Fashion

Amid the dusk light, there’s hushed, excited chatter. And then drums, lights, and orchestral tones. It’s 10:18 p.m. in Paris, and Pharrell Williams is debuting his first collection as creative director at Louis Vuitton, Spring-Summer 2024. Never mind that it is three quarters of an hour late — fashionably late — nobody cares. This is the biggest fashion event of the year, and we can wait. We’ve been waiting a year and a half already. This is a big deal. Lous Vuitton’s creative director is the biggest role in menswear, formerly held by the beloved, brilliant Virgil Abloh, who passed away from cancer in November 2021.

For Christmas this year, Santa Claus brought me the most splendid Maine Mountain Parka from L.L. Bean, rife with thoughtful details and flawless construction from hood to hem. Standing in the living room, I admired the weather-proof cuffs and pulled the oversized zipper with rubber grip pull cord (a must when wearing gloves). I fastened the button-front storm placket — such a satisfyingly haughty act, akin, I’d imagine, to how one of Napoleon’s cavalrymen might have felt strapping on his saber. I flipped the adjustable snorkel hood with its removable faux-fur ruff onto my head and burrowed my hands into the deep snap pockets. I then plopped down on the couch and gazed smugly out the window at the bomb cyclone raging outside.

This week, while politics has resembled something akin to The Real Housewives franchise, I’ve been far more concerned about the horror show that is their outfits. Politicians' dress isn’t just a personal statement; it’s an ideological one. Look at Ron DeSantis. As the Florida governor was sworn in for his second term this week, he donned a crisp blue suit and slicked-back hair, complimenting the dresses of his daughters Madison and Mamie. His four-year-old son, Mason, looked immaculate in a matching suit. Some say shoving a blazer on a child this young is vulgar. I disagree. Mrs. DeSantis’s mint-green cape dress was chic. The whole family’s sartorial elegance oozed American conservatism.

Whisper it — but Cockburn can’t help but love a funeral. Old churches, black clothes that take a few inches from the waist, the spread is always great and the wake is single-handedly the best after-party anyone, dead or alive, could ask for. But there are a few rules. The first, one that should be glaringly obvious, is not taking smiling selfies for Instagram. Now, Cockburn knows that for a funeral such as Queen Elizabeth II’s, photos are unavoidable. But it seems that the people at Meghan’s Mirror, the style blog devoted to Meghan Markle, are lacking in basic etiquette. A little over a month after the death of the Queen, Meghan’s Mirror has splashed photos of Meghan’s outfit at the events surrounding the Queen’s death on their blog's homepage.

Queen Elizabeth II was a bright spot in the world in more ways than one. She was, by all accounts, a warm and gracious monarch who led her country through storm after storm with “timeless decency and an enduring calm,” as Australia’s prime minister put it. Yet despite her reserved demeanor and steadfast sense of duty that harkened to a much more modest age, the Queen had what appeared on the surface to be a surprising sartorial sense. Do a quick Google Image search for “Queen Elizabeth style” and you’ll see what I mean. Her outfits were often brightly colored and recognizable. Despite this, though, she wasn’t known, as Princess Diana was, for being a trendsetter, exciting fashion magazines and red-carpet commentators with “look what she wore!” moments.

Americans are fat and getting fatter. “More than two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or have obesity,” reports Heathline.com. The CDC (I actually trust them on this one) says that between 1999 and 2020, “obesity prevalence increased from 30.5 percent to 41.9 percent,” and severe obesity “increased from 4.7 percent to 9.2 percent.” And so, in the wake of woke, Old Navy and other clothing companies are (trying to) cash-in on our widening waistlines by disguising their latest capitalistic campaign as “inclusive sizing.” I gave up shopping for Lent. I made my return recently by perusing a Lands’ End catalog with my mother.

The Covid-19 outbreak has been hard on us all. So please: as we slowly return to our in-person office jobs (assuming we do at all), don’t make it any harder than it already is by dressing like you’re still working from your makeshift at-home “office.” “The coronavirus pandemic has boosted Americans' love of comfort wear, accelerating a trend toward wearing athletic attire — also known as ‘athleisure’ wear — at all hours of the day,” reports CBS News. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, sales of formal attire have slumped as stuck-at-home workers prioritize how they feel over how they look.” The athleisure market — already a $155 billion industry — is expected to skyrocket to $257 billion over the next five years.

'To every thing there is a season,' we read in Ecclesiastes, and summer is the season for seersucker. No fabric is better suited for long summer days. Its lightness reflects the sun. Its pucker ventilates the skin. Rather than avoid the heat, seersucker dresses up for the hot occasion. Summers in New York are infernally hot. Seersucker makes it livable, if not always desirable. Since fashion dictates that seersucker only emerge between Memorial Day and Labor Day — timing that varies as you head south — its absence also makes its return that much more rewarding. As the weather warms, out it comes, radiating the light of summers past.