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Fashion

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Fashion

Cashmere Has a Legal Definition, and It Is the Reason Two Jumpers With the Same Label Can Be Nothing Alike

Under US labelling law the word means goat undercoat averaging no more than nineteen microns. Within that definition sits a range from fibre that pills in a month to fibre that lasts twenty years. Here is what separates them.

Sep 6, 2026/4 min read

Changthangi goats grazing on high pasture, the Himalayan breed whose undercoat is spun as pashmina. Cashmere goats of the same species; the Mongolian herds are not pictured

Fashion

Linen Creases Because of Exactly What Makes It Good, and Most of the World's Crop Grows in One Corner of France

The fibre comes from the stem of a flax plant that is left to rot in a field. It is stronger wet than dry, it moves heat away from the skin faster than cotton, and it will never lie flat. A guide to buying it well.

Sep 6, 2026/5 min read

A field of flax in flower, the pale blue blossom that lasts a single morning on each plant, with hedgerow trees beyond

Fashion

A Tailor Can Change Almost Anything Except the Two Things That Decide Whether It Fits

Length, waist, sleeves and taper are routine. Shoulders and the chest are not, and a jacket that is wrong there is wrong permanently. Knowing which is which is the difference between a cheap fix and a garment you will not wear.

Sep 2, 2026/4 min read

A seamstress working at an industrial sewing machine in her workshop, cones of thread beside her and a tape measure round her neck

Fashion

Dolce and Gabbana Is Selling Its Buildings and Twenty Four Years of Eyewear to Buy Nineteen Months

The house lost more than 100 million euros at the operating line and breached its bank covenants. The banks have waived the terms until March 2028, on condition that a set of extraordinary transactions is completed by June next year.

Aug 29, 2026/4 min read

Via Montenapoleone in central Milan, the city's luxury shopping street, seen along the tram tracks

Fashion

Fashion Spent Two Years Changing Every Designer It Had. Now Comes the Part That Counts.

Jonathan Saunders starts at Kate Spade today, near the end of the largest reshuffle of creative leadership the industry has run. Fifteen debuts landed in a single season. Almost nobody is asking whether it worked.

Aug 26, 2026/4 min read

Handbags in a shop window carrying discount tags and price tickets

Fashion

Cost Per Wear Is the Only Clothing Maths Worth Doing, and It Can Also Justify Anything

Divide the price by the number of times you will actually wear it. The sum is trivial, the discipline is not, and the reason it keeps producing flattering answers is that almost everybody overestimates the second number.

Aug 22, 2026/4 min read

T shirts hanging on a clothes rail at a market stall

Fashion

How to Judge a Garment in Sixty Seconds, Before You Pay for It

Price tells you almost nothing about how long a piece of clothing will last. Fabric weight, seam tension and fibre length tell you a great deal, and all three can be checked while you are standing in the shop.

Aug 22, 2026/4 min read

Fabric swatches in graded colours with pinked edges

Fashion

Luxury Is Growing in Euros and Shrinking in People, and It Has Lost Sixty Million Customers Since 2022

Bain and Altagamma expect personal luxury goods to reach as much as 373 billion euros in 2026. The same research shows the customer base falling from 400 million to 340 million. Both numbers describe the same strategy.

Aug 22, 2026/3 min read

A mannequin in a jacket seen through a shop window, with the street reflected in the glass

Fashion

Loose Beats Light, and Wool Is Not the Enemy: What Actually Works at Forty Five Degrees

Most hot weather dressing advice is written for a European summer and fails here. The variables that matter in Gulf heat are fit, weave and how a fabric handles sweat, and they do not line up with the usual natural versus synthetic argument.

Aug 21, 2026/3 min read

A loosely woven linen shirt folded on a pale surface

Fashion

The Slim Suit Is Finally Over, and What Replaced It Asks More of the Wearer Than of the Tailor

Menswear has spent two years moving from ultra-slim to relaxed but refined, and the shift is harder than it sounds. A narrow suit hides its faults on the hanger. A generous one does not.

Aug 21, 2026/3 min read

A softly structured navy wool jacket on a tailors workbench beside shears

Fashion

Fifteen Million Garments a Week Arrive in Ghana, and Forty Per Cent of the Country's Clothing Imports Become Waste

The donation bin is the end of the story for the person using it and the beginning of a long one for everybody else. What happens next is a functioning trade, a genuine livelihood, and a waste problem nobody exports a solution for.

Aug 20, 2026/4 min read

Densely packed secondhand clothing stalls in an open air market