BEAUTY: Clothing--Simone Rocha at Pitti Uomo

This year's guest designer at Pitti Uomo (the twice-yearly international fashion trade show in Italy) was Simone Rocha who showed her first exclusive menswear collection...even though she has been showing menswear sprinkled into her womenswear shows for about four seasons now. So this was a wonderful opportunity for Rocha who said, "To be able to bring my vocabulary, distill it down, and refocus it in this way has been a very exciting process, and the whole experience here at Pitti has been fabulous. I’m very grateful to Pitti for having me as their guest designer."

She used Florence, the city of Pitti Uomo, as a springboard for inspiration and studied the classic 1985 Merchant and Ivory film "A Room With A View" based on E.M. Forster's novel of the same name. Soaking up the costume design of the film which takes place in the early 1900s, Rocha said, "This is my Irish man [referencing one of the characters in the book and film] and he’s arrived in Florence and become the main character." This Spring-Summer '27 collection was shown in the performance space of the Teatro della Pergola, a 17th-century opera house, and she used one of the floral prints she found in antique trunks in the theatre on ties and embroidery on garments. Indeed, Rocha was able to employ her now-standard vocabulary of lace, ruffles, bows, pleats, and the pearls and rhinestones of costume jewelry in a nice hybrid of classic UK menswear, with a curious--and cool--addition of work aprons in leather, and spiked shoes! I love this collection for the way it pushes boundaries but also, strangely, exists simultaneously within them...

https://simonerocha.com

The Peacocks of Pitti Uomo, June 2026

Pitti Uomo, the twice-a-year international clothing trade show in Florence wrapped up today and the buyers, fashion journalists, and industry figures who attend are often as interestingly dressed (sometimes more so) as the clothing inside the Fortezza da Basso. The courtyard outside provides a perfect spot for watching these peacocks come and go... seeing as this is the summer edition, street style outfits were lighter, looser, and much more casual, but many of these men are Italian (some of the best dressed men in the world), so the classic suit still reigns. And say hi and congratulations to the newly minted Doctor Bruce Pask in image 18!

All images below by Acielle | Style du Monde for Vogue

All images below by Jonathan Daniel Pryce for WWD

JUNETEENTH 2026

https://www.juneteenth.com/

It's That Time Again ... June 2026

Regular readers know that twice a year, I blog about all the fascinating, beautiful, mesmerizing, strange, puzzling, outrageous, outstanding, unusual, artistic, inspiring sartorial creations coming out of the exquisite imaginations of designers, and down the runway. Regular readers may have also gleaned that I follow fashion the way some people delve into the art world. I think of "fashion" as "costume" or "performance"--as a way to convey an idea or a concept. I appreciate what some designers do the same way one appreciates what an avant garde sculptor or painter or performance artist does. And in a way, these designers are performance artists. For me, it is not about what is hanging on racks in stores, but what these artists are creating and the ideas and concepts they are working with as an influence on their marvelous creativity. It is moving sculpture. It is theater. Fashion and clothing at this level serve as a kind of visual shorthand. A piece of clothing in the hands of a designer can evoke a place, a region, a country, a specific time or an entire era, a work of art such as a novel or film or painting, a class of people, even a social, financial, or spiritual element... and the combination of such pieces of clothing, as well as their harmony or contrast, can tell a fascinating story.

Here is the season schedule (London is quite late this year)...

JUNE 2026 FASHION SCHEDULE -- FOR SPRING/SUMMER 2027

Pitti Uomo -- Simone Rocha is this year's guest designer
June 16 - 19, 2026
https://uomo.pittimmagine.com/

Milano Moda Uomo
June 19 - 23, 2026
https://www.cameramoda.it/it/milano-moda-uomo/

Paris Fashion Week Homme
June 23 - 28, 2026
https://www.fhcm.paris/

London Fashion Week
September 17 - 21, 2026
https://londonfashionweek.co.uk/

All've It by Matt Moberg

All’ve It
By Matt Moberg

I think every human being
eventually has a moment
where they are standing outside in sweatpants
that have lost the will to be pants,
holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,
or some other receipt from the universe
that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”

And then the sky bruises purple.

And the air touches your face
like it knows your whole story.

And suddenly you realize:

all the real is actually unreal.

The dirt.
The breath.
The weird little bones in your hands.
The fact that we are here,
on a floating rock with pollen counts,
paying bills,
missing dead people,
loving living people
who say “leaving now”
while still fully naked and looking for socks.

And still,
the moon clocks in.

No applause.
No benefits.
No note from management saying,
“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”

Just the moon,
working nights
like a single mother with no applause,
packing silver lunches
for every dark thing
that still has to rise.

Tell me that isn’t holy.
Tell me there is a better word
than sacred
for the way light keeps returning
with no guarantee
we will actually stop and take note.

I know people who believe in therapy,
probiotics,
tarot,
twelve-step meetings,
manifestation journals,
and waiting exactly eleven minutes
before texting back
so they do not appear emotionally available,
even though their whole nervous system
is standing in the driveway holding flowers.

And underneath all of it,
every ritual,
every doctrine,
every smoothie with chia seeds,
the prayer is the same:

Please let me be loved.
Please let me be forgiven.
Please let this strange little life
mean something
before my lower back
submits its formal resignation.

What is going on?

For real tho—What is this place?

This unbearable tenderness
of being alive long enough
to watch steam lift from coffee in winter
like a soul practicing leaving.

To see your friend laugh so hard
they slap the table
as if joy is a mosquito
they are trying to kill.

To hear a child say “pisghetti”
and, for one shining second,
realize language
has finally been improved.

I know I already noted this in the first piece,
but the older I get,
the less use I have for certainty.

Certainty has never made me pull over
because the sunset looked like God
dropped a jar of peach jam
across the whole midwestern sky
and decided to be lazy
and not clean up.

Certainty has never made me gasp
at rain on hot pavement.
Certainty has never found me
in the cereal aisle,
holding Captain Crunch,
suddenly remembering
that everyone I have ever loved
was made from stardust,
hunger,
and a series of decisions
we probably should have slept on.
No.
It has always been awe.

Awe was the first church.

Before steeples.
Before committees.
Before men got involved
and started making rules about skirts.

Awe was there
with its wild hair
and muddy feet,
saying:

Look.
Look again.
Look until looking
becomes love.

Awe, and soup.

Awe, and someone rubbing your back
when you are sick.

Awe, and old couples at Target
arguing gently about avocados,
as if marriage is not one vow
but ten thousand errands
performed beside the person
who knows exactly
how you like the cart pushed.

Maybe gratitude
was never meant to sound elegant.

Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Damn.
That woodpecker is trying
to beat that tree from itself.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you, body,
for continuing to drag me through this world
despite the many slim jims
I have done to you
at gas stations.”

Maybe gratitude sounds like:

“Thank you to the dogs
who lose their entire minds
when we come home
as if we have returned from war
and not Walgreens.”

For me, that might be my gospel.

That joy that does not wait for us
to be impressive but only needs us
to come through the door.

Because the truth is,
this life is devastating.

And ridiculous.

One minute you are 22 and invincible,
driving too fast,
eating gas station nachos
with the confidence of a Greek god.

The next minute you are googling,
“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”
and the answer is,
apparently,
“Welcome to the second half of your life.”

But even now—

even tired,
even grieving,
even emotionally held together
by iced coffee, playlists,
and one very specific wolves hoodie—

we keep finding reasons
to stay soft.

We plant tomatoes
even though grief is real.

We bake bread
even though the news is on fire.

We send photos of the sky
to people we love
with captions like,
“LOOK,”
as if beauty is an emergency
and we are all volunteer firefighters.

We keep saying,
“You have to see this,”
because wonder
is the oldest form
of resurrection.

So here’s to the believers
and the atheists
and the agnostics
and the people whose entire theology
is just trying not to cry
in the DMV line.

Here’s to the people clinging to faith.

Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax
and oat milk
and the one group chat
where nobody pretends to be okay.

Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.

The accidental mystics.

The ones who can contemplate mortality
for six straight hours
and then become emotionally attached
to a perfect peach.

The ones who know
despair has a mouth,
but so does laughter.

May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty
in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
May we never become so polished
that we forget how to stand
in the Starbucks line of existence
with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,
feeling the enormity of it all
rattle around in our bones
like thunder
looking for somewhere to laugh.

And may we remember:

whatever else this is,
whatever mess,
whatever miracle,
whatever cosmic group project
no one was prepped for—

all’ve it is astonishing.
that we are here.
that we have loved enough to be ruined.
that the moon keeps showing up.
that bread exists.

So pass it on.

Tear off a piece
with your bare hands.

Take it in as you take it down.

And then go outside and look at that moon.

https://www.facebook.com/matthew.l.moberg/posts/i-think-every-human-being-eventually-has-a-momentwhere-they-are-standing-outside/10102752320674739/

Collage Is Collecting

All collages by JEF

"Laurie Anderson: Tiny Desk Concert, May 2026"

Laurie Anderson (previously here) played a Tiny Desk Concert at the NPR studios recently, performing some of her classic songs ("Let X = X" and "Dog Show") as well as a fascinating cover of "Dirty Blvd." by her late husband Lou Reed.

Laurie Anderson: Tiny Desk Concert
Tom Huizenga | May 22, 2026

Laurie Anderson has a way of holding our lives up to a mirror, reintroducing us to ourselves, in all our ridiculousness and splendor. Now in her late 70s, the curious-minded visionary maintains her impish smile; her incantations — on everything from the American Dream to Amelia Earhart in this Tiny Desk set — seem more sage-like than ever.

The idea of playing music behind an office desk struck Anderson as just another off-beat idea. She's had hundreds of her own. No one can boast being NASA's first artist in residence and performing a concert for dogs at the Sydney Opera House.

Anderson emerged from a hothouse of visual arts, theatre and music that commingled in lower Manhattan in the early 1970s. She hung out at Philip Glass' loft, she once told me, listening to "organs at ear-bleeding levels," while staring at the ceiling. In 1981, she enjoyed an unexpected hit in "O Superman," and since then has created thoughtful, tech-savvy musical meditations on wide-ranging topics.

Coming straight from the Big Ears Festival, where she played with a seven-piece band, Anderson pared down to a trio for this career-spanning set with violist Martha Mooke and multi-instrumentalist Doug Wieselman.

"Let X=X," with its inscrutable references, random yet consequential, is from her debut album Big Science. It might be telling us what you see is what you get, but also that it's OK to let the unknowable be what it is. "The Letter," which follows, is from her latest, Amelia, a moving travelogue following the flight path of the famed pilot. From the desolation of her late husband Lou Reed's "Dirty Blvd.," Anderson shifts to brief moments of beauty — a paean to the stars above and a dream of being a dog.

https://laurieanderson.com/