In the very center of the industry, where form costs more than function and silence is a luxury, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy has found itself trapped in the glare of its own shine. While the flagships’ windows continue to reflect the light above Avenue Montaigne, heat is building in the depths of the corporate body. Leaks of internal information, ethical imbalance, declining sales, and a tremor in trust have all fused into a single term, quietly, almost lexically: luxury malaise — an ailment for which recovery cannot be purchased, only the acknowledgment that the system needs shade. Not retouching, not injections, not performative growth, but a pause. Against the backdrop of the second quarter of 2025, when the market expected signs of strength from LVMH, reports seeped into the press: group sales fell by 4%, profit by 15%, and the key fashion and leather goods segment suffered most — down 9%. On its own, a moderately worrying signal, considering post-pandemic volatility and a slowdown in Chinese consumption. But the issue wasn’t the numbers, it was the backdrop. The media noise surrounding the release of results was not just loud — it was narratively awkward. Headlines no longer delivered the usual confidence. Where “growth” normally appears, there was now “fatigue.” And even HSBC, in an attempt to soothe the market, framed its main thought like this: “It’s rough… but won’t get rougher.” For the titans of luxury, already a defeat. Yet perhaps the most important part of this situation is not the drop in figures, but the drop in illusion. The very structure of the group — its advertising tempo, its algorithmically accelerated production of meanings, product collaborations, and ambassadors — has reached a phase where external gloss collides with internal overload. And here appears the first crack: leaks. How data within LVMH ended up in the hands of journalists remains a question that the press office has carefully skirted. But the fact remains that contract schemes, supply chain locations, contractor names, and procurement policy details have escaped. This became possible not because of technical vulnerability, but because of the architectural pressure of the system itself: too many players, too many entry points, and — too much speed. And suddenly it is not Dior dictating the tempo, but a Telegram channel. Not Givenchy creating intrigue, but a PDF document sent by an anonymous source the night before the quarterly report’s release. The second layer of the story concerns labor ethics. According to an investigation published alongside the report, outsourcing structures were found in the supply chains of several of the group’s brands that practice questionable working conditions in South Asia, some with accusations of excessive overtime, unsanitary conditions, and violations of minimal social standards. And although LVMH quickly issued a statement about “isolated incidents” and “work to improve practices,” these words no longer carry their former crisis-management power. Today’s consumer — especially in the premium segment — tends to associate themselves not only with the aesthetics but with the ethics of a brand. To fall in this aspect is like overturning a mirror. The third crack is visual and commercial fatigue. The gloss no longer warms — it blinds. When each season carries five to ten creative launches, when a single brand simultaneously presents capsules, NFTs, celebrity installations, and a new fragrance line, even the loyal customer begins to lose focus. Abundance ceases to be a gift. It becomes noise. And luxury, historically built on the economy of scarcity, loses its strategic silence. This moment is exactly what the term luxury malaise captures — literally “luxury malaise,” but pointing not to illness, rather to overheating. Overuse, overexposure, overpromising. When luxury loses the right to pause, it loses its value. And more and more often, instead of attraction comes the weary “Again?” at yet another launch. Why does LVMH need so many lines at once? Why a news item every week, a launch every month, a major report every quarter? Because the system does not allow for pause. Because the spotlight doesn’t know how to turn off. And yet this is precisely what becomes the signal for shade. Why does this matter right now? Because for the first time in many years, the very language of luxury has settled. Its aesthetic force is thinning. The marketing palette, honed over decades — from Matelassé to Monogram — is starting to feel mechanical. Phrases from press releases have become predictable. Even the visual solutions in campaigns seem to repeat themselves: staircases, silhouettes, twilight gazes, slowed walks, leather, light, drapery. Still beautiful, but now — without risk. Which is why the question that should be asked in this situation is: perhaps the brand truly needs shade? A place without a camera. Silence. The absence of a release. A retreat into deep work with materials, not images. Reinterpretation. Total reduction. Turning off the algorithm, even if it leads to a temporary loss of momentum. And in this sense, as paradoxical as it sounds, the current crisis could be a rare opportunity. An opportunity to return to essence. To remember that luxury is not KPIs and not stock prices, but the architecture of experience. It is texture, not volume. It is the silence after the show has ended but the feeling remains. Not a new collection, but a new quiet. Luxury has always lived in the pause, and when it is deprived of the pause, it ceases to be luxury. What is happening with LVMH is not catastrophe. It is a marker. A signal. The beginning of a new cycle, where the winner will not be the loudest but the most resilient. Not the fastest, but the most precise. In an era where the market is overheated and the language of luxury oversaturated, it may be that shade becomes the new light. Not as refusal, but as strategy. And while luxury malaise travels through the feeds of BoF, HSBC, WSJ, and Telegram channels, a new awareness is ripening within the industry: pause is not failure. Pause is potential. And perhaps the greatest luxury of the 21st century is the right to one’s own shade.

i didn’t hear the hammer fall, but i felt the room at sotheby’s grow quieter—not the kind of quiet when everyone holds their breath, but the kind that remains when something real slips out of sight and passes into another dimension, into the place where it is no longer the object that speaks, but memory. jane birkin’s bag had been sold. not “one of,” but the one. the bag made for her in 1984, on a flight between paris and london, when she—young, bold, with hair gathered in a careless knot—complained to jean-louis dumas that her woven basket wasn’t spacious enough. she described her ideal bag: soft, leather, practical, feminine but without fuss. dumas sketched it on a napkin. the birkin was born out of fatigue, out of spontaneity, out of the need to simply be herself. the bag that went under the hammer for over eight million euros held not gold but traces. black box leather, the color of inky night—worn like a diary carried without a cover. brass hardware—dimmed like rings on fingers you haven’t taken off for years, not even in the shower. a strap that could not be removed. nail clippers tied to the handle—like a pendant, like a relic, like a sly mockery of everything called functionality. she used that bag for nine years. not like a glossy-magazine heroine, but like a woman whose hands were full—with a child, a notebook, a cigarette, a life. it wasn’t an accessory. it was a stage. the bag as theatre, as a letter without text, where every seam was a phrase, every scratch a memory. she carried it to the supermarket, to film sets, to protests. not carefully, not reverently. without display-case distance. because a real object lives. and lives with the body. when it was put up for auction, the lot description read: “the original birkin. 1985. black box leather. jb initials.” but what can you say about a woman who lived part of her life with an object, beyond initials? what can you write in a listing beyond weight and year, if at the bottom of that bag there were crumbs, letters, rouge, candy wrappers, coins, keys to apartments where she no longer lived? nine people fought for it. the bidding lasted ten minutes. then silence. the hammer. the final nod. the winner—a japanese collector. the question remains: what did he buy? leather? rarity? history? or the right to keep what a woman left behind—like a scent on a scarf, like a note on a wall? jane parted with that bag in 1994—at a charity auction to support an aids foundation. she let it go easily, as if it had never owed her anything. it wasn’t a rejection. it was moving forward. because women who know who they are don’t hold on to things. they let them go on living. after. without them. that’s what those who are sure of themselves do—even in scuffed shoes, even with hair undone. you don’t feel luxury when you look at photos of that birkin. you feel a body. a woman’s body. warm. unshowy. a body that lived in paris. slept with the window open. spoke in a mix of english and french. cried in the kitchen when no one saw. laughter. cold hands. a manicure. a bag full of life that needs no translation. now it’s gone. to tokyo, perhaps into storage. or into a private collection, behind glass. but as the hammer fell, i thought of my own bag. not a birkin. not worth millions. just the one i carried for six years. in it there’s still powder. a letter. a key that opens nothing. i don’t throw it away. i hold it the way you hold someone else’s letters—with care, with warmth, with gratitude. jane birkin’s letter isn’t in her autobiography. it’s in that bag. it’s unwritten. it’s lived. like the rhythm of a walk, like a voice, like a glance. and we, women, keep reading it. every time we take our own bag. every time we put our stories inside. every time we stuff it with everything—because we always carry a little more than it seems. i believe it wasn’t the brand that made the birkin. jane made it real. and when the brand wanted to replicate the form, it was already filled with meaning. because the true form is the one that holds the impression of a woman—not her style, her presence. the sotheby’s scene wasn’t about luxury. it was a moment of silence into which a woman entered—through an object, through a life, through what cannot be faked. because breath left on leather cannot be cloned. if you ask me if i want such a bag, i’ll say i already have one. not by name. by essence. it knows me. and that is enough.

He was born in Gibraltar, in air that smelled of salt, port ropes, and a distant wind from Africa. From day one, his gaze didn't wander over toys but over the folds of his mother's dresses—he noticed how the fabric breathed with every step, how the light played on the hem, how the hem could betray joy or fear. From the age of three, he could watch for hours as his mother tied a scarf, as she rolled up her sleeves, and he saw in these movements not everyday life but drama. He didn't want to be a knight, like other boys—he wanted to be the one who sewed the king's cloak. When the family moved to South London, he found himself in a neighborhood with the smell of fried fish, gasoline, and rain on cobblestones. The dirty shop windows reflected his thin face with burning eyes, and John dreamed not of knightly swords but of mantles for heroines who saved not the world but their pride. He walked the streets as if in a play: puddles under his feet seemed like mirrors for imaginary shows. Even school corridors were catwalks for him—he imagined that one day women would walk down them in dresses he would sew, and their heels would beat in time with his inner music. At home, he built castles out of pillows and wrapped himself in curtains, imagining himself as a mannequin in a palace hall. A ball went on in his head every night, a new character was born every day. He memorized the color of the old carpet in the living room, the texture of the sofa covers, how the leather of the armchair cracked under his fingers—he absorbed everything like a sponge, and this became his language. In his teens, he was too strange for his peers: he wore his grandmother's scarves, sewed feathers and scraps of tulle to his school blazer, and dyed his hair in strange colors long before it became fashionable. His classmates teased him, but he wasn't angry—he imagined how one day they would be captivated by his shows. And in those moments, he felt not like an outcast but a harbinger of a great show. In the evenings, he locked himself in his room and drew silhouettes of women on old newspapers with waists narrower than a quill, with shoulders resembling palace cornices, with eyes full of cold fire. He didn't just invent clothes—he created heroines: divorced duchesses, midnight murderers with scarlet lips, witches in lace dresses that seemed to choose whom to curse. After entering Central Saint Martins, he found his flock—the air there smelled of wet ink, old mannequins, and hopes for a revolution. Every corridor of the institute was like a labyrinth where students didn't sleep at night and cut the world according to their own rules. John was a fanatic: he could go for weeks without going outside, experimenting with fabrics, burning holes in silk, dropping drops of paint on velvet to understand how they would soak in and dry. He carried scissors with him, like a pianist carries notes. His 1984 graduation collection, "Les Incroyables," was more than a graduate show: it was the resurrection of the terror of the Great French Revolution, but through the prism of punk and decadence. Models in cloaks, with torn jabots, with asymmetrical vests, walked the runway like characters from Jacques-Louis David's engravings, but with a crazy gleam in their eyes. The atmosphere was like in an underground theater: part grotesque, part brilliant revelation. This collection was bought right off the runway—no one could remember such a thing happening to a graduate. This is how the John Galliano brand was born, which immediately began to sew stories, not just things. In his first workshop, the walls were hung with prints of 18th-century paintings, newspaper clippings about bohemian scandals, and tiny paper dolls on which he experimented with draping. The atmosphere there was like an alchemical laboratory: everywhere were scraps of fabric, hooks, feathers, silk ribbons, the dye-stained hands of assistants, and John, flying between the tables with a cigarette, the smoke of which smelled of a mixture of vanilla and tobacco. Every morning he began by dousing himself with cold water to wake up in his madness, and then put on a suit that looked as if a mad marquis had sewn it: a floor-length cloak, a shirt with ruffles, a vest with gold buttons. He didn't just work—he lived as a character in his own show, not turning off the drama even outside the atelier door. In his notebooks, ideas for ballet tutus flashed, but not from tulle, like classic ballerinas, but from hard, shiny leather the color of hematite and inky black coal. These tutus were supposed to stick out like thorns, exposing the silhouette, making the waist look like the neck of an hourglass, and with every turn, they would cast glints like a mirror ball in a dirty cabaret. His drapes resembled either tofu, a whirlpool, or a wound pulled together with threads. And his dresses, which he called "curtains after a fire," were born like this: he would take old velvet the color of dried blood and literally set fire to its tips so that the pile melted and writhed, leaving charred holes along the hem. He would then soak the fabric in tea and coffee to give it the shade of a rotten rose with stains, like the ceilings in an abandoned theater. The draping in these dresses fell asymmetrically—one side could stretch to the floor with a shaggy fringe, the other would be pulled up like a torn piece of a curtain. When the model walked the runway, these scraps rustled and fluttered, as if in the wind among burnt walls. For Galliano, fabric was not passive: he loved for the material to live its own life, to resist. If silk was too smooth—he crumpled it in the dirt to knock off the shine. If taffeta rustled too loudly—he cut the fibers to make the sound muffled and hoarse, like the sigh of a dying diva. He chose every color with a diabolical intent: copper, like the oxide of old chandeliers; gray-green, like mold on the walls of an opera house; dark plum, like clotted blood in theatrical makeup. In his collection sketches, notes appeared: "Make the fabric look like an old bedspread from Madame de Pompadour's bedroom" or "Add the smell of dust to every fold so the dress smells of oblivion." He didn't just create things—he wanted clothes to become an archive of emotions: fear, desire, betrayal. It was during this period that he began to understand: beauty is not perfection, but shock. He didn't dream of a woman in his dress looking cute, he wanted her to look as if she had just won a duel. Every fold, every cut line was a challenge to boredom. His mannequins stood on the runway not as models but as actresses on the scaffold—their clothes didn't just adorn, they screamed.When John Galliano became the creative director of Dior in 1996, he didn't arrive—he broke in like a hurricane with the smell of powder and wind from a junkyard of old decorations. Dior at the time was a respectable house with archives smelling of dry flowers and memories of the post-war New Look, but Galliano turned this heritage into a backdrop for an opera without rules. Every one of his shows was like a masquerade ball on the ruins of an empire. In the spring-summer 1998 collection, he gathered models who looked like decadent sirens with eyes outlined with black eyeliner an inch thick and lips the color of clotted blood. Their hair lay in greasy waves, like women who had slept the night on a train from Shanghai to Berlin. The clothes were wrapped in layers of taffeta the color of yellow tobacco, crimson wine, dirty pearl; corsets were pulled so tight that the models' backs resembled a cathedral arch. In Dior Haute Couture autumn-winter 2000, Galliano staged a performance where models appeared in crowns of copper thorns, like saints from the iconostasis of hell. Their dresses shone like a dragon's scales: embroideries of millions of glass beads, hand-stitched, caught every light on the runway and reflected it with a thousand microscopic glints, so that the hall resembled a mosaic pattern of a medieval palace. He loved to turn the runway into a moving painting: models walked like actresses from Eisenstein's films, with anguish, with contorted poses, as if every movement was cut from the air with a knife. In the spring-summer 2004 show, women came out in kimonos that, when viewed from the front, looked like monumental constructions, and from the back, they scattered into silk petals, cut from strips of fabric the color of a fading rose, graphite snow, a lunar eclipse. As they moved, the fabric rustled as if someone was slowly tearing the pages of an ancient book. He paid special attention to hats: his favorite milliner Stephen Jones created constructions that were larger than the models' heads—multi-meter spirals resembling spiral staircases, or felt discs from which ribbons dangled like tongues of flame. These hats always created the feeling that a woman could fly away with them at any moment—not from this world, but into her own crazy kingdom. On one of Galliano's signature shows, models walked down a runway laid with mirrored tiles in dresses that looked like old circus posters: striped corsets the color of black coal and dirty gold, skirts with ruffles like can-can dancers, but instead of fun—faces full of arrogance and indifference, like empresses who are tired of ruling. His love for theater was expressed not only in the clothes but also in the atmosphere: at his shows, he filled the hall with the smell of incense, released smoke with the smell of hot iron so that the audience felt as if they were in a cathedral or on a battlefield. The music was always a mix: the ringing of bells, the screech of violins, and then suddenly—electronics with a ragged beat. It was an attack on the senses, a real obsession. In his Dior, you could see precious fabrics that Galliano treated as if he wanted to destroy their perfection: he cut the edges, made burns, tore seams to give them the look of survivors of a fire. The velvet was the color of clotted blood, the satin was the color of chalk on a judge's board, and the lace was the color of ash. No designer has done more to show fashion as both a weapon and a spectacle: in Galliano's shows for Dior, women didn't just walk the runway, they dominated, shocked, seduced. In their eyes, you could read: "You want me, but you are not worthy." Each dress was not an item of clothing but a theatrical prop that turned them into witches, queens, courtesans, pirates.Galliano always knew how to make people at his shows speechless. When he staged Dior shows at the Grand Palais, women in the front rows forgot how to breathe: they clutched their pearl necklaces, their lips parted when a model came out in a dress with a skirt of golden tulle that shimmered like dust on gladiator armor. Men in classic suits exchanged glances because they felt that this was not just a show, but an attack on their idea of decency. The looks in the hall burned like candles at the funeral of the old order. But how could a man who started every morning with ecstasy not burn out? By 2010, John was not just a designer—he was a rock star of fashion. Each show demanded more and more emotion from him, more and more performance. And the evenings became longer and longer: alcohol, substances, sleepless nights in the studio, when he tore up patterns with cries of "This is too boring!", threw away fabric and started all over again. In February 2011, he went into the La Perle cafe in Paris. Tired, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he began to shout, as witnesses say, anti-Semitic insults. Someone filmed it on a phone. This video went viral faster than his best collections: within a day, it had circled the globe. Dior, which at the time had an absolute intolerance for any racist statements, fired him almost immediately. For the industry that had deified him yesterday, he became a leper. You should have seen the faces of people at the shows in those days: glossy magazine editors walked the Dior catwalks with lost eyes, as if someone had torn out their heart. Rumors about what would happen next hung in the air like smoke at his shows: who would replace him? Could anyone make Dior not just beautiful again, but as exciting as a thriller? Many cried in the dressing rooms: for the Dior team, it was the end of an era. Galliano disappeared. For several years, he did not appear in public, underwent treatment, paid his debts, tried to get his life back on track. In fashion, his name became like an incantation: you say it—and everyone is shaken by a mixture of delight and shame. In 2014, he suddenly returned, and not just anywhere, but to Maison Margiela—a brand where the philosophy of anonymity and deconstruction always reigned. Galliano became a puppeteer again, but with a different temperament: in Margiela, he found a new side. He began to assemble couture looks as if he were sculpting them from the ashes of his old self. The dresses looked like puzzles of fabrics torn to shreds, the colors were like dust on stained glass: pale turquoise, gray with a pink undertone, bronze that looked like green moss on a statue. At one show, models came out in capes of mesh with pieces of vinyl, like glass after an explosion, their faces smeared white, like the masks of spirits from Japanese theater. The audience sighed as in a church when the organ sounds. Someone whispered: "He's back." The music there was also mesmerizing: electronics with a crunch, as if someone was breaking ice, superimposed on the looped sounds of footsteps in an empty corridor. It wasn't music—it was a nightmare in a dream that was impossible not to watch to the end. But in May 2024, it became known that John Galliano was officially leaving Maison Margiela. The news passed like an earthquake through the fashion industry: everyone understood that he had gone back into the shadows, leaving behind emptiness and a tremor. The name Galliano is still spoken in a whisper—like the name of a spirit who knows how to turn fabric into phantasmagoria and shows into a theatrical orgasm. But the return of this ghost to Dior is impossible in a reality where money is more important than madness. In the LVMH offices, they prefer smooth, predictable collections that don't make the audience blush or clench their glasses from too sharp a beauty. Today's Dior is building polished palaces where no ruffle will explode in flame and no hat will be covered in the rust of history. After his exile, everything changed: couture houses began to tiptoe, fashion stopped hissing and growling, as if it had been trained not to bite. The catwalks were cleared of the smell of tobacco smoke and fear, the fabric stopped rustling with threat, and the models stopped looking like demons in silk. Shows turned into polished presentations, where every drape is measured like a lawyer's cold gaze. Instead of dresses that look like living shards of dreams, they now sew neat capsules for impeccable women who don't want to risk even their facial expression. Luxury has become like a museum where it's inappropriate to laugh loudly, and anguish and pain have been replaced by endless beige tranquility.

Paris, 1925. The runways have yet to learn the word “avant-garde,” but women are already beginning to move differently. They shed corsets not out of rebellion, but for the sake of breath. At this moment, at the intersection of fashion and refined bourgeois audacity, the name Marcel Rochas emerges — not a tailor, but more a composer of lines, a conductor of curves. At twenty-two, he opens Maison Rochas to create dresses not for shop windows, but for women who walk, breathe, and live their days with movement in their fabrics. He senses immediately: women’s fashion is not theater. It is the home, the street, the automobile, the dinner table. Rochas brings coats into couture wardrobes, designs dresses with pockets — unthinkable at the time — and unites aesthetics with utility without betraying sensuality. He does not sketch the idealized woman — he sews her life. But the legend lies not in the fabrics. It lies in how Rochas could capture time before it became fashion. By 1934 he is dressing actresses and society muses, but in the 1940s his style becomes a code for a new elegance — one that recalled Dior, yet resonated more intimately. His silhouette was not an architectural manifesto, but a muted breath. In 1945, against the backdrop of post-war Europe, Rochas launches Femme, still called one of the greatest fragrances of the 20th century. Its formula, by master perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, would go on to shape entire eras. Femme smelled of peach, oakmoss, and leather — not as a metaphor for the body, but as a nakedness of memory. The fragrance inhabited the woman not as an icon, but as a personal story. Marcel Rochas becomes one of the first designers to understand the power of perfume as the extension of a dress. He works on packaging graphics, the visual identity of the bottle, creating — long before branding existed — his own code: Rochas is when silk smells like skin. In 1955, at only forty-nine, Marcel dies. His wife, Hélène Rochas, takes the helm, preserving the tone — not expanding, not breaking, but prolonging the breath. She opens the Rochas fashion school, yet the house slowly recedes into the background. Designers change, but none leave a foundational mark. Unlike Chanel, where Karl became a second myth, or Dior, where each step lands with thunder, Rochas lives in a whisper. Its elegance proves too restrained for the 1980s and 1990s. Then, in 2002, Rochas unexpectedly rises again. It is resurrected by Olivier Theyskens — a young Belgian already known for his theatrical subtlety. He does for Rochas what Sarah Burton would later do for McQueen: he returns a soul to fashion. His collections from 2002 to 2006 are haute couture without the need for spectacle. Velvet with misty wool, floral dresses like watercolor, silhouettes in which a woman seemed the heroine of a novel. He was a genius of quiet intensity — and it was in this form that Rochas spoke again. But — finances. Procter & Gamble, owner of the brand, shutters its fashion arm, focusing on perfumes. In 2006, Rochas leaves the runway once more. The house vanishes again. After Theyskens’ departure in 2006, Rochas fades from the catwalk like scent from skin — not instantly, but in stages, leaving behind layers of memory. Only the fragrance line remains, and in the hands of Procter & Gamble the brand exists as a trail without a body. Femme, Alchimie, Lumière — perfumes from different eras that seemed to open abandoned attics of feminine memory. But fashion remains silent. In 2010, the label is acquired by Interparfums — the French perfume giant known for contracts with Lanvin and Montblanc. Interparfums decides to return Rochas to fashion: the body must match the spirit. A slow revival begins. In 2013, Marco Zanini, known for his work at Gianfranco Ferré, becomes creative director. He breathes a new European melancholy into Rochas: volumes recalling Balenciaga in the Cristóbal years, patterns like 1940s porcelain, fabrics that did not shine but seemed to listen. Zanini creates a living archive of sensuality, but departs in 2014. He is succeeded by Alessandro Dell’Acqua, founder of No. 21, ushering in an Italian chapter. His Rochas is more contemporary, ironic, corporeal. Pussy-bow blouses, lurex tights, deliberately girlish ballet flats as if from a 1960s keepsake box. He remains until 2020 — until the pandemic arrives, and fashion once again seeks a voice from the street, not the balcony. Today, in 2025, the house of Rochas stands in a state of restrained reboot. Its creative director is Charlotte Lafayette, a young Frenchwoman from Lanvin, who presented her first capsule collection in autumn 2024. Her Rochas is like silence from which any sound can be shaped. This is not yet a rebirth, but already a pulse. The pieces appear not on runways, but in lookbooks sent to a chosen press. Rochas once again chooses silence as its language. Fragrance is its parallel life. Femme, as a cult, lives on in reissues. In recent years Rochas has released Mademoiselle Rochas, Byzance, Girl. The last became almost viral on TikTok, positioned as a “clean” perfume without parabens, aligned with the neuro-aesthetics of Gen Z. It is a game in new eco-mindedness, yet in the glass bottle one still hears Roudnitska’s echo: peach and oakmoss as a genetic code. At fashion weeks, Rochas is absent. No runway shows. No Vogue Runway flashes. In online stores — rare pieces that often disappear faster than they arrive. This is a brand choosing to exist like a mark on satin, not a flag. Its luxury lies in distance. Its signature — silent desire. Today Rochas is not a moment, but a feeling from another time, returning to you when you pull from a drawer an old silk scarf scented with someone’s neck. And yet it lives. It holds on thanks to aesthetes, collectors, archives — and above all, to those who can hear it even in silence. Perhaps Rochas will never be a brand with millions of Instagram Reels views. But it will always be a brand for those who can discern the scent of time.

It began with silence. After a decade of Maria Grazia, Dior resembled a luxurious archive: couture, lace, ruffles, poems about femininity, and all of it was beautiful, like a late velvet evening in a Roman palace. But time is the most ruthless editor, and even the most beautiful stanzas start to sound repetitive. Then Bernard Arnault, a man who can see ten years into the future, lifted his gaze from his reports with a look that was more like an x-ray of the industry, and he understood: Dior needed an architect of mood. Someone who isn't afraid of the silence between notes. And he chose Jonathan Anderson. Anderson is like a sky with a thousand shades at once, and not one of them is repeated. His collections for Loewe were like dreams filmed by a Japanese director with British humor: here is a shirt with a collar that resembles an orchid flower; here is a Puzzle bag that looks like a patchwork map from a game where every detail can disappear and return. He cuts the fabric of the world and reassembles it so that it seems we have never seen a coat before, even though coats have existed for centuries. At Dior, it was clear from the start: this was not a quiet transition. This was antagonism. When he first entered the atelier on Avenue Montaigne, they say he ran his hand over the fabrics in the archive like a pianist over the keys before a concert. He lingered on the gray velvet, the taffeta the color of a faded rose, the buttons with the house's crest—and said that Dior must be both like morning frost and like a night flame. Because the new pop-idea of Dior is about any woman being able to walk into a room and her step sounding like an announcement of her own power. Why did Arnault entrust Anderson with both men's and women's? Because he understood: the world is no longer divided into "for him" and "for her." The world is now a continuum, where a jacket can be armor for both a woman and a man; where a wrap dress speaks not of weakness, but of the right to be unpredictable. Anderson knows how to design such things: at Loewe, he played with proportions like a chef with salt, adding a little more than necessary so that the flavor would be remembered forever. And that decided everything. Arnault wanted not just a designer—he wanted a conductor who could play on both the men's and women's keys. They met in London, in a restaurant where candles stood on the tables, and each one trembled like the hearts of those who knew that the fashion world was about to change. They say they discussed more than just fashion: they talked about how at Loewe he had created a collection of neon threads that glittered under ultraviolet light; about how models at the Loewe show walked in shoes that looked like bears, and about how the audience first laughed, then gave a standing ovation. They also talked about Dior Homme, which was needed like a breath of nitrogen—sharp, but life-saving. In those moments, Anderson understood that he was not just facing a new job—but a chance to reboot the very code matrix of Dior. Because Dior, which was born as a dream of femininity, today must become a manifesto for everyone who no longer wants to choose between elegance and audacity. His goal is to create dresses that will sound like a protest, and jackets that will be silent, but in that silence, say more than any words. Look at the details: in his very first men's collection for Dior, shown in a garden with the geometry of a palace, there were the finest scarves that wrapped around the neck so that they seemed like a second breath; jackets with shoulders like Rodin's sculptures, and boots in which every step sounded like a gunshot. And the audience froze not from beauty, but from the thought: this is dangerously beautiful. He brings a new vision to Dior—he brings the ambivalence that the world loved in Loewe: when a fabric can be tough as armor and soft as a cloud; when a dress can both protect and undress at the same time. And Arnault understood this: he didn't need a designer with a trend, but a philosopher who knows how to sew parables from organza. Now Dior is preparing for Anderson's first women's collection—and the world is holding its breath. Because everyone understands, it will be a question of whether the industry is ready for Dior to stop being a hall of fame and become an arena for courage. Because Anderson has never played by the rules: he loved to invent his own. And now he will write them on the fabric of Dior. They say he already spends hours in the archive on Avenue Montaigne, studying Christian Dior's own patterns. But his gaze is not sentimental—he looks at the past as a map on which you can't drive backwards. And if today you see a Dior dress that looks like a mixture of architecture and abstraction, know this: it's Anderson saying that the new pop-idea of Dior is not about approval, but about the right to your own rules. Because for Anderson, clothing is a statement. It is the alphabet on which we learn to speak about ourselves. And Dior with him is a Dior that will once again be the first word in the language of courage.

There’s a shade in Chanel’s milky tweed that no Pantone chart can pin down: it sits somewhere between a gray Paris morning, before the fog has settled on the balcony grilles, and the cream that slips over a cup’s rim at breakfast in a room at the Ritz. This color neither shouts nor promises; it holds in the pause between inhale and exhale, where every microscopic fiber absorbs silence, as if the cloth could hear your thoughts before you decide to speak them. Milky tweed dislikes direct light: it reveals itself only in half-tones, when a lampshade casts a yellow glow and every fold becomes a raised map of mood. In that relief you can make out stories of those who sat in a corner of the Hemingway Bar and ordered a dry martini at the exact moment a lover’s driver was already waiting across Place Vendôme. This tweed breathes slowly and sounds muffled—like the upholstery of an old sofa that keeps warm traces of long conversations that never quite became confessions. Press your face to Chanel’s milky tweed and you’ll catch the scent of old face powder with a hint of faded roses, warm metal from vintage jewelry clasps, and a faint tobacco trail hidden deep in the seams. You can’t call this scent gentle—it’s more like a secret pact: that you’ll never admit aloud you’ve wanted this jacket since you first saw archive images of Coco on the atelier staircase. In motion, this tweed doesn’t hold like armor: it creases, buckles, shows its weaknesses, and that is precisely its power—like a cut on a perfect leg that draws the eye more than a flawless sheen. Chanel’s milky tweed isn’t out to assert freedom—it knows you pay for it with other things: sleepless nights, the exact skill of falling silent at the right moment, a ring with a cold stone you never wear to work. This tweed doesn’t shout about rights; it is so beautifully quiet that any sentence feels excessive. When I looked at milky tweed in the hall of Villa Paloma, it seemed to me that if silence had a color, it would be this one—soft, dense, like dawn light, and heavy, like the glance once thrown after you that you remember for years.