All posts tagged: show notes

What It’s Like to Walk in a Runway Show

What It’s Like to Walk in a Runway Show

Published by Jenni Sidey

Subscribe to the Show Notes newsletter for on-the-ground intel from fashion weeks and the wider world of men’s fashion. On the day I made my runway debut, I spent the morning pacing back and forth in my apartment, practicing my walk. My call time for the Eckhaus Latta fall 2026 show at New York Fashion Week was in a couple of hours, and I was experiencing the off-putting dissonance that arises when you intently focus on something that normally requires no conscious effort—like breathing or, in this case, perambulating. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I readily agreed to put myself in this position. I have never aspired to model-dom, but when the stylist Thistle Brown texted me to ask if I wanted to walk in the Eckhaus show, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Eckhaus Latta is a perennial NYFW highlight because Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta make clothes for a gritty, weird, real version of New York (and LA, where Latta is based). Their fashion fantasy transports you to ketamine-fueled downtown gallery dinners, where …

How to Do Milan Like a GQ Fashion Editor

How to Do Milan Like a GQ Fashion Editor

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. Every time I drop by Bar Quadronno in Milan, I think: Thank God this place isn’t in New York or Paris. If a wormhole opened and dropped the convivial wood-paneled joint in practically any other city, it would be mobbed day and night by crowds of wannabe influencers fawning over its tidy panini and perfect aperitivi. But not in Milano. On a Friday afternoon in January, when I had 45 minutes to kill in between runway shows, I found Quadronno—as always—half empty and full of charm. Since 1964, the city’s so-claimed first late-night panini joint has served as a clubhouse for fashion designers like Miuccia Prada and Matthieu Blazy. (I’m telling you: This place is incredible.) Milan is full of Quadronnos, spots with different but equally powerful vibes that have become unpretentious fashion-adjacent watering holes. Some are old, some newer, but all have been protected from …

Meet the ‘Loewe Boys’ Who Wowed Paris With Their First Menswear Collection

Meet the ‘Loewe Boys’ Who Wowed Paris With Their First Menswear Collection

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. A couple of days before their fall 2026 runway show for Loewe, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez were shopping their own collection. “I want these for myself,” Hernandez said, grabbing a flat, rubber-toed, slip-on sneaker that looked like a cross between an aquasock and a climbing shoe. Examining a shelf of handbags in a rainbow of suedes in their bright Paris design studio, Hernandez picked up a delightfully rounded black nubuck briefcase. “I’m getting this one,” he added. “Good! Because I got the brown,” McCollough replied. This was a new and thrilling experience for the creative and life partners, who have been making clothes for women since 2002, when they launched their beloved NYC-based label, Proenza Schouler. But until the duo joined the LVMH-owned Spanish luxury house last year following Jonathan Anderson’s move to Dior, they had never before done menswear. “For selfish reasons, we’re very …

‘Need Those Jeans’: It’s Tom Ford Mania at Paris Fashion Week

‘Need Those Jeans’: It’s Tom Ford Mania at Paris Fashion Week

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. The morning after Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford fall 2026 show, I woke up in Paris to a text from my cousin, Max, a 24-year old photographer who lives in New York and is—like a lot of his friends—obsessed with Tom Ford-era Gucci. Ford has loomed large in fashion for the past few seasons, even as the designer is happily retired from his namesake brand and is currently shooting a film in Rome. At Gucci, for example, Demna has tapped into a hedonistic aura by raiding the archive of Ford’s shrunken, sexy, clingy clubwear. The Tom Ford effect is also evident in the various other catwalks awash in leather and sequins, and in the silhouettes that are slimming and sharpening left and right. Zoomers are snapping up archival Tom Ford for a bunch of reasons. It has just the right price-to-vibe ratio—it’s relatively affordable but packs a …

How to Watch a Fashion Show

How to Watch a Fashion Show

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. I was recently scrolling on TikTok when I came across a video from a guy whose disembodied head was bobbing in front of a green-screened model wearing an elaborately tailored dress. “I don’t know anything about fashion,” the guy wryly declared, “and today I’ll be reviewing the Thom Browne show.” The joke is that he’s doing something a lot of people on the Internet do: confidently judge fashion collections despite having no idea what they’re talking about. I have a bit more professional authority. In my role as GQ’s global fashion correspondent, I attended 111 runway shows last year, which means that in 2025, I probably saw something like 5,000 pairs of pants on catwalks all around the world, from Paris to Seoul to the undersung fashion capital of the American South known as New Orleans. Most runway shows accommodate maybe a dozen serious reviewers. But …

Gucci Fall 2026: Demna Wants You to Start Guccimaxxing

Gucci Fall 2026: Demna Wants You to Start Guccimaxxing

Published by Jenni Sidey

Demna is a maestro of attention, and the show was a bet that Gucci can’t be redefined by piles of bankable product, though there were some surefire It bags swinging from the crooks of elbows. Demna is instead trying to generate desire through hardcore attitude. Said the designer: “It’s part of Gucci to celebrate yourself, to be in love, to flirt, all of those things. To be bold, to be daring, to be kind of fearless in some way.” In fact, the clothes felt like accessories to the swaggerful vibe. Many models walked with a fuck-you strut after Demna instructed them to act like exaggerated versions of themselves. EsDeeKid’s fellow underground rap stars Fakemink and Nettspend hit the runway in skater-like skinny jeans and monogrammed fanny packs; the former stopped on the runway at one point to pull out his phone for a few seconds of lazy scrolling. “There are a lot of people on the runway and also in the audience today that I listen to their music, I consume their art,” Demna said …

Keith McNally on Balthazar’s First-Ever Fashion Collaboration

Keith McNally on Balthazar’s First-Ever Fashion Collaboration

Published by Jenni Sidey

Show Notes: You’ve never done a “fashion collaboration” at Balthazar. Why now, and why with Ami? Keith McNally: Partly because we’re neighbors. The Ami store is only three blocks away. And partly because when my management team met the Ami team last month, they returned gushing about how nice and low-key the Ami team were. I tend to like people who are understated and low-key quite a lot. I also like Ami’s brand. What’s your impression of Alexandre Mattiussi and Ami? If you and Alexandre have had dinner together, where and what did you eat? Absolutely terrible man. No, of course not! I haven’t met Alexandre Mattiussi. I’m quite a shy person. Ask my staff. Seventy percent of the time when I dine at my restaurants, I dine alone. I actually like my own company. (Which is fortunate because no one else does.) Does the idea of adding a new element to the guest experience at Balthazar excite or frighten you? Nothing frightens me except rejection. I don’t know why, but I like seeing the …

‘It’s Like Putting Out an Album’: Backstage at A$AP Rocky’s Latest AWGE Fashion Show

‘It’s Like Putting Out an Album’: Backstage at A$AP Rocky’s Latest AWGE Fashion Show

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. A$AP Rocky, Chanel ambassador, has rarely been seen in public wearing anything but Matthieu Blazy-designed blazers for the past few months. But on Thursday evening, the rapper, actor, and fashion impresario was comparatively dressed down in a zip-up hoodie he designed for AWGE, the clothing line that sprung out of his record label and creative agency in 2024. Rocky was in a warehouse-like basement a stone’s throw from New York’s City Hall, prepping for his third AWGE runway show, set to be held upstairs the following night. The 37-year-old paced back and forth along rails heaving with AWGE-branded clothes, and stroked his chin as he reviewed models’ outfits. At one point, he disappeared into a changing room and emerged wearing khaki trousers covered in cargo pockets; he had decided to lend his own AWGE sweatpants for one of the looks. “It’s like putting out an album,” …

The NYFW Darlings at Public School Are Back. Will They Stay in Session?

The NYFW Darlings at Public School Are Back. Will They Stay in Session?

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. On Wednesday night of New York Fashion Week, Public School returned to the runway after a seven-year hiatus. Just before the show got underway, Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne—the homegrown NYC brand’s founders and designers—remarked that they were feeling surprisingly calm. “I guess that’s what you get for being old, being the OGs,” Chow joked. It’s hard to overstate how big of a deal Public School was in a certain era of 2010s men’s fashion. Chow and Osborne, who met at Sean John in the aughts, were clothes-obsessed and stylish, and they made gear for the emerging street-style Tumblr economy, fusing the casually layered sensibility of NYC streetwear with avant-garde influences from European designers like Raf Simons. This fit-pic-forward aesthetic struck a chord, and Public School got picked up by just about every important department store, and the well-liked Chow and Osborne hoovered up industry accolades, …

The Fall 2026 Menswear Shows I Can’t Stop Thinking About

The Fall 2026 Menswear Shows I Can’t Stop Thinking About

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. By the time I found myself deliriously laughing at a frowny-face handbag on the last day of Paris Fashion Week, I knew that I had seen enough clothes for one season. The bag was courtesy of earnest but irreverent Japanese label Doublet, a sendup of Celine’s optimistic Luggage tote, the one with a side zipper that curls into a cute smile. It was soon followed by a couple more anthropomorphized accessories: one bag mimicked the crying laughing emoji, while another vomited a strip of green leather out of its unzipped mouth. In a way, it was fitting that the fall 2026 men’s shows culminated in a surreal showcase of pure fashion brainrot. Over the course of five days in Paris, all of the prevailing menswear trends went out the window. Some designers proposed skinny jeans; others pushed ginormous pants. The preppy renaissance that’s currently hitting stores? …