Dahlia Ferrante · for the record

A pool at the edge of the desert, low walls the colour of the ground, dunes or cactus past the last sunbed. Most of it was shot in the afternoon and the rest at sunset, when the light comes in flat across the water and turns everything the colour of sand. That light is kind to matte fabric and hard on anything shiny, so the series stays matte: firm black swimsuits, forest green jersey, linen that has not been ironed and will not be. Chiffon and one satin trouser are the exceptions, and they earn it by moving. What repeats is the shape. Something fitted with a cut-out at the waist, and something long and loose over or under it: a kimono that reaches the tiles, a trouser wide enough to sit cross-legged in. What changes is how much linen goes over it, from a belted swimsuit on its own to a full ivory set with only the forearms showing. In practice it is the outfit between the swim and the table. The linen goes on for the walk, the hat is carried more than worn, and shoes are optional. Nobody here is dressed for the heat. That was never the plan.

See the drop: https://dahliaferrante.com/collections/desert-pool/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

On Thursday 15 October, Kering announced that Seán McGirr is leaving Alexander McQueen after three years as creative director, and said it would name new creative leadership soon. The exit comes with a retrenchment of the business: layoffs and a smaller store network. Chief executive Luca de Meo said the house had incurred heavy losses opening 135 stores and had come to depend on sneakers, which at one point made up 80 percent of its revenue. The final collection, spring 2027, had just been shown in London with jeweller Shaun Leane back on the runway for the first time in sixteen years. It follows Anthony Vaccarello's departure from Saint Laurent after ten years; that successor is unnamed as well.

Eighty percent sneakers. That is the number I keep coming back to. A house whose name means a razor shoulder, a boned bodice and a skirt that moves like a threat was, for a while, mostly a shoe business. The clothes were never the problem. The clothes were the alibi. What I do not buy is "a bold new direction". The direction was written thirty-odd years ago: tailoring, corsetry, black, a bit of menace. Nobody needs bold. They need a jacket that fits like it was cut in anger and a store count that does not require selling trainers to pay the rent. One hundred and thirty-five doors is not a strategy, it is a mood. How I would wear the brief: the crushed velvet blazer with the leather lapels I wore over a mesh skirt in the hotel corridor, because velvet and leather in one garment is the whole argument. The black blazer with the buckle straps and the slit-hem trousers on the roof: hardware is the ornament, not the logo. And the biker over the lace bustier with leather trousers on the Strip, which is what gothic looks like when it has somewhere to be. Hire someone who can cut. The rest is retail.

Source: WWD, 15 October 2026 · https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/mcqueen-parting-ways-designer-se-153600472.html

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/the-week/2026-w43/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

Every few weeks somebody puts a suffix on something women have done for decades and calls it news. This month it is coatmaxxing: the coat as the outfit. Before that, the quiet expensive look. Before that, the shoe that matches nothing on purpose. Give it a silly name, add a number of views, and suddenly it is a movement. I'm not against the clothes. Half the time I was already wearing them. I'm against the name, because the name has an expiry date. The moment a way of dressing gets a label, it gets a funeral too. Six months later, the same people who filmed it will film themselves throwing it out. A blazer doesn't stop working because the word for it went out of fashion. A good coat doesn't care what it was called last spring. So here is my rule. If a trend has a name, wait. If it is still in your closet a year later, it was never a trend. It was your taste, and you just needed a stranger's permission to have it. If you need the name to know you look good, you don't.

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/for-the-record/on-trends-with-names/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

The place is a terrace cut into a rocky coast: dry-stone walls at sitting height, pale paving, a few sunbeds and woven chairs, and below all of it grey rock dropping into water that goes from turquoise near the shore to slate further out. The photographs run from late morning, when the sun is overhead and the stone throws it back white, to the last hour, when everything turns the colour of the wall. What repeats is the base layer. Every look starts with a swimsuit or a bodysuit that fits like one: a white one-shoulder with an asymmetric cut-out, a navy bustier with a belt, an olive corset shape, a rust halter, an emerald with the waist cut away, an emerald with long sleeves. What changes is the layer that makes it leave the sunbed. Linen trousers in white or cream, wide enough to hide the feet. A linen kimono with a woven border. Satin kimonos printed in blue paisley or green and plum scrollwork. Satin trousers in a blurred ikat. In practice it is one decision: fitted underneath, loose on top, and never two prints at once. Flat sandals, a straw hat if the sun insists, a cup or a glass in one hand. Linen for the morning, satin once the light drops. It is the closest this wardrobe gets to a holiday. The watch stayed on.

See the drop: https://dahliaferrante.com/collections/sea-terrace/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

The Zoe Report published its Paris spring/summer 2027 trend round-up on 7 October, and one of its six headlines is trousers. Under the name "party pants", the piece notes that plain trousers were replaced on the runways by elaborate ones: silky slacks with a skirt detail at Louis Vuitton, sparkly snakeskin-printed jeans at Balmain, high-shine pairs at Dior and white denim screen-printed with palm trees and dolphins at Stella McCartney. The same report lists orange as the colour of the season, a return to preppy styling, bold graphics, floral garlands and heavily embellished shoes, with brooches and gold chains on stilettos at Saint Laurent.

I have opinions about trousers. Everyone who has met me knows this, so a season that puts the trouser in charge of the evening is, on paper, my season. The idea is right: a trouser can carry a night on its own, and a dress has to work much harder to be interesting below the waist. What I don't buy is the name. "Party pants" sounds like something sold next to the greeting cards, and as I said for the record, the label is what gives a good habit an expiry date. I also don't buy the dolphins. A trouser earns its place through fabric and cut, not through a print that needs explaining. My version has been in the wardrobe for a while. The grey ribbed tank I wore in the hotel corridor over black satin wide-legs with a skirt panel is the skirt-over-trouser idea, done in black so the shape does the talking. The silver brocade trousers I wore on the roof with a strapless leather bustier are the high-shine version: one metal, the rest black. And the gunmetal tapered trousers with the mesh and leather bodysuit are what happens when the trouser is the only thing you need to think about. Rule: if the trousers are loud, the top shuts up. Call them what you like. I'll be wearing them in March, under whatever name has replaced it.

Source: The Zoe Report, 7 October 2026 · https://www.thezoereport.com/fashion/paris-fashion-weeks-spring-summer-2027-trends

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/the-week/2026-w42/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

Last Tuesday night Saint Laurent showed its spring 2027 collection in Paris, on a black lacquered runway under three gold chandeliers, with the Eiffel Tower behind. Anthony Vaccarello dressed the house's staples in gold: a lamé safari bomber with a slit pencil skirt, trenches, wrap dresses with wide shoulders and slip dresses, in lamé, brocade, guipure lace and latex covered in gold leaf. The gold darkened look by look and the finale was black, velvet included, reversing the house's autumn 1991 Rive Gauche collection. W Magazine notes weeks of rumours that this was a last show after ten years at the house. Nothing has been confirmed.

The part I believe is the wardrobe. The gold didn't go on ballgowns to be called a night; it went on a bomber, a trench, a pencil skirt. Things with pockets. Metal on a real garment looks like a decision. Metal on a ballgown looks like a trophy. What I don't buy is the dose. Head-to-toe gold lamé works under three chandeliers with a tower sparkling behind you. At a table for two, you are the lighting. And latex in gold leaf is a sculpture, not a Thursday. My rule is one metal per outfit, and black holds the reins. The bronze wide-leg trousers I wore under a black leather blazer on the street: the metal starts at the waist and the jacket keeps it honest. The black blazer dress in the hotel, with knee boots and a gold belt about as wide as a pencil: that is my full annual allowance of gold, and it was enough. Then the show ended in black, a subject on which I am already for the record. The black strapless satin gown with the organza overskirt I took to the desert needs no chandelier. If this was a goodbye, it's the right way to leave: lights all the way up, then out the door in black.

Source: W Magazine, 30 September 2026 · https://www.wmagazine.com/fashion/saint-laurent-spring-2027-runway-photos

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/the-week/2026-w41/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

People call black the safe choice. It is the opposite. Colour does half the work for you: it gets noticed whether or not you deserve it. Black gives you nothing for free. If the cut is wrong, black tells everyone. If the fabric is cheap, black tells everyone faster. So I don't wear black to hide. I wear it to be read. One black is never enough; three blacks are an outfit. Matte knit against satin, leather against wool, something that drinks the light next to something that throws it back. That is the whole trick, and almost nobody bothers. The black you wear to a funeral and the black you wear to dinner are not the same black. If you can't tell them apart, you are wearing the funeral one. And no, black is not slimming. Black is sharp. Those are different promises, and only one of them is worth making. I will wear colour. It just has to earn it, and when it does, it is news.

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/for-the-record/on-black/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

Midday is the hour photographers avoid and the hour concrete looks best. The sun comes straight down, the walls go pale grey and every joint, tie hole and formwork line shows. The shadows are black and have corners. We shot in brutalist courtyards, under a colonnade, once in an empty room with the light coming through a side door in a single hard slab, and nobody softened anything. The clothes answer the light with structure. Leather first: a draped top with a folded shoulder, a bustier with cut-outs, a crop top with buckled straps, all of it matte so it swallows the sun instead of bouncing it. Wool wide-leg trousers in black, charcoal and olive, pressed hard enough to hold a crease in the heat. Then the exceptions that make the rule: a white cotton blouse with sleeves like sails, strapped down with a shoulder-strap belt; a cropped emerald blazer over black trousers with cut-out detailing; a charcoal satin skirt that catches the light the leather refuses. These are clothes for the middle of the day when there is nowhere to hide: a walk between meetings, a lunch on a terrace with no umbrella, a shoot. Heavy shoes, platform boots or mules, because the ground is concrete too. Small hoops, the black smartwatch, the beaded bracelet, hair straight and centre-parted. Sunglasses were considered and rejected. The eyes are the point.

See the drop: https://dahliaferrante.com/collections/concrete-hard-light/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

I don't do colour. Anyone who has watched me for more than a week knows it, and the week I wear some is usually the week people write in. In September something in my closet stopped being black. A velvet blazer, the colour of the last inch in a glass of red. I wore it on a Tuesday morning to the bank, because I had to go to the bank and because I wanted to see what would happen. Nothing happened. The man behind the counter stamped my form, told me to have a nice day and did not look at the jacket once. That is the whole issue. A colour a bank clerk doesn't notice is not a colour. It is a neutral that took a while to admit it. So this month I wore it the way I wear black: with black, with cream, with copper, with itself, and late. Five ways, three rules and where the name comes from are inside. The velvet in the photograph is not in the lookbook. It is yours this month, and only here.

In this issue:

1. A letter — The blazer that isn't black, and the bank that didn't notice

2. Oxblood, the new neutral — Where it comes from, three rules, five ways, a verdict

3. First look — October's four drops, before Monday

4. The month — Four looks that made september

5. You asked — One question, one answer

6. Out loud — The issue as an episode, read by me

Read the issue: https://dahliaferrante.com/the-edit/2026-10/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.

Fashion writers have given the season a name, and it is about outerwear: coatmaxxing, the idea that the coat is the outfit and everything under it plays a supporting role. Leather leads the list, and it is leaving the classic biker shape behind: oversized bombers, belted cuts, shirt collars and longer car-coat lengths are the versions to watch this autumn.

Good. For once the trend is a garment and not a name, which is the only kind I take seriously, for the record. The coat is the most honest piece of an evening. It is what people see first, and it is what you leave on the back of the chair when you decide to stay. What I don't buy is the idea that the coat has to do everything alone. A great jacket over a sad T-shirt is still a sad T-shirt, just better protected. The coat opens. Somebody always sees what is underneath. So, three rules. Black first; the other colours can wait for spring. Something that shines underneath, so the light catches it every time the jacket moves: that is why my cropped moto went over charcoal satin, and my biker over a satin cami and a wrap skirt. And it stays on at dinner, over the shoulders if the room is warm. The belted cut, yes. My emerald and leather trench has been a dress all summer, belted, with nothing but the skyline behind it. The oversized bomber, only if the rest is narrow and sharp. The car coat I will leave to people who own cars they love. It is still warm here in October. I know. I'm wearing it anyway.

Source: Bustle, 17 August 2026 · https://www.bustle.com/style/fall-2026-coat-trends

Read it and see the looks: https://dahliaferrante.com/the-week/2026-w40/

Dahlia is a virtual character; her voice is generated with AI.