WCME: Blue Origin’s Billion Dollar All-Woman Crew
Plus: boom boom culture's FOMO, the hemline theory, and a seersucker shirt.
What Caught My Eye is a new daily column about pushback.
Hello everyone, I am writing this letter from the gym. I definitely have my best workouts early, and it clears the rest of the day for work, editing, and home activities.
This morning I read a trending piece about the boom boom aesthetic. I first heard about this during men’s fashion week in January. You can look at it as a bold, high-impact look that’s in direct defiance of the current market turmoil. On one side there is the spectacle with the tariffs, and on the other is the return of power dressing à la Gordon Gekko and Donna Karan in the ‘80s. Last year’s mob wife trend is this year’s old-money look. The rich are wearing beige!
Goldberg dissects the fashion as a symptom of FOMO: lunch is expensive these days; traveling à la White Lotus feels reserved for only a certain class (the rest of us are searching for bargains on AirBnB); and who the heck can afford The Row?
For those priced out of The Row, the pressure builds to pluck feathers from the peacocks for social currency. Instagram demands a luxury bone, even if your credit card disagrees. But honestly, that sounds like a mighty chance to rethink personal style.
Experts say the economic choppiness may even out later this year. But for now, retailers are retreating to safe bets, like household names, mass-appeal basics, and they’re not taking chances on new (and untested) brands. In more certain economic times, people spend on the new (and unseen)!
But it’s not all gloom out there. Especially in spring and summer, there’s plenty of room to play—with color, texture, and silhouettes that don’t scream “algorithm.” One way to start is with the seersucker shirt, it ticks all the boxes of power dressing, with a little fresh wink.
WCME: Space Suits, made for women
As a tool of pushback—against eroding norms, silence, and exclusion—the space saga took a much-needed twist yesterday when an all-female crew took a Blue Origin space flight to the Kármán line, the boundary where Earth’s atmosphere meets outer space.
Not since Jean Shrimpton modeled for Richard Avedon in Harper’s Bazaar has the women’s space suit been so openly discussed (and scrutinized). But first things first. The clothes.
Monse designed the suits, effectively “putting the ‘ass’ in astronaut,” as Katy Perry put it. The aim, according to Fernando Garcia, was to “make suits look approachable and like something anyone could wear, then space might feel a little bit less distant.” In other words: if she can do it, so can you!
It brought a little hope to suits, a garment that has been feeling a little same-old, same-old lately.
Still, the moment came across as little rich in flying up an overbearing Billionaire’s fiancé to orbit, raking in the dollars with self-promotion that left little to nuance (Kim Kardashian got a mention in the underwear department). On social media, users complained that the attention was not on the beauty and wonder of Earth. This was about glam.
One user said on social media, “this is tone deaf, because of the many wars that are destroying lives and the planet, while celebs just casually go up to space… is this black mirror?” Another user commented, “we literally just want healthcare, lmao.”
Whether you thought this was a marketing stunt gone bad, or another (kick flare) leap for womankind, it was ripe for the taking.
Have a good day!
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