Hello, Open Thread. Happy end of March! Baseball season has begun. The daffodils are popping. And in the category of three’s a trend: The third youngish designer of a smallish but storied French brand has just left the building. After last week’s departures of Harris Reed from Nina Ricci and Marco De Vincenzo from Etro, Nicolas Di Felice, the very talented Courrèges designer, announced this week that he was parting ways with that brand after five years. Courrèges had long been existing on fumes left over from its space age heyday, but when Di Felice joined, he managed to make it feel relevant for today. His work was sophisticated and architectural, but it had an underground edge that made it cool and drew fashion insiders to his shows. Whether it’s possible to keep that momentum going without him — or whether it even needs to happen — is another story. The owners of heritage houses say it is easier to sell an established name rather than start a new one, but in an oversaturated luxury market, some of these collections are starting to feel like dead brands walking. I think it’s time to let some of them rest. But hope springs eternal, at least when it comes to fashion brands. Case in point: Christopher Kane is joining Mulberry. Kane, for those who don’t remember, was a darling of the YBD movement — the young British designers — of the early 2000s and 2010s. He had his own namesake line, did a stint as the designer of Versus Versace and was named women’s wear designer of the year at the British Fashion Awards in 2013. He was an early catwalk Croc adopter and always had a slyly funky high-low approach. Nevertheless, he struggled to stay afloat and closed his label in 2023. Mulberry, for its part, is a sort of more accessible Burberry that also enjoyed great success in the early 2000s thanks to its Bayswater bag, arguably the first British It bag. Since then, however, it has struggled to recapture that heat. Will the meeting of these two once-feted British labels bring them back? We’ll see in September when Kane’s first Mulberry collection is revealed, but I have (measuredly) high hopes. NUMBER OF THE WEEK
|
 |
| From left: Zendaya this month at the "The Drama" premiere in Paris, at the film’s Los Angeles premiere, and at a Black Women in Hollywood event. From left, Aurore Marechal/Getty Images; Lisa O'Connor/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press |
In other news, Zendaya is promoting a new movie with a new round of theme dressing. To go with her new flick, “The Drama,” about wedding and relationships … well, drama. She has been making appearances in white wedding-ish dresses.
She teased it with a white Vuitton dress at the Vuitton show during Paris Fashion Week. (That’s it at the top of this newsletter.) Then came the white Vivienne Westwood gown she wore to the Los Angeles premiere (or rewore: she also wore it to the 2015 Oscars) and the white lace Harris Reed pants-’n’-shirt combo she work to the after-party. Next: another white Louis Vuitton look at the Paris premiere. And then a white suit and tie by Francesco Scognamiglio for an Instagram selfie posted by her “image architect” Law Roach.
Then she added a new twist, wearing a black Armani column from last year to the Rome movie premiere. What was that about? Apparently the Westwood had been something old, the Vuitton something new, and this Armani was something borrowed — from Cate Blanchett, who wore it to the Venice Film Festival in 2025.
This is getting awfully meta.
Presumably Roach and Zendaya, who pretty much invented this approach to press tours, are raising their game a notch given that their strategy has been broadly adopted by many of their peers. But while it made a big impact at first, it’s starting to veer into the gimmicky to me. What do you think? Let me know.
Then catch up on what BTS wore to its comeback concert; check out the latest plant-based material aiming to change fashion; and consider the question of taste — and whether it is the one thing A.I. cannot replicate.
Have a good, safe weekend. Time for some spring cleaning.
STYLE AND CULTURE |
Make someone’s day and forward this email.
Did you get this from a friend? Sign up here.
Share your feedback on Open Thread by email.
Check out our full assortment of free newsletters.
FASHION NEWS |
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
 |
| A Skims shapewear launch at Nordstrom in 2020. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images |
We seek it here, we seek it there, that damned elusive flat stomach. It’s harder to pin down than the Scarlet Pimpernel. When did this become the agreed-upon Platonic body ideal? Sometime after Peter Paul Rubens and before Bella Hadid.
However it happened, business empires have been built on helping women (and, increasingly, men) reach this near impossible goal, not just through punishing gym routines and diet, but also through clothing itself.
What started with Spanx — the contemporary equivalent of the girdle, which was itself a more modern iteration of the whalebone corset — has spawned Skims, Yitty (by Lizzo), Honeylove and Commando, to name a few of the companies now known euphemistically as “shapewear” brands. And it’s not going away any time soon: Estimated at $2.73 billion in 2024, the shapewear market is predicted to reach $4.32 billion by 2030, according to a report from Grandview Research. People are, apparently, putting their money where their body modification dreams are.
But how realistic are they?
The truth is, while shapewear can do a lot to smooth and compress our flesh, it can’t actually remake our bodies. Wearing a foundation garment — or, as Gwyneth Paltrow once told the world, two at once — can help sculpt what’s there, but it won’t erase it.
That’s why Karla Welch, the stylist who works with Sarah Paulson and Renate Reinsve, and Bailey Moon, who has worked with Jill Biden and Pamela Anderson, recommend shapewear for what Moon calls “creating a seamless look under clothing.”
But beyond acting as a tool to erase bra or panty lines and other obvious bulges, they each say: Manage your expectations.
I asked one of my colleagues, Zoe Vanderweide, who delved comprehensively into the world of shapewear for Wirecutter, how to think about the options. (For the purposes of this answer, I am going to focus on stomach-related shapewear, but as the photo of Skims above shows, there are options for all parts of the body.)
According to Zoe, shapewear comes in three tensions: light, which is kind of like a leotard; medium, which makes you feel more sucked in and can help if you are having trouble zipping up certain garments; and high, which involves more elaborate construction, including targeted panels. All of the above is made from some blend of nylon and elastane, but, Zoe said, “the secret to compression is in the knit.”
This is not information included on a garment tag, so Zoe recommends a stretch test: “More compressive fabric should feel stretchy yet firm — the harder it is to stretch, the more compressive it is,” she said.
She also suggested checking to see if there are little silicone strips that grip onto the skin at the top of a shapewear garment to keep it from rolling down, or little pieces of boning-like structure to make the top more rigid. Also snaps or hooks at the crotch, which will allow you to use the bathroom without having to disrobe.
Finally, Zoe said her hands-down favorite for balancing comfort and effect was the SPANXsculpt OnCore short. “It’s a really nice balance of effective smoothing and tummy control,” she said, “with a fabric that still feels quite smooth, light and comfortable.”
Still, there is another option. You can always avoid the issue entirely, Welch said, and opt for “cinching a waist with a belt,” perhaps over a full skirt, to create the illusion of shape.
“I’m tired of shrinking women,” she said. Perhaps shrink-wrapped is a better way to put it.
