The provincial question of whether San Francisco is ugly, badly dressed, or culturally inferior to New York (which would merely reproduce the same hierarchy of taste that I want to interrogate) is not as interesting to me as to the question of: why is a culture, so suspicious of arbitrary authority; nevertheless compelled, the moment it confronts aesthetics, to search for an authority capable of certifying aesthetic judgment?

The golden ratio, classical architecture, evolutionary psychology, mathematical harmony, “timeless” materials, some biological account of proportion. The apparent relativist who insists that nobody can tell him what to like immediately begins searching for the formula that will tell everybody what they should like.

Why? One answer might be that the fantasy of objective beauty promises to relieve us of the embarrassment of taste. If the Parthenon is beautiful because its proportions instantiate some universal law, then my attraction to the Parthenon is no longer really mine; I have merely perceived correctly. The judgment has been displaced from the subject onto the object. I do not have to say, “I desire this world.” I can say, more safely, “This world is beautiful.”

This is why the distinction between beauty and aesthetics exists. Beauty can be imagined as a property. An aesthetic cannot. An aesthetic exists only through relations among objects, places, symbols, and expectations; it is less an attribute of a thing than a structure through which things become intelligible together. Derrida’s différance is useful here because meaning, for Derrida, is never simply present inside the sign: it is generated through differences, references, absences, repetitions, and deferrals, through the entire system that allows one thing to mean something by not being another thing. The original theory of style makes a similar point when it describes style as dependent upon a flexible structure of conceptual interdependency.

The black leather jacket gives us the elementary example. There is no substance called “rebellion” contained in leather. The jacket becomes rebellious through Brando, the Ramones, punk, motorcycles, queerness, fetish, Saint Laurent, Hedi Slimane, the accumulated history of people who wore it, copied it, mocked it, commercialized it, and wore it again after commercialization had supposedly emptied it of meaning. The same jacket can signify danger, nostalgia, wealth, homosexuality, heterosexual masculinity, downtown authenticity, or the desperate attempt of a forty-eight-year-old private equity partner to communicate that he still listens to music. The object has not changed, yet everything has changed.

This is the basic movement of aesthetics: nothing means alone; and we can go further. An aesthetic organizes a fantasy about the kind of life in which those objects make sense. Ralph Lauren does not sell shirts. No, Ralph Lauren constructs a world in which horses, inherited houses, old convertibles, English setters, WASP leisure, Western masculinity, and a certain fantasy of American aristocracy become mutually intelligible. Muji stages another world. So does punk. So does a Chinatown bakery. So does the Odeon. So does the lobby of the Mercer. The objects matter because they function as evidence that this world exists.

This is why the tech impulse to construct an aesthetic through first principles so often produces something strangely dead. It begins from the assumption that an aesthetic is an optimization problem. Greco Futurism becomes revealing here because it cannot simply say, “I like Greek columns; I want to put them next to computers because the combination excites me.” That admission would expose desire in its embarrassing contingency. It therefore needs Greece to be objectively beautiful. The column must arrive accompanied by a theory of civilization.

Why does a technological elite obsessed with artificial intelligence, rockets, longevity, and the future suddenly find itself obsessed with taste, marble busts, and piscinarii? This is where the attempt to ground aesthetics in beauty reverses itself. The appeal to timeless beauty presents itself as an escape from ideology, while it is often the most ideological element of the aesthetic, because it converts a historically specific desire into an eternal law. “I want Rome” becomes “Rome discovered beauty.” A personal fantasy becomes a civilizational fact.

New York generally does something different because New York makes this fantasy of purity difficult to sustain. The city is aesthetically productive because it has very little respect for the integrity of worlds. A perfect coat encounters garbage. A Beaux-Arts facade gets covered by scaffolding. A Japanese listening bar sits above a wholesale perfume store. The person in $1,800 trousers shares the subway platform with a construction worker, a teenager coming home from school, three tourists, and someone screaming about the Book of Revelation. The city keeps introducing material that the aesthetic did not request.

This contamination is productive.

Consider the downtown restaurant that wants to stage Paris in 1978: zinc bar, handwritten menu, candles, burgundy banquettes, slightly hostile waiter, perhaps a bathroom mirror that suggests cocaine even if nobody is actually doing cocaine. In a controlled environment, the concept could become unbearable. In New York, the fantasy is interrupted by the Con Edison truck outside, the DoorDash courier squeezing past the maître d’, the rat behind the garbage bags, the finance guy taking a Zoom call on the sidewalk. The aesthetic remains alive because the world refuses to fully cooperate with it.

This is what San Francisco, at least in its dominant technological culture, often appears to want to remove: friction, contingency, embarrassment, contradiction, the unresolved remainder that prevents a system from becoming fully coherent. The dream of technology is that everything irritating can eventually be interpreted as a problem and every problem can eventually be solved. This dream produces extraordinary software. It produces terrible aesthetics.

The paradox is that the aesthetic therefore depends upon the very world it appears to reject.

Downtown needs uptown. Minimalism needs clutter. Quiet luxury needs logos. The stylish person needs the unstylish person because style is relational before it is individual. If tomorrow everyone began dressing like Rick Owens, Rick Owens would cease to perform the same cultural function. The clothes could remain identical; the aesthetic fact would disappear.

Someone does something that seems wrong. The wrongness acquires charisma. Other people imitate it. The imitation becomes a code. The code becomes a market. The market standardizes it. The standardized version eventually becomes what the original gesture was resisting.

The loft is a perfect example. Artists occupy industrial buildings because they are cheap and available. Their poverty produces exposed pipes, unfinished floors, enormous windows, improvised kitchens. Those constraints acquire aesthetic value. Developers reproduce the constraints deliberately. Exposed brick becomes a premium finish. A material sign of not having enough money becomes something for which enormous sums of money are paid. At this stage we are tempted to say that the aesthetic has become fake, but this is too easy. The “authentic” loft was already staging a world. The difference is that the original situation contained a contradiction that the luxury imitation can only represent. In the first loft, the exposed pipe is there because nobody could afford to hide it. In the second, someone has paid extra to make sure the pipe remains visible. The object is identical but the social relation has inverted.

Taste is often discussed as if it were simply a refined capacity for discrimination, but taste also concerns which contradictions a society permits itself to see. A polished aesthetic can conceal the conditions that produced its objects; another aesthetic can make those conditions visible, exaggerate them, parody them, or turn them into symbols. Style becomes interesting when it does not merely decorate social reality but rearranges our perception of it.

This is why I find the language of “good taste” increasingly inadequate. Good taste implies that the problem has already been solved and that the tasteful person possesses the answer. Aesthetics is more unstable. It is an attempt to construct coherence from materials whose meanings never fully belong to us.

The chair has a history. The jacket has a history. The neighborhood has a history.

You can rearrange these things, but you cannot empty them.

Every aesthetic therefore contains an excess it cannot account for. This failure is not incidental to the aesthetic; it is the condition of its truth.

Welcome from inside The Fitting Room. A dispatch from between the mirror and the door: where looks are tested, stories are forming, and something’s always slightly undone.

In this interview, we’re fortunate to sit down with Pietro Ferragina, Creative Director of Bosideng and veteran of Armani, Prada, Versace, and Margiela; whose career spans the runways of Milan, Paris, and London, and whose philosophy challenges how we think about style itself.

Lekondo: Could you briefly introduce yourself, your current role, and the brands you’ve worked with in the past? How would you describe your personal dressing style in a few words?

Pietro Ferragina: I’m Pietro Ferragina, I am from Italy, with pure Italian DNA. I used to work for Giorgio Armani, Prada, Versace, Maison Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier etc. Now I’m Bosideng Creative Director.

I have developed my own style during these years working in China. I have been thinking that my feedback from marketing is not only because my work has Italian or western style, but also has Chinese style. I appreciate the trust and opportunity that China has offered which accomplished my infinite creativity. I’ve been also collaborated with Jean Paul Gautier, MSGM, Maserati etc. I’ve also had the privilege of being part of London Fashion Week 2020, Milan Fashion Week 2023, and Paris Fashion Week 2025. From the runways to the backstages of these top-tier fashion events, I’ve not only gained rich, hands-on industry experience, but also been fortunate enough to receive sincere well-wishes and heartfelt support from seasoned veterans and peers in the fashion world.

My personal dressing style leans towards a minimalist base paired with textural details, yet it is also wonderfully eclectic—evolving dynamically alongside the different eras I’ve lived through and the iconic fashion houses I’ve had the privilege to work with.

From the gritty, rebellious spirit of 1990s British street style to the sleek, futuristic flair of the Y2K era, each period has left an indelible mark on my sartorial choices, shaping a style that is both cohesive and richly layered. What’s more, I am a firm adherent of long-termism—a philosophy that extends beyond fashion, guiding me to value timeless pieces and sustainable elegance over fleeting trends.

Lekondo: Looking back at your time with brands like Ysack before joining Bosideng, what was the single most valuable lesson you learned about building a brand’s aesthetic that you’ve brought into your leadership role here?

PF: Brand aesthetics isn’t just isolated “visual appeal”—it’s deeply tied to a brand’s core scenarios. We didn’t just create “polished clothing”; instead, we wove “comfort, dignity, and functional needs that fit different life scenarios” into our aesthetic (for instance, using wrinkle-resistant fabric to make minimalist suits).

Now at Bosideng, I’ve applied this logic to “functional warmth scenarios”: our aesthetic isn’t about “making down jackets ‘look like fashion pieces’”; it’s about making “warmth itself” a part of sophistication—like turning the functional stitching of mountaineering jackets into a visual element.

Lekondo: Is there a particular designer or artist who has consistently inspired your sense of style and your work throughout your career?

PF: Valentino Garavani, Karl Lagerfeld, Pierre Cardin, Jean Paul Gaultier, Girogio Armani

Lekondo: A fundamental problem we see is that many consumers struggle to define their personal style and discover brands that truly resonate. From your vantage point at a major brand, how do you see this ‘discovery’ challenge playing out? Do you believe consumers need more guidance in finding their own aesthetic?

PF: The core frustration for consumers does not lie in their inability to choose a style, but rather in their failure to find a style anchor that truly fits their lifestyle scenarios.

There is no shortage of fashion information out there, yet people often struggle to identify which style seamlessly integrates into their commute, outdoor activities, or casual gatherings.

A brand’s role should never be to dictate how consumers should dress; instead, it ought to link styles to specific scenarios.

For example, Bosideng clearly communicates warmth-focused dressing solutions for different occasions, allowing consumers to realize that “this style is tailored specifically for my life”— a far more impactful approach than generic “aesthetic guidance.”

Lekondo: Thinking about the future for Bosideng, which is already a household name in China, what is the next frontier for the brand? Is the focus more on international expansion, product diversification, or new ways of connecting with customers?’

PF: For Bosideng, international expansion serves as the vehicle: we will tap into Europe’s fashion circle, not to simply sell products, but to engage in the local urban lifestyle community.

Product diversification is the foundation: we are expanding our offerings beyond winter down jackets to all-season outdoor thermal apparel (such as spring and autumn outdoor softshells and lightweight down wear).

Developing new ways to connect with consumers is the key: we replace hard-sell advertising with scenario-based content (like styling v-logs featuring “weekday commute + weekend hiking” looks), allowing consumers to perceive Bosideng as a lifestyle choice, not just a piece of clothing.

Lekondo: One final question on that point: a challenge for any major brand is ensuring its design intent and story reach the right audience. Do you think new platforms like ours, which focus on analyzing a user’s style preferences, could create a more efficient and authentic way for brands like Bosideng to connect with their ideal customers, beyond traditional advertising?

PF: Platforms like yours are exactly the precision connection tools that brands need. Traditional advertising is about telling consumers, “We are great”; however, your platform enables consumers to discover for themselves, “Bosideng is a perfect fit for my lifestyle.”

For example, by analyzing users’ preferences for “weekday commuting plus occasional outdoor activities”, your platform can recommend our lightweight thermal jackets to them. This approach is far more effective at conveying the message that choosing Bosideng is a lifestyle decision, rather than just “buying a down jacket”. In turn, it fosters a more efficient and authentic connection between the brand and its consumers.

Style Ontology is our ongoing attempt to catalogue fashion aesthetics, scenes, and subcultures—part research project, part group obsession. Each post focuses on one style: what it means, what it looks like, and the strange internal rules it seems to follow once it’s on an actual person.

“brutalism”

Definition. Architecture’s material honesty translated to garment: raw-edged seams, unfinished hems, exposed construction, heavyweight fabrics left untreated. Fashion brutalism borrows from post-war concrete modernism—Le Corbusier’s béton brut (”raw concrete”), the Barbican’s mass and geometry—to produce clothing that refuses refinement. The principle: let material and structure speak without decorative mediation. Silhouettes are boxy, oversized, often angular; construction is visible; linings are omitted or reversed. The body becomes scaffold; the garment, a load-bearing volume. In an unstable world, who wouldn’t want to dress like a fortress?

Where conventional fashion conceals its making, brutalist garments foreground it: topstitching in contrast thread, seam allowances worn outward, fraying edges left deliberate. The aesthetic codes as unfinished but is meticulously engineered. Volumes are geometric—cube, cylinder, trapezoid—echoing the monumental forms of brutalist buildings. The wearer occupies space with unapologetic mass: heavy, angular, structurally present.

Visual grammar

• Silhouette: oversized, boxy cuts; exaggerated dropped shoulders; geometric blocking (rectangular torsos, cylindrical sleeves); cocoon coats; wide-leg trousers with substantial weight; asymmetric hems.

• Materials: raw/selvedge denim, unlined or reversed leather, heavyweight cotton canvas, boiled wool, industrial felt, waxed cotton, thick linen; preference for undyed or minimally treated fibers that show wear, age, and construction.

• Construction: industrial hardware (metal grommets, exposed zippers, rivets) as functional elements; unfinished hems; reversed garments showing interior construction.

• Color: concrete grey, cement white, charcoal, rust/oxidized orange, raw beige, black; monochrome or tonal palettes mimicking poured concrete, weathered metal. Monochromatic severity, occasionally punctuated by industrial neon.

• Footwear: chunky-soled boots, architectural sneakers with exaggerated soles, heavy leather shoes with visible Goodyear welt stitching.

Body logic

The body is treated as structural armature rather than form to be flattered or revealed. Garments create volume around the body or encase it in geometric shapes that obscure conventional gendered silhouettes. The effect is protective (armored, insulated) and spatial (occupying volume, asserting presence). Gender markers dissolve in favor of proportion, weight, and material integrity. The wearer becomes architectural: monumental, functional, deliberately imposing.

Pop culture shorthand

• Demna Gvasalia’s early Vetements (2014–2016): oversized proportions, industrial materials, deconstructed tailoring

• Rick Owens’ DRKSHDW line: raw-edged hems, heavyweight jersey, brutalist geometric cuts

• Yohji Yamamoto’s structural experimentations photographed against concrete brutalist buildings

Timeline

• 1950s: Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation (1952) and term béton brut establish brutalism’s architectural vocabulary: exposed concrete, visible structure, material honesty. Alison and Peter Smithson theorize “New Brutalism” emphasizing ethics of material truth.

• 1960s–70s: Brutalist architecture peaks (UK social housing, university campuses, cultural centers). Simultaneous emergence of Japanese avant-garde fashion (Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto) exploring deconstruction, raw edges, anti-fit—laying conceptual groundwork though not yet termed “brutalist.”

• 1980s–90s: Belgian deconstructionists (Martin Margiela especially) expose garment construction: reversed seams, visible linings, unfinished hems, garments-in-process. Margiela’s 1997 collection features garments with exposed muslin toiles. Helmut Lang’s industrial minimalism aligns with material austerity.

• 2000s: Architectural fashion gains traction; Hussein Chalayan, Gareth Pugh explore sculptural, geometric forms. Rick Owens develops DRKSHDW with raw-edged, heavyweight constructions that become foundational to brutalist fashion vocabulary.

• 2014–2016: Demna Gvasalia’s Vetements explicitly references industrial, utilitarian dress through exaggerated proportions and raw finishes. “Normcore” discourse dovetails with renewed interest in anti-fashion and architectural references.

• 2015–present: “Brutalist fashion” emerges as explicit critical term in fashion writing; designers including Craig Green, Jacquemus (early collections), and continuing work by Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto sustain the aesthetic. Term gains currency as descriptor for raw-edged, geometrically structured, materially honest garments.

See also (adjacent concepts)

• deconstructivism

• workwear

• utilitarian

• architectural fashion

• anti-fashion

• wabi-sabi (material honesty through different cultural lens)

• industrial

Brands

• Rick Owens (especially DRKSHDW)

• Yohji Yamamoto

• Alexander McQueen

• Craig Green

• Lemaire

• Vetements (2014–2017)

• Our Legacy

• Julius

• A-COLD-WALL*

• Marni (Francesco Risso era)

• Hed Mayner

• Studio Nicholson

References

Blanks, Tim. “Craig Green.” Vogue Runway, https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/designer/craig-green. Accessed 7 Jan. 2026.

Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge: Spectacle, Modernity, and Deathliness. Yale University Press, 2003.

Loschek, Ingrid. When Clothes Become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems. Berg, 2009.

Martin, Richard, and Harold Koda. Infra-Apparel. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993.

Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door: each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.

This issue comes from @notacriminal. You can find him in Komune most Fridays.

P.S. Starting this week, I’m launching a Substack where I’ll be sharing Lekondo BTS and my ongoing journey to curate an ontology for aesthetics. If you want to follow along, you can subscribe here:

I’ve been going insane inside these four walls. I haven’t been buying or been on social media, or been outside. I’ve been looking at my own clothes, falling in love with many of them again. And, while I will forever be entangled with fashion, I now realize that my relationship with fashion up to a certain point had been frivolous. The constant noise had been pushing me to buy and engage; it creates a constant sense of FOMO that you might miss out on the next drop. And i can’t lie, the dopamine from buying something new is amazing. Stepping away I missed something about it, and it took some thinking to realize what it was.

I didn’t miss fashion, I missed the community around it (my heart goes out to the Komune team).

Instead of fashion, I’ve been engaging with a lot more music; in fact, I’ve reconnected with my past audiophile hobby, and I’m planning to get a new setup for Christmas (feel free to dm me about that). The genres of music I’ve been engaging with have been mainly punk rock, metal, and rap, and it got me thinking. For a while, I’ve felt an uneasy silence pertaining to the fashion community, and I couldn’t put it into words until I separated myself from it. A majority of “fashion”, the outfits, the community, and the discourse around it have lost the intention and meaning behind it. Fashion has lost the music that made it.

The silencing of fashion

Punk, Rap, and the LGBTQ community (Not as a genre obviously, but the artists and community within), examples of cultures that have been inseparably embedded within fashion, all of these cultures are or were loud, anti-establishment movements that made a statement and solidified themselves in the minds of the people, both alive to see them and those who see the effects years after. The effects of these cultures on so many aspects of our lives, especially fashion, are undeniable. So why is it that while the people who these genres represent, who make the music, and who the music is for, are being attacked, those who dare to appropriate the styles of their culture are silent, maybe implying support at best, and outwardly compliant at best, with the scale bending towards compliance?

Fast-fashion, trend-chasing, algorithms, a healthy mix of all of them. The once alive and impactful music that influenced many and created the cultures around the clothes we wear, has been replaced with mall ambience. It is impossible to make out any sense of general cohesion within the noise that makes up what is considered to be the fashion community. Everything is “safe,” no real risk is taken anymore, and no development has really been seen. Men in skirts and nail polish were once a shocking revolutionary development, a jump in breaking down gender norms, and while there are still people who hate it, and places in the country where you can get killed for doing that, there has been no real push to develop more impactful statements through fashion. Trends have become more sterile than ever: old money, cottagecore, vintage, all things that are safe, inoffensive, derivative. And with this tone down in style, the discourse has gone with it.

The existence of fast fashion has created a one-sided and derivative discourse that limits the community as a whole. The discourse around fashion is so manufactured and dull, it’s like a caricature of a superficial stereotype. The same takes and counter-takes are spat out over and over by people who become indistinguishable from each other amidst the constant scroll slop. There are many videos highlighting how our clothes are worse now, but few are willing to look beyond the surface-level criticism of “fast fashion bad” (it is). The designers that we idolize didn’t make clothes for the sake of outfits; they did it because they had a message.

Fashion, at least good fashion, does not exist in a vacuum. The fashion industry is attempting to become self contained. To create clothes without context, art with no message, aesthetics without subculture. And as so often with these situations, the people follow the corporatations. Consuming without intention, wearing without meaning, going though trends at a mind boggling speed. Both trends and people are in an eternal search for an authenticity that cannot be manufactured. They are attempting to steal all the marketable aspects of these communities and strip the message behind them. The original voices of fashion have been washed away by the apathetic corporate scream to consume.

Consumers Vs Artists

If fashion is art, as fashion enthusiasts like to claim, then it cannot be separated from the time in which it is happening, and by extension, it cannot be separated from the era in which it is being observed. This era of fashion will pass by with a dying groan, as the only real identity or influence is the constant onslaught of micro trends that define the pinnacle of slop that defines our lives. “Fashion” has become so derivative and self-indulgent that the community at large manages to say nothing when there is everything to be said.

Every artist is a consumer, and every consumer wants to be an artist. In the age where the powers that be are trying to replace real art with AI slop, it’s more important than ever to slow down and identify and engage with real art. We’re in a situation where anything with real meaning has to be condensed into a minute-long format to be swiped past and forgotten about the next moment. The bar for what is art has been lowered to an all-time low. Arbitrary metrics of acceptance define the worth of creativity. No bigger trend depicts this more than the push for “curation”. No longer do you have to create something of worth and meaning to be validated; all you have to do is get expensive, nice-looking things and call it “curation.”

Of course, curation is a real thing to an extent, museum director is a real job. However, the sudden push for people to be “curators” to curate their space, and closets, and life, not everyone is actually putting enough thought into what they are doing to actually be “curating”. I’ve typed the word so many types it’s losing meaning, the same way it loses meaning when everyone is “curating” for the sake of “curating”. There is no engagement, there is a surface-level intention, and there is no artistry, it’s becoming shorthand for consumption with branding.

Consumption isn’t creating. Buying is not engaging.

Good art cannot be created for the sake of making art. Even the paintings of the Renaissance made for the churches and the wealthy had meaning, storytelling, and references. It has the context of history, and every time it’s talked about, it’s brought into the context of an increasingly advanced world. We do not have that history. We may never have that history. The smaller moments of creation and artistry are washed away by the flood of consumerism that defines the modern era.

Fashion as an art form is not dead. Art cannot die. There are just more consumers than ever, and those consumers consume diluted art made by other consumers, cheap imitations of art with meaning, and then begin to dilute the pool even more. Fast fashion brands are now so far on top of the food chain that they can create and control the trend cycle artificially; in fact, fast fashion is the only type of fashion that can keep up with the constant rush of new trends. The way to fight against this is simple. Buy with intention, and dress with a message.

The new age hypebeast

The infallibility that high fashion consumers feel by separating themselves from the average chud who buys fast fashion means nothing when you take into account that they are mindlessly consuming at the same level as the people they criticize. The word “quality” becomes a meaningless buzzword to validate another empty purchase. There is no engaging with the item, there is no innovation, there is no creation. Just another buyer at a different store. The Idea of “Luxury” and “Quality” has created a new sort of hypebeast. The original hypebeast had such a powerful impact when they were around because of the level of absurdity behind their consumerism. Now, within just a few short years, rampant consumerism is so common that every archetype within fashion mainstream culture fills your head with the idea that you need to buy more to look like this.

The “Quality” hype beast will buy anything because it seemingly is made with care. For many of these people, they take the brand name alone as a signal of this “quality”. And while many of the names have earned their right to be associated with quality, the issue arises when they will not be able to appreciate that well-crafted item because they have no intention and are not mindful of what they’re buying. The other day, I saw the iPhone pocket by the Issey Miyake label. When I first saw it, I thought it was absurd, but when I heard that it was from the designer label, I paused and started validating the $230 sock. Before I realized that it was the stupidest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen, and any self-respecting person would go and buy a regular bag with that money.

There is a lack of meaning behind it. The people who defend it refer to other chronically online and meaningless labels of consumerism as if that validates the item, instead of revealing a devastating picture of hopelessness and a collective scream for help. Things are no longer made by real people. Issey Miyake did not design the sock. When the clothes themselves are not made with an intention beyond the profit margin, and even the shoppers with the most developed sense of style aren’t shopping with an intention beyond getting a fit off, that leaves us in a very particular era of meaningless slop.

Politics and Fashion

From the spiky hair of punks to the uniforms of fascism, fashion has been an integral part of history since Eve bit the apple and realized she was naked. And politics is what white is to the rice that is history. I touched on this a little bit in my last article, but you are your style. Whatever you wear right now is your personal style, and it is always developing. I’ve talked to a lot of people in person and online within the fashion community, and as a whole, these are young, educated, socially aware people, aka woke liberal bastards. With young, socially aware people making up the majority of the fashion community, how is it that the fashion space seems so silent on all political matters? As all of History will tell you, fear lends itself well to compliance. The majority of the fashion community has built itself in a way where their public image is their job, or at least an important part of what they do. Fashion microcelebrities word things like politicians and corporations, trying to avoid actually addressing the issue. A culture with so much influence is suddenly becoming more conservative and traditional as prejudice becomes more normalized within our world. The same community built by queer, Black, brown, immigrant, anti-establishment subcultures is now drifting toward conservatism because silence allows it.

The discourse so prevalent within the fashion community is already so deeply embedded within political concepts. The “fast fashion bad” and “Clothes are worse now” all come from the same discussion of the dangers of capitalism and corporations within our world, and the increasing dissatisfaction the new generation feels with the broken promise of a good life if you work hard, and with the abuses of power that define the way we live. Not shopping at certain brands, avoiding fast fashion, fixing clothes and reducing waste, is an amazing start, but it doesn’t get to the core of the issue. Unfortunately, the fashion community will, most likely, not have a massive movement all backed by one idea. Everything is a “trend” or reduced to a “-core” and thrown into the pit of the millions of subcultures left to rot. We can no longer actively engage with the interesting and challenging ideas we are presented with. Due to both learned apathy from the scroll, and the constant amount of work we have to do to keep up in the world. If we’re all drowning, how can any of us help each other swim? A good first step is to work towards becoming an artist.

Art is inherently anti-power; it’s inherently pro-human. When people struggle, they create the most beautiful works of art; when fascism thrives, the first thing they do is suppress the artists who speak the truth. The entire generative AI push is to discount real artists and get people hooked on slop so they stop thinking critically. Engage with your art, understand the nuance. And if you believe Fashion to be an art form, then treat it as such and give your art a proper message.

No single person can change the overall culture. And none of the overbearing corporations that make their influence unbearably apparent within our daily lives will ever willingly be better. But it starts with solidarity, letting each other know that they are sane and that it is okay to speak their minds. And most importantly never let fascists feel comfortable within our safe spaces. Never be afraid to tell a nazi punk to fuck off.

Style Ontology is Lekondo’s in-house research project: a living index of fashion aesthetics, scenes, and subcultures. Each post unpacks one style: its definition, symbols, and body logic.

office siren

Definition. Corporate tailoring meets intentional sensuality: pencil skirts, stiff-collared shirts, structured blazers, and pointed heels styled to telegraph control; and flirt with provocation. It weaponizes office codes (glasses, stockings, top-handle bags) into nightlife-ready signals. Also labeled corpcore or “corporate with a twist”, it’s a stylized remix of late-’90s/early-’00s corporate dressing reframed for the algorithm era.

Visual grammar

• Silhouette: pencil or midi skirts; slim, often low-rise trousers; fitted button-downs; shrunken cardigans; waist-cinching belts; tailored vest-and-skirt sets.

• Accessories: slim rectangular “Bayonetta” glasses; sheer hosiery; top-handle or boxy satchels. Pointed pumps, kitten heels; neat bun/side-part; restrained makeup with a single statement (a clean cat-eye or deep lip).

Genealogy & influences

The look draws on ’90s minimalism + sexed-up tailoring: Tom Ford’s Gucci F/W 1995 (sleek, louche suiting), Prada S/S 1996 (“ugly/geek-chic” intellectualism), Calvin Klein F/W 2001 (austere sensual tailoring), and mid-’00s Yves Saint Laurent by Pilati (precise, waist-focused suiting). Contemporary crystallization arrived with Miu Miu F/W 2023 (cardigans, hosiery-as-logic) and Sandy Liang F/W 2024 (downtown ingénue grows into office).

The trend was also popularized on TikTok in late 2023–early 2024, with creators experiment with a stylized reinterpretation of corporate wear.

Pop culture shorthand

Think:

• Catherine Banning in The Thomas Crown Affair

• Gisele Bündchen’s Serena in The Devil Wears Prada

• Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada

• ADA Alex Cabot in Law & Order

• Jenny Johnson in My Super Ex-Girlfriend

• Joan Holloway in Mad Men

• Bayonetta (Cereza) in Bayonetta - where Bayonetta glasses originated!

Timeline

• 1950s: the “human computer” archetype (e.g. NASA’s Rocket Girls) seeds a cultural image of female intellect in office dress.

• 1990s runway base: Ford-era Gucci, Prada ’96, Calvin Klein ’01 codify geek-chic.

• 2000s screen canon: Secretary and TDWP lock the office-seduction shorthand.

• Late 2023: Miu Miu F/W 2023 and a spike in “Bayonetta” glasses push a geek-chic optics revival.

• Late 2023–2024: the term “Office Siren” goes fully viral on TikTok, then mainstream press.

Culture & debate

Editors cast the trend as a post-“girlhood” pivot: corporate codes recast as power play; empowering for some, performative within patriarchal logic for others.

Brands

• Kookaï, NA-KD, Isabella Vrana, Uniform Person, Trish Wescoat Pound, Sandy Liang

See also (adjacent concepts)

• geek chic

• sexy librarian

• femme fatale

• power dressing

• corporate core (corpcore)

• corporate with a twist

References:

https://www.voguehk.com/en/article/fashion/tom-ford-gucci/

https://www.vogue.com/article/office-siren-girlhood-trend-patriarchy

https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-trends/gallery/office-siren-fashion-trend-photos-1236709354/siren-suiting-style13/

https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/office-siren-dress-codes/

https://sartorialmagazine.com/fashion-1/2025/2/20/the-office-siren-how-women-redefined-office-style

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Girls_(NASA)

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2023-ready-to-wear/miu-miu

Style Ontology is Lekondo’s in-house research project: a living index of fashion aesthetics, scenes, and subcultures. Each post unpacks one style: its definition, symbols, and body logic.

“klubnacht”

Definition. Berlin techno’s uniform: black (or near-black) layers, minimal hardware, zero flash. Outfits built to survive 24–48 hours in; silhouettes engineered for sweat and concrete. The point is function, anonymity, and utilitarianism; an attitude codified by Berghain (Berlin’s definitive techno club) and its marathon Klubnacht (“club night”) weekends, echoed across techno scenes; across Berlin, East London, and Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Dress like you’re ready to dance. Or not: mesh, leather, latex, heavy boots, corsets, but dance anyway. At the door, the answer might be Heute leider nicht — “sorry, not tonight.” Dress for a yes; accept a no with grace. These are the rooms that mattered on a Thursday night: no spectacle, just stamina. Here, the body is both machine and canvas: androgynous, pared back, tuned for bass, heat, and hours.

Visual grammar

• Silhouette: form-fitting tanks/long sleeves; cargo or carpenter trousers; column/tube skirts; cropped bombers; harness or corset on select nights.

• Materials: leather/PU, coated denim, jersey, mesh, latex, neoprene, ripstop.

• Footwear/bags: heavy boots, front-zipped; low-profile sneakers; belt pouch.

• Finish: matte black/charcoal; minimal metal (D-rings, zips, clips) that functions; sweat-proof hair/makeup. Mandatary earplugs (important!)

Body logic

Machine + canvas. The body is a durable instrument (machine) and a surface for subtle modification (canvas). Fit trends non-gendered: form-fitting without overtly “masculine” or “feminine” markers; stoic, self-contained, embodied yet detached.

Pop culture shorthand

• Paul Kalkbrenner as “Ickarus” in Berlin Calling

• Franka Potente as Lola in Run Lola Run

Fashion History Timeline

• 1990s: basement acid → reunification free-for-all. West Berlin’s UFO club (1988) seeded acid house/techno just before the Wall fell; reunification unlocked derelict spaces for all-night, semi-legal parties that defined the new city’s sound and attitude.

• 1991: Post-Wall clubbing in repurposed industrial spaces normalized long arcs and privacy. Tresor opens in a former vault and hardwires Berlin’s techno identity.

• 2000s–present: Berghain consolidates the weekend marathon; Klubnacht becomes a ritual fixture.

• 2010s: No-photo policies become both rule and aesthetic.

• 2020s: The look globalizes (Berlin → Londo, Bushwick et al.) while local scenes diversify around it. The silhouette ports to clubs like Bossa Nova Civic Club; the uniform persists even as neighborhood culture shifts.

See also (adjacent concepts)

• cyberpunk

• industrial

• rave

• rock

• steampunk

• goth minimalism

Brands

• Rick Owens

• Helmut Lang

• Raf Simons

• Ann Demeulemeester

• Gareth Pugh

• Boris Bidjan Saberi

• Guidi

• POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF)

• Dr. Martens

• Damir Doma

References

https://www.nokillmag.com/articles/nyc-nightclub-fashion-throughout-the-years-outfit-inspo/

https://www.ivyberlin.com/blogs/news/berghain-outfits-dresscode-getting-in

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Berlin_Techno_Fashion

https://www.vogue.com/vogueworld/article/roxy-lee-vinegar-sniffs-zine-instagram-sausage-and-custard-london-gay-parties-club

https://www.refinery29.com/de-de/street-style-clubs-berlin?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=organic

The Aura Awards were the clearest expression of that experiment, because they were never really awards. Rather, they were a weekly thought exercise about how taste forms, how it spreads, how communities experience the world through images.

Now, with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, we close the circle.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who tried to map the limits of what language can say. The Tractatus, his only book published in his lifetime, is a series of numbered propositions that build toward a single idea: that if we could understand how words picture the world, we might finally see the limits of what can be thought or said.

Fashion, we think, has the same boundary. Beyond brands and products, there’s a place where meaning stops being constructed and starts being felt. That’s the space we were trying to inhabit; the faint line where form turns into understanding.

The more we thought about it, the more it came back to language. What if fashion had a shared vocabulary the way coffee does? A flavor wheel for style. A set of coordinates that helped people say why something felt elegant or loud or calm.

We began sketching axes: formal to casual, statement to subtle, colorful to muted. Most of us know when something works, but we don’t know how to say why. The words don’t exist, or they have been flattened by marketing until they mean almost nothing.

That absence of language became the real problem we were chasing.

When you can’t describe what you see, you start relying on proxies. Price. Brand. Algorithmic popularity. Over time, those proxies replace perception itself. Taste becomes something you buy or inherit, not something you practice.

So we tried to build a place where people could practice it again. Where describing an outfit was not about correctness but curiosity. Where judgment could feel generous, not competitive. What happens when you give a community a new vocabulary and let them reason together, visually.

At first, I thought we were building an app. But the longer we worked, the more it felt like designing a discipline. A way of being. A way of seeing. People began writing about their looks with precision, empathy, and humor. They were not optimizing. They were observing. And from those observations, a culture began to form.

Looking back, I think the real experiment was not in the technology or the aesthetic model. It was in creating a small garden of internet where lived experiences could be discussed with celebration and sincerity. A place where authenticity itself was the art form.

This Week’s Theme: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Think:

• What can be shown cannot be said

• Ethics and aesthetics as one

• The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

Wittgenstein spent his life chasing the edges of language. He wanted to know where thought ends and the world begins. The deeper he went, the more he realized that language isn’t just how we communicate; it’s how we see. What we can’t describe, we struggle to notice. What we can’t name, we start to overlook.

It’s a deceptively simple idea, but it carries enormous weight. If the boundaries of language are the boundaries of our world, then language is not just a mirror of reality but the infrastructure of it. Every new word is a small expansion of consciousness. Every word that loses meaning shrinks it.

Fashion lives right on this edge. It is a language made of texture, proportion, and gesture. It’s not just about what we wear, but how those choices become legible to others. When we say, “this feels right,” we’re really saying, “this fits inside the grammar of my world.”

But fashion’s grammar is fragile. The words we use for it—“chic,” “timeless,” “minimal,” “avant-garde”—are constantly collapsing under commercial pressure. Once a word becomes profitable, it stops being descriptive. It turns into marketing. And when the language of style becomes marketing, the field of perception narrows. We stop seeing difference. We start repeating ourselves.

When our words no longer describe the world, we stop being able to think clearly about it. And this isn’t just about fashion. It’s happening everywhere—politics, art, technology. “Innovation,” “authenticity,” “community”—these words used to name real experiences. Now, they gesture at meaning without creating it.

Philosophy’s job was to show the fly the way out of the bottle; to remind us that the mazes we live in are often built from our own language. In some sense, that’s what we’ve been trying to do with Lekondo. To rebuild a small part of that language. To make space for meaning again. Fashion just happens to be the medium we use to think out loud.

And so, this is a small thank you — to everyone who’s joined, contributed, and played. Every outfit, every post, every quiet observation has added a new word to this shared language we’re still learning to speak.

Beauty, at its core, is the acute perception to the immense yet delicate. And there is nothing more immense yet delicate than being human.

Thank you for reading. I love you.
— Yeng

Lekondo

The Aura Awards have entered their Reverie phase. After the negotiations of coexistence comes the discipline of stillness. What remains when nothing competes for space? What kind of beauty appears when you stop arranging and start attending? But before we crown this week’s winner, let’s take a moment for those who participated!

Here are the honorable mentions:

@bei

@tofu

And the Aura Award goes to…

“Origami Assassin at Corporate Funeral” by Yeng T

The Aura Awards were never supposed to have an author, at least not one who could appear in the results. We built this whole thing as an observation deck — a place to watch how people think through clothing, how meaning gets made in public. The idea was to stay behind the glass, narrating the ecosystem, not participating in it.

But Seki complicates things. In Go, Seki describes a position where both players are alive only because neither moves. It’s a fragile equilibrium, and that’s what this feels like: I can’t fully accept the award without breaking the frame, but I can’t refuse it without pretending I’m outside the game.

I didn’t plan this. I just dressed in the way I think. Minimal, a little defensive, black as a boundary. The project was meant to surface patterns, not create them. But maybe this is what happens when you run an experiment long enough: the observer bleeds into the data. The plant you were observing starts to observe you as well.

The logic of the Awards has always been communal, unpredictable, a little absurd. So maybe the only honest response is to accept it, awkwardly, provisionally, as both subject and editor.

A reminder that sometimes the act of watching is also a kind of participation.

This Week’s Theme: Reverie

Think:

• The mind as a fitting room

• Clothes that forget their function but remember their feeling

• The lake between remembering and imagining

The word reverie means to drift into thought. Not deliberate reflection, but the kind that finds you while you’re looking elsewhere. It’s the half-waking, half-forgetting state where memory and imagination overlap.

Every culture has its own flavor of this idea: yūgen in Japan, saudade in Portugal, mélancolie in French painting. It’s not sadness, exactly. It’s the awareness that beauty and distance share the same shape.

Fashion, too, has its reveries.
- A shirt worn thin enough to remember your body.
- A color that reminds you of something you never owned.

This week isn’t about clarity or statement. It’s about the gentle confusion of being seen and half-asleep at the same time. It’s about looks that wander: soft silhouettes, quiet mismatches, light that doesn’t quite land where you expect.

The challenge is to let the outfit think before you do.
Dress for the moment when you forget you’re dressed.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your outfits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitcheck here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Yeng
lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door:

Each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.

This issue comes from @Jakob Pablo. Jakob is a Queens based visual artist primarily interested in painting and fashion design. He also claims to know the best sandwich in New York. You can find him on instagram or on X.

It was really funny to see Derek Guy aka @Dieworkwear start blowing up on Twitter sometime two years ago, as someone that used to read his blog back when I was in high school. DieWorkWear is a menswear writer who credits a chunk of his interest in fashion/ knowledge to his time spent within menswear forums. Forums that I myself have a huge nostalgia for, because they really brought me up on my own fashion journey. It’s always a great feeling seeing someone who puts as much thought into their words as Derek breakthrough the mainstream. Commentators under Derek’s posts seemed to all share a recurring trend, they would speak about stylish individuals with a sort of mysticism. As if you had to have a sort of supernatural wit about you in order to have great style. Of course I’d argue your boyfriend isn’t genetically pre-dispositioned to wear that tacky sports hoodie, he just doesn’t know how to dress himself. Though it made me question where this sentiment was coming from, since the reality is there shouldn’t be any mysticism when it comes to talking about people with great style! Fashion after all is a skill that is as learnable as cooking,drawing, etc. To me outsiders only consider the subject’s current style, not considering the years of learning and experimenting it took to build that up.

This experience made me realize there really aren’t any good spaces to learn how to get a good sense of style. Google searches might point you in the direction of a youtube video or two, but there’s so much nuance that’s lost / can’t be conveyed in a 10 minute video. I couldn’t even tell you where I’d begin to point when someone asks the question “where can I learn about fashion?” When I was in high school circa around 2018 it seemed like there was an abundance of great resources available from the aforementioned online fashion forums, places such as Styleforum, r/Malefashionadvice, Kaynetothe, etc. I couldn’t have imagined those places were on their last legs but nonetheless they existed. None of these spaces operate anywhere near as popular these days, and there hasn’t really been a new space to fill that void. Niche hobby enthusiasts who’d find themselves in such public arenas have retreated into discords, and conversations for less entrenched beginners have been primarily relegated to social media. Frankly I would go as far as to stake there isn’t a single good forum/arena to discuss ideas. Journalism doesn’t even report on the artistry or the process of clothing anymore as much as it does work to create digestible fashion content.

What I’m lamenting the loss of here is the loss of real third spaces to talk about fashion and fashion adjacent subjects. The loss of third spaces is an American wide epidemic, but also one that intimately affects people interested in fashion. “From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent. For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger—more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own.” (1) Both online and in person spaces lack the infrastructure to build real communities, which also greatly hurts broader dialogue about topics in niche communities. It’s really difficult to ask people for recommendations on raw denim when they’re all hiding in their private raw denimheads discord. I believe however the formation of community driven fashion third spaces is a solution to the current state of dialogue in regards to style.

Discussion about the current state of fashion media.

Fashion as a subject exists in a rather peculiar place. There has never been such a widespread interest in the subject without any real substantive spaces to discuss it. When I began to learn about fashion and style it felt like there was an abundance of resources available to me. The aforementioned style forums were a great environment to talk to other niche hobby enthusiasts who accumulated a wealth of style knowledge that were also willing to share their personal experience. There wasn’t any profit motivation for users to share their thoughts, homies were just doing it for the love of the game. Genuinely these different forums functioned as a great entry point into learning about fashion from people with a variety of different backgrounds. Environments like this were unique to that late 2000’s to mid 2010’s internet, but it genuinely promoted interaction between experienced and intermediate levels of fashion experience. Compare that to today where there isn’t really any sort of space where an intermingling of experience levels occurs. Rather today as I alluded to earlier if you were looking for advice on how to dress you would most likely seek out some sort of content creator. The dynamic is completely different from a mentor//mentee approach, as invariably content creators are trying to sell you on something (whether it be a product, idea, or themselves). Really this is part of a larger shift in discussion overall, as fashion spaces do not curate for discussion anymore, they instead serve to create content.

Much of this shift from discussion to content based conversations is a result of the isolation of American Communities. Really who can blame them? As it stands it feels like there isn’t any infrastructure for spaces that cater toward in-person communities or discussion. Instead online & social spaces are competing with an endless stream of content for who can maintain the public’s attention. As a consequence conversations about fashion have become much more commercially driven. Should I purchase this? What should I purchase instead? This brand is making this move, etc. To me this is the antithesis of learning about fashion. What we are left with are a generation of fashion consumers wrapped up in aesthetics, but without styles that have personalities. As art critic Ben Davis observes in Art in the After-Culture “The details of an artwork’s literal presence- actually going to see art at a museum or gallery, the subject of traditional critical writing- are reduced to a kind of local news status, compared to its significance as part of the more general circulation of images” (2) Carry this example forward to fashion. The average person interested in fashion isn’t concerned with the artistry of a piece of clothing anymore. Rather it is reduced to a mere status symbol. Clothing is part of such a longer conversation that entangles history and builds upon designers of the past, but current spaces don’t have the infrastructure to have that discussion. Conversations about Rick Owens aren’t about the pieces themselves, instead concerning themselves with the act of owning Rick Owens.

As I see it there are three major spaces for fashion conversation as it stands: Media (podcasts, substacks, as well as larger publications like Vogue), Discords (replacing forums), and finally social media. All three of these spaces predominantly serve that content form of discussion. I wont press too much on social media because that is self evident. In the case of journalism articles have to be made to be accessible and comprehensible to the largest common denominator, as “clicks” are now a metric of success; otherwise they face the inevitability of being buried by the algorithm. Inevitably these conversations get bogged down in constant conversations about new fashion seasons, and who’s wearing what designer. There has to always be something new going on. Discord discussions function in a similar manner. Because there is a lack of threads/posts there is a constant information stream with no organization in sight. It becomes less of a discussion and more of an overglorified group chat (an overglorified group chat which I enjoy tbf, but i digress!). These spaces are not conducive to conversations about learning, and honestly they’re not built for that function. These spaces are built to serve as content.

It’s hard to have actual discussions about fashion when any sort of discussion is filtered through the need for it to become content. A comment section is not a substantial replacement for a back and forth between peers, too much gets lost.The remedy to the question of “how can we fix discussions about fashion” is the formation of spaces that are conducive to that end whether it be online or irl. In fact there are already spaces where that shift in discussion is occurring.

The creation of spaces to learn about fashion

I was rather bitter about discussing clothing in general for a very long time, and personally thought it best to opt out of such conversations entirely. I didn’t really enjoy this new wave of content based discussion and found it rather alienating. But an overwhelmingly positive experience at Komune changed my mind. Komune is a New York based experimental fashion retailer which highlights emerging brands & designers. For their one year anniversary they invited designers they worked with throughout the year for a showcase, asking the designers to reimagine their first piece through their current skillset. Martin, one of the store’s co-founders offered a walkthrough in the store’s space at the end of each day where he broke down the designer’s vision for the piece they submitted, the design process, & what it meant to the designer. It was an experience which left a lasting impression on me because it really made me imagine what fashion centric third spaces could be. Discussion about fashion can & frankly shouldn’t end at aesthetics when there is broader discourse about intent, growth, etc to be had. Creating a space for your audience to engage with you & the designers you work with on a deeper level is an awesome idea. In my opinion a large part of Komune’s success is in part because it focuses so much on teaching. They give the people who walk through their doors the tools to understand the clothes they sell, which in turn creates a genuine feeling of community.

It’s important to acknowledge that there are spaces that are experimenting with alternatives to the current form of discussion about fashion, it’s just about discovering those spaces. Crying about the way things were or lamenting that they might never get better is an easy way to fall into a cycle of cynicism. It’s even more ridiculous to fall into such cynicism when there are real efforts to make a real material change, and build communities.

One more space I want to highlight is studio Wenjue Lu, a multidisciplinary art studio in Brooklyn. The main tenet behind Wenjue Lu’s work is restoring a feeling of “slowness” in an ever accelerating world (which is also kind of what this article is about in a roundabout way). Something that WJL has done lately is host several workshops for fashion sketching and the dyeing process for clothing within their studio walls. These workshops are exactly what I would want a “third space” to be. Not only are you creating a space for people to exist in, you’re also helping educate others. I can’t gush enough about how thoughtful I think the duo behind this studio are. My takeaway from this studios and Komune’s work is that fixing the way that we speak about fashion would come in the formation of a space that focuses on two aspects:

1) Works to educate their community in regards to fashion, consumption, and style
2) Is driven by a community focus.

There has to be more in person spaces like these. It would be great if we could make this kind of education accessible to people from as diverse a background as possible. I hope more spaces like these begin to emerge, as the demand for third spaces increasingly emerges. It is my belief that through supporting spaces that foster thoughtful discussion, we can shift the dialogue from a consumption oriented mindset to one that is focused on the artistry of fashion.

I want to also briefly touch on the topic of third spaces online. While outlining two examples I’ve personally experienced in the real world, the virtual world is a whole different space. Not everyone wants to live in New York City with all the subway rats, but still really want to talk fashion with other people. So what would those kinds of online spaces even look like? The answer as it stands is I’m not sure? Maybe it can’t! Of course a return to the old internet forum style discussion would be ideal, but the infrastructure for such a change isn’t there just yet. The way the new internet has settled forums doesn’t retain user attention the way social media does, leaving it to be unprofitable. Leaving a rift between what is best for the consumer vs the market, as inherently the algorithms of websites like Twitter or Instagram aren’t serviceable for the kinds of discussion that places like Wenjue Lu or Komune are having. In truth I believe it would require the emergence of a new online space that is focused on a diverse set of discussions, divorced from the demands of the algorithm.

So if you wanted to learn about fashion, where would you go? At the end of the day there’s no better place than out in the streets. Stroll down a crowded street, see what other people are wearing, have conversations about pieces you thought were interesting. Fashion is a communal art and you won’t learn about style by keeping to yourself. It’s because fashion is such a communal art that I think it’s important for the formation of third spaces that support that end.

References:
1) Thompson, Derek. “Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out.” The Atlantic, 14 Feb. 2024, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/america-decline-hanging-out/677451/.

2) Davis, Ben. Art in the After-Culture. Haymarket Books, 15 Mar. 2022.

‌

The Aura Awards have entered their Seki phase. Evolution has learned restraint. The goal is no longer to expand, but to coexist.

What began as a contest of survival has become a study in diplomacy: how two styles, two selves, two aesthetics can share the same space in harmony. But before we crown this week’s winner, let’s take a moment for those who participated!

Here are the honorable mentions:

@hazel

@patty_choux

And the Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 It’s a tie between @arkenlight and @melanieleah 🔥🔥

For the first time in Aura Awards history, evolution refused to pick a winner. Two fits emerged side by side—distinct, alive, and unwilling to cancel each other out. A perfect seki before seki: mutual life on the board.

And so, in honor of that balance, we celebrate both.

“Cambrian Twin” by Yeng T

I like that there are two of them
I like that evolution doubled back
I like the moment abundance became visible
I like how one look breathes into another
I like symmetry learning to misbehave
I like the way the board split but didn’t break
I like coincidence dressed as destiny
I like that we can’t tell which came first
I like reflection finding a twin
I like color as conversation
I like form as argument that ends in laughter
I like that no one won, and everything lived
I like sequins beside silence
I like mutation with manners
I like the light learning to bend twice
I like that this is how evolution speaks

This Week’s Theme: Seki

Think:

• Shared space between textures

• Fabrics negotiating peace

• Presence sustained through restraint

Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the goal is to claim more territory than the opponent. The game was invented in China over 2,500 years ago and is believed to be the oldest board game still played today. Its rules are simple: one player places black stones, the other white, each turn marking a point on a 19×19 grid. Once placed, stones cannot move; only when fully surrounded are they removed from the board.

Go was considered one of the four essential arts of the cultured aristocratic Chinese scholars in antiquity. The earliest written reference to the game is generally recognized as the historical annal Zuo Zhuan (c. 4th century BCE).

Despite its relatively simple rules, Go is extremely complex. Unlike chess, Go doesn’t revolve around a single king. There is no decisive checkmate. Instead, power accumulates quietly, in the margins, through structure and intuition.

Seki is one of its strangest outcomes. Two opposing formations press so tightly against each other that any further move would be suicide. Both positions are “alive,” but only because they agree—wordlessly—to stop. It’s an impasse, yes, but also a kind of peace.

What’s unique about seki is that in a game defined by expansion, it’s a rare moment of mutual recognition: two sides realizing that survival sometimes means restraint. Neither wins territory, but neither is lost. They coexist in perpetual, delicate tension.

Fashion, too, reaches these points of balance.

• A maximalist skirt restrained by a neutral top.

• A formal blazer softened by sneakers.

Style, like Go, is not only about claiming space—it’s about knowing when to leave it unclaimed. About allowing contrast to remain alive on the board.

And so this week, the invitation is simple:
hold the pause.
let the line breathe.
leave one corner of the board untouched.

Not everything needs to resolve.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your outfits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitcheck here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Yeng
lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door:

Each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.

This issue comes from (@samueleolivieri). If you love vintage, we’ll get along just fine. Aspiring journalist with a passion for news and fashion, I write about the things that evolve with time!

Fashion as my unconscious ritual

Buying clothes, wearing them, finding new pieces, mixing and matching, and moving forward with fresh styles, we often do all of this without even realizing it.

Yet every choice we make becomes part of our personality, a silent message we send to the world. The real question is: do you dress purely for the look, or for the story your outfit tells?

Sending a message without knowing it

Many people don’t realize it, but getting dressed is like broadcasting a message.
It’s a daily act, an expression of who we are, and the first way we introduce ourselves to the world.

Historically, clothing was a code, it revealed social status, origin, and often political or cultural beliefs.
Today, we wear clothes with less conscious thought, but the story hasn’t disappeared.

So ask yourself: am I wearing this just because I like it, or because of the story it carries?

Why Vintage Lovers Get It

If you love vintage, you probably check the brand and history of what you’re buying. Maybe you want to know if it’s a good investment, or if the brand has a unique story.

But here’s the thing: every brand has a story.
No brand, no accessory exists without a reason. They are created to communicate something: a style, a cultural reference, even a rebellion, and by wearing them, you are amplifying that message.

You’re not just dressing yourself. You’re participating in a conversation bigger than you, even if you don’t realize it.

Dressing to Meet a Human Need

Clothing is more than fabric on skin. It answers deep human needs.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our actions are guided by the needs we seek to fulfill. Clothing is part of that journey. It first satisfies basic physiological needs, protection from the cold, sun, or rain.
Then it climbs the hierarchy, giving us a sense of belonging by aligning us with certain groups, communities, or lifestyles.

Throughout history, fashion has been a tool of expression and change. Think of the flapper dresses of the 1920s challenging gender norms, or the black leather jackets of the punk movement symbolizing rebellion. Clothes can unite, provoke, empower, and they tell the story of who we are becoming as a society.

So, What Should We Wear?

Should we dress just to look good, or to honor the meaning behind what we wear?
There is no single right answer.

But one truth remains: humans are visual, and yes, we are judgmental.
I’m not saying you should dress for others, but be aware that the way you dress reflects the character you project into the world.

My Vintage Watch Story

Take my own experience.

Portobello Road Market: London’s most famous vintage market.
I found a Seiko watch.
At the time, I didn’t know much about its value or history.
It was £20. I bought it.

Later, I discovered that the Seiko “Tank” was inspired by one of the most iconic watch designs ever made. While it wasn’t the first rectangular watch, it helped popularize the shape, giving it a clean, structured form that left a lasting cultural impact.

I realized I wasn’t just wearing a watch, I was wearing a piece of design history.

Here are the honorable mentions:

@antwon

@mirimoon

@bei

And the Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 Congratulations, @sarahmaemae 🔥🔥

MORNING CAPSULE: FALL AND TRENDS SIGNAL – WHAT TO DO NOW
The closet index remains stable after last week’s rotation into value-driven fundamentals. Following a strong performance in baseline neutrals, early indicators suggest sustained inflows into durable fibers and fall silhouettes. The overall sentiment remains constructive, supported by consistent cost-per-wear yields and long-term confidence in biege-based assets.

Fit Flow Analysis
In early trade, money flows are positive in the oversized brown knit. The piece demonstrates resilience across market conditions, maintaining texture integrity and margin of comfort.

Flows are neutral in the checked skirt, reflecting balanced sentiment between structure and movement. Investors continue to accumulate on minor pullbacks, citing favorable plaid-to-plain ratios.

Flows are modestly positive in burgundy tights, signaling early risk-on behavior among color investors. This development warrants monitoring should momentum spill over into the lower-accessory segment.

Momo Crowd and Smart Money
The momo crowd remains active in fast-fashion rotation, though positioning has softened as attention shifts toward quality-weighted portfolios. Smart money remains selectively long in timeless items, showing preference for undervalued pieces with proven versatility metrics.

Note for new participants: smart money typically accumulates during periods of aesthetic fatigue and distributes during viral hype phases. Alignment with this approach tends to outperform over multiple wardrobe cycles.

Sentiment
Consumer confidence in quiet fits remains elevated. Fear of missing trend is moderate, offset by renewed appreciation for utility-based style. Emotional volatility index remains low.

Outlook
Interest in foundational colors (saddle brown, khaki, burgundy) continues to outpace speculative tones. Cashmere and wool blend futures show stable demand heading into colder months. Preliminary data suggests the wardrobe market may be entering a new phase of diversification, marking a structural shift away from value concentration toward evolutionary abundance. The phenomenon—informally referred to by analysts as the Cambrian Expansion—is characterized by accelerated mutation across silhouettes, colorways, and layering strategies.

Protection Band and Allocation Guidance
Based on current conditions, prudent dressers may consider maintaining 30–40% exposure to core wardrobe positions, 10–15% allocated to experimental silhouettes, and 45–60% held in liquid basics.

Conservative participants should maintain higher protection bands via neutral layering; aggressive participants may reduce protection to pursue limited-edition accessories on short-term pullbacks.

This Week’s Theme: Cambrian Explosion

Think:

• Mutation as styling principle.

• Form following curiosity, not function.

• “See what happens.”

The Cambrian Explosion was a period roughly 540 million years ago when life on Earth went from simple to complex—suddenly, dramatically, irreversibly. In a geological instant, organisms developed eyes, shells, symmetry, movement. Almost every major form of life we know today traces its ancestry back to that burst of invention.

Fashion is going through its own Cambrian moment. We’re living through a style explosion: cottagecore beside cyberpunk beside girl math beside prep revival. Every fitcheck brings a new species of aesthetic: coquette, blokecore, office siren, techwear. The landscape isn’t linear anymore: it’s branching, mutating, hybridizing in real time. One day you’re a minimalist; the next you’ve grown ruffles, spikes, and a carabiner tail.

This week’s theme is about maximal invention. Curate? Mutate? Layer the fossils of your old selves with something entirely new. A thrifted suit jacket over gym shorts. An office shoe with an alien sock. Evolution doesn’t plan ahead—it just happens.

Let it happen.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your outfits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitpic here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Yeng
lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door:

Each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.

This issue comes from @notacriminal. You can find him in Komune most Fridays.

My recent journey with my style.

Imagine what the peak of your personal style would be right now. Chances are, the image you made in your head, if you were able to think of one, is inspired by something you might have just seen, by something you want to buy. Think back, is this the same goal as when you first started on your fashion journey? Wait a week or a month and think about your goal again. Chances are it changed again. This is natural. Style is ever evolving, everyone knows that. So if everyone knows that then why are we so obsessed with discovering it?

I haven’t posted any of my outfits for a while. Style has always been more personal than social for me. When it is social, it’s usually between close friends. When I would post on Instagram, I would get nervous that too many people would see it instead of the people I wanted to see it. I usually opted just to show my outfits to people in smaller Discord servers instead, just my friends. But I haven’t even been posting on Discord either. When I go out, I haven’t been worrying about what I’m wearing or caring to focus on my outfit. I feel like I’ve hit a wall. I feel bored.

What would the old me say if he knew that my current favorite pair of pants was grey trousers?

Frankly, knowing me, I would have ended it all right there. Realistically, I never thought I would ever get to the point where I was wearing trousers and button-up shirts. Even a year ago, but now they’re so integral to my personal style that I couldn’t imagine not wearing them. While my job requires professional wear, I was already drifting towards a more “adult” style long before I was working at this job. It’s funny, because these pants, which by all means are “boring,” were actually a very adventurous piece for me. I had long avoided lighter colored pants for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because I just thought that I couldn’t pull them off. At the time I was actually looking for another pair of baggy black trousers when I came across these. I already have multiple baggy black trousers. I had trapped myself in a box. Having believed I had found my niche, I stopped looking for anything new. Now this was new and exciting to me, but I wasn’t excited to show it off. A lot of these clothes I’ve been enjoying have been enjoyable from a technical standpoint. They’re comfortable and fit me well. But they are not exciting because they fit extremely comfortably within the circle of my personal style. It was a step out of my comfort zone, but not enough that it actually makes me feel something when I’m wearing it.

I remember when I was first in the deeply experimental stage of my fashion journey. Everything I bought was a massive step out of my comfort zone. And as a result, everything new was exciting, and I was excited to wear it and show it off. This box I was making for myself wasn’t even one I was aware I was making. I actually hadn’t thought of my “personal style” in months. Which brings me to my first point. Personal style is not something one can just “fix”. At best, it’s something that can be developed. But it’s something you already have as a result of your choices and personality. The idea of my personal style was a prison even if I didn’t think of it as my personal style.

Another reason why I haven’t been posting is that I’m almost completely off of social media. I’m trying to live more in the real world, and it’s been an amazing experience. I would have never gotten those grey trousers if they weren’t in Komune for me to try on. Seeing something in person is a lot more inspiring than the constant flood of everything happening online. Scrolling, you’ll see so many things in sequence that you won’t be able to remember any of it. But going in person, trying things on, and being able to really experience it fully will stick with you a lot longer. I’ve been trying to buy things in person more. It’s usually cheaper and a better experience. These are 2 stores that really stood out to me recently:

Doors was a very inspiring experience. It has a collection of independent designers. Many different pieces of clothing were interesting, but what stood out to me was a purposefully distressed trench coat full of safety pins. It was so over the top that it could almost be described as a costume piece. But it was really cool. The price was eye-watering, and it was far too small for me. But it was very inspiring, and it was definitely exciting. It made me think about how I could modify my own clothes to get a look closer to that jacket, but more personal.

John Fluevog was another really cool store. The variety of shoes on display makes it so that there’s something for almost everyone. For me, these really stood out

The athloafer is a very interesting development for me. It is tangible proof of evolution and innovation in fashion. I currently own the Junya Wantanabe Snofer, and I’m quite happy with it, but I love this take on it. It’s rare that you will actually see something with an actual flame graphic. Especially one seen in. The shoes have a car-like design. It’s exciting. Personal style, like a lot of fashion discourse, is a very online concept. The swaggy old Japanese people didn’t get their casual swagginess from hyperanalyzing other people’s outfits on Instagram. I really liked the new push for people who were “into fashion” to get real hobbies, because fashion doesn’t thrive in a vacuum.

There has been one piece that has excited me online. The last time I went on instagram (everything in moderation) something DID stand out to me, because I hadn’t been on it in a while.

This take on the riot boot feels such a far cry from what I’ve been building my style towards, pushing it back towards that more experimental phase in my journey. Being free with your style and just trying out new things is so important to keeping a relevant and exciting fashion journey. Settling for one style is boring, and a truly personal style will incorporate multiple facets of your personality.

I’m writing this when I’m writing it because I only recently felt like I got over the slump I’ve been feeling towards my personal style. What pulled me out of the slump really wasn’t anything new. This is significant to me because I would never post without having something new to show off. A lot of my excitement came from new things, as you can probably tell. But appreciating the style that you’ve built up for yourself is just as important.

None of the pieces in this outfit are new by any means. It’s all a year to two years old. The day I wore it I barely focused on my fit, but my closet is so curated that I can just throw something on and it will look good. The clothes I’m wearing are my personal style. It’s not something to be found, it simply is. And every new experiment and experience factors into it. Don’t overthink it. This outfit is exciting to me because the clothing in my closet is exciting. At some point the clothes that were once experimental to me became normal parts of my style language. Using Lekondo (they did not pay me for this) to document my closet helps me feel more appreciative and excited about the clothes I already have. The title of the article is clickbait, it’s not that you shouldn’t find your personal style, but rather to not be so worried about what box you’re in. Being free and true to yourself is the ultimate expression of personal style. But ultimately I just wanted to show off cool stuff I’ve been looking at. If it was up to me we’d all be naked.

Here are the honorable mentions:

@nycgaucho
@melanieleah
@michelle

And the Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 Congratulations, @bibiandersun 🔥🔥

Spirals You Can Wear

I wore the sequence,
to school, to the party, to the season I thought I could come out as someone new. The top drew me in, buttons running diagonal. Expansion above contraction, contraction inside expansion.

(Alone the way a spiral is alone—always turning, never touching the same point twice. (If the universe has a dress code, maybe it’s this: ratios stitched into denim, curves that keep unfolding. (Not that I understood it. Not that I asked for it. But I wore it anyway. (Sometimes aesthetics is math you can’t opt out of. (Sometimes it’s survival: if the pattern works, then maybe I do too. (I thought: it’s not their fault it looked strange. Not their fault I made myself part of the equation. (Not their fault the mirror gave me away—light across my clothes like bees zipping through sunflowers. (Not their fault I called it geometry when really it was tabis. (And when I told people, they said “you look amazing.” But that wasn’t what I needed. (I needed someone to say:

It was Fibonacci
that made me choose the buttons,
the swelling shorts,
the curve,
the imbalance.

Fibonacci written into the pleats.
Fibonacci whispering: wear this, become that.
Fibonacci that remembers the order, even when I try to forget.

And if the sequence ever ended—
if it finally stopped its turning—
I think I’d still be here.
Only lighter.
Only clearer.
Ready to step into the next number.
again.

This Week’s Theme: Kirkland Signature

Think:

• Economy as silhouette: wide, generous, repeating.

• Value so good it becomes couture.

• Normcore, but make it wholesale.

For readers abroad: Costco is a members-only warehouse chain in North America, where goods are sold in absurdly large quantities. Imagine: six pounds of cheese, or thirty rolls of paper towels. Kirkland Signature is its in-house brand.

* Legend has it that Khrushchev, visiting an American supermarket during the Cold War, admitted he knew communism had lost after seeing such abundance.

Kirkland Signature is Costco’s private label, stamped on everything from olive oil to cashmere. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s oddly trustworthy. People value it because it works. Over time, the plain logo itself became a kind of inside joke, a knowing wink: the unit economics just make sense.

Why does it matter? Because style isn’t only about luxury or rarity. Sometimes it’s about approachability. Sometimes it’s about the quiet genius of the bargain. The thrill of finding something useful, repeatable, wearable—and realizing that’s what makes it chic.

This week’s theme is about style as return on investment. A plain sweatshirt worn every day until it molds to you. A jacket that doesn’t just last, but keeps proving its worth. An outfit that shows up, again and again.

The challenge: find beauty not in excess, but in consistency. Look squarely at what you already own , and bring those pieces to life. What was the level of appreciation you once had it for? We’d love to see it.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your outfits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitpic here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Yeng
lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside the Lekondo fitting room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door:

Each issue explores a theme, highlights some standouts, and introduces what’s new — in the app, on the streets, or inside your wardrobe’s collective unconscious.

This issue comes from @mirimoon, Miranda Luna. Miranda is a digital marketing strategist and the creator of Colombian Chic?, a curated newsletter unveiling the stories, trends and talents reshaping Colombian fashion. Based in Medellín, she blends her communications expertise with a passion for spotlighting local talent and the stories behind fashion.

In Latin America, it’s still difficult to document fashion. There aren’t sprawling digital archives of runway shots or documentaries on local designers. If you want to trace how a creative evolves, you have to piece it together yourself. And on social media, anything that could be an archive evaporates in 24 hours, buried under likes and views.

That’s slowly changing. Here in Colombia, the local fashion scene is growing in popularity, and wearing local brands has never been “cooler”. But what’s the point of consuming if everything gets lost in the feed?

Building a visual diary — even if it’s just of my own closet — has become an intimate, exciting way to create an archive, especially when wearing local pieces. Taking the photo not for external validation and likes, but to build my own references and understand the identity I’m creating as the fashion scene in my country grows.

Thanks to Lekondo, that archive doesn’t get lost in my phone’s gallery or dissolve into algorithms. It can live in a space that allows me to return, observe, compare, and connect. In a world that tells us we should look all the same, keeping a record of the local brands I wear—and noticing how they shape my sense of belonging— is deeply reaffirming.

That visual diary has turned into a map of my obsessions. I’ve noticed I reach for more patterned pants than I thought, that I have a soft spot for greens and yellows even though I swear I’m “not a color person”, and that I’m still torn between loose silhouettes and fitted garments. What follows are fragments of that map: my fits and the aesthetics I’m creating without even noticing.

This pleated skirt intimidates me. I love its color and the way it falls, but every time I wear it, I feel like I’m weighed down by all those ideas about how a woman’s body “should” be shown. But the first time I put it on with this white shirt, I just didn’t care anymore. Suddenly, it stopped being a difficult piece and started feeling comfortable.

If I had to name what came out of it, I’d call it my “cloudy” aesthetic: I felt light, almost suspended. What might look like a school uniform to someone else becomes playful to me because of the color. And the accessories —a green bag with lime handles and a glass pineapple necklace, both from Colombian brands— act like anchors. They remind me that this silhouette experiment is mine, and that I get to inhabit it on my own terms.

I like to think of this as my “fantasy rock star” look. A bit dark, a little dramatic, almost gothic-romantic, but really it’s just me trying on something different. I enjoy exploring what it feels like to inhabit that slightly bolder alter ego through this see-through lace dress. Wearing it with wide jeans underneath is my way of making it more everyday and bringing that fantasy into real life for a moment.

This pleated tulle top is, without a doubt, one of the most challenging pieces in my closet. I still struggle to figure out how to style something so wide and so light, but pairing it with jeans is how I ground its dreamy air. I like to play with textures and colors that shouldn’t work together and yet somehow do. I feel like it’s a piece I’ll never get tired of experimenting with.

How many colors, textures, and silhouettes do I still have left to explore?

Keeping a visual record of what I wear helps me find an answer to that question. I get excited thinking about what my own fashion universe might look like in a year or two. Maybe I’ll look back at these outfits and remember everything I was learning about my culture, or notice that I stopped wearing certain colors and decide to bring them back. That exercise keeps me documenting and helps me establish a visual conversation with past versions of myself.

The Aura Awards are about what happens when clothes map the invisible structures of the world. And once again, the community has shown us just how far that imagination can stretch. But before we crown this week’s winner, let’s take a moment for those who participated!

Here are the honorable mentions:

@miyamotomusahi
@vtrd
@adeifefaith

And the Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 Congratulations, @mirimoon 🔥🔥

Future Relics, in Practice

When we talk about relics, we usually mean an artifact preserved from the past, like an object that outlived its moment. But a “future relic” is stranger. It asks: what from right now will endure? What will be left behind, not by accident, but because it already feels like it belongs to more than one time?

This outfit addresses that question directly. The black skirt, the tank, the flat shoes— they’re durable choices, the kind you could imagine in almost any decade. And then there are the accents: the red earrings, the striped bag, the pearls resting just so on the collarbone. These are the details that place it in a specific time without trapping it there.

What’s striking is how compelling it balances those two registers. It isn’t trying to be timeless, but it ends up that way. You can imagine it being worn to the grocery store, or the attire to an art gallery. It’s functional in the present, but it also contains subtlety of what people in the future might say about us: that we cared about proportion, about contrast, about combining utility with expression.

Deliberate, composed, slightly mysterious. That’s what makes it a “future relic.” It’s timeless, yes, but more importantly, it’s caught a moment that already feels like memory, one that will make sense, over and over again.

This Week’s Theme: Fibonacci Sequence

Think:

• Symmetry that emerges out of asymmetry.

• Patterns that reveal themselves in recursion.

• Spirals in texture, cut, or accessories.

The Fibonacci sequence is when each number is the sum of the two before it. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…..but then you notice it shows up everywhere: in the spirals of a sunflower, the curve of a seashell, the branching of trees. Architects use it to design façades. Musicians use it to shape rhythms that resolve just when you want them to.

Why? One theory is that it mirrors growth itself. The sequence describes how populations expand, how cells divide, how structures scale. Another is that our brains are wired to recognize proportion, and Fibonacci proportions feel balanced without being perfectly symmetrical.

Each part contains the shape of the whole. Growth isn’t linear; rather, it folds back on itself, building complexity from repetition. This week’s theme is about recognizing those hidden orders, and making them wearable. A pleat that drapes itself down a skirt. A spiral in jewelry, mirrored by a twist in hair.

Beauty is in the acute perception to the immense yet delicate. Not because we consciously recognize the math, but because it reminds us of how we grow, too—through iteration, through trying something, then trying again, then combining the old and the new into something that feels inevitable.

We’d love to see it.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your outfits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitpic here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Yeng
lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside The Fitting Room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door: where looks are tested, stories are forming, and something’s always slightly undone.

Each issue explores a theme, highlights a fit from the feed, and what’s coming next — on Lekondo, in our closets, or out in the city.

This issue comes from Steam Geek, otherwise known as @AskaCat, is a vintage fashion enthusiast based in France with a special interest in tailoring. Thanks to his experience on multiple dedicated forums, he has enough knowledge to start a collection of his own, spanning from late 19th century to modern pieces. He is a regular user on the Lekondo community and posts ensembles constructed from his collection regularly on the platform.

I have always asked an incessant question that any young parent might know all too well: “why is that?”

This question, as vague as it may be standing before us like a suspect in a criminal case, has followed me throughout my life. It rhythmed my academic path, brought me to the world of fashion and gave me the curiosity most of my friends know me for at the time these lines are written, all because I kept using that question as a follow up to any answer.

“Why do trousers have pleats sometimes?”

“to help with movement, it’s an heritage from workwear”

“why is that?”

“They act like accordions and deploy when the fabric is meant to stretch”

“And why does mine have three pleats when most trousers have two or less?”

and then I paused. Books, the all mighty internet and some just as nerdy friends had answered these questions quite effortlessly and I had consumed that knowledge like one consumes popcorn in front of a movie. But that one question had stumped me. It’s not like the others, it doesn’t speak of functionality, it speaks of fashions, fads and temporary appreciations for a certain look and a certain aesthetic. It drew me back to the 1930s – not that I lived through the period, thank heaven –, especially the U.S.A. Since the first world war, the country had become a leader in any kind of fashion, architecture and music, the “place to be” for many. As such, it had carried on the swing epidemic that had swept the world in the late 1920s and had embraced the Oxford Bags (which are a whole thing, I wholeheartedly encourage you to research them).

As the years went by, the men’s fashion in the US turned to drape. Any suit deserving of the name was cut full enough to drape elegantly and give a Y shape to the silhouette. Apart from being my favorite cut in the history of clothing, it also proved to be quite a fantastic camouflage for any man’s true silhouette which could be enhanced via padding and – you guessed it – pleating the cloth. The U.S, staying true to its “bigger is better” persona, always worked towards more. More drape, more fabric, more Y silhouettes.

The eldritch amalgamation that resulted from this unholy quest was the swing suit.

Pleats in the back, on the trousers, on the jacket’s chest and even on the waistcoat depending on some models. Naturally, the trousers followed this trend, adopting a fuller cut and more pleats. Surprisingly, I have yet to find a pair with more than three pleats dating from this era of fashion.

Now that I know the niche history of my trousers – which were luckily found in a flea market in the French countryside – I got to thinking. This little knowledge, it did help me understand why. That ‘why’ is very interesting to me because it helps give ideas as to how one might wear their clothes.

“Now that I know that my trousers were made for dancing teens in the 1930s, I might have some more playful and party-ish elements with them !”

This example, as specific and useless as it may sound at the moment, is something that might happen to any one of us, of the Lekondo team, to any of you. With the rise of thrifting, second hand shopping and the evergrowing coming and going from flea markets, clothing that is new to one but not to the world is becoming more and more prevalent. Thus, I wholeheartedly encourage you, sole reader of this editorial, to research any garment you might own for it is the witness of many things. A pair of trousers may have seen the downfall of the swing era, a bag may have seen riots that aren’t told about in schools anymore.

Actually, this might be more easily demonstrated with another item I own and happen to have bought during the writing of this editorial.

It is a collar. Not a full shirt of which I speak of the collar, not cuffs either, just the collar. In fact, it is detached from the shirt body and heavily starched so as to give it rigidity beyond what is the norm to our day. I happen to own 15 models of these heavily starched collars, but here’s the one I want to speak about for this:

This specific collar is called a wingtip. It is, historically, worn in the most various ways possible.

There are those who wear it with eveningwear

some wear it with morningwear :

or just separately, with any old trousers and waistcoat

Do mind that I do not know who any of these men are. Anyway, there is not one singular way to adorn such a collar. The model showcased in the multiple fits and demonstrated higher in this, was made at Aix-en-Provance, France. It is from 1910 (as is written on the inside), and at the time of its creation it might have been worn in the second exemple’s fashion : grey striped trousers, a contrasting waistcoat and a black jacket. Here, unlike with just any pair of trousers, I couldn’t just side aside and watch this stiff piece of cotton with no curiosity. My first question to myself was “what in the world did I stubble upon and is it even related to clothing ?”. I have since found that this “trend” or way of wearing collars is originally dating back to 1827, when a woman (Mrs. Montague), had enough of washing her husband’s dirty shirts. She noticed the collar and the cuffs of the shirt were the first to wear out and show stains. Bored with the tenuous task, she cut the collar and the cuffs off of her husband’s shirts, washing them aside. Soon, her idea spread out like a wildfire and it was only 120 years later that the detachable collar truly died in the fashion of even the old.

In the meantime, they were all the rage. From imperial collars that were worn high and ended just under the cheekbone to spearpoint collars which much more resemble the ones worn today, these detachable collars are one of the more historical pieces I wear occasionally. Why, you might ask ? because they still bring about some uses out of their time. Firstly, they bring a sense of structure which I very much enjoy today. They are also a tremendous factor when it comes to personalisation of shirts in the morning. Want the modern shirt look with none of the wrinkling after hours ? detachable collar. Want a Peaky Blinders vibe in your outfit ? detachable collar (recommend a club collar). Want to give your fully suited look an edwardian vibe ? detachable collar (wingtip).

But enough of me advocating for my ways. My point is the following. inside and outside of one’s chosen aesthetic, it is healthy to look at the history of clothing for the reasons stated earlier but also so you may learn of new references and new looks to try yourself. I’m a fashion history nerd, who wears tailoring and sartoria all day long, all year long. Of course I am biased and wear antiquated clothing, which may make you think the history of clothing is just that. But I urge you to look around for more, because it is so much more ! The birth of Punk, Alt, Emo and Grunge aesthetics and sounds is rooted in the history of clothing. Zoot suits and the ensuing riot, the teddy boys, the suede heads, all parts of historic clothing that one may identify with more easily (in terms of style, the politics affiliated with these events is left to one’s own heart). My point is : be curious, research why your t-shirt has these weird sleeves, find out why your Crewneck sweater has these motifs on the wool, look at why the denim jacket you bought has stripes of sewed fabric, ask yourself why your trench coat has these D rings on the back of the beltloops.

Because the answer will help you find why you might appreciate the things you do, how they were originally worn may help you differ from that and help you create your own style, looking at the reason for some small detail may be the starting point for a whole new way of living life. Clothing has an origin, always. It always had one, as all things do. But today, I convey to you something you might not have thought of : you were too late for the history I just spoke of. But you’re in time to shape its future. Be who you want to be, look just the way you want, wear out your clothing just like you enjoy it. That's the story your grandchildren will tell.

The Aura Awards are about what happens when clothes refuse to stay in one era, one genre, one role. They’re about the way a single look can be both memory and prophecy.

And once again, the community has shown us just how far that imagination can stretch. But before we crown this week’s winner, let’s take a moment for those who participated!

Here are the honorable mentions:

@samuelolivieri

@tofu

And the Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 Congratulations, @melanieleah 🔥🔥

Orpheus in the Parking Lot

In this version, Orpheus is a woman, which already makes the story better. Because if a man had to walk out of the underworld without looking back, you know he would. He would get all the way to the exit, humming to himself, thinking about lunch. But if a woman is Orpheus, of course she looks back. Not because she doubts, but because she’s curious. Who wouldn’t be? The whole point of a person you love following you out of hell is that you want to see them following you out of hell.

The outfit helps. Imagine descending into Hades dressed like this: dark denim cut into almost-geometric slabs, a blazer that looks like it was designed for an interplanetary court proceeding, shoes sharp enough to sign contracts. It’s armor, but with a cutout right at the center, as if to say: I could protect myself completely, but I won’t. Which is its own kind of power.

In myths, people are always warned not to look back. What does it mean to walk forward without proof? Looking back is supposed to be dangerous, but it’s also irresistible. If you don’t look back, how do you know the story is real? Maybe that’s the real curse: not that Eurydice disappears, but that you’re asked to trust in something you can’t see, indefinitely.

Standing in the parking lot, Orpheus looks less like a tragic figure and more like someone waiting for her Uber. She’s dressed for both antiquity and whatever comes after the second season of The Rehearsal. You can see the past in the cut, the future in the angles. The underworld could be just below the concrete. Or above. Or nowhere.

Anyway, she turns her head. Because who wouldn’t?

This Week’s Theme: Future Relics

Think:

• A silhouette that refuses to pick a side.

• Layering that bends time and gender.

• Clothing as a portal, not a label.

The word “relic” usually means something from the past—dusty, inert, behind glass. But relics are also portals. A relic creates a thread between then and now, then and later. A thrifted jacket with a stranger’s name stitched inside carries time across time.

And then there’s the “future.” We usually talk about it like it’s clean, empty, waiting for us to fill it. But the truth is, we only imagine the future using fragments of what we already know. When sci-fi designers create “space uniforms,” they borrow from the military and from monks. When we picture post-apocalyptic survivors, they’re always dressed in torn jeans and leather, not some fabric we haven’t invented yet.

So “Future Relic” is an outfit that could survive in a museum, but it could also survive the future. And that’s the point: you can’t tell the difference. The past and the future fold into each other, and what’s left is presence.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your fits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitpic here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Thanks for being early!
Yeng

lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

Welcome from inside The Fitting Room. A weekly dispatch from between the mirror and the door: where looks are tested, stories are forming, and something’s always slightly undone.

Each issue explores a theme, highlights a fit from the feed, and what’s coming next — on Lekondo, in our closets, or out in the city.

This issue comes from @ThisIsAntwon, a London-based creator whose sharp fashion commentary and deep techwear expertise have made him a respected voice in fashion discourse for almost a decade through his YouTube channel.

Fashion is not about looking good. That’s my favorite sarcastic retort when someone makes fun of my ridiculous drop-crotch pants, but there’s some truth there. Hang around any certified clothes-wearers for long enough and you’ll know what I mean.

Tracking the evolution of my style on Lekondo.

The Internet Uniform

The internet is full of ‘How To Wear Clothes In Current Year’ creators, as if getting dressed is a check-box exercise of donning the season’s most agreeable garments, and guides on using clothes to make yourself more attractive to others. They are exclusively designed for people not particularly into fashion, and enthusiasts rarely discuss clothes on those terms.

Isn’t that weird? Surely fashion fans are trying to look as good as possible by conventional standards. Would an artist not aspire to create the most beautiful paintings? Would a musician not practice making better-sounding music?

And yet, Hedi Boys go head-to-toe in impossibly tight garments when everyone knows wider fits are on-trend. Kapital fans spend thousands on semi-destroyed Boro jackets. And I still wear the Acronym P30A-DS when literally hundreds of people have told me they think they look terrible. Perhaps if I were earlier in my fashion journey I’d have sold them for the wide-fitting raw denim all over my IG feed.

(Yeah, not everyone likes the pants.)

Because it does start out that way, doesn’t it? Like most do, I began an interest in clothing with a nebulous desire to dress better. But something happens between “I want to look good” and “I am a clothing enthusiast”. A fashion MF. Following a hobby many paint as frivolous or materialistic (“aren’t you just buying stuff?”). I can only tell you what happened to me, how clothing tangibly altered the course of my life, and why I’m still sharing my thoughts on weird pants after nearly a decade.

What started as shopping became something more layered: a slow turn toward self-expression.

Fashion as Expression

I have to admit, when I decided to take a more active interest in fashion I wanted to crowd-source my opinions. With little context for what ‘looks good’, and little knowledge of what was out there, I found myself asking “what can I consume to improve how others look at me? Which rules should I follow?”

It’s hard to argue that manners of dress (or any way we choose to present ourselves) aren’t in some way socially-derived. “Buying things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like” is an unofficial mantra of capitalism, and when we see the Rolex-wearing yuppie step out of an expensive car we naturally assume they’re not a timepiece enthusiast but a showing-off enthusiast. Same with everyone carrying a monogrammed LV bag through airport security.

In effect, I was looking outwards. Low knowledge requires external validation. There certainly is a level of dress focused on looking good enough to not get bullied by your peers. In the UK, Represent is the king of this category, providing clothing heavily inspired by other brands and the trend cycle so its fans can safely consume their product catalogue and utterly blend into a Slug & Lettuce bar queue. That’s good enough for some, and you know what? I don’t blame them.

What Clothing Actually Means

If you choose to keep riding the fashion bus though, you’ll probably end up learning a little more about what clothing means. Not just ‘Gucci logo equals $800 shoes’, but the language clothing speaks. I appreciate that it sounds pretentious, but it’s an important part of progressing clothing beyond looking good for other people, and into a means of self-expression.

If you’re walking around in public, it’s better to speak in complete sentences than total nonsense.

At a basic level, hanging around different clothing brands, stores, and communities for some time shows you what different types of clothing represent. We’re always buying more than a physical garment with clothing pickups, and a little cultural context goes a long way to helping you decide what’s right for you (a context shaped by a combination of marketing material and real people). Carhartt and Armani Exchange might put out a fundamentally similar branded tee, but say something quite different about the wearer.

I get it, ‘what your logo says about you’ is still pretty superficial, but it’s the first way a lot of people (myself included) start thinking about the visual language of clothing beyond how much it costs.

Fortunately, the form, construction and details of clothing have something to say too. Our choice to wear a high-gsm cotton jacket VS an ultralight packable nylon one is partly one of practicality, but also one of expression. Like it or not, they evoke different feelings based on their look, history, and cultural context. The same goes for garment dimensions, hardware, embellishments, pretty much any identifiable part of a clothing item. How designers or brands interact with those builds a picture; the more we understand that picture, the more conscious we are of what we express when we put that shit on

.

The nylon pants + bag massively change the vibe of this fit. See the outfit details here.

We need to go through that process, at least a little, to appreciate some types of clothing. We need to recognize the conventions to enjoy the unconventional. And the unconventional is not always the most beautiful by typical standards - just as many have little appreciation for modern art (“I could do that myself!”), we can’t expect a wider audience to appreciate the manipulated proportions of a Rick Owens getup or a heavily-layered Lemaire outfit, even when they have a lot more to say than a middle-of-the-road ‘good-looking’ shirt.

Eventually, you stop dressing to be understood, and start dressing to say something.

—Antwon
Lekondo | Youtube | Tiktok | Instagram

If you resonated with this article, contribute a fitpic to Lekondo - we’re building a community of people that are as enthusiastic and thoughtful about fashion as Antwon.

lekondo.com | @lekondonyc

You can read more about the philosophy behind the Aura Awards here, but the short version is this: each week, a constraint; each week, a claim; each week, a community decision about which outfit expresses best.

And last week, the community spoke.

Before we announce the winner, here are the honorable mentions:

@michelle
@tofu
@math

Each one carried the theme in its own direction, and reminded us how many ways an outfit can exist in superposition.

But only one could win.

And so, the first Aura Award goes to…

🔥🔥 Congratulations, @steamgeek!!! 🔥🔥

Look again at the outfit. It’s a person, except the head is a cat, except the cat looks more composed than most people I know. The body wears a black three-piece: crisp shirt, thin tie, high-rise trousers with room to think. Over it: a long, patterned robe—domestic, almost intimate—lined in micro-geometry. On the feet: black velvet slippers punctuated by a gold fleur-de-lis, like a private joke about monarchy told in a rental walk-up.

It’s funny. It’s compelling. It’s imperative.

And it’s the perfect opening note for Schrödinger’s Cat, our theme this week.

It’s difficult to describe why this is beautiful without reducing it to “nice trousers” or “good proportions,” which is true but beside the point. The beauty here is tacit. What makes it moving is not the silhouette, but the idea that someone could walk out the door like this and be both ridiculous and regal, vulnerable and invincible. The beauty lies in holding contradiction without resolving it, in refusing to collapse into a single reading.

And this is where it becomes cool. Coolness is not a trend, but a pause: the refusal to explain yourself, the ability to leave two or more interpretations alive at once. A cat in a box. An outfit in superposition. You think you know what you’re looking at, and then you realize you don’t.

But the split runs deeper still. Dressing as a cat is cheeky, yes, but it is also a philosophy. The cat refuses measurement. No face to scan, no brand to tag, no algorithmic handle to seize upon. A cat is presence without data. In this way, the fit becomes an essay on being in public without surrendering to it. A reminder that in an economy where everything is quantified, some things cannot be.

@steamgeek’s outfit takes something as banal as getting dressed and makes it into a koan. What is it to be both at home and outside, both animal and human, both anonymous and iconic? The outfit doesn’t answer; it just holds the question, with paws tucked neatly beneath the robe.

And so: the cat is alive. Also, unfortunately for the haters, so is the drip.

Congratulations again @steamgeek!!!

THIS WEEK’S THEME: ORPHEUS & EURYDICE

Think:

• A shirt buttoned wrong on purpose.

• Accessories that signal absence as much as presence.

• The risk of glancing back —whether at a mirror, a phone, or an ex

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice tells the tragic story of a gifted musician, Orpheus, who descends to the Underworld to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, after she dies from a snakebite. He charms the gods of the Underworld with his music, but is given a condition: he must not look back at Eurydice until they reach the world of the living. At the very threshold of the Underworld, Orpheus looks back, breaking the condition and losing Eurydice forever.

I kept thinking about Orpheus. Not as the “greatest musician in Greek myth,” but as a dude who loved someone and couldn’t stop checking to see if she was still there. The story is usually told as a lesson about doubt, or disobedience, or the dangers of retrospection. But what I keep noticing is how ordinary the impulse feels. He just wanted to look back. He wanted to make sure she was real.

It makes sense: the journey out of the underworld was long. Probably boring, probably quiet. I imagine him walking ahead, Eurydice’s footsteps behind him—soft, almost inaudible—and how unbearable it must have been not to turn around, not to confirm she hadn’t disappeared already. When he finally did turn, she was gone, but in a way she was gone the whole time. He was being asked to trust in something invisible, something impossible.

That’s what the myth feels like. About how impossible it is to move forward without glancing back at a mirror, or a story, or a person who used to know you.

Every fit is a kind of underworld journey: you leave the safety of your room, step into public space, and hope the choices you made are still alive out there. But the danger is that if you look too hard—if you check too often, if you second-guess—you risk killing it. You risk making the outfit about doubt, instead of presence.

I don’t think the story tells us not to look back. It tells us that looking back has consequences, and that not all doors are two way doors. Which is another way of saying: sometimes the outfit works, sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, you only know once you’ve already left the house.

As always, this conversation only matters with you in it. Whether you’re posting, browsing, or quietly reflecting, we’d love to hear what meaning you’re finding in your fits. Reply here, or join the community on Discord!

Haven’t signed up yet? Share your fitpic here! Your outfit is part of the language we’re all writing together.

Thanks for being early!
Yeng

lekondo.com | @lekondonyc