Hello, Open Thread. Tax day has come and gone. Earth Day is almost upon us. The combination of those two milestones is a reminder that the single most effective tactic any of us can employ to mitigate fashion’s effect on climate change is to wear our clothes for as long as possible and invest in the kind of clothes you can wear as long as possible. It’s good for your bank account (amortize the costs over time) and the environment. Increasingly, though, clothes prices, especially luxury clothes prices, are so high that they seem out of reach for anyone but the 1 percent. That’s why we are starting a project to better understand how you, our readers, think about the cost of what you buy. To kick it off, we are doing a quick survey. Take a look here, and if you are interested, please participate! On the subject of affordability, Old Navy has teamed up with Christopher John Rogers for a new collaboration. This is part of the Zacaissance taking place at Gap Inc. under the chief executive Richard Dickson and Zac Posen, who is both the chief creative officer of Old Navy and the executive vice president and creative director of its parent company. Mr. Posen, as you may remember, was the onetime boy wonder of New York Fashion Week who crashed and burned and then joined the once pace-setting Gap Inc. in 2024 to shake things up. The appointment took most of fashion aback but has proved a fortuitous choice. Anyway, Mr. Posen has made it part of his mission to support independent American designers, and this is one of those initiatives. Mr. Rogers, who started his own label only 10 years ago, won the award for women’s wear fashion designer of the year from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2021 and is known for his brightly colored clothes that combine couture-level dressmaking with a breezy Claire McCardell-like vibe. He did a collaboration with J. Crew in 2024 that was a major hit, and this one with Old Navy, full of stripes, dots, florals and fun from $24.99 to $84.99, is equally covetable. Mr. Rogers just makes happy clothes. (I’m especially into the denim, above, and the stripes.) Who doesn’t want some of that right about now? NUMBER OF THE WEEK
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Finally, in less salubrious news, Condé Nast has announced that it is closing Self — or what’s left of Self — as well as all international editions of Glamour, and turning that magazine’s digital site into a recommendation platform for fashion and beauty. Which sounds like a euphemism for a bunch of affiliate links.
This was probably a fait accompli. The print editions of those publications died years ago, and the company has been increasingly consolidating its less popular titles under core brands like Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair and Architectural Digest. Glamour and Self, as digital properties, never really figured out how to distinguish themselves from the pack.
But when I started my career in publishing at Vanity Fair oh so many moons ago, those two monthlies were the cash cows of Condé — Glamour, the magazine for aspirational working women, and Self, an early avatar of the wellness movement. This seems like an ignominious end: going out not with a bang but a fizzle.
Magazines, during their print heyday, really were repositories and chroniclers of our collective dreams and desires, cultural arcana of the most visceral kind. Someday they may not be seen as old-timey media but valuable antiquities.
Think about that. Then get the inside story on the clothes of two major talkers of the moment — “Euphoria” and “Mother Mary” — check out the looks of the W.N.B.A. draft and remember Adriano Goldschmied, the “godfather” of modern denim.
And have a good, warm weekend. I’m heading to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Go out and walk among the daffodils!
FASHION AND CULTURE |
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INSIDE STYLE | ||
Condé Nast Shutters Self MagazineThe publishing giant is also closing the international editions of Glamour Magazine in Germany, Spain and Mexico. By Katie Robertson |
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.
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| Edward Berthelot/Getty Images |
Have you never gone to a music festival? Wellies and cowboy boots in the sweltering mosh pits of summer are as common as daisy chains and short shorts. (In fact, they are generally worn with daisy chains and short shorts. See Kendall Jenner at Coachella in black boots and white cutoffs.) Now, however, they have spread to more urban settings. Not to mention the runway.
It’s not a coincidence that perhaps the most consistent booster of boots at all times is the Condé Nast global chief content officer Anna Wintour, who wears both knee-high and ankle styles with dresses year-round.
For Tamara Mellon, the woman who put Jimmy Choo on the footwear map before starting a signature line, boots are now as much a warm weather staple as sandals. “They make a summer outfit feel more pulled together than sandals, especially for officewear,” she said.
Outside, they protect the foot from dirty city streets in a way that sandals cannot, and inside they protect from overly air-conditioned spaces.
Like Ms. Wintour, Ms. Mellon likes high boots with long dresses — Stevie Nicks-coded or more streamlined — but she considers ankle boots the most versatile investments. “They take you from winter to summer and look modern with shorts or miniskirts and evening dresses,” she said. The effect is not that different from wearing sneakers and ankle socks, just a lot chicer.
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| Clockwise from top: Fans in cowboy boots waiting for a concert for the Taylor Swift Eras Tour; Nicole Scherzinger in New York; Olivia Rodrigo in New York. Clockwise from top; Christoph Reichwein/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images; XNY/Star Max, via GC Images; Gotham/GC Images |
Dana Levine, a stylist who works with Shonda Rhimes, among other high-powered women, said the appeal of summer boots lay in the juxtaposition of feminine or summery clothes with tougher footwear. The contrast complicates the messaging in interesting and potentially provocative ways.
Still, wearing heavy footwear in hot weather is not without complications.
On the plus side, Dr. Rock Positano, the co-director of the nonsurgical foot and ankle service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, said that for people who have issues with their feet or ankles, boots in summer can be salutary. For anyone with plantar fascia, Achilles’ tendon or heel and knee issues, they’re actually a good idea.
“The boot provides stability in these areas and often protects against overuse injuries,” Dr. Positano said. Especially if the boot has a one- to two-inch heel.
One caveat: Make sure the boots are not too tight. Heat tends to cause the foot to swell, and, Dr. Positano said, “swelling is the natural enemy of the foot and ankle.” Trying to shove a too-big foot into a too-small shoe is, he said, “the equivalent of trying to put 10 gallons of water into a five-gallon tank.”
He calls this the “Cinderella complex” of footwear and advises avoiding it. Test the fit of boots in the mid- to late afternoon, when swelling is usually at its height.
Further risks: If your feet sweat a lot in the summer heat, you are at risk for athlete’s foot and contact dermatitis. “Perspiration in a closed boot in a warm climate may actually cause chemicals in the boot material to leach out and cause skin inflammation,” Dr. Positano said.
All of which is why Ms. Levine, the stylist, suggests wearing microfiber socks with your boots, maybe even keeping an extra pair in your handbag. Zak Scott, the head of marketing for the shoe company Sole Bliss — its sand-colored suede ankle and cowboy boots are summer best sellers — also recommends looking for boots lined in leather because leather acts as a natural wicking material, allowing feet to breathe no matter what season it is.
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