The Digest 35
and my favorite inclusive moments from NYFW
Welcome back!
NYFW just wrapped, temps are dropping and I’m heading into a 5 day weekend - the vibes are incredibly high. Bringing you a very robust Digest today full of lots of goodies, including my fashion week thoughts at the end. Kind of a Digest-Spread hybrid this week, really.
Also - someone told me this week they used knowledge they gained from my newsletter to answer a question in a job interview. My heart is full! Hope you get the job ✨
Incoming in the next couple weeks:
A comprehensive look at what plus size people actually want from the fashion industry and why we’re so far from the target
A deep dive into the multisensory marketing taking over every industry right now
A new Setting The Table interview with a very exciting guest
And a fresh Digest every week!
PS: starting next week, every other Digest will be behind a paywall. Now is a great time to become a paid subscriber if you haven’t already (button below) <3
Want to read the paywalled posts but don’t have it in your budget right now? Just shoot me a message and we’ll make it happen. Love you mean it!!
At The Composite, we serve up a curated collection of culture and critique. Think of The Digest as your quick, thoughtful read to replace the doom scroll, offering a bite of everything you need to stay in the loop. Come hungry. Leave questioning everything.
Aperitif
A little taste of what’s to come
Trending Tidbits:
These trends are tracked not for following, but for what they reveal. Not necessarily an endorsement, but a thought starter
🍊 Orange Nails (and orange hued beauty in general - I blame Taylor)
🪖 2016-era green army jackets (and distressed jeans)
Recommended Reading
📖 How Podcasts (and Plastic Surgery) Are Shaping Male Beauty Standards
📖 As birth rates decline, is pregnancy now an aspirational aesthetic?
📖 Ziora Ajeroh on being body-shamed by X's Grok
📖 Playful, Nostalgic, and High Fashion: Welcome to Baby-Doll Fall
📖 Move Over, Right-Wing Boomer Survivalists. Stylish Millennial Libs Are the New Preppers
📖 How a PhD in Biomechanics Turned Leila Kelleher Into a ‘Fat Fashion’ Pioneer
The Main Course:
A selection curated to keep you fed
All the hot girls are quitting nicotine. As we know, nicotine cessation brands are the new wellness brands. See: this Beauty Matter article on Ripple and their “plant-powered puffs”
According to Dieline, cigarette-inspired packaging is trending - culturally, smoking retains some of the perceived coolness that vaping simply does not possess
Marie Claire is declaring a book tote takeover. Cultured Mag interviewed 5 debut authors on the state of the Literary It Girl. Brands are embracing book culture to connect with their consumers
Business of Fashion wrote about the boom of books in the beauty industry
Even so, The Economist says that reading rates are down overall, citing a 40% drop in readership for pleasure in the last 20 years
Speaking of books, I’ve been following Maddie (@minibookwellington) for a while - she’s currently creating cookie versions of all the Booker Prize longlist books and it’s *incredible*. Seriously, check it out. We need more whimsy!
Great news for those of us who were readers as kids: The Babysitters Club is being adapted into a stage musical
Goop drove a milk truck around NYC in promotion of their hydration serum. Got Milk? is celebrating 30 years of the milk mustache. Milky products are taking over your skincare routine
LoveShackFancy partnered with Tinder to promote their newest fragrance Secret Crush, a gourmand vanilla scent. The partnership includes limited-edition merch and a pop up Secret Crush Cafe dishing up all things vanilla
As I predicted, savory perfumes are on the rise. From The Composite archives in Dec 2024: In a year dominated by edibly sweet, gourmand fragrances, will we see an uptick in unexpected, somewhat unwelcome savory ingredients in perfumes next year?
Remember last month when I broke down brands’ desires to cosplay as blue collar workplaces, particularly bodegas and street vendors? Enter Liquid I.V.’s NYFW bodega pop up and Veronica Beard’s NYFW convenience store pop up… 😌
The use of hair as accessory has been on the rise for a while. It peaked with these stunning hat-hair hybrids at the Collina Strada show
I thought the Tanner Fletcher x Etsy show was so darling and quaint and imaginative
Big Jane Wade fan here - this collection has me thinking about pockets that allow for the body cam-ification of phones in this era of surveillance and streaming
One of the biggest trends in fashion and luxury right now? Dogs. Jason Wu partnered with Purina. The NYT reported that the wellness industry is all in on pets, “with collagen puptides, raw meat diets and longevity supplements”
See also: Rachel Antonoff and Susan Alexandra brought back their dog show this fashion week. Bissell sponsored the show, outfitting some models with their Little Green Clean Machine as an accessory for the runway. Frankly a *genius* move
Marc Jacobs is the latest to embrace the banana trend
Putting aside the fact that Krys Marshall stars in my new favorite show of all time, my wholly unbiased opinion is that this is one of the best dresses I’ve ever seen. I mean!!!
Here’s an easy post I’ve been seeing from brands in the last few days in case you want to jump on the bandwagon
Bubble Skincare has historically skewed heavily Gen Z + Gen Alpha, so it’s interesting to see that their new brand ambassador is none other than Millennial icon Leighton Meester. The comments on their YouTube vid and IG post point to it being a smart move
I’m really interested in the future of the laundry space and feel like we’re going to be seeing a lot of innovation there, particularly with fragrance being so pervasive right now. Keeping an eye on it
Before we move on to after dinner courses: I need to very quickly discuss Blank Street, the famously soulless coffee shop chain who seems, to their credit, to be tuned in to the same things as I am.
You may recall that in the last Spread I spoke about Bodegas, Convenience Stores, and Blue Collar Cosplay, specifically about the use of places like dry cleaners in campaigns and the evolution of fruits in marketing → vegetables in marketing.
Well, Blank Street is pulling from the same moodboard, babes. See their newest campaign, inspired by running errands:
Featuring none other than… dry cleaner! vegetable grocery shop!
Digestif:
An after dinner course on the topic top of my mind
Alright alright, let us (briefly) discuss NYFW. Let us remind ourselves that putting Paloma or Devyn or Jill1 on your runway as your token non-zero model does not an inclusive brand make!! Let us remember that we can hold two truths at once, and acknowledge the wins with room to simultaneously critique what needs to improve.
A couple personal moments from the week:
I attended the Eloquii presentation which featured all curve models. It was the first time in a long time that I was in a crowd of fabulous fat women and felt that spark of joy that was so common when I first moved to New York in 2019 and plus size events were commonplace. What I will say is this - I am a huge Eloquii fan and think they are doing so many things right for us. At the same time, I really hope to see models spanning a larger size range in their next show. The clothes, though? Fabulous. I have my eye on the animal print pieces, particularly this zebra moment.
follow along with Eloquii on their IG here
I also dropped by a lovely event put on by Berriez last weekend. Berriez is a vintage shop curated for curves, and they have some really incredible pieces. They’re celebrating a rebrand and it’s so wonderful to see their amazing success in an environment that is not friendly to indie brands with an inclusive mission. More of this, please!
You can make appointments during the week or drop by on the weekends in Brooklyn to shop for yourself. They also have a closet sale coming up next weekend, with clothes in sizes L-5X for sale.
Check out their website here and follow them on IG here
This letter is getting ~incredibly~ long, but I want to leave you with a few more fashion week thoughts here. I’ll dig into some fun trend things and more general thoughts in another letter, but for now let’s recap some of the good stuff through an inclusivity lens.
Tyler McGillivary
I really enjoyed this interview with Tyler, written by
for Teen Vogue.“I think that anybody can dress somebody who is literally a toothpick, which is again, that's a body that's beautiful as well. But all to say it is an exciting element of design to work with different bodies because clothes are meant to be worn. They're not meant to just be on a hanger” - Tyler McGillivary for Teen Vogue
Sivan Apparel
A new-to-me brand that seems to have true inclusivity at its core. I loved seeing the diversity of age, ability, size, race, and more - and as these comments point out, THIS is the hallmark of a truly incredible designer. Clothes made for every kind of body, tailored impeccably, functional and fashionable no matter who wears it. This is the reality of the world we live in. And, not least of all, the clothes are beautiful.
The TikTok made me 🥹
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And just a few other moments I enjoyed:
Dessert:
A book rec as the cherry on top
I’m a huge fan of both
and and a devoted listener of their pod. They recently launched and their first pick is Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Somehow I did not know this book existed! Thick is a collection of essays about intersectional feminism, race, body and beauty standards, and more. I can’t wait to dive in.
Jessica + Emily doing really exciting programming, with weekly discussion Qs and more - highly recommend checking them both out and following along with Lowbrow.
From my scroll: things that caught my eye or match the themes of this week’s letter, formats I think will catch on - you get the vibe
If you’re here for a new perspective on fashion, beauty, and culture, you’re in the right place. Pull up a chair. The table is wide, and the conversation is layered.
beautiful fantastic women who i want to see succeed and on more runways! but their inclusion alone doesn’t allow you to check a size inclusivity box for the optics
Love the NYFW coverage!! That ELOQUII green Sherpa coat is stunnnning.