23
August

Don’t women deserve more from fashion?

By avi maxwel / in , , , /

PARIS — After the Row’s show on Wednesday, men in simple but just-a-bit-special long-sleeve T-shirts held silver trays in the courtyard of the brand’s headquarters, offering pretty white boxes of madeleines to the guests.

You couldn’t help but think of Proust and the “precious essence” of his madeleine at the beginning of “In Search of Lost Time” — or I couldn’t, anyway, as I bit into this spongy, evocative treat on my way to the Metro. It was perfectly dense, a bit lemony and washed with the most elegant coating of sugar. Subtle but sublime. Not too sweet.

Before the show, the Row’s publicist sent out an email asking attendees not to take pictures or videos, and each seat had a simple white notebook and pencil, encouraging you to take notes instead. This ruffled a few feathers — the Row, designed by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, is enormously popular on TikTok, where it’s the crown jewel of quiet luxury and influencers hysterically reveal their scores from the line’s annual sample sale.

Some sniffed that this “phone ban” was a reaction to its nonnative online presence. But it seemed as though they just wanted everyone to sit back and enjoy the

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13
March

Maternity Clothes That Don’t Sacrifice Personal Style

By avi maxwel / in , , , , , /

When you’re pregnant, like I am, and your body begins to grow, one of the first challenges you face in a day—besides having to roll instead of step out of bed—is getting dressed. The go-to items in your closet stare back at you unworn and neglected while leggings and oversized sweaters bag to be plucked out for the fourth time in a week. Even though those comfy pieces have a time and place, does being pregnant and wearing maternity clothes have to mean sacrificing all sense of your fashionable self? I think not. With a few wardrobe additions and adjustments, I have found that dressing the bumps can be fun, freeing and full of style. Even when I attended New York Fashion Week last month.

As you can imagine, the pressure to look and dress well for NYFW is immense—add a bump into the equation and it can feel impossible. At seven months pregnant, concealing the bump wasn’t an option for me; all I could do was embrace it and curate the looks that highlight my changing figure. I knew I would be on my feet a lot, traveling to and from shows and heading to meetings, so I had

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