At a recent party in SoHo, I was surrounded by flirty Gen Z’ers and Cali-sober younger millennials. The looks were ferocious, with skin showing all-round, from itty-bitty skirts to curve-skimming dresses and crop tops galore— and, amid the throbbing electro and all that skin, I spotted one young woman wearing a dainty corset, laced up at the front. I couldn't stop myself from asking her about it. T love the corset for all sorts of structural and flattering reasons,” replied Lizzy Cohan, a 26-year-old journalism student. She bought this one after she saw the lead singer of a favorite band, the Marias, wearing something similar, and tracked down Christina Montoya, the designer of the California-based brand Stiina. A DM later and measurements sent, Cohan had her corset, which at this party she wore with wide-leg cargos.
Years ago, of course, the corset was something that constrained not just physically but psychologically. In the Victorian era, it created the wasp waist on women, transforming even an expansive midsection into a tiny concave triangle. The effects of long-term wear were extreme: organs were shifted; simply breathing could be a challenge. For these reasons—along with fashion charting a course toward the freedom and social scandale) of flappers—the corset has been, for more than a century, a kind of sartorial Debbie Downer.
This story is from the November 2022 edition of Vogue US.
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This story is from the November 2022 edition of Vogue US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Canvas the City - Martha Diamond captured the brisk energy of Manhattan.
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Are you in pain?” Cadence Dubus, a Brooklyn-based fitness instructor who has developed a program for “fascia release,” asks, sending me spiraling before our session begins. There’s that twinge in my shoulder and the carpal tunnel at night—but aren’t such annoyances simply the conditions of modern life, of getting older? “Some,” I answer, shy to cop to any of it. Dubus then has me walk back and forth, squinting at my gait.
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It was late in the summer in Los Angeles, with all the dry heat and burnished sunlight that implies, and Billie Eilish was sitting in a dark room, busy changing her mind. The singer was halfway through editing the music video she had directed for “Birds of a Feather,” her latest astronomically successful hit song (nearly 1 billion streams) off her latest astronomically successful hit album (nearly 4 billion streams at the time), when she encountered a problem: She realized she hated it. Well, not hated. “I was like, this ain’t it,” she says.
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If the eyes are the window to the soul, then our cheeks are the back door. What other part of the body so readily reveals our hidden emotions? Embarrassment, exuberance, delight, desire, all instantly communicated with a rush of blood. It's no wonder that blush has been a mainstay of makeup bags for decades: Ancient Egyptians used ground ochre to heighten their color; Queen Elizabeth I dabbed her cheeks with red dye and mercuric sulfide (which, combined with the vinegar and lead concoction she used to achieve her ivory pallor, is believed to have given her blood poisoning); flappers applied blush in dramatic circles to achieve a doll-like complexion, even adding it to their knees to draw attention to their shorter hemlines
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Simon Porte Jacquemus, much like his label, resonates with the sunny, breezy French South-but behind the good life, as Nathan Heller discovers, is a laser focus and a shoulder-to-the-wheel work ethic.
