It's not enough to be a French Girl anymore.

Good evening Gatekeepers!

My Texas trip continues. I spent some time in Austin for the past few days, visiting my younger sister and swimming in her pool. I’ve kept it light the past couple weeks, in my opinion…to soak up the last of summer. You only get 80 or so, after all. I spent the first few of mine being a damn baby, so I’ve got to catch up.

• Phia’s cookie-stuffing scandal continues but I have yet to find anyone surprised. Bloomberg reports that internal messages show co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni pushing the auto-attribution behavior months before Phia said it had only recently learned of the misattribution. This story has been developing over the past few weeks but I’ve noticed none of my friends who work outside fashion or beauty have been particularly shocked to hear the details. In fact, the ones who work in start ups seem wholly unfazed. They don’t think it’s acceptable behavior but startup culture has trained them to expect companies to pursue the most aggressive possible interpretation of a metric. They’ve grown used to the “move fast and break things” ethos. Whereas fashion people, by contrast, understand affiliate attribution as a sort of trust system — credit determines who gets paid and falsely claiming a purchase can divert money from the creator or publisher who relies on it to keep the lights on.

• The next British institution to join Mike Ashley’s retail empire? Harvey Nichols. A luxury department store, known as Harvey Nicks, thanks partly to the 90s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, warns that it could collapse within a year without new investment. Frasers Group is reportedly leading the bidding on the reported favorite spot of Princess Diana’s and a sale would put it alongside House of Fraser and Flannels.

• Kickstarter will give you cold, hard cash for your fashion, art, film, or music project. Kickstarter reports that to apply to the Culture Fund, your campaign status must be live or in draft and must launch before or on December 31st, 2026.

• Sézane’s founder Morgane Sézalory wants the brand to grow with the customer base that made it famous. It’s apparently not enough to just be the French girl brand anymore. In an interview with Vogue Business, Sézalory outlined plans to release fewer pieces made with better materials. The brand will be prioritizing intention rather than growth. In other words, more edited. This sounds to me like a realignment with their original customer (who has been voicing online that they want more organic cotton, less plastic in their sweaters, and fewer drops) and potentially…a reason to increase prices. The new logo and website will go live on August 19th and the rebrand will launch August 23rd, according to Vogue Business. I’m excited about this, I prefer when a brand’s behavior matches their marketing.

• Copenhagen SS27 ended on August 7th and the street style was...a mix of sporty and Laura Ingalls. The clearest signals I can give you on this front are running shorts, turquoise, aprons, headscarves, and prairie dresses. Take a look at the Further Study note for lots of competing patterns and also a few baby bumps, if you’re into that sort of thing!

• Vogue announced San Francisco as the host city for Vogue World 2027. I wrote on Substack Notes months ago that I felt called stylistically to San Francisco, perhaps due to the intense insistence from a few peers that San Francisco actually is a “fashion city”. It could have also been Thom Browne’s fall 2026 GQ Bowl show at the Legion of Honor. Either way, Vogue has chosen a technology capital vs a traditional fashion city which I’ve read as an attempt to put their complicated relationship to Silicon Valley on the world’s stage.

• WashWise just debuted a $29 dry shampoo for your clothes. I always thought that was just called body spray, but they claim it uses hydroxypropyl cyclodextrin to eliminate odors caused by bacteria on a lightly worn garment. They raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round to help you wash your clothes less.

• Absolutely Fabulous or “Ab Fab” from the 90s. The British equivalent or perhaps just slightly meaner version of Sex and The City. It was really much more openly satirical. In addition to using the term “Harvey Nicks”, Ab Fab also illustrates two main industry archetypes, functionally similar to how we Americans use the SATC foursome. Patsys, who are themselves insiders who set fashion rules but strangely haven’t changed their own personal style since the previous decade. Edina, patron saint of fashion victims, tries too hard to make the latest trends work regardless of self-doubt and camel toes. You can find the first episode here or the full series on BritBox.

• Copenhagen SS27 street style. Vogue has a good visual roundup and I also liked this piece in Harper’s Bazaar on the two camps of Scandi Maximalism or Scandi Minimalism. If you want an “influencer” POV, I enjoyed KarenBritChick’s vlog, who I have been parasocially fond of for years following her “Where Did U Get That?” series.

  

• Does San Francisco count as a fashion city? The announcement in the SF Chronicle certainly makes the contemporary case through counterculture and technology. To dive deeper, read through the history of Levi’s, Gap, Rothy’s, and Kamperett. Pair it with the rise and fall of Esprit, San Francisco’s coolest, hippie-fueled fashion brand of the 80s.

• Why is French girl style such a driver behind identity? Fashion’s obsession with the mythical french girl dates back to the original American Vogue, where you could read about whether French women thought bangs were cool, who was living at the Ritz, or what they wore while they stood in the opalescent haze of their lunch cigarette. Paris had long been considered the fashion capital of the world and so when describing the “French woman”, it almost came across synonymous with “ideal”. Ideal of course meaning: doesn’t age, doesn’t gain weight, always has clear skin, is never stressed out, doesn’t try but achieves perfection. Now, when building a brand, one must simply promise the attributes of the effortless French girl, à la Sézane. Using the aesthetic descriptor gives the customer base that same frame of reference that American Vogue was using and makes it possible to simply purchase the identity you wish you could own. You could even argue this label is steeped in misogyny, that women should strive for beauty but never reveal just how much effort it takes to be presentable. No matter the decade or the marketing campaign…the worst thing it seems a woman can be, is vain. Anyway, off to rip my eyebrow hairs out one by one and get a manicure that costs $90 but looks like my real nail color!

  POLL OF THE DAY!

  I’m wondering…which city’s style resonates most with you?

• I’ve been in Texas for over a week now and I’m remembering my love for western influences. While I haven’t been walking down the streets of Laredo per se, I have been wearing my hair big, swinging through Blanco (I’m nearly a year late for the Shelley Duvall estate sale…RIP), and swimming in saltwater pools in Austin. I keep all my potions in this set from Cadence and my makeup in this bag, which has been a total lifesaver for the flight to the Lone Star State and bouncing from town to town.

• Speaking of Texas…whenever I head home, I meet up with my good friend, Morgan. No, that’s really her name, I’m not talking about myself. Two friends named Morgan. Anyway, I usually help out with whatever project she has going on at the moment and this time, it’s a 100 piece vintage wedding archive. 1960s to 1990s. Victoria’s Secret, Gunne Sax, the works y’all! You guys seemed to enjoy the sneak peek a few days ago, so I’m linking her Instagram for you here, where she’ll drop the collection in the next month or so.

• On the subject of small town gossip…what happened to the antique mall in the town square of Blanco?? Apparently, it closed in July. Bummer.

• Unfortunately for me and yet perhaps spiritually beneficial, I packed for this trip by simply grabbing everything out of my dryer the night before I left. That means I’ve been working with far too many pairs of pants and far too few tops. To get by, I’ve been in a Uniqlo linen button down, basic t-shirts, a set from Gap that reminds me of Doen, and vintage orange tab Levi 505s. I will update you on any vintage finds I procure here later.