Yesterday saw the launch of M90, an “urban breathing mask” created by the Swedish company Airinum and sold in more than 50 countries. Face masks are already a common sight in Asian countries, although the cheap washable cotton rectangles rarely perform well in tests. Surgical masks, the type usually worn by doctors, have tended […]
Category Archives: Fashion
For The First Time, CoverGirl Ads Feature Woman Wearing A Hijab
CoverGirl is featuring a woman wearing a hijab in its advertising for the first time in the makeup line’s history. Beauty blogger Nura Afia is featured wearing the traditional Muslim head covering in an ad campaign for a new line of mascara that also includes singer Katy Perry and actress Sofia Vergara. Afia says […]
Just my type: how fashion became all about the font
As with any obsession that encourages rummaging into minutiae, fashion’s current font preoccupation has schisms probably being debated heatedly on page 23 of a thread on The Fashion Spot. Broadly speaking, to put it in font language, it’s all about serif and sans-serif. For everyone else, it’s the fonts with the curly edges on the […]
Stella McCartney’s flashmob finale ditches strutting for dancing
McCartney’s fashion week raison d’être has always been about more than aesthetics. Her pioneering anti-fur and anti-leather stance, widely considered the hippy eccentricity of a Beatles daughter when she launched her label 15 years ago, has since been adopted by Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Giorgio Armani. Last week, her brand released its first […]
H&M’s diverse advert mirrors the real world. Shame the ad industry doesn’t
Diversity is so hot right now. Take H&M’s new television advert for its autumn/winter 2016 collection, for example, which features a range of women including: • Black women with natural hair • Women with shaved heads • A muscular woman • Action shots of women’s wobbly bits wobbling • A thin woman eating french fries […]
How the first world war liberated women’s wardrobes
News of an interesting new exhibition, Fashion & Freedom, at the Manchester Art Gallery from 13 May – 27 November 2016. It’s then touring – see this page for details. As well as what Helen Pidd writing for The Guardian calls the obvious ‘upsides’ (you know, peace and all that): the war liberated women from their […]
A plain woman’s guide to nylon for her husband
A brilliant (for all the wrong reasons) article from 1958 in which a Guardian journalist pondered the place of nylon in a man’s wardrobe. Does the tired business man slosh it through in the bathroom basin, rinse, and drape over the edge of the bath or over the towel rail, to leave a puddle on […]
Fearless polymaths: irrelevance and creativity
The worst thing that ever happened to universities was when someone had the bright idea of creating disciplines, instead of allowing students to explore a range of subjects. Education is supposed to broaden the mind. Now it narrows it.
Fashion lessons from Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I think this is a piss-take by Hannah Marriott for The Guardian, but you can never tell. So I’ll mostly be wearing orange and black this season Captain Phasma’s mask is sleek – very on-trend silver coupled with a sexy off-the-shoulder cape – but the storm troopers’ monochrome styling and dark glasses are unequivocally the […]
Netflix made socks that know when you’ve fallen asleep while binge watching
The socks use a method of rest and activity monitoring known as actigraphy. So a built-in accelerometer will wait for you to stop moving for a prolonged period of time before sending a signal to the TV to prevent you from losing your place in Mad Men for the 20th time. An LED light will […]