Fresh off the Press: Read the Latest
The latest from The Citizen’s Poste spans longform features, interviews, and cultural commentary examining fashion and culture as systems: how they’re built, how they operate, and how they shape the present moment. We publish with intention, not urgency. That means fewer pieces, sharper thinking, and writing that assumes an intelligent reader. No trend-chasing, no filler. Start wherever you like. Stay as long as you want. This is fashion and culture for readers who prefer substance, clarity, and a little wit with their rigor.
Material Intelligence: Inside The Mind of Marina Raphael
In an industry increasingly shaped by images, simulations, and accelerated output, the most consequential decisions in fashion still happen off-screen. For Marina Raphael, touch is not an embellishment or a sensory afterthought; it’s a form of intelligence. As founder and creative director of her eponymous brand and Artistic and Design Director of Handbags at Elie Saab, Raphael operates at the intersection of precision, heritage, and contemporary restraint. Her work is defined by structure and clarity, yet shaped by deeply tactile decision-making— from the grain of a leather to the sound a clasp makes when it closes.
The Book Club Effect: Turning Literary Curation into a Branding Strategy
From Venetian and Parisian salons to campaigns by Prada, Chanel, Miu Miu, and Brunello Cucinelli, and onward to celebrity book clubs, literature has consistently conveyed cultural authority ... Influence, anchored in intellect and cultivated taste, remains timeless.
Powder, Pistes, and Prada: Après Ski, Before the Spectacle
Skiing and fashion have been intertwined for over a century. Designers like Lucien Lelong, Edgidio Scaioni, and Madeleine Vionnet transformed practicality into style with two-piece pantsuits and knit accessories, while Norwegian trousers in the 1930s offered an alternative to skirts. Emilio Pucci’s one-piece suits and Massimo Giorgetti’s colorful uniforms of the 1940s caught Diana Vreeland’s eye, earning space in Harper’s Bazaar. By the 1950s, “après-ski” entered the lexicon, and Maria Bogner’s stretch ski pants— sported by Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Brigitte Bardot— brought both color and celebrity to the slopes. The decades that followed saw space-age prints, bold colors, and media moments from Princess Diana’s ski trips to George Michael’s Last Christmas, solidifying ski fashion as aspirational and visible.
When Fashion Becomes Art: on Mohammed Ashi
Founded in Beirut in 2007 and now based in Paris, Ashi Studio has become one of the leading houses that approach couture not as adornment but as an extension of artistic expression. His devotion to volume, silhouette, and conceptual rigor has positioned the studio among the few expanding couture houses into the realm of objecthood.
When Transparency Outshines Impact: The Paradox of Fashion’s Sustainability Rankings
The Swedish multinational fast-fashion retailer H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB— better known simply as H&M— was ranked first in Fashion Revolution’s What Fuels Fashion? 2025 report this September. Yet both the public and the media seemed to have little to say about this rather significant news. Given the state of our world, that silence feels telling. Most outlets, including legacy fashion titles, appeared more concerned with the brand’s return to the runways during London Fashion Week for its star-studded S/S26 collection than with its supposed sustainability “progress.”
Virtue Signaling, Performative Males, and the Exiled Self: Consumerism’s Chokehold on GenZ
There is always some aesthetic to sought after, or some niche to have more dialed, and lately, this has been portrayed as a lack of originality—with especial hate directed toward “performative males.” Somehow it has become a trend to avoid trends at all cost; how ironic, how terribly human. But, must we condemn the performative parts we all have?
Why Jacquemus’ Embrace of Humble Codes Feels Like Fashion’s Boldest Move
You can take someone out of the village, but you can’t take the village out of them. … Simon Porte Jacquemus will always return, like any other designer and artist in general, whether he seeks it or not, to Mother Earth, to his homeland, to his home. In a fashion landscape addicted to spectacle, Jacquemus staged something far more disruptive: humility.
If There’s One Thing We Know About the Louvre Heist, It’s That the Internet Loves a Sophisticated Criminal
On October 19th, at 9:30 am local time, shortly after the museum opened for the day, four unknown suspects arrived at the Louvre with a ladder, power tools, and a plan. In A mere seven minutes, the thieves swiped eight priceless pieces, from crowns to brooches. And while the Louvre has physically lost the jewels from their gallery, they have simultaneously gained a commodity which may be equally as valuable: views.
The It-Girl Is Everywhere— But Does She Still Matter?
Once upon a time, the It-Girl was an exclusive symbol of unattainable cool— crowned by fashion houses, worshipped by glossy magazines, admired from afar. Think Kate Moss in the ’90s (heroin chic, but somehow aspirational), Alexa Chung in the 2010s (the reason we all wore Peter Pan collars), or Brigitte Bardot before them. They were the blueprint: impossibly stylish, a little intimidating, and always out of reach.
Get In, Loser! We’re Learning About Chebula: Talking Skin, Science, and Storytelling with Jana Kleemeier
It takes a certain kind of confidence to make antioxidants feel aspirational. But True Botanicals did exactly that with their new Mean Girls-inspired Chebula campaign, a playful ode to the often mispronounced ingredient (it’s “CHUH-BOO-LAH,” by the way) quietly powering half of Hollywood’s glow.
Valentino SS26: Fireflies and the Politics of Perception
At Valentino’s Spring/Summer 2026 show in Paris, the lights went out before they came up. Pamela Anderson’s voice filled the Arab World Institute, reading a 1941 letter by Pier Paolo Pasolini, a young poet describing fireflies as fragile but luminous acts of resistance in an era of fascist darkness. That letter became the conceptual nucleus of Alessandro Michele’s second collection for the house: Fireflies.
Kitschy Couture: When Fashion Becomes Sculpture
Haute couture has long been hailed as the pinnacle of fashion, craftsmanship and artistic vision. Often described as sculpture in fabric form, it gave us Charles James’s clover-inspired gowns and architectural silhouettes that could fold into a New York City yellow cab, or Mariano Fortuny’s pleated Delphos inspired dresses, recalling Grecian columns and fluid drapery... Couture once signified femininity, excess, and status, a six to eight month process culminating in a one-of-a-kind gown, priced like a small fortune.
You’re Not The Only One on Resy: Why Every Fashion Brand Suddenly Wants a Table in New York
On an upper floor of Bergdorf Goodman, there is a historical artifact: the department store restaurant. Art Deco details, like gilded accents on crown molding and chrome-rimmed bar stools, are reminiscent of the glamorous aesthetics found throughout this New York City landmark. Today, fashion brands have replaced the curated department store as the destination of dreams and desires— and that increasingly includes dining venues. But what does it reveal about the future of the fashion industry?
That Sweater is Not Just Blue: How Fashion Dictates Taste (and Why You Don’t Even Notice)
You didn’t choose that aesthetic. That aesthetic chose you… By the time you saw the “boho chic” look trending on TikTok, the trend had already moved through the system: from forecasting deck to runway, to meticulously curated Pinterest moodboards, and finally, to your algorithmically engineered for you page. Money was spent. Samples were pulled. You liked it before you even had time to ask why. Fashion has always carried large connotations of influence, but in today’s digital landscape, it’s becoming something closer to an auto suggestion. What you wear no longer reflects mere “personal taste”; it reveals how well you’ve absorbed what was predicted, packaged, and served to you a year ago.
Drawn to Craft: What the World’s Most Coveted Luxury Brand Can Teach Fashion Today
The landscape of luxury is the one often ruled by ephemeral trends, inflated marketing budgets, and quarterly reinventions, and it is in this landscape that Hermès has emerged, once again, as a silent sovereign. The French maison just released its first-half 2025 financial report, and, as expected, it reads not like a business update, but a quiet reaffirmation of everything Hermès is and everything other brands might hope to be.
From Spectacle to Stillness: Kate Moss for Calvin Klein
There are always two players in fashion: those who craft the image and those who become it. In 1993, Moss, then 18 and barely known outside of London’s casting rooms, stepped into Calvin Klein’s Obsession frame, and something changed; a campaign that would rewire the visual vocabulary of the decade. No gloss. No spectacle. Shot in grainy black and white, she stares directly into the lens, not quite smiling, not quite styled. “Be good. Be bad. Just be.” the campaign whispered. And with that, fashion seemed to listen: shedding ornament for honesty, polish for presence.
The Death of Personal Style (and How to Resurrect It)
From the Y2K obsession with low-rise, leopard print, Blumarine, and Paris Hilton, to the current 2010’s craze of micro shorts, high boots, Isabel Marant, and ‘indie-sleeze,’ we commodify fashion decades with increasingly shorter cycles. In fact, I’ve already been seeing ‘2019-style’ nostalgia edits on my TikTok For You page.
The Invisible Hands Behind Haute Couture
Have you ever looked at a couture garment and felt an overwhelming urge to touch it? You’re not alone. There’s something intrinsically tactile about haute couture—whether that’s a shimmer of a fabric or a meticulously placed bead. On the runway, every detail dances in the light and demands to be seen. After all, beneath each couture creation, lie hours and hours of human work. In a world of mass-produced and machine-made fashion, tactility sets couture apart. The human touch enables couture to come alive.
White Lines and Quiet Luxury: Fashion, Class, and Performance at Wimbledon
As the Wimbledon Championships 2025 draw to a close, its cultural impact feels prominent. The Championships might be one the most prestigious sporting events of the year, but its relevance in fashion is undeniable. With figures like Cate Blanchett, Hugh Grant, or David Beckham in attendance, Wimbledon has become a quintessential expression of British identity, where sports and fashion become equal. In the heart of South West London, this tournament projects class and luxury ideals through performance and personal style. Fashion has, for long, been dictating hierarchy, just as tennis itself has historically been a marker of socio-economic wealth. At the All English Lawn Tennis Club, both legacies combine and reinforce each other. Constrained by a strict dress-code, sporting brands have shifted the way they dress their players, making the audience follow, finding clever ways to subvert norms. Wimbledon leaves room for an interesting commentary to observe how this sport-fashion, and its evolution, both reinforces and subverts existing class hierarchies.
When Wintour Snow Melts: Fashion’s Most Coveted Role Is Open— On Linkedin?
It’s the end of an era. Well, kind of.
You’ve certainly heard by now that Anna Wintour is no longer Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief. After nearly four decades in control, the woman who turned the masthead into her throne has quietly stepped aside. She hasn’t left Condé Nast, her other titles, Global Chief Content Officer and Artistic Director, remain intact but her retirement from Vogue's top editorial role has marked a shift that goes far beyond semantics. We’ve approached the end of an era, yes. But we’ve also entered the beginning of a complicated reckoning.