StyleZeitgeist Podcast

Our guest on this episode is Gene Pressman, of the great retail family that made Barneys into a New York fashion institution that has become part of the city lore and that has left an indelible mark on fashion itself. Barneys was a trailblazer, a temple for true fashion cognoscenti. Gene's new book, out September 2nd is called "They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World's Greatest Store." We see no lies; Barneys was the world's greatest store, and we all came there. 

Gene walks us through the ark of his career, through the changes he has witnessed in the store and in New York City since the '60s and through the '90s. He talks about the seismic changes in fashion he has witnessed firsthand, such as the rise of Giorgio Armani, the ascendance of Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, the wonder of the Antwerp Six, and his long-lasting friendship with Azzedine Alaia. We also discuss the current state of fashion and retail, and much, much more. 

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Our guest is Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe, one of the most talented Belgian designers you have probably never heard of. We speak about his career arc, from assisting Josephus Thimister at Balenciaga to building out the womenswear at Jil Sander with Raf Simons, to the short but brilliant life of his own brand, why he quite the fashion rat race and has quietly worked behind the scenes at houses like Loewe, and why the current fashion system is broken.

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The Turkish Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan burst onto the London fashion scene with a brilliant 1993 graduate show Tangent Flows. With work that blended philosophy, science, technology, history and fashion, Chalayan became the pinnacle of conceptual fashion. Today, Chalayan designs and makes art, teaches at HTW in Berlin, and is a mentor at Forecast Mentorship Program 2025. In this wide-ranging episode Chalayan we discuss his career arc and the spirit of intellectual inquiry that has driven him to create some of the most memorable collections in the history of contemporary fashion.

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We are back with the fashion journalist Philippe Pourhashemi to reflect on the Spring / Summer 2026 menswear season. We discuss many collections, starting at Pitti Uomo in Florence and ending with Paris. We dissect J.W. Anderson's debut at Dior, including the new ad campaign, Julian Klaussner's runway debut at Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens's moment of grandeur, Craig Green's return to the Paris catwalk, how the Japanese continue to make Paris look good, what we saw at the showroom and why the best clothes are coming from small brands, and much more. 

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On this episode we speak with the German fashion designer Lutz Huelle, who has built a brand with a cult following from scratch. Lutz tells us about growing up in a small German town in the '80s, his friendship with the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the dream world of the '90s London youth culture and Central Saint-Martins, how he ended up designing the Artisanal and knitwear lines during the golden years of Martin Margiela, and eventually launching his own line in Paris. We discuss the challenges of the fashion system and his teaching job, and speak about why it's important to remain kind in the industry that often isn't.

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Apologies for the hiatus, but we are back with a bang! On this episode we speak with Patrick Scallon, Paris-based communication consultant who was the head of communications at Maison Martin Margiela from 1993 to 2008 and at Dries Van Noten from 2008 to 2023. In the fashion world Patrick is a legend, having helped shape two of the most iconic independent brands. He was awarded the Chevaliers des Arts et des Lettrés by the French ministry of Culture for his contribution to fashion in 2019.

We get into the weeds (hence the feature length of this episode!) of his years at Margiela, discussing how the brand was molded, how it communicated its values, how much creativity was spurred by the lack of resources, how Scallon had to turn down the supermodel Claudia Schiffer, Margiela's biggest market (you will never guess), and the dangers of the current Margiela fetish. Plus, we finally get the truth about whether you were supposed to cut off that infamous label from the garments (the answer may surprise you). 

We also chat about Patrick's time at Dries Van Noten, what made Dries special, how the brand grew during his tenure, the immense work of putting together Van Noten's brilliant 2014 exhibit, and some of the brand's most memorable shows.

Lastly, we speak about what it's like to work in communications, the pressures of the job, how the industry has changed over Patrick's tenure, and what the fashion press could do better.

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On this episode we speak with Robert Williams, Luxury Editor at the Business of Fashion. We start with Robert's unique career journey as an American student in Paris (it wasn't like Emily's), before going on to discuss the challenges of maintaining independence in fashion journalism. We explore the evolving landscape of the fashion industry over the past decade, discussing the intersection of fashion and marketing, the challenges faced by the fashion media, and the impact of consumer behavior on luxury fashion. We examine why heritage brands want to be luxury fashion brands, and the pricing dilemmas that have emerged as brands strive to maintain their luxury status while appealing to a mass audience. In the end Robert turns tables and asks Eugene about his upcoming book and for fashion reading recommendations.

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On this episode we speak with Emily Segal, the founder of the brand strategy agency Nemesis, publishing house Deluge, and the author of the novel Mercury Retrograde. Emily came to fame in the 2010s as the co-founder of the collective K-Hole, which coined the term "normcore." She went on to work with everyone from Prada to Supreme, and learned a few things along the way, some of which we discuss in this episode. We mostly concentrate on two pieces of her writing, the Umami Theory of Value and B for Balenciaga, a brand case study. We discuss why the current culture feels like a postmodernist, meaningless, made-for-Instagram slop, or as Emily writes, "Umami is what you got when you did not get anything," why Balenciaga is a cultural apex predator, a vortex that sucks in cultural artifacts and spits them out as memes, why Demna's irony is hollow, whether he will succeed at Gucci, and much more besides.  

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We are back with Philippe Pourhashemi to review the women’s Fall / Winter 2025 season. We discuss the debuts of Veronica Leoni at Calvin Klein, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten. We also give our impressions of what is likely to be the last collection of Daniel Lee at Burberry, and dive into the shows of Undercover, Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons and more.

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Natasha Degen, the chair of Art Market Studies at Fashion Institute of Technology and the author of Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion after Andy Warhol, is back on the podcast to discuss the ever more insidious relationship between fashion and art. We discuss her concept of Art Pop, which are commercial ventures that are given an air of an art project, what the second rounds of collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama signify, and why fashion is increasingly getting into film, TV, and books and literature.

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