#21: Simple Pleasures

Fashion week and fastelavnsbolle and football, oh my.

Hello! 

I spent last Monday to Friday in Copenhagen for fashion week, where I caught a seemingly inevitable cold. On Saturday I convalesced at home ahead of Sunday, when Ivan whisked me away to Manchester for a night.

This is being typed into my Notes App on the train back to Euston, following several plates of mismatched food (cartoon-y fried eggs; a piece of brie; Weetabix) at the hotel breakfast buffet. In other words, I’m in near prime writing condition: reams to tell you about, and partially thanks to this lurgy, with nowhere else to be.

Though most of my writing revolves around fashion, I rarely do a full fashion week circuit; by this, I mean shows, showrooms, and meetings from morning till night, followed by dinners and parties. I’d say I don’t have the stamina (physical, social), for it, but the truth is I don’t need to go through the rigmarole for work, as I don’t write show reviews. My MO so far has been to go to a show or two, freckle my iCal with a couple of meetings, and call it a fashion week.

In Copenhagen, I tore up my rule book, if you can call abstaining from social engagements that. I was in town to report on a few stories for the South China Morning Post, and arranged a healthily packed schedule of shows and appointments and dinners. But I was also extremely pampered, and got to spend much of the in-between minutes carpooling to shows with Daphne and our driver Nicolas, who curated playlists according to the weather — The Cure and The Smiths as palate cleansers when the sun was out; bossa nova on a foggy Tuesday.

Copenhagen is not your average fashion week (no, they are not paying me to write this). Much has been penned about the initiatives CEO Cecilie Thorsmark and her unflagging team are driving when it comes to sustainability, but as an attendee, it’s really the more welcoming environment that’s striking. I can speak for many a fashion person when I say Paris, London, Milan (and I assume New York) can be anxiety-inducing when you’re not inducted into a clique or coterie, so the Danish capital’s laid-back yet intimate atmosphere was refreshing to say the least. It reminded me, a somewhat jaded freelancer, that although inflated egos and hierarchies dominate fashion, pockets of genuinely talented and lovely people do exist — and thrive, if you let them.

On that slightly saccharine note, below are miscellaneous highlights from the last week that brought me pleasure amid the chaos. But first, I realised I’ve been lax with sharing my work; here are a few recent stories:

• For The FT: a story on the ‘new minimalists of New York,’ a.k.a. brands that are making interesting yet pared-back fashion. I’m sure we’re all rolling our eyes at ‘quiet luxury’ at this point (hence its absence from the body of the piece), but these designers are really all I want to be wearing day-to-day, budget-allowing. Top of the wishlist is Attersee’s famously flattering vest. Oh, and if you buy the paper, this story and another one of mine will be in this weekend’s HTSI.

• For SCMP: a fun little piece on Taylor Swift’s status as a fashion anti-hero. To any Swifties mad about the headline, I didn’t write it.

• For Monocle (paywalled): An intro to the ultra-fast-moving business that is K-beauty.