Stetsons, tears and polka dots: how the September style issues weigh up
Vogue
On the cover: Meghan Markle’s 15 Forces for Change: Greta Thunberg, the actor Gemma Chan, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern, the actor and leg-warmer devotee Jane Fonda, Salma Hayek, actor Laverne Cox, body image activist and actor Jameela Jamil, the Royal Ballet’s Francesca Hayward, the writer Sinead Burke, actor and Michelle Obama mentee Yara Shahidi, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, boxer Ramla Ali, as well as models Christy Turlington Burns, Adwoa Aboah and Adut Akech. Oh, and, you! There’s square given over to what’s kindly being called a mirror in which you are invited to see yourself: “Because you, too, are part of this collective.”
Weight: 1kg
Your autumn-winter look: Workwear, but not as you know it. Forget boilersuits and baggy jackets, in Meghan’s Vogue, workwear means business. Think tailored suits, shirts with a twist, structural bags that nod to but stay firmly on the right side of briefcase and knee-high boots. If you are after a promotion by Christmas, style with a luxe carabiner, 2019’s answer to the lanyard.
Key styling tip: Structured silhouettes are here to pick up the hard work left behind after a summer of toohot-to-email floaty dresses. That OOO couldn’t stay on forever.
Celebrity quote: Fighting talk from the supermodel and former milkshake parlour waitress Saffron Vadher: “If someone ordered a medium, I’d always make it large, so I could have what was left”.
Soundbite: “I am a beach. I literally don’t give a fuck” – from Matt Haig’s poem, A Note From the Beach.
Cheap trick: Take a tip from this season’s “chunky eyelashes” and channel that unintentionally clumpy mascara look you couldn’t avoid as a hapless teen.
Scene-stealer: It’s a toss-up between Dr Jane Goodall’s padded Patagonia jacket and Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s Barbie.
Weirdest wellness trend: Inhaling and exhaling is the key to wellbeing. That, and a £4,ooo, seven-night stay at an Indonesian resort which offers breathing workshops.
Funnest food: It’s not so much the food as the packaging – the co-founder of food-sharing app Olio Tessa Clarke flags Mimica Touch as one of her favourite innovations: a gelatin-based package that feels smooth if your food is fresh and bumpy if it’s a bit past it. Best before dates – and unnecessary food waste – be gone!
Spot count: The Michelin starred chef Elizabeth Haigh admits to livening up her chef’s whites with polka dots, and there’s an actual cheetah on a page 215, but Meghan’s issue of Vogue feels, relatively speaking, quite free of 2019’s ubiquitous leopard prints and polka dots. EVB
Vanity Fair
On the cover: Kristen Stewart in a pink Chanel jacket and white ruffle blouse.
Weight: 340g
Your autumn-winter look: Mostly just your undies. Bras under blazers, tulle over granny pants – underwear is key. The cold never bothered you anyway.
Key styling tip: Get dressed up to wash up – see actor Bill Skarsgård, stood at the sink in an oh-so-shiny silver suit.
Celebrity quote: “I would choose to come back as an exotic translucent marine organism writhing around orgiastically” – Rick Owens.
Soundbite: “Haute crying is now a fixture. Read it and weep.”
Cheap trick: Falke socks. So nice you won’t need to bother with shoes.
Scene-stealer: Mrs Prada, photographed by Baz Luhrmann, wearing a feather cape.
Weirdest wellness trend: Playing Sims. The actor Thomasin McKenzie says it’s been “a portal back into [her] own world” while filming Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho.
Funnest food: Tiny glasses of what appears to be … milk? As seen in a shoot of up-and-coming actors.
Spot count: A whole page of the leopard variety, from Sacai shorts to Burberry trainers, as well as a top worn by Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever, photographed alongside Zombieland’s Zoey Deutch in a leopard print bucket hat. LH
Dazed
On the cover: The model Adut Akech or country-trap artist Lil Nas X. Weight: 680g
Your autumn-winter look: Get your cowboy boots out and plaid shirt on; Dazed heads west to take a look at the current youth culture obsession with all things cowboy.
Key styling tip: If you don’t have a big hat on, you’re doing it wrong.
Celebrity quote: Actor Honor Swinton Byrne on who she would like to play her in an adaptation of her life: “Do they have to be an actor? I want to say an animal. Like an otter, or something.”
Soundbite: “This is a little boy from Wigan who has been going to the Elvis festival since 2013 … This is the last time I saw him and he was dressed as Freddie Mercury – he’s a little fed up with Elvis so he started a new act.”
Cheap trick: Akech wears a pair of tie-dyed leather undies well – easily replicated on cotton ones from M&S.
Scene-stealer: Rodeo champion Kanesha Jackson, “a member of the Texan family jumping historic barriers in professional rodeo” in a white stetson, white shirt with bolo tie, white jeans and red cowboy boots. But she is clear it’s not just a “look”: “You can tell from a mile away a person who rides horses and (someone) who’s just trying to look the part … We don’t dress to be seen, we dress to our dress code.”
Weirdest wellness trend: No wellness, just Elvis.
Funnest food: Whatever a cookout entails, it sounds delicious.
Spot count: As far as Dazed is concerned, chaps are the new spots and fringing’s the new leopard print. EVB
Marie Claire
On the cover: Laura Harrier in sequinned Louis Vuitton.
Weight: 320kg
Your autumn-winter look: 70s Parisian. Tweed suits, pale blue eyeshadow and knee-high boots. Oddly, no cigarettes.
Key styling tip: “Alice bands are all the rage – add ballsy earrings and everything below will go unnoticed”.
Celebrity quote: “We went to an aerial yoga class this Saturday and it was genuinely one of the worst things I have ever done in my life.” Aisling Bea on hanging out with Eleanor Tomlinson.
Soundbite: “When I was 10, Mum created some cornicing out of hundreds of plastic vaginas laid side by side.”
Cheap trick: Matt lipstick.“When the mouth is matt, the face just seems more radiant by default,” according to Givenchy make-up ambassador Neil Young.
Scene-stealer: Retro pics of Doris Day in a look back at her life.
Weirdest wellness trend: A pulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF): “A wholebody system will re-energise the membranes of all 70 trillion cells in the body through changes in their electrical potential”.
Funnest food: Jon Snow cakes and Dothraki trifle at a Game of Thrones afternoon tea in Ireland.
Spot count: Six: leopard print dresses from Kate Spade and Yolke, a skirt from Ganni and two tops, both Louis Vuitton. Plus a polka dot skirt from Topshop. LH
Love
On the cover: There’s a choice of nine: Gigi Hadid, Lizzo, Juliette Lewis, Hailey Bieber, Felicity Jones, Mariah Carey, Rami Malek, Tracee Ellis Ross and Luka Sabbat.
Weight: Just shy of a whopping 2kg. Your autumn-winter look: “There appears to be a new and fierce independence in what people want to do and how they want to do it,” says Katie Grand in her editor’s letter, which sounds like your look for next season is whatever you want it to be. But if it involves tailoring, tulle and a sailor hat, a la Richard Quinn, then all the better.
Key styling tip: Make like cover star Gigi Hadid and give your ponytail a touch of the prim with a ribbon, in readiness for the return of Blair Waldorf.
Celebrity quote: Mariah Carey: “Darling, there’s always a wealth of material in me, because of what we go through on a daily basis. I don’t count years any more. I don’t know what they are. Why would you?”
Soundbite: “The universe is my favourite artist.”
Cheap trick: Carnations appear above Tokyo costume designer Tomo Koizumi’s head like antlers, in an interview hailing his “big, frilly, fantastical dresses” as the talk of New York fashion week. Given they were also the floral of choice for Virgil Abloh recently, it seems the bad third date botanical is now a good way to signal fashion prowess.
Scene-stealer: The 20s. Love predicts that the shift from 2019 to 2020 will likely be seismic. Far from being something to flap about, however, Grand thinks the 2020s will be “provocative, unpredictable, maybe a bit precarious, but obviously a lot of fun.” Here’s hoping.
Weirdest wellness trend: Love prescribes Lizzo, on stage at Glastonbury: wielding “love (and her message of selflove) not so much as a device to eke out sadness and melancholy from our black and broken hearts, but to motivate and to arouse, to promote healing and spread undiluted, unbridled joy … Less a breath of fresh air than a raging reckless tornado of positive vibes.” Sign us up.
Funnest food: Gigi Hadid’s morning eggs: “creamy-cheesy scrambled or sunny side-up with za’atar. Always some kind of bread on the side. Sometimes turkey bacon.” Plus, whoever gave the model in a leather Louis Vuitton cap a jam sandwich deserves a raise.
Spot count: Who needs eye-catching spots when you have this season’s answer to the mille-feuille look: organza a la Koizumi. EVB
Red
On the cover: Helen McCrory wearing Polo Ralph Lauren and Escada (unless you’re a subscriber, in which case she’s wearing Roksanda).
Weight: 420g
Your autumn-winter look: Casual commuter meets 70s activist. Wideleg trousers, berets, high necklines and centre partings.
Key styling tip: “This season’s layering is the perfect excuse to double up with two lightweight coats to fight the chill.”
Celebrity quote: “When I left [teaching] after eight years to go and tell dick jokes in a pub, I know a lot of my mum’s friends went: ‘What is Romesh doing?’” – Romesh Ranganathan on becoming a comedian.
Soundbite: “I rocked up to a party in too-tight jeans, an unflattering waistcoat and a flat cap, drowning in enough jewellery to weigh down the sturdiest pirate”.
Cheap trick: Cinch in last season’s oversized blazers and cardies for an updated look. “Belts are your new necessary accessory!”
Scene-stealer: A recipe for studland bay lobster and thrice-cooked chips, photographed on the prettiest of plates.
Weirdest wellness trend: A tie between two zeitgeisty skincare ingredients: snow mushrooms and pineapple water.
Funnest food: Cherry bakewell almond butter – limited edition from Pip & Nut.
Spot count: One polka-dot top from Kitri and that’s your lot. LH