This article is taken from the February 2026 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Get five issues for just £25.
Diehard fashion bitches require a period of calm at the beginning of each year, in which accountability can be taken for the highs and lows of the previous annum’s sartorial behaviours. So how did we all do?
Personally, if one looks at garments I purchased new, I did brilliantly. I give you eight-ish ’fits (a euphemistic ten); largely responsible in terms of ethics; all of which will be sported as long as I am alive. Conclusion: consumerism conducted with relative serenity.
However, were one to study my inventory of non-returnable, second-hand purchases, one would behold hormonally-induced, crack-whore, credit-spunking in which a handful of coruscating successes is outweighed by so much dross. Conclusion: massive and mortifying fail.
This is a learning curve that the whole of Planet Fashion is going through right now. Trading our lust for fast fashion for a compulsive, algorithm-enslaved, Vinted habit is not conscious consuming. I’m going cold turkey. Tedious, but there it is.
Given our overstuffed existences, a fallow period — in which one makes space in one’s wardrobe rather than adding to it — will always be a catalyst to style. Plus that feeling of not wanting anything is so precious, so radical, so bracingly counter-cultural that one must cling to it as long as possible, replenishing one’s imaginative soil.
There are trends in the offing, of course, and, no, I’m not including Pantone’s colour of the year — “Cloud Dancer” — or white-nationalist neutral, as it has been hailed.
The V&A’s upcoming Schiaparelli show is bound to get people sticking lobsters on their heads. Meanwhile we have a lot of extravagant texture, continued soft gothness and Eighties silhouettes going down.
As ever, modishness lies in the styling rather the purchasing, not least when fashion has slowed to its current torpor. By way of demonstration, I give you two spins on tailoring. On the one hand, one can keep it stark à la Dan Jackson’s shoot with Adwoa Aboah, styled by Tabitha Simmons for February’s Vogue.
Sleek, spare, there’s the odd flourish, but it’s basically kept no frills, the story in the structure and the model’s kohled and freckled beauty.
Alternatively, one can deploy the same components — a pencil skirt, say, a tweed jacket — add knitwear and ramp up one’s accessorising with sundry scarves, tippets, gloves, socks and battered bags to embrace Miu Miu’s harried librarian trope. As books usurp phones as the objets du jour, so-called “literary chic” ran through the spring/summer 2026 collections of Prada, Chanel, Celine and Tory Burch like a ladder in a lisle stocking. In its prim, bluestockinged way, this is a cardigan-fuelled maximalist rebellion against the pared-back minimalism of recent years.
Styling-wise, then, either keep matters sharp, or play up the character acting. You styles your clothing, you takes your choice — and two very different guises are the result.
People are forever proudly informing me that they don’t read magazines, in the same way that they preen over not reading newspapers. And they’re never the most interesting individuals, are they?
Re glossy eschewing, the line tends to be that they “can’t afford any of the clothes”. However, very few people are buying these rags to spend, they’re looking at them for the styling: the throwing things together and seeing what comes out.
In the same way, even if I weren’t a shopper of Me + Em, I’d still crave its monthly catalogues, because the styling is a masterclass in contemporary dressing. The November issues this year and last completely blew me away.
The layering, the chic, the sprezza — mofoin’-tura. I assumed some fancy stylist was responsible, but, no, it’s the in-house team, working with founder Clare Hornby like some well-oiled machine. Currently storming America, this hard-working label deserves its success.
Obviously, when I said I had no desires, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Behold, the brand’s polka dot Lace Trim Maxi Dress in black and cream crepe (£325), styled with a heavy black jacket and snowy heeled loafers.
When I say that this frock looks as if I already own it, naturally I mean that as the highest compliment. It would slot straight into my wardrobe and existence, augmenting both utterly, to be rocked over decades.
I’m not yet feeling that I will die if I don’t have it, but all that will take is the rush of oestrogen due in about half an hour. Perhaps the person I’m currently sleeping with will present it to me as a birthday gift come March? A woman can — and should — dream.
