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Random Recs: Uniqlo’s secret sauce, Studio Nicholson, craft influencers, a secret Negroni Salon



Fantastic Man Autumn 25

A few snippets of digital ephemera and IRL recommendations I’ve enjoyed lately…

1/ Craft influencers. In a backlash to flattening algorithms and A.I. slop, young creatives are finding value in the imperfect qualities of analogue, tactile pastimes. Vogue Business reports on the craft creators transforming niche hobbies like scrapbooking (hi!) and journalling into fledgling brands and media platforms. This doesn’t surprise me as we saw a similar wave around the banking crash of 2008 when we reverted to wholesome hobbies (sewing machine sales skyrocketed!) in protest of Big Tech and untrustworthy corporations.

2/ BLITZ: THE CLUB THAT SHAPED THE 80s at the DESIGN MUSEUM. Not another 80s fashion exhibition! Yes! But if you enjoy indulging in that decadent era, it’s worth visiting the Design Museum for not just a nostalgic wallow in the Blitz Club’s fashion, but also to revisit the era’s wider influence on graphic design, music, architecture and media. The reconstruction of the club itself with an A.I. Rusty Egan DJing (below) is a fun touch.
Rusty Egan Blitz Club exhibition Design museum
Princess Julia as the Venus de Milo, 1980, Luciana Martinez de la Rosa

3/ Non celebs on magazine covers are my vibe. Good to see Hermes’ Nadège Vanhée on the cover and inside the latest Perfect magazine, photographed by Juergen Teller (below), and graphic design legend Karel Martens on the cover of Fantastic Man (above). Side note: it was fun to celebrate the latest Gentlewoman magazine at Miu Miu in New Bond Street a couple of weeks ago. After 15 years as the editor, Penny Martin is still doing a superb job.
Perfect Magazine

4/ /On tiny attention spans, short form content and Simone Weil in the age of TikTok.

5/ STUDIO NICHOLSON’s perfect day bag. Advocating for short girl bags: a short strap, manageable size (30cm wide), beautiful grained leather and at a non-ridiculous price (£495), Studio Nicholson’s Medi Doublet Bag (below) in Italian grained leather looks ultra-sophisticated in ‘Darkest Navy’, and I predict will look even better with age.
Studio Nicholson Medi Doublet Leather bag

6/ The Negroni Salon. A rare bar recommendation from me. I don’t drink much but I managed to sample a couple of negronis at the preview of The Lanesborough’s new Negroni Salon (opening October 8th). The space is delightfully opulent, intimate and fun, while plentiful truffle fries are the ideal salty accompaniment to a spiced negroni.

7/ UNIQLO, a ‘distribution system for utopian values’. This New Yorker long read is part history lesson in Ametora style, part customer service manifesto and part business masterclass. A few choice takeaways: One in four Japanese people is said to own a Uniqlo puffer jacket. It has ‘takumi’ teams of veteran textile artisans who coach far flung factories on dyeing and sewing techniques. Uniqlo’s precursor Unique Clothing Warehouse employed a rising artist called Jean-Michel Basquiat. In the stores, piles of clothes are ranked from A to E according to tidiness (take note Gap!). (P.S: my Uniqlo AW25 picks: these Paraboot-style lace-ups*; T-bar Mary-Janes* and the cashmere-mix HeatTech*.)

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Fantastic man; Blitz exhibition; Princess Julia as the Venus de Milo, 1980 by Luciana Martinez de la Rosa; Perfect magazine; Studio Nicholson
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links* and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

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Not your mother’s Versace



Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale

Oh, the Medusa head medallion-clutching at Versace SS26!

It was the most polarising Fashion Month debut so far and I get it. But in a way, polarising is good.

Let’s break it down.

After a few very campy Instagram teasers, the show itself (the first from new creative director Dario Vitale) was a much younger, messier, some say Miu Miu-coded affair. There were – to my eyes – unflattering leather tailored pants (tightly belted to accentuate the excess of fabric around the crotch), a pile-on of badly cut 80s suiting, bizarre boxy waistcoats, Marilyn-esque screen prints, unsightly tucked-in knits, frumpy floopy dresses and a mish mash of accessories.

The sexy Donatella-era glamour was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a chaotically-styled, gen-Z appealing thrift explosion. My first reaction: where was the stylist? Did they have a stroke at the first sight of the collection? In fact, no the stylist was a young gun, known more for celeb styling and ‘character-based’ editorials, which explains a lot.

While the editors at the show enthused about the eclectic looks and dynamic energy in the room, the issue from my vantage point was the bulky silhouettes and lack of finesse. Awkward styling as a concept I understand, but for a brand pitched as luxury, this didn’t translate. In the hands of Joe McKenna I think I’d have loved it, the contrast of high youth, tacky eighties with a level of polish could have put this (for me) in the same league as Michael Rider’s Celine.

But. I don’t think Vitali wanted that. Perhaps a polarising reaction is actually a smart strategy when you’re aiming for a reset. Thinking back to Alessandro Michele’s Gucci debut, there was a similar outcry of “the Gucci customer will hate it”. What actually happened? The cool kids adored it for being radically different, championed it and made it desirable. Admittedly, there was a tighter level of editing in the early days, whereas here Vitali didn’t seem to know when to turn off the tap.

Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale
Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale
Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale

Aesthetically it’s a hot mess, but an intentional one, and importantly it’s a point of view. In the current climate of too many brands, every brand really needs to define their vibe and own it. And in that regard, the customer will come.

I’d love a showroom re-see. Broken down and merchandised well, there are some strong pieces that align with other 80s-flavoured looks we’ve been seeing. Coloured jeans, exaggerated leather blousons, unapologetic statement bumbags, boxy denim jackets, T-shirt tops with the sides spliced away to nothing. Oh and my fave – the deco-style cigarette case belt buckles and pendants. (Consider it the new Medusa head!) These pieces are both editorial yet commercial, you can picture them on a Dazed cover, in celebrity street style TikToks, in the clubs of Croatia and on the high streets of Europe, America and Asia. Conclusion: perhaps we just need time for the eyes to adjust to a whole different new-gen take on Versace.

Versace ss26 via NYT
Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale
Versace SS26 by Dario Vitale

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES:  Versace SS26
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
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NYFW SS26 notes



Coach ss26 neck purses backstage

New York Fashion Week: Not a huge amount to write home about, but a few details captured my attention…

Coach has hit its stride in recent seasons and I’m pleased for Stuart Vevers. He’s a nice guy and I think people conveniently forget that he elevated Loewe in the fashion space before Jonathan Anderson arrived. Anyway, at Coach SS26 (above and below) I liked the neck doodads – cute little pouches and pendants meant to symbolise sentimentality and New York mementos. Styled in combination with dishevelled, oversized silhouettes by appropriately youth-obsessed Olivier Rizzo, they should help attract the next generation of Coach handbag-toting customers.

Coach ss26
Coach ss26
Coach ss26

At Tory Burch SS26 (below) there was more sentimentality, with clothes resembling well-loved, favourite pieces, creased and crumpled, and accessorised with nostalgic trinkets, in particular beachy shell necklaces and earrings worn with drop-waist belted skirts and flapper-style dresses.
Tory Burch ss26
Tory Burch ss26

Toteme (below) got my vote for its skin-baring necklines (for us short neck girlies – thank you), a fab flat-front white pant and a nonchalant new bag, the Clip – a black croc-embossed top-handle transmitting chaotic, city-girl energy. For the record, Toteme bags are really nice and much better value than most It bags.
Toteme SS26
Toteme SS26Toteme SS26
Toteme SS26 Clip Bag
Toteme SS26

Finally, I think 90s minimalism may be giving way to preppy revivalism (yes, agaiiinnnnnn).

The choice in fashion seems to be either nostalgia or basic b jeans and vest tops (if Biz Sherbert’s on-campus youth report is anything to go by) and since America is the home of polo shirts, baseball caps, chinos and boat totes, it’s totally unsurprising they want to elevate this heritage. We’ve already seen former Polo Ralph Lauren creative director Michael Rider’s first look at Celine, early peeks of Jonathan Anderson’s preppy-fied Dior, and both Gap and J. Crew riding high again in public sentiment, while NYFW saw the runway relaunch of Ivy League haberdasher J.Press (a very literal iteration, complete with JFK Junior lookalike – below).
J Press by Greg Kessler/ KesslerStudio

Should you need more preppy references, pick up a copy of Bruce Weber’s newly released monograph, My Education. Let’s hope the kids pick up on this look but put a more contemporary and subversive spin on it, otherwise I fear we’re stuck with Brandy Melville and ballet flats forever.

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES:  Coach SS26 x 4; Tory Burch SS26 x 2; Toteme SS26 x 5; J. Press
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare

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Cold eroticism at Jil Sander SS26



Jil Sander ss26

In the absence of a ticket, I watched Simone Bellotti’s debut SS26 show on YouTube. As one of 13 key designer debuts this season, it’s one of the first shows that will be discussed big. Coming from a very critically successful few seasons at Bally, Bellotti has engineered a lot of good feeling from the press.

I loved this debut. It felt stripped back to the spare linear silhouettes of OG Jil Sander, with a pure colour palette that nodded to Raf-era. Within that I particularly liked the cold eroticism of Lucio Fontana-esque cutaway slashes in the skirts and cut-out back details, unexpected pops of silver, some great bags and the flat shoes. (more…)

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