck on display in an exhibit that traced tarot’s enigmatic history and showcased some of the artists, from Leonora Carrington to Dorothy Iannone to Chris Ofili to Kim Krans, who have found creative inspiration in the cards. In the first room, Renaissance Symbols, rarely-seen decks like the Visconti-Sforza and Sola Busca from the 15th century and the iconic Rider-Waite-Smith from 1909, dazzle alongside other ancient treasures like an intricately illustrated prayer book by Michelino da Besozzo, a prominent court artist commissioned to create a lavish deck for a duke in Milan in the early 1400s; a colorful zodiac diagram from the deluxe version of a popular 1425 Austrian textbook; or a “Wheel of Fortune” from Naples circa 1510 advertising the services of Renaissance astrologer Luca Gaurico. For curator Claire Gilman, who has tracked tarot imagery in art for years, the exhibit’s second room, Modern Visions, offered her a forum to tell the story of tarot from the British occult revival to Surrealism to the U.S. in the ‘60s and ‘70s, up to its contemporary moment in a way that felt comprehensible and complete. A bridge between tarot’s ancient symbolism and its modern interpretations. Tarot dates back 400 years, and it started as a game for Re-
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naissance-era nobility. “In its origin it was a higher-level card game like bridge, and while, even in the Renaissance, there were definitely occult associations with the cards, it was not a divinatory practice until later,” says Gilman. In the 1700s, tarot would evolve from high-brow amusement to a tool of prognostication, its decks (which are made up of 78 cards, divided into the Major and Minor Arcana) studied and read to gain insights into the past, present, and future. The designs of the decks have evolved over the years, often serving as a time capsule of the decade in which they were made, but their intention hasn’t. Centuries later, the most dramatic shift may be tarot’s audience. Take the Bravo-verse. Tarot readings have served as plot points on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Orange County, Vanderpump Rules, and Southern Charm. Don’t know what show to binge next? Netflix created a “tarot TV guide” to predict your streaming future. There are tarot-themed coloring books for sale at Target, and you can get your cards read while shopping at Selfridges. Jonathan Anderson and Gabriela Hearst have looked to the tarot for both personal and design guidance, and, in 2021, Maria Grazia Chiuri famously transformed the 22 archetypes of the Major Arcana into haute couture for Dior. Chanel’s Les Tarots makeup collection featured two “mysterious” shades of blush, while Hermès branded its own silver-edged tarot deck (which comes, naturally, in its signature orange box). In fact, nowadays, there’s a deck to suit any interest: a pasta tarot, a Jane Austen tarot, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tarot, a Disney villains tarot, a Marvel tarot, a Taylor Swift tarot, and the list goes on and on.
© Bea Nettles
Words Fiorella Valdesolo
Bea Nettles, Photographs from The Mountain Dream Tarot, The Star
Tarot is one part, along with witchcraft, crystals, and private planes, and some very fabulous closets, but also astrology, of a larger mystical groundswell. Kendra Scott helped business clients look at the timing of a deal, the is selling healing stones, Urban Outfitters has a crystal people involved and the motivations behind a decision. starter kit, and Hot Topic’s witchcore includes a cosmic Most often, people are turning to these practices when aura gothic witch ring set and celestial lace maxi skirt. things aren’t going as planned, says Toonk. “Very rarely “An object can be incredibly powerful because it gives in- are they like, ‘My life’s amazing, let me seek out spirituatention to a physical form, but there is a difference betwe- lity,’” she adds. en buying from an actual practitioner and buying from Social media has been a double-edged sword for these a company that has simply noticed that moons, crystals spiritual practices: It can quickly disseminate informaand evil eyes are selling,” says Corbin Chamberlin, an tion and ideas, but it can also oversimplify or misrepreintuitive and founder of Sage & Salt. “The other danger sent them. Same goes for the language that has become is the suggestion that you can purchase your way out of associated with it all: a decade ago, manifesting, groundoing any actual work.” ding, vibes, and intention were not part of the popular While healing isn’t something to lexicon, now they’re a hashtag. In be bought at the mall, that these her new solo off-Broadway show practices are even surfacing theBroad Strokes, comedian Cat re is indicative of how widespread Cohen asks, jokingly, whether she collective interest is. According to should be learning how to maniSpate, an AI-powered trend forefest from an influencer with nocasting platform, vision boards, ticeable filler on TikTok? “Maninumerology (or life path numfestation and intuition may have bers), astrology, and birth charts become the Uggs of spirituality,” are surging in popularity. That’s says Toonk, who believes people in part because witches and astroshould know these words, but also logers have found a vast new audo their due diligence and find out dience via our Instagram feeds. what they mean. Having a shaman or healer, perGiorgia Pecora, an astrologer, wrisonal energy coach or spiritual ter, and teacher, is quick to eyeroll guide may have once been conat the buzzwords but is interested sidered outre; now, not so much. in why this vocabulary has becoPeople are simply more open to me normalized. “I think some very this kind of work than they were old human needs simply found a even 10 years ago, says Anna Tonew language,” says Pecora. Whionk, who has been offering tarot le ideas around ritual, meaning, and Akashic record readings and intuition, and transcendence were creative consultations since 2016. long relegated to religion or other Adam Putnam, The High Priestess “When I started reading profestraditional institutions, she adds, sionally, it was still wacky and as more people no longer relate to outside convention,” adds Toonk. Chamberlin, who has those structures, the need hasn’t disappeared but rather been called everything from an intuitive strategist to a migrated towards spirituality, astrology, meditation and witch to a psychic, has lately embraced the title of ener- manifestation. “Social media accelerated that because it getic butler. “I read the energy around a situation,” says collapsed the distance between niche subcultures and Chamberlin, adding that sometimes that involves tarot, mainstream culture,” says Pecora. “Twenty years ago, clearing a space, creating a ritual, or just telling someone you might have had to actively seek out an occult bookwhat they already know but have spent six months trying shop to encounter some of these ideas, while now a video to talk themselves out of. “People imagine me as a witch about ‘protecting your energy’ appears between a recipe arriving in a cloud of smoke, but a lot of my job is ex- and a celebrity interview.” tremely practical.” He’s cleared houses in the Hamptons, There’s a reason why this mystical wave happens to be
Photos: Ian Edquist © Adam Putnam. © 2026 NIKI CHARITABLE ART FOUNDATION
F O R Z A . INTO THE MYSTIC
surging right now. Part of it is how perpetually online power and direction at a time when we feel collectively we find ourselves. “The more digital our lives become, unmoored. But can these ancient practices align with our the more desperate we are to touch something real,” says increasingly digital future and the growing use of AI? Chamberlin, adding that some of the tactile parts of the- While artificial intelligence will likely become infinitely se practices give the body an experience that cannot be more adept at combing through and interpreting astroscrolled through in three seconds and forgotten. It’s why logic and symbolic information, says Pecora, a digital words like “grounding,” says Pecora, have become so re- reading can’t replace human intuition or the relational latable. “We spend so much time online, in our heads, part of this work. Much like relying on Chat GPT as your consuming information, and scrolling, that modern life therapist, adds Toonk, asking it for a 12-card reading has become incredibly disembodied,” adds Pecora. Then completely misses the human variable. And that’s where there’s the declining participation in organized religion the real magic lies. in the West, which may indicate a loss of faith in the Those who are still dismissive of astrology or intuition, church’s authority, but not a loss of spirituality. Accor- says Pecora, should consider how shaped their daily lives are by magic algorithms that have ding to Google, searches for “how captured and monetized their atto be spiritual” hit a 15-year high tention while making them believe in 2026. “We still want to believe their wants and needs aren’t serthat our life belongs to some kind ved up but spontaneous. “We are of larger pattern, and we want rimore technologically connected tuals, meaning, symbols, timing, than ever and yet incredibly diand something that helps us place sconnected from our bodies, our suffering and change inside a bigown rhythms, and from the abiliger story,” says Pecora. ty to be bored long enough to hear Historically, religion used to fill ourselves think, and part of the atmuch of that void, but increasintraction to astrology, tarot, and rigly astrology, tarot, and other tual is a countermovement to that, spiritual practices have begun to a desire to recover some sense of occupy that space. “Astrology is interiority,” says Pecora. It’s why especially powerful because it githese ancient practices are expeves you a cosmology without neriencing a distinctly modern-day cessarily asking you to belong to buzz, even though they may run an institution, follow a doctrine or totally counter to our current opbelieve in a single authority, and timization culture. “They’re efthat fits very well with the way fective, they’ve been around for people live now where spirituality hundreds of years, but they’re not has become more self-directed,” sexy, and they’re not fast,” says Tosays Pecora. “Astrology has this Niki de Saint Phalle, Justice onk. “It’s interesting to see people strange ability to make you feel not fighting that but embracing it.” both individual and connected to something much larger than yourself.” And that kind Gilman and her colleagues at the Morgan knew the tarot of connection is vitally important right now as we live show would be popular, but they never dreamed of it atthrough a period of ongoing political unrest, economic tracting as many visitors, attention, and goodwill as it did. uncertainty, social change, and rising distrust in gover- “So many people reached out to express their gratitude nment and institutions. “When people feel they have less and said they had been waiting for this show their whocontrol over the world around them, they start looking le life,” Gilman shares. The exhibit, much like the expefor ways to understand it and regain some personal agen- rience of tarot itself, feels like the ultimate antidote to the endless scroll. A chance to pause, wonder, reflect. “Tarot cy,” says Chamberlin. Tarot and astrology have become a way to connect and gives people something they rarely have anymore,” says feel a sense of belonging, but also a means of reclaiming Chamberlin, “a moment to stop.”
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This fall, sheer slips play peekaboo with more substantial layers NOT-SO-NAKED DRESSING
At some point, naked dressing was bound to run out of clothes to remove. In recent years, the red carpet has become a game of one-upmanship, with celebrities in increasingly transparent gowns competing to reveal more and more, to the point that step and repeats seem one wardrobe malfunction away from requiring a censor bar. Then, with a surprise show on the eve of New York Fashion Week this past February, fashion’s soothsayer Marc Jacobs made a compelling case for leaving a little more to the imagination. He sent out a trinity of long sheer slips — white, ice blue, and bubblegum — layered over tonal tops that were completely opaque and just long enough to cover the crucial bits, leaving legs for days visible through a veil of nylon. The effect was a delicious contradiction: naked, but also not. Across the Fall/Winter 2026 season, this business -on-top, boudoir-below proposition was everywhere. At Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford, Antonio Marras, and Carven, sheer silk and lace slips in both mini and midi lengths emerged from the hems of sharply tailored blazers. Valentino and Saint Laurent achieved a similar effect with plush faux-fur and leather wrap coats, while Victoria Beckham and Zankov heightened the contrast with sailor sweaters and
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grandpa cardigans. Mytheresa Chief Buying & Group Fashion Ventures Officer Tiffany Hsu says the retailer is “really going to town with” negligées paired with “shapely, structured silhouettes” this season. The appeal lies precisely in the mismatch: lingerie-like layers removed from their come-hither context and paired with more traditionally masculine-coded pieces that telegraph strength. “There is something intriguing and seductive when one mixes transparency and opaqueness in the same look,” says Henry Zankov of the material meet-cutes in his collection, including upcycled polyester mesh against merino wool and cashmere stripes and Japanese paper organza with brushed alpaca. “It feels subversive and doesn’t give it all upfront,” he adds. “You have to get to know her first.” For Antonio Marras, that juxtaposition speaks to something deeper. “When we pair the rigorous tailoring of a men’s jacket with the ethereal lightness of a sheer slip, we are not simply combining two garments; we are telling the story of the complexity and layered nature of the human being,” Marras says. “True strength — the kind that endures over time — lies in the ability to embrace opposites and allow them to coexist in harmony.”
Courtesy of Marc Jacobs.
Words Alison S. Cohn
Marc Jacobs
Prada
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Even as designers rewrite the naked-dressing formula, the original still exerts a powerful hold: This past summer, “Kate Moss 1993 sheer dress” — the infamous Liza Bruce slip rendered transparent by paparazzi flashbulbs — was a breakout Google search term, as was “Jessica Alba sheer lace dress” — a Fendi number the actor wore sans jacket to the house’s July couture show in sweltering Rome. But women aren’t just scrolling the fantasy; they’re asking how to wear sheer IRL. “As people begin building their fall wardrobes, the focus has shifted from if they should wear sheer to how to style it practically,” says Sagal Mohammed, editorial and creative lead for commerce at Google. Her prescription? “Nostalgic ’90s Kate Moss slip-dress energy, but modernized with strategic layering for everyday wear.” So, how to layer strategically? Start with proportion. For the top layer, stylist and former model Ana Tess recommends choosing something “long enough that you’d be comfortable wearing it on its own.” Having spent years on the other side of the camera, she knows real life demands a greater range of motion than walking up and down a runway. “My test is, can I bend over on set without showing everything?” she says, noting that adding a pair of bike shorts underneath offers extra insurance. Tess sees this approach to sheer working everywhere from lunch with girlfriends to a date or cocktail party — but maybe not the office. Her life hack for corporate girls: “Wear the full suit to work, stash a sheer slip in your bag, then ditch the pants after hours.” For the sheer-curious but exposure-shy, Prada offered an object lesson in flipping the script: Get dressed first, then add something diaphanous. Fifteen models made four exits each, adding as they went. One look topped a chunky cardigan, poplin shirt, satin pencil skirt, and floral knee socks with a sheer organza halfslip tied at the waist. The idea carried over to Miu Miu, where Miuccia Prada’s aptly titled “Mindful Intimacy” collection went three deep: a sheer tulle dress over a red silk dress over a peach nightgown. To keep all that fabric from overwhelming the body, Tess suggests either choosing a very loose slip, as at Rabanne, or cinching a half-slip tightly to “carve out a waist,” à la Prada and Alainpaul. After years of baring it all, the real power move this season may be choosing exactly what — and how much — not to show.
Courtesy of the designers.
F O R Z A . NOT-SO-NAKED DRESSING
Antonio Marras
Carven
Dolce & Gabbana
Alainpaul
Zankov
Tom Ford
Fendi
Saint Laurent
Victoria Beckham
Rabanne
Miu Miu
Valentino
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Moda The right look can change everything. Sharpening your confidence, altering your attitude, and readying you to take on the world. So how do we dress to embody our most powerful selves? Start with clothes that make you feel unstoppable. 3
We are all in training to be the best versions of ourselves from personal to professional - so why not flaunt that hard work in looks that pack a punch? POWER OF YOU Photography Brooke Nipar Styling & Creative Direction Karen Levitt
DSQUARED2 jacket, corset, skirt, dsquared2.com; Nike x Skims bra, shoes, nike.com; Danimás gloves, danimas.com.
Balenciaga jacket, balenciaga.com; Adidas shorts, adidas.com; Off-White shoes, off---white.com.
DSQUARED2 sleeves, dsquared2.com; Nike top, nike.com; Ashton Michael shorts, skirt, ashtonmichael.com; Adidas shoes, adidas.com.
Tom Ford jacket, skirt, gloves, shoes, tomford.com; Nike windbreaker, top, nike.com.
Off-White romper, sunglasses, shoes, off---white.com; Nike bra, nike.com; Skims keychains, skims.com.
Gucci jacket, pants, shoes, gucci.com; Skims bra, skims.com; Danimás gloves, danimas.com.
Bottega Veneta dress, hat, bottegaveneta.com; Danimás gloves, belts, danimas.com; Nike shoes, nike.com.
Givenchy dress, belt, gloves, boots, givenchy.com; Nike bra, nike.com.
Dior jacket, shirt, skirt, 800-929DIOR; BetterMe leggings, store. betterme.world; Danimás gloves, danimas.com; Nike shoes, nike.com.
Ashton Michael jacket, ashtonmichael.com; Danimás gloves, danimas.com.
Loewe jacket, loewe.com; Danimás bag, danimas.com.
Max Mara top, shorts, maxmara.com; Naked Wardrobe cream gloves, nakedwardrobe.com; Danimás black gloves, danimas.com; Nike x Skims shoes, nike.com. Model: Kiddy Akita Lou @ Photogenics; Hair: Sean Fears @ Opus Beauty using Got2B; Makeup: Eden Lattanzio @ Forward Artists using MAC Cosmetics; Production: All Good NYC; Fashion Assistants: Morgan Paquin & Jessel Ramos; Location: Gym Prop Company @gympropcompany; Casting: Urban Casting @urbancastingnyc
This Fall, faux fur goes rogue as femme-fatale glamour stalks the streets of suburbia WINTER WARRIORS Photography Brendan Wixted Styling Tiffany Reid
On Left: Fendi vest, belt, shorts, socks, shoes, fendi.com. On Right Altuzarra coat, boots, altuzarra.com.
Above: Khaite jacket, skirt, khaite.com; Wing + Weft gloves, wegloveyou.com. Left: McQueen sweater, pants, shoes, alexandermcqueen.com; Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet, rings, vancleefarpels.com.
On Left: Miu Miu jacket, pants, On Right: Miu Miu coat, hat, miumiu.com.
Givenchy by Sarah Burton coat, hat, gloves, boots, givenchy.com.
Above: On Left: Chanel coat, shoes, On Right: Chanel dress, watches, 800-550-0005; Wing + Weft gloves, wegloveyou.com; Jimmy Choo boots, jimmychoo.com. Right: Gucci jacket, shrug, pants, gucci.com; Van Cleef & Arpels rings, vancleefarpels.com.
From Left: Ferragamo jacket, ferragamo.com; Gentle Monster sunglasses, gentlemonster. com. Prada jacket, briefs, skirt, sunglasses, prada.com. Burberry coat, pants, burberry.com; Alaïa sunglasses, maison-alaia.com.
Above: Louis Vuitton dress, sunglasses, hat, 866.VUITTON. Left: Loewe jacket, pants, shoes, loewe.com; The Cast bandana, thecast.com.
Above: Hermès jacket, hat, boots, hermes.com; Calle Del Mar briefs, calledelmar.us Right: Balenciaga jacket, sunglasses, boots, balenciaga.com.
On Left: Bottega Veneta dress, hat, shoes, On Right: Bottega Veneta coat, hat, shoes, bottegaveneta.com. Photo assistant: Justin Mulroy; Fashion Editor: Copelyn Bengel; Fashion Assistant: Remi Fischer; Hair: Takayuki Umeda; Makeup: Claudia Oyanedel using NARS Cosmetics; Casting Director: Bronson Vajda; Models: ANJALI /Statement mgmt BELU / New York Models YEVA / Marilyn NY.
The black suit takes center stage – deconstructed, reimagined, and anything but boring SUITS YOU Photography Javier Biosca Styling Donna Wallace
Gucci jacket, pants, shoes, gucci.com.
Tom Ford jacket, shirt, tie, tomford.com.
Michael Kors jacket, pants, cummerbund, shoes, michaelkors.com; Fope necklace, fope.com.
Above: Celine jacket, turtleneck, pants, sunglasses, shoes, celine.com. Left: Schiaparelli jacket, vest, pants, shoes, schiaparelli.com.
Above: Emporio Armani jacket, pants, armani.com; Repetto shoes, repetto.com. Right: Tod’s jacket, shirt, pants, tie, shoes, tods.com.
Fendi jacket, pants, body chain, fendi.com.
Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello jacket, pants, shoes, ysl.com. Model: Chin Chin Hsu at Next Management; Hair: Fernando Torrent at Kasteel MGMT; Makeup: Ruben Marmol at Kasteel MGMT; Nails: Nubia Soacha; Casting: Christie Phedon; Shoot producer: Gabriela Velasco; Photographer’s assistant: Enrique Escandell; Fashion assistant: Liv Bellamy
Italy’s fashion capital remains the most alluring backdrop for this season’s strongest looks MOLTO MILANO Photography Emre Guven Styling Selin Bursalioglu
Chanel jacket, shirt, skirt, 800-550-0005.
Left: Lola Casademunt coat, bag, lolacasademunt.com; Wolford tights, wolford.com; Gucci sunglasses, gucci. com; Tom Ford shoes, tomford.com. Right: Peserico coat, peserico.com.
Left: Prada knit, top, dress, skirt, socks, shoes, prada.com. Right: DSQUARED2 jacket, boots, dsquared2.com; Liu Jo shirt, jeans, liujo.com.
Left: Louis Vuitton top, jacket, skirt, bag, 866-VUITTON; Stella McCartney shoes, stellamccartney.com. Right: Weekend Max Mara coat, maxmara.com ; Wolford tights, wolford. com; Bottega Veneta sunglasses, bottegaveneta.com; Balenciaga shoes, balenciaga.com. Talent: Lando @Monster-mgmt; Hair: Giovanni Erroi @Green Apple; Make-up: Elena Pivetta @Green Apple using Mac Cosmetics
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Pan orama Who are the culture leaders unafraid to forge their own paths? Those courageous few, who swing big and make waves that ripple for generations. Fortune favors the bold, and it is they whom we celebrate for strongly shaping our culture. 171
In art, fashion, and music, the battle lines are drawn WHAT’S UP? Words Cynthia Martens
Courtesy of Getty Images, Silver Screen Collection
V
iolence is the ultimate weakness or, as the writer Isaac Asimov once put it, “the last refuge of the incompetent.” That hasn’t stopped masculinism – a #brand as much as an ideology, promoting male supremacy and confusing strength with brute force – from infecting public discourse. True forza is courage, a word that contains the Latin term for heart. Thankfully, the arts abound with such power. This Fall/Winter season, the arts offer self-preservation with a side of ’90s nostalgia. And what the Bronx wants Is not a combative retaliatory response It’s a renaissance… The Warriors, a 1979 thriller set and filmed in New York City, presented a Coney Island street gang’s nighttime escape from the Bronx after its members are falsely accused of murdering a gang leader and face threats of retribution from rival thugs. Initially panned by critics, the movie featured numerous gritty subway and street
THE WARRIORS Warriors will be playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, NYC, opening March 2027
P A N O R A M A . ARTS AGENDA
scenes and later became a cult favorite, spawning video game and comic book spinoffs as well as an all-female concept album by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis. Now, in March 2027, The Warriors is finally taking center stage on Broadway – and if Hamilton is anything to go by, theater-goers will need to be strategic in their quest for tickets. In an interview with Artist on the Rise following the album launch in 2024, Miranda noted that “flipping the gender of the Warriors as a female gang” made the project compelling. In particular, he said that certain “toxically online men doxxing women’s home addresses” reminded him of behaviors shown in the movie. “It seemed to be the same malignant chaos. … I got excited by the notion of writing women’s voices surviving the night,” he said. Sometimes, of course, women don’t just survive a night – they shoot and kill their low-life attackers, hightail it out west in a Thunderbird convertible and accelerate off a cliff into the Grand Canyon to escape the FBI. Thelma & Louise, the 1991 film starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon (with a memorably shirtless
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THELMA & LOUISE The 1991 movie hit is now a live show at the Young Vic Theatre, London, through October 24, 2026 performance by a 26-year-old Brad Pitt), is now also a theatrical production, premiering this fall at the Young Vic in London, where it runs through October 24, 2026.
Photos: Courtesy of Red Light Management. Getty Images. © Patrick Robyn
4 NON BLONDES New album, 1994, to be released in early 2027
ARTS AGENDA . P A N O R A M A
ANTWERP SIX At the Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu), through January 17, 2027 The show’s music is by Neko Case, with choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber. Rachel Tucker is Louise and Amy Lennon is Thelma, while Trip Cullman is the director. At the time of the film’s release, its depiction of resilience, female friendship on the road, and violence perpetrated both by and against men led some critics to dismiss it as degrading. Yet Callie Khouri, who adapted her original screenplay for the new stage production, posited in a recent interview with The Times of London that the story didn’t need much updating because “it’s still a very plausible scenario,” with women’s rights on a backwards trajectory in the United States, where she was born and raised. Let’s be clear: The 1990s are (still) having a moment. Pop
culture is awash in references to Friends, Tamagotchis, MTV, Gameboy consoles, video rentals, landline phones, choker necklaces, slip dresses, flannel shirts, Calvin Klein, alt-rock, and more. In June, comedian Rob Anderson extended his viral foray into Millennial childhoods with the release of a full-length YouTube special, “Are You Afraid of the ‘90s?” What prompted this wistfulness? Possibly, a yearning for a pre-surveillance era of the internet, one that felt exciting – with the screeching, beeping promise of the dial-up connection – rather than ominous. Whatever the reason, fans of the decade’s style and sound have more to look forward to in 2027, with the promise of a new album currently titled 1994, by 4 Non Blondes early in the year. The band’s debut album Bigger, Better, Faster, More! came
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MOSCHINO At the Forte di Bard, Italy, from October 31, 2026, through February 14, 2027
out in 1992, with the generational anthem “What’s Up?” quickly rising the in charts. And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed Just to get it all out, what’s in my head And I, I am feeling a little peculiar And so I wake in the morning, and I step outside And I take a deep breath, and I get real high And I scream from the top of my lungs, “What’s going on?” The ’90s iteration of the group was short-lived, but band members Linda Perry, Christa Hillhouse, Dawn Richardson, and Roger Rocha astutely sensed the time was ripe for a reunion. In a statement put out by Red Light Ma-
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nagement, Perry noted that “Playing some songs with 4 Non Blondes just seemed like a fun thing to do, in a way it hadn’t before now.” Duly noted: We’re standing by for the encore. For travelers craving a curtain call for ’90s fashion, the Fashion Museum of Antwerp (MoMu) is treating visitors to “The Antwerp Six,” an exhibition that runs through January 17, 2027, and tracks the rise of the radical Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene, and Marina Yee on the global design scene after their debut in London in 1986. Antwerp, Belgium, is a long-standing business hub, home to the world’s first dedicated commodities exchange – the Handelsbeurs, which opened in 1531 – and known for its vast diamond district, through which a substantial majority of rough diamonds pass before reaching jewelers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cobblestoned Flemish city has also churned out an impressive number of fashion designers. The Antwerp Six all studied at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and have since continued to explore creativity in various forms, with Demeulemeester producing homeware for Serax and Van Noten launching an arts foundation in Venice. Known for his irreverence and nonconformity, designer Franco Moschino – another big name from the era – once confessed to The New York Times that his original passion was painting. “Making money in art was difficult,” he noted in a 1986 interview. “The easiest way to make money was to use art for some other reason. One of the easiest and most interesting from an economic point of view was fashion. Fashion pays.” From October 31, 2026, through February 14, 2027, visitors to the alpine Forte di Bard in Italy’s Valle d’Aosta region will be treated to “Ceci n’est pas une exposition,” a collection of more than 200 photographs, garments, and archival materials from Moschino’s career. Part of a Lombard dialectical theater group in the 1970s, he served as illustrator to Gianni Versace before emerging as a leading Italian designer in the 1980s. His provocative aesthetics can be traced to Pop Art, which gained traction as Moschino was growing up in Abbiategrasso, a town outside Milan, and plainly influenced his work. Witness a silk suit from Moschino Spring 1991, covered in a pattern print by Roy Lichtenstein: the collaboration between designer and artist was a manifestation of their kindred sensibilities. “I’m interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial
Photos: Getty Images. David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
P A N O R A M A . ARTS AGENDA
P A N O R A M A . ARTS AGENDA
GUGGENHEIM POP At the Guggenheim, NYC, through January 10, 2027 art. I think it’s the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can’t be this way,” Lichtenstein told the BBC in a 1966 interview. Through January 10, 2027, stop by the Guggenheim in New York for “Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now,” a celebration of the movement critics once dismissed as vulgar for its embrace of advertising, comic strips, pulp magazines, and other mass-market influences. The pieces on display were assembled over decades following the departure of curator Lawrence Alloway, who spearheaded the museum’s original Pop Art exhibition. In addition to works by Lichtenstein, visitors can see Chryssa’s take on the blazing neon signs of Times Square, a distillation of commercial Americana if there ever was one, and art by Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen,
John Chamberlain, Andy Warhol, and Richard Hamilton, as well as more recent contributions from the likes of Maurizio Cattelan, Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim, Lucia Hierro, Alex Da Corte, Liu Shiyuan, Martine Gutierrez, Lauren Halsey, and the iconic Yayoi Kusama, who died this past summer at 97. Her immersive installation “Infinity Mirrored Room – Dancing Lights That Flew Up to the Universe,” dated 2019, welcomes viewers into a constellation of flickering lights. As a child during the Second World War, Kusama spent many hours a day stitching parachutes for Japan’s Imperial Army, and as an adult, she openly spoke of her mental health struggles. Ultimately, Kusama waged her battle through creativity, stating: “Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.”
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A new San Francisco exhibition charts how Azzedine Alaïa’s road to global stardom ran through the U.S. COMING TO AMERICA Words Alison S. Cohn
Photos: Courtesy of Fondation Azzedine Alaïa © Andrea & Valentina. Courtesy of Fondation Azzedine Alaïa and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco © Gilles Bensimon
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n the sage words of Clueless’s Cher Horowitz, Alaïa is, the body. He predicted that their kinetic forms possessed “like, a totally important designer.” A new exhibition, “power that might have an influence for the last decades opening November 21, at San Francisco’s Legion of of this century,” anointing Alaïa as fashion’s fin-de-milHonor museum reveals just how important the United lennium Balenciaga. Soon, Bergdorf Goodman fashion States was to making the late Tunisian-born French cou- director Dawn Mello came calling, encouraging Alaïa to turier a household name. Azzedine Alaïa: Sculpting Fa- produce his first ready-to-wear collection and inviting shion, the first U.S. Alaïa retrospective, brings together him to present it in New York. The following September, 80 garments spanning 1982 to his death in 2017, alongsi- he staged his first-ever fashion show at the Fifth Avenue de pieces from his formidable historic fashion collection, department store, a standing-room-only affair featuring including works by American greats Charles James and top models Pat Cleveland and Alva Chinn. Adrian. The exhibition traces how Alaïa’s body-sculp- Bergdorf was hardly alone in recognizing Alaïa’s potenting clothes met their moment in the U.S., as American tial. Former Barneys co-CEO Gene Pressman maintains women were claiming greater agency in the workplace he first visited the designer’s atelier as early as 1979 or and redefining what strength could look like. Retailers, 1980. In his memoir, They All Came to Barneys, Pressman recalls buying a trove of black leeditors, models, and celebrities ather opera gloves studded with became his champions, helping metal grommets, inspired by cotransform a tiny but influential stumes Alaïa designed for Crazy maison into an international pheHorse dancers. “With those glonomenon. ves, we had it first,” he writes. Alaïa’s path to fashion stardom Whatever the precise chronology, was hardly conventional. He stuby 1983 an Alaïa boutique opened died sculpture at the School of on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills Fine Arts in Tunis, financing his and was stocked in department education with sewing jobs after stores and independent boutilearning the craft as a boy by ques in San Francisco, Dallas, doing his sister’s homework. In Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and 1956, he moved to Paris, where a Boston. Two years later, Barneys school friend helped him land an took Alaïa-mania to another leinternship at Christian Dior that vel, staging a 1,000-person show lasted just four days. Neither his at the Palladium, art-directed by time on Avenue Montaigne nor a Jean-Paul Goude, for a crowd that later three-season stint at Guy Above: Azzedine Alaïa Left: Spring/Summer 1990 included Keith Haring, Stephen Laroche proved as formative as Sprouse, and Andy Warhol. working independently from his at-home atelier. For the next two decades, his reputation “Alaïa’s really sculptural approach to design resonated spread discreetly among a rarefied circle that included with a generation seeking empowerment through bodily the Countess Nicole de Blégiers, novelist Louise de Vil- autonomy,” says Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco morin, artist Rosine Baldaccini, and actor Arletty. By the curator Laura L. Camerlengo, who organized the retrodawn of the 1980s, however, word about his dresses cut spective with Fondation Azzedine Alaïa director Olivier with the precision of carved marble had begun to travel Saillard. “His clothes offered women shape and form, but also comfort.” Inspired by the wrapped linens of Egyptian across the Atlantic. Alaïa once said he owed everything to photographer Bill mummies, his signature bandage dresses used Lycra to Cunningham, who brought him to the attention of the shape the body without the rigid architecture of corsetry, American fashion industry in a November 1981 Women’s allowing full range of movement. A long white Spring/ Wear Daily story headlined “Paris’ New Hot Name.” Cun- Summer 1990 column and a dramatic hooded, fishtail ningham’s street-style shots of French editors including gown worn by Grace Jones from Spring/Summer 1986 Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele captured a form fitting leather give those ancient wrappings a startling sense of life. suit and a jersey dress with a zipper spiraling around “His understanding of materials really helped him crea-
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Alaïa client Mathilde de Rothschild captured this duality a bit less academically: “Thanks to his dresses, a lady already has 50 percent of her work done for her, whether her aim is to do business or to seduce a man.” Wearing Above: Grace Jones walks the Spring/Summer 1986 show; Stephanie Seymour walks the Spring/Summer 2003 show; Spring/Summer 2003; Spring/Summer 2003; Spring/Summer 2003; Fall/Winter 2017. Right: Iman walks the 1985 Palladium show, with a front row including Keith Haring, Stephen Sprouse, and Andy Warhol.
Photos: Getty Images.
te garments that wrapped around the body, rather than forcing it to take an artificial shape,” Camerlengo says. With body-con cuts cradling hips and breasts, glossy black leather, and metal grommets, Alaïa’s clothes were also unabashedly sexy. Amid second-wave feminism’s expanding conversations around women’s sexual freedom and pleasure, this embrace of sensuality was an assertion of agency. “Rather than being passive subjects of the male gaze, women used the way they felt in an Alaïa dress to reclaim the gaze,” says Camerlengo. Longtime
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Alaïa offered the potent promise of having it all — in the boardroom and the bedroom. Alaïa’s vision of empowered femininity also helped shape a new fashion archetype: the supermodel. Detroit-born Veronica Webb and San Diego native Stephanie Seymour were among the teenage models Alaïa took under his wing, along with 16-year-old Brit Naomi Campbell; all three lived with him and his partner, artist Christoph von Weyhe. Alaïa taught them not simply how to walk, but how to command a runway. Indifferent to the fashion calendar, throughout the ’90s he might show a collection a week after the season ended, yet the trio and their single-name-only peers would fly to Paris to walk for him in exchange for runway samples. “When I wear Alaïa, I feel like myself,” Seymour has said, estimating she still wears his designs four times a week. Alaïa’s women were never one type. Without budgeting for advertising campaigns or celebrity placements, he
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attracted devotees from Tina Turner to Rihanna and Lady Gaga, typically insisting that they come to Paris for fittings. The exhibition includes a Spring/Summer 1989 minidress Turner modeled for a photo shoot, dripping in strands of gold-tone steel beads, and the statuesque Fall/ Winter 1997 red silk chiffon gown Rihanna wore to collect a Grammy in 2013. His reach extended even to the White House. Michelle Obama wore Alaïa on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, where she cinched a Maria Pinto sheath dress with his perforated black leather corset belt and to gala events as first lady. Obama, however, bought her Alaïa off the rack — at Chicago boutique Ikram — just like his many other American fans. Above: Rihanna in a Fall/Winter 1997 gown at the 2013 Grammy Awards; Michelle Obama wears a corset belt on the 2008 presidential campaign trail. Right: Veronica Webb at a 1987 fitting.
Photos: Getty Images. © Jean-Baptiste Mondino
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Catherine De Orio combined two adjoining Chicago lofts to create one sophisticated yet inviting home where cinematic scale meets intimate discovery. Warm, irreverent and deeply personal, it brings to life the philosophy behind her lifestyle brand, Casa De Orio: a truly beautiful interior should be experienced as much as admired. WELCOME HOME Words Aaron Rasmussen Photography Eric Kleinberg
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resh out of college, Catherine De Orio was living in glamorous, intimate, and sometimes quite European.” Open Venice, Italy, and working at the Peggy Guggenheim gathering spaces give way to jewel-box rooms; broad views Collection when she began hosting dinner parties in are interrupted by doorways, shelving, and hidden passagher apartment overlooking Dorsoduro’s majestic Basilica di es. “I wanted smaller rooms to be discovered,” she explains, Santa Maria della Salute. At night, the glow of a Murano glass “and places where you don’t see everything all at once.” chandelier caught the eye of passersby below. When De Orio That element of surprise is central to De Orio’s point of view. spotted someone looking up, she would wave from the bal- Her rooms are composed but never obedient to a single pecony and invite them to join the festivities. Even then, home riod or provenance. Italian modernism meets Art Deco; salwas less a private retreat than an invitation. vaged surfaces sit beside high-gloss lacquer; serious pieces That instinct took shape much earlier in the large Italian coexist with candy jars and irreverent art. The tension keeps family in Chicago where De Orio grew up. At the home of the interiors alive. So does the feeling that nearly everything her grandmother, known to loved ones as Nana Kay, a pot has a story, memory, or joke. Much of the home is custom, of Sunday gravy rich with pork neck less as a declaration of luxury than as bones was a near-constant presence an expression of De Orio’s unwillingas was the unspoken understanding ness to settle for an approximation. that anyone who walked through the When she couldn’t find what she endoor would be fed. “Even if I was just visioned, she designed it — or had it tagging along with a cousin or showmade. ing up with a friend, there was an imDe Orio’s path has been similarly mediate sense of ‘Come in, sit down, resistant to tidy categories. A self-delet me feed you,’” she recalls. “There scribed “recovering attorney,” she left was warmth, generosity and an inlaw to train as a chef, built a career stinct to bring people into the fold.” in food and television — including Decades later, open-heartedness and hosting an Emmy-winning dining hospitality inform the way De Orio program — and established and cooks, entertains, and designs. “I now leads the Foundation for Culinary show love and create connection in Arts, which creates culinary career much the same spirit,” she says. Welpathways for young people from hiscoming people into her home is an torically underserved Chicago comexpression of affection and a way of munities. She is also the founder and Catherine De Orio honoring the time she and her guests creative director of Casa De Orio, an choose to spend together. editorial lifestyle platform devoted to dining, design, and la That approach is also embedded in the Chicago loft she dolce vita. Bringing the strands of her career together, its “life shares with her husband, renowned trial attorney John Go- lived well” ethos celebrates discernment, pleasure, and conrey, a partner at leading civil rights firm Romanucci & Blan- nection rather than perfection or display. The loft is where din. A recently completed multiyear renovation combined those ideas come to life. the original loft with a neighboring unit, bringing the home The experience begins in the entry, where an overdyed peato just over 3,000 square feet. Part of a former printing press cock-blue and green Turkish rug, sourced from Istanbul, sets and cardboard box factory, it retains its industrial character. the palette, and bookshelves wrap the doorway. “I wanted it Limewashed brick, timber beams, and exposed piping pre- to feel as if you are officially leaving the outside world behind,” serve that heritage while long sightlines and high ceilings De Orio says. Cookbooks mingle with volumes on fashion, provide drama. “I think renovations can sometimes go too art, and design — an immediate introduction to De Orio’s far,” says De Orio, who resisted smoothing the enlarged loft interests and the home’s governing principle: curiosity as a into a single immaculate whole. “I wanted to contrast this form of decoration. That idea deepens in the library hallway, very Chicago industrial shell with spaces that feel decorative, where oxblood saturates every surface and 1950s André Ar-
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The loft’s expansive scale is deliberately held in check in the entry, creating a threshold between the city and the residence.
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Nicknamed the Green Room, it carries several associations: green is both De Orio’s and Gorey’s favorite color; the building sits on Green Street; and the name recalls the backstage rooms De Orio frequented during her years in television.
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bus sconces shaped like hands illuminate books that De Orio and Gorey, both devoted readers, have actually read rather than selected merely for show. The hallway’s impact comes not from theatrical gestures but something quieter — the life of the mind made tangible. The kitchen, dining room, and sitting areas occupy a continuous volume. For De Orio, who remains active in the culinary world, the kitchen is unapologetically functional. “I wanted it to look like a kitchen,” she says. “Utilitarian things can be incredibly beautiful without disguising what they are.” Unable to find a range hood with the presence the room demanded, De Orio designed one in patinated zinc with brass strapping and trim, giving the open space an architectural centerpiece. In the dining area, an Art Deco-style burlwood table is surrounded by clean-lined Guglielmo Ulrich chairs upholstered in deep green Dedar Milano fabric. A more intimate booth is tucked into one corner, lowering the scale and shifting the mood. Its zinc tabletop recalls the old bars of Parisian brasseries, a reference to De Orio’s time living in Paris, where she and Gorey still love to dine. It is slowly accumulating culaccini, the Italian term for rings left by glasses and dishware. She chose the untreated metal precisely because it would record use. “I like thinking that over time it will hold evidence of all the meals and people who have sat there,” she says. For now, she laughs, the table is in its “awkward adolescent phase” — no longer new, not yet enveloped in a silvery patina. The booth has become one of the home’s centers of gravity, a place where De Orio works, dines with Gorey and settles in with friends. Glass jars of seasonal candy within reach add an almost childlike note. “There are plenty of serious design pieces in the house, but I never want the house itself to feel serious,” she says. “The candy jars bring whimsy and cheer, and they give people permission to help themselves.” Nearby, a green goatskin Aldo Tura bar cart turns the Italian ritual of the after-dinner drink into a movable vignette. Bottles of aperitivi and amari are arranged alongside crystal and a 1950s brass ashtray shaped like a fly that has been repurposed for coffee beans, a nod to le mosche, or “the flies,” traditionally served with sambuca, Gorey’s preferred diges-
tivo. It is at once an inside joke and a gesture of hospitality tailored to him. The fireplace room offers perhaps the clearest conversation between the building’s industrial origins and the world De Orio has brought into it. A carved Arabescato marble mantel is set against inky black Venetian plaster with a subtly sueded finish. An antique crystal chandelier and towering foxed mirror multiply the room’s glow and height while weathered brown Chesterfields keep the room grounded and sociable. Beneath an ornate Italian mirror, a compact Paolo Buffa dry bar holds an antique carved wooden figure of a woman, acquired in Florence and said to have once displayed jewelry in a Ponte Vecchio shop. Battered and bruised, she is all the more beloved for it. The materials are opulent, but the atmosphere is more akin to a private club than a formal salon. In the butler’s pantry, the loft’s expansiveness gives way to compressed glamour. Salvaged Spanish marble tiles form a checkerboard floor beneath a distressed pressed-tin ceiling. Lacquered aubergine cabinetry holds vintage china and crystal, while a Romina Ressia photograph of a woman eating pasta with the solemnity of a Renaissance sitter punctures any preciousness. The first room completed during the renovation, it became De Orio’s refuge from all the dust and disorder. Its wine fridge helped. “I would come in here, pour myself a glass of champagne, and unwind,” she says. She nicknamed it the “Cham-panic Room.” The joke, and ritual, stuck. The former neighboring loft is divided into small, increasingly enclosed spaces culminating in the Green Room. Without windows or a distant view, attention turns inward. Matte Venetian plaster absorbs the light, Versailles-pattern parquet lends formal order, and towering hand-painted de Gournay panels transform the walls into a landscape of pomegranates, flowers, and peacocks, De Orio’s favorite bird. Inspired by a screen once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, the panels make the room feel transported and intensely private. An immense mirror above a leather sofa creates an illusory opening in the windowless room, doubling the chandelier, bookshelves, and panels, giving the interior unexpected depth. “It’s glamorous and cocooning because the scale is so intimate,” she says. “It’s
I want the house to feel warm, layered, and welcoming. The whole point, for me, is that people should want to stay.
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From an intimate sitting corner to the working kitchen, shifts in scale, texture, and light shape the loft’s atmosphere.
like disappearing into a world unto itself.” A wet bar with a vintage Sherle Wagner swan faucet and a green-and-white porcelain basin occupies one corner. Hardwired 1970s Bowers & Wilkins speakers, a turntable, and custom vinyl drawers reinforce the room’s analog character. Books, records, and patterned Scalamandré pillows soften the grandeur. Of all the rooms, it may best capture the balance at the heart of De Orio’s sensibility — erudite but playful, glamorous without being remote, and happiest when put to use. She often retreats here at day’s end, but after dinner, guests tend to follow. One recent visitor arrived for happy hour at four in the afternoon and stayed until sunrise. “The Green Room feels like something from another time, but it isn’t intimidating,” she says. On quieter evenings, you’ll find her curled up on a blushpink Mario Bellini Camaleonda sofa with Gnocchi, the couple’s pug, and Gatsby, their Brussels Griffon, in the Blue Room, its glossy walls catching the low light of a brass Sputnik fixture.
For all its dramatic furnishings, the home’s real luxury lies in its shifts of atmosphere and the freedom to use every room according to one’s mood. It can hold a crowd without feeling cavernous and provide solitude without feeling closed off. Its architecture provides the volume; De Orio’s layers of color, material, memory, and humor provide the emotional scale. “An interior becomes interesting when it tells you something about the people who live there,” she says. “The places you’ve been, the people you love, your sense of humor, even your peculiarities should all make their way into a home.” In De Orio’s loft, patina is allowed to form, doors conceal unexpected spaces, and a grand room is never too grand for a jar of candy. Beauty matters, but only insofar as it serves the life unfolding around it. The home is the most persuasive expression of Casa De Orio’s vision of a life lived well: not a perfectly styled existence, but one made richer through attention, appetite and company. “I want the house to feel warm, layered and welcoming,” De Orio says. “The whole point, for me, is that people should want to stay.”
After 20 years, Portrait Hotels & Resorts, part of the Ferragamo family’s Lungarno Collection, is entering an era that blends its individualized guest service with the cities it calls home AN ITALIAN ORIGINAL Words Casey Brennan
Portrait Firenze overlooks the Arno and Ponte Vecchio in the heart of Florence.
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ortrait Firenze, just steps from Ponte Vecchio, expresses its luxury less through formality than through a sense of intimacy. The Arno moves past the windows; midcentury furnishings and archival photographs recall Florence’s glamorous postwar years; and service is conceived around the individual. The atmosphere feels closer to an exceptionally well-appointed Florentine residence — a quality that gets to the heart of what the Ferragamo family has spent more than three decades building in hospitality. Portrait is the high-end hospitality brand within the Lungarno Collection, the hospitality company founded by the Ferragamo family in Florence in 1995. What began with Hotel Lungarno, on the south bank of the Arno overlooking Ponte Vecchio, has grown into a tightly edited portfolio of hotels, residences, restaurants, and bars in Florence, Rome, and Milan. Distinct from the fashion house that made the family name synonymous with Italian luxury, the Lungarno Collection has developed its own identity over the last three decades. Within that world, Portrait occupies a distinct place. The
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brand currently has just three hotels — Portrait Roma, Portrait Firenze, and Portrait Milano — built around the idea of highly personalized, residential-style hospitality. If Lungarno Collection is the larger universe, Portrait is its most intimate: fewer addresses, exceptionally privileged locations, and a service philosophy that borrows something fundamental from the Ferragamo legacy — the idea of designing around the individual. Leonardo Ferragamo, one of Salvatore Ferragamo’s six children and president of Lungarno Collection, traces the family’s move into hospitality to precisely that connection. “The choice for my family to enter the hospitality world and therefore creation of the Lungarno Collection is thanks to our cultural heredity,” Ferragamo tells GRAZIA USA. “Hospitality was and is in our DNA, inspired by the strength of my father’s heritage and approach to clients, creating a product and service unique to each guest, transforming a shoe made to measure into a luxury hotel experience, or better, a lifestyle experience.” Salvatore Ferragamo became famous for an intensely individual approach to his clients, studying anatomy
and fit and creating shoes around the person who would wear them. But the hotels were never intended to become fashion showrooms. Instead, the family built a hospitality identity around principles it knew well: craftsmanship, detail, Italian style, and personalization. The Ferragamo connection is unmistakable but deliberately understated. BEGINNINGS ON THE ARNO
The story began on Borgo San Jacopo with Hotel Lungarno, which established both the geographic and philosophical center of the collection. Over time, the Lungarno Collection developed a cluster of distinct addresses around this small pocket of Florence, which now includes Hotel Lungarno and its residences, Gallery Hotel Art, and Portrait Firenze, along with restaurants and bars including the Michelin-starred Borgo San Jacopo, Caffè dell’Oro, and Picteau Bistrot & Bar. Rather than making its hotels interchangeable, the Collection allowed each to develop its own personality. Hotel Lungarno became known for residential elegance and its art collection. Gallery Hotel Art took a contemporary, de-
sign-oriented direction with its changing art installations. The former Continentale, meanwhile, is now being folded into Portrait Firenze, as one of Lungarno’s most significant projects to date. “Our approach has always been to draw from the Ferragamo family’s cultural sensibility and tradition of innovation,” says Lungarno Collection CEO Valeriano Antonioli. “This has allowed us to develop a distinctive identity — one that is deeply personal, intentionally niche, and centered on creating immersive, crafted experiences in iconic locations.” Eventually, those ideas found a more concentrated form in Portrait, now marking its 20th anniversary. The first property opened on Rome’s Via Condotti in 2006 and rebranded as Portrait Roma in 2013. The intimate address felt more like a private Roman residence than luxury hotel. Above: The Library at Portrait Milano, where residentialstyle interiors bring intimacy to the historic former Archiepiscopal Seminary. Left: A room at Portrait Firenze frames a quintessential Florentine view of the Arno and Ponte Vecchio.
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Portrait Firenze followed in 2014, with 37 suites designed by Florentine architect and interior designer Michele Bönan. The property looked to the 1950s and ‘60s, when Florence played a pivotal role in the emergence of Italian fashion. Archival photographs, Carrara marble, warm woods, and restrained midcentury references helped create a hotel deeply connected to its locale. Just as important was the made-to-measure service that runs through Lungarno’s history. Rather than simply responding to requests once a traveler arrives, the Portrait Lifestyle Team aims to understand how a guest wants to experience the destination and shapes their stay accordingly. “The Portrait brand was built from the ground up, not on instant recognition, but on substance,” Antonioli says, “through exquisite design, intimate service and a philosophy of tailored luxury.” A NEW SCALE Then came Milan. Portrait Milano, which opened in December 2022, showed how far the Portrait concept could stretch. The hotel occupies Milan’s former Archiepiscopal Seminary on Corso Venezia, a historic complex dating to the 16th century. Architect Michele De Lucchi and his studio AMDL Circle led the restoration, while Bönan designed the interiors of its 73 rooms and suites, drawing inspiration from Milanese homes of the 1950s and incorporating details of Italian craftsmanship. At the center of the complex is Piazza di Portrait Milano, a roughly 30,000-square-foot historic courtyard now open to the public. Connecting Corso Venezia with Via Sant’Andrea, the plaza introduced something unusual for a luxury hotel: a grand central space intended to belong to Milan as much as to the guests sleeping upstairs. Milanese residents can cross the piazza, meet for drinks or dinner, visit boutiques, and attend events without being hotel guests. The spa, too, welcomes all for treatments. Rather than sealing itself away from its surroundings, Portrait Milano participates in the everyday life of the city. Milan also changed the scale of Portrait. Rome established the private-address model. Florence developed it further. Milan added dining, retail, wellness, events, and public space without losing its personalized service. That relationship between hotel and city has become increasingly important to the Lungarno Collection’s vision. “Our values are rooted in authentic hospitality, respect
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for people and place, and a deep connection with the local community,” Leonardo Ferragamo says. “We believe true luxury is created through sustainability, cultural openness, and meaningful relationships that welcome guests into the spirit and life of each destination.” Now, the company is bringing some of what it learned in Milan back to the place where the story began. BACK TO FLORENCE Two decades after the first hotel opened, Portrait is being given a more defined identity. Portrait Hotels & Resorts now unites the properties in Rome, Florence, and Milan under refreshed branding within the Lungarno Collection. And in Florence, that future is already taking shape. The historic Continentale is being integrated into Portrait Firenze, expanding the property from its current 37 rooms and suites to 67 and creating what Lungarno describes as a “city resort,” scheduled to debut in 2027. The project will also add a 3,200-square-foot spa with treatment rooms, an indoor pool, a sauna, a Turkish bath, and wellness facilities. La Terrazza Rooftop Bar, long one of the Continentale’s signatures, will remain open to the city, retaining its remarkable perspective over Florence while receiving aesthetic updates. But the project reaches beyond additional rooms and amenities. Portrait Firenze will also incorporate the medieval Torre dei Consorti and extend farther into Vicolo dell’Oro, historically associated with Florence’s goldsmithing tradition. The plan is to strengthen the relationship between the hotel and the streets surrounding it — an approach that recalls, on a much smaller scale, what Portrait Milano accomplished with its piazza. Lungarno describes the idea as “hospitality that expands beyond hotel walls to create shared, inclusive spaces.” The Ferragamo legacy is present throughout the hotels without dominating the experience. Its influence appears in the emphasis on craftsmanship, attention to the individual, and an understanding of Italian luxury that relies as much on discretion as display. That sensibility has traveled from the banks of the Arno to Via Condotti and, in Milan, an entire public historic complex. For a company that has long resisted the urge to replicate itself, what comes next may be its most interesting chapter yet. Right: A view toward Trinità dei Monti from Portrait Roma, the intimate Via Condotti property where the Portrait story began.
Corso bag, $8,800, and all clothing and accessories by Bottega Veneta, bottegaveneta.com
Bottega Veneta’s newest Intrecciato offering, the Corso, will never leave you out in the cold A PRESTO Photography Jeffrey Westbrook Words and styling J. Errico
Some days call for restraint. Others call for throwing everything you might possibly need into one very good bag and getting on with it. Snow, shine, late lunch, unexpected overnight stay — the point is not to overthink it, but to look fabulous while carrying the evidence. Enter Corso, Bottega Veneta’s new Winter 2026 tote: generous, quietly commanding, and rather wonderfully unconcerned with the tyranny of carrying only what one strictly needs. Its ample silhouette is built around the house’s unmistakable Intrecciato, rendered in a broad 9x12 panel of supple nappa leather, which folds softly into smooth leather sides. The result is a pleasing contradiction — fluid yet structured, relaxed yet impeccably considered.
True to Bottega Veneta form, there is something deliciously unfussy about the Corso: no frantic hardware, no decorative gymnastics, just beautiful leather doing what beautiful leather does best. The integrated handle keeps the silhouette clean while making those generous proportions surprisingly easy to carry. And generous it is. Inside, suede lining, zipped pocket and removable pouch bring a little order to all that possibility. Available in baby, medium, large, and maxi, Corso offers different scales of ambition — because sometimes the day simply refuses to fit into a neat little handbag. So, throw in the gloves, the book, the shades, the mysterious thing you may or may not need later, and get out there, weather be damned.
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