But what I’m finding with this summer is that the colors I’m into are the same ones I pinpointed at the end of last winter as closing, seasonal heroes. Which no doubt means I’m going long on them.

The tableau includes: yellow, purple, green and orange.

With important infusions of baby pink as a highly specific, seasonal neutral-pairing. That’s the vibe! And the whole story. But it’s more nuanced than you think. Below, ways to wear each color with some words on nailing the right shade, determining which silhouettes on your outfit are best served in color and more generally speaking, what makes them good.

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Yellow

The shade of yellow is neither pastel nor electric — it’s more muted, not quite grainy mustard, but closer to it than submarine. Maybe the appropriate comp is a yellow cab. In our first rendering, it’s styled with a graphic tee that rans a pretty complete complete primary color spectrum —

My preferred pairing does indeed lean on a range of warm reds and cool blues, less hot on orange (another one of our colors) for the yellow but do like it with green or purple.

Best silhouettes for the color are casual: surf shorts (e.g. from Madesome), the pictured terry pants. Tie dye shorts as seen below, cotton bandana —

With this one, the accessories bring a lot of anchoring with the green tourmaline stones against fine silver contrasting the yellow/orange, and the black drop connecting to the sunglasses for a bit of weight.

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Purple

Papal! Or close to it. Something between royal and platypus-like (do you remember the fuschia beanie baby!). Great with yellow as mentioned above, in subtle doses like this —

Pairs well with green too, especially when by design —

And because it is such a strong and powerful color, it’s best served styled with casual accouterments — an oversize graphic tee to bring more texture and conversation to the outfit (the washed black tones down the color), or with a hodgepodge of different ideas, as seen in the first demonstration. Pajama pants (Petite Plume, hard recommend), but a fancy gold chain belt (yellow in conceit), a polka dot cotton-voile button down styled casually with an evening bag and flip flops (more yellow).

My preferred way to wear is with competing personality pieces to even out and raise the vibe of each component of the complete look.

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Green

The color of nature! Fertility! Grounding! Money! It’s also just calm on the eye. Shade is particular here in that it’s not chartreuse, or pistachio, or lime. It’s more like a washed forrest green —

Kind of literal when styled with brown, but it works if you throw in a few curveballs: a satin counter color bag, jewelry with competing character traits, maybe you’ll go for a belt.

Cool with washed black, which seems to be a theme — it’s like the muscle relaxer for all these colors, and adds a dose of cool/rock and roll when color often feel a bit preppy or cutesy.

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Orange

The most precarious of the range because the shade of color is sooooo specific. You don’t want to err too far on the side of pumpkin spice, !Happy Halloween!, etc etc. But a straightforward orange — think mid-way through cooking a beefsteak tomato — is indeed the appropriate color on one hand,

But on the other, we’re talking about more like a melon than we are a straight-up orange.

Turquoise contrast in bag and bangle but I did also do this to demonstrate how good it could be when the two shades of orange come together AS ONE.

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The post’s piece de resistance! And also where I leave you for you today. I’m going on vacation tonight, so nothing new from me next week.

See you back here in August!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Leandra

Here we are, midway through the summer, established within whatever our routines are going to look like.

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The least Sagittarian thing about me is that I love routine. It makes me feel safe. When the engine is going and the shape of time is feeling more or less predictable, it allows me so much more flexibility to really fuck shit up. Stop overwhelming myself with corporeal details and tap into the ~creative flow~ streaming overhead.

It also makes it easier to take a temp check. The quiet of knowing what to expect amps up the volume on what’s buzzing under the surface, loud but unnamed. Like most good trends before they reach peak-peak. And no question this summer, the big great trend of the szn has to got to be:

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By 81st, my face was covered by a film of sweat that made me look like a sunken, glazed donut. A soft, hot breeze came through just then, offering subtle comfort.

That a hot breeze could feel like respite is one reason I love the city in the summer, when the air gets thick and gentle, and the sidewalks sing their glorious chant of stillness.

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What a strange relief it is to consider how atypical stillness can feel in New York. Yet by the end of June and well into August, it’s like the quiet has always been here.

Maybe it is always here and I don’t feel it because I’m the one who’s been on a bender, rushing to do this or that. To get here or go there, check this off, put that on.

All of that melts away with a summer in the city. It becomes like a kid home alone with their parents, while the siblings are gone. Relaxing into their not having to fight to get heard or be seen, just getting to be.

Soft and tender but real, like the stillness of summer in the city.

At dusk, if you take a walk long enough, you’re sure to find someone tangled in their own romance. The gentleman gazing up at the pink sky, with a foggy glass in his hand, vapor dripping down his wrist. The woman leaning on the door post, arms crossed, with most of her weight leaning on over to the same side where she holds her cigarette.

There’s a smirk of serenity on her face as she observes the passersby. These moments are aimless and gorgeous, leisure and pleasure. No agenda or incentive beyond being.

It varies greatly from the signature friction we come to know and go to bed with in the city’s better-known, get-it-done-or-die energy.

But summer in the city is a season of sweet, juicy nothing. And the nights?

Ohhhhh, the nights. The people spill out into the streets, wandering because it’s a sin to stay in — lining the stoops, walking the sidewalks, setting up collapsible chairs on this block or that, zig zagging in and out of the delis for AC and water. Maybe an ice cold beer.

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Music blasts from the bikes, sometimes scooters, zipping by, and by nightfall, the neon traffic lights have replaced the remaining light of dusk. Making visible the unseen and turning the streets into one big, vibrating social club. No walls.

When it’s really hot, it feels like we’re frying — going crazy — together, our brains sizzling on the collective pan that is summer in the city.

By the time I got to 59th street on Wednesday, it was nearly 8pm and, I said, fuck it I’m getting on the bus. The sweat marks creating abstract lines across my red silk slip were fine by me but the balls of my feet were starting to throb, even though I had on my “walking shoes.”

So I ascended the step up to the M3, into the AC and rode down to 8th, sitting at a window as I watched the remains of midtown’s workforce walk their totes home. You could feel the itch in their march, how eager they must have been to get out of their starchy collars.

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By 27th street, I’d counted at least three abandoned, melting cones lining Madison Ave., and the sweat marks were starting to dry.

Originally, I’d been wearing this top with these shorts —

It had been what I’d worn all day and the night before but I changed because you never know where a summer city night could take you: the club or the ice cream shop, the fire escape or the bar

or to one of those stoops.

Regardless, a skimpy red slip seemed to better understand the galaxy of possibility of a city summer night.

I met Roxana around Bleecker street. She was hungry, I had eaten, so we stopped for food and I had a drink at a packed restaurant on Elizabeth Street where the World Cup was playing but only two people sat near us under the vast flag awning at the outdoor tables.

Hot girls walked by. Shirtless men too, with their tops slung around their necks like gym towels. One such shirtless man asked if the place had frozen margheritas and how much they were. Neither of us knew.

When I kicked my head towards the couple sitting near us they were in their summer romance. At points I could see both of their tonsils and I wondered whether summer in the city is in fact more uninhibited or if we just have more access to each other. Either way, I thought, man I love summer in the city.

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The best outfits really do seem unfinished — there’s a break through point you can feel, even if you can’t understand what it is exactly. And dressing for the summer thrives on this concept of never being finished getting dressed. One thing missing, one thing off. One thing you forgot to change out of from bed. If all goes to plan, the next time you’re home, you’ll be going straight to bed anyway. Such is the magic of

summer in the city.

After the meal, we walked more. Down from Bleecker up to 7th, for soft serve without a line. The guys sitting outside had chocolate melting down the front of their knuckles, drying instantly into a glistening cast, mimicking the lines over their fingers and I thought, maybe I should have had chocolate too.

We sat for a minute, but then kept walking towards music — Madonna! — until we got to a bar with its windows and front door flung wide open. The crowd spilled out into the street and everyone danced.

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By now I could smell my own skin with the effortless flick of a limb. The sun didn’t beat down my shoulders massaging them with its assuring warmth, but something else did — some kind of embrace, the thrill of what lay ahead as my legs got heavier and I started to think, dancing in the middle of the street, that it was time to make my way up.

So I dropped off Rox at 12th street, sweat beads drip, drip, dripping and kept walking until I could no longer hear the cascade outdoor chatter echoing through the streets in the sweat of tonight’s rendition of summer in the city. July 1, 2026

Halter tops and bodysuits

Fortunately or not for the cause of proving a thesis right, I spent most of the summer out of the city, so I don’t know whether the looks would have held up over the course of last summer. But when I got back in mid-August, the impulse was still ringing.

This summer, I’m here for the most part (and could not be happier; one among my least popular opinions may be that I love the city in the summer), and that same impulse towards b-suits is starting to nag, only now I’m not just thinking about one-piece suits.

I’m going full bikini top styled under tanks, unbuttoned shirts or sheer tees. They leave so much more to be thought about than bras do; esp as paired with public pajamas —

And on at least two occasions, a tankini top (one strapless, so basically a tube top) has surpassed the utility of a plain old cotton tank.

As we come down from the 4th and settle into summer’s (majestic) routine stillness, I offer some outfit ideas for bringing your suits to the streets, and making them feel like THAT’S WHERE THEY BELONG —

Have a great week!!!,

Leandra

28 outfits for June

It’s not the bad kind of cheap, it’s more like taste that you can hear coming because ornaments hang from left or right, up, down. The hats are quirky, the necklaces hang loooooow. The look might make you tilt your head and say no, even though you’re nodding YES!

Summer clothes don’t make the same kind of logical sense winter ones do — when the rules of dressing are more austere, laced in the pursuit of capturing luxurious comfort. This time of year they’re wrapped in a different feeling, stained with human fingerprints espousing the virtues of imperfections in that 1/1 kind of way. And if I had to pinpoint 5 things to lean into what I’m loosely calling Summer of the Ornament (broad term!), I’d highlight:

1. Freaky sunglasses

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To wear as the only accessory. If you prefer to leave your limbs unfurnished.

2. Throw-over-your-shoulder festive bags.

Some of them will jingle jangle, others just feel edibly bright.

The birkenflops letter

3. Jewelry that takes the pressure off everything else you’re wearing.

Button down and cargo shorts, full stop. Or keep it simple in summer black — whichever!

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How to wear summer black

4. Belts, belts, belts

Of course! But pay attention when I say that their use case the summer is 111% to help you transform button downs into dresses and dresses into tunics. Goodbye belt loops, hello man-made blousing!!!

5. All hail the cowboy hat

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Really can’t explain this one with words, but she is feeling really great on a casual summer dog walking/grabbing coffee look. As evidenced by this proof of concept:

A wild card

I saw a woman a couple weeks ago walking down Madison Avenue in a pair of pvc thong heels, with a fitted denim vest and jeans. She wore her vest open with a low cut white cotton tank inside and had the most gorgeous long blonde hair —

The scene caused me to launch a Google search which led to a similar looking vest from Express, which I bought and paired with these Brock jeans (there are so many you can find on TRR — the style is called The Wright):

It’s the least literal ornament from the loot, but an expression I plan to expand as the season progresses and beyond.

That’s it from me today. My older girls left to sleep away camp at the end of last week. I sobbed like my boyfriend was breaking up with me as the bus pulled away! Th experience has insofar as reminded me of how tender love is, no matter its age, or who it is directed towards. The simultaneous thrill of “I can’t believe this feeling is real,” and the pang of “But how could it do this to me?”

Life really is rich. Have a great 4th…,

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Leandra

Still ahead: ten visual demonstrations outlining how to wear summer black while still feeling like you’re dressing in the spirit of summer. Subscribe for more!!!

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There are trends running rampant all around us, most of them flickers more than full fledged stars — birkenflops/rocket dogs, big earrings, 90s surf frames, beaded bags, complicated necklines — but the one I’m betting on most effusively represents a vibe more than a specific item.

That vibe is public pajamas — but if we were going to narrow the lens on focus, the baby doll-style doily top would be the new variable bringing public pajamas (always present to some degree when it’s hot) back into the public consciousness.

Call it a response to Prada’s - spring 26 - collection, sparks of Phoebe Philo’s collection E, or a re-up on an evergreen mode of summer dress whereby the task order is precisely to look like you’re in between night and day, sleep and work, the most intimate square of your home (bed) and the broader public domain.

Between a resting state and complete chaos.

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Public pajamas is the name of a broader, more behavioral game

Regardless of whether it’s apparent to the naked eye, trends that take off tend to reflect a broader, collective yearning. With sleepleisure, my sense is often that there’s a quality of aspirational boredom implied by the trend: a craving for mental blankness, a tender calm that becomes available and allows us to embrace new inputs.

Where in the past I’ve suspected we need rest when I’ve zeroed in nightgown clothes, this season, I’m proposing that the rest has been taken. That the regeneration of this trend reflects a regeneration of our spirit: a readiness to delve into the next thing with a sense of peace, measured patience. Dare I say, with faith!

Maybe this is why the doilies feel so good styled ironically: with fancy pants (low rise) or clunky shoes or bold jewelry/intentional sunglasses. Hats.

It’s what makes them feel more public than pajama: if the complete look could be worn boudoir, a leather bag or belt comes in as an anchoring compass, pointing the look out the door —

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If it’s not the bag, it’s the shoe:

And as evidenced here, can sometimes spill into lazy beach territory:

The photos here reflect a range of garment-types that can help you capture the spirit of the dressing mandate, but the earlier mentioned doily top does feel like the lowest stakes way to buy in. Some of the best expressions of the top include the new range of tops and skirts from Gimaguas, Doen’s chapter two summer collection, and Ciao Lucia’s bread and butter.

I love this (Prada-coded) for $120, and this — not a top but short enough to pass for one!, from Magda Butrym.

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In the end though, it really is about a spirit more than a specific piece.

So long as you pair your pajamas with things you’d wear out, striking that balance between dressed and not, I think you’re good to go. Literally.

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Have a great week,

Leandra

On a layover in Barcelona last week, I bought a pair of 38 euro flat slingback sandals —

I walked into the store because I saw a delicate pair of wedged, thong slingbacks in the window and thought those could scratch the itch of my reluctant (but still effusive!) desire to participate in a trend Peter Muelier’s Alaia piloted off the ground in 2024, but which in much freakier form, Phoebe Philo is landing.

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The Alaia portion of this trend looks like any number of the delicate thong heels you have seen perpetrating the shoppable internet with the aforementioned here, Gianvito there, Amina Muaddi, Le Monde Beryl, Paris T—I can go on.

Plus: Chanel recently showed Resort 27 and Blazy’s rendering of the woman included his own pass on the sling flop, so you can rest assured this one is going to stick around for a little while longer.

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The Philo portion of this trend includes any number of the wider renderings that look a bit like a Birkenstock (birkenflop? Flipenstock?), which you may have seen, including what I call the best alt option, which is these from Jude.

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The magic of the Philos is the subtle wedge that proposes the simplest yet most impactful lift to your leg, making them an ideal option for outfits that expose a lot of your leg.

They’re also heavy — like aesthetically, they add weight. So any outfit that reads more delicate (as in feminine) or naked (as in booby halter top) benefits from their presence in the broader tableau.

The very thing I did not know I needed to make mini shorts, skirts and one-and-done dainty dresses feel current again.

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The other version of this shoe is starting to feel a little stickier (more emotional, because they are so nostalgic) as I see more and more freckling the streets. It features a more apparent wedge and looks a little like a Rocket Dog —

Never forget!

I love these for a “work” setting because it’s unexpected. Is also great with feminine dress, or as demonstrated below, something a little more beach forward:

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Other good luxury options include:

• these from Dries

• these from Staud

• these from Chloe

• these (and these) from Balenciaga

• these from Coperni

• and obviously, the pictured Ancient Greeks

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That’s it on the shoes, but one style note worth acknowledging, which would have been too distracting within the flow of the story is related to the straps in the outfit of the first photo —

Something about the exposed halter straps crossing behind regular straps feels great right now. It’s a tiny, unexpected city cue with big impact, and needs a contrasting dose of elegance for context/so you don’t actually look like you’re barreling off the beach. More on this in an upcoming send but for now: the key to getting it right is leaning into color and contrasting texture.

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The only other thing I can tell you is that I made an excellent okra summer stew the other night, with cooked down shallots that I swirled around in tomato paste and seamed with coriander and paprika, salt n pepa. Once it was cookin’ I added preserved lemon, dried apricots and a little bit of white wine then 25 min later, vwala. The next day, it was so good on a seed cracker with feta cheese.

Okay, I’m done. Thanks for playing! See you next week,

Leandra

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I love getting dressed for in-between time: when the busy days of the school year are still in progress, before the lazy and slow dead of summer (which calls for not much more than a reappropriated night gown) are actually here.

Basically, there is still reason to get dressed.

It doesn’t feel silly or beside the point. Or redundant. More like the outfits actually count — so I do. Count them, I mean.

28 here for your scrolling pleasure:

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Have a great week!!!!!!!!!!!

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New is different, different is scary

I think we are pretty resistant to newness. We may like new stuff but genuine newness: new concepts, new technologies, new ways of being are trickier to embrace because “new” implies “different.”

The brain latches on to what is familiar from such an early age because what is familiar often feels safe.

I remember in the very early months after Jojo was born for example, I could detect a knowing smirk on her face when she woke up to see me, or either of her sisters, or her dad standing over her crib. It was not the same when a still-unfamiliar face like that of one of my brothers, or my mom, or my friends would greet her. The behavior had no charge, there was no judgment. It just was.

New faces are different, different is unfamiliar. Unfamiliar is not safe, and fundamentally, I suspect everything we work for, build our personalities around, try to become — even euphemize with love, is, somehow, in service of possessing safety.

This human quality probably dates back millennia and once served (still can serve) an important evolutionary purpose, shooting the nervous system into defense in the presence of genuine threat, but I’ve been thinking a lot about newness in a specifically creative context — the extent to which we need new ideas, opinions, visuals in order to challenge stasis/experience progress, and how often the almost knee-jerk response is rejection.

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Safety and risk

The irony, of course, is that in order to create this work, the person making it has to feel safe. Maybe in order to receive the new work, one has to feel safe too, but it’s a different kind of safety. Like you have to be open enough to receive it, and confident enough to know that embracing this new thing doesn’t mean anything about who you are. So in either instance, it’s a risk.

Making art is inherently risky because it’s vulnerable. It cracks the lid on something deep and raw, it exposes it to the tempo of a touch that is not your own. You can’t control what happens once you give it to the world. It could get shot down, it could cause a fight.

It could be dismissed, overlooked, or ignored altogether. All of this ladders up to a kind of failure.

I have said that releasing certain work is like having a pap smear in public. This still feels true but before you can even get to the point of choosing the pap smear — before the product gets made, the brain has to feel like it can melt into its natural, original rhythm. Abandon the rules of logic, make new sentence structures, break rules. It has to feel safe to touch into flow.

It’s not impossible to do this, or to feel the ascension of your own risk threshold when you’re on high alert, but it’s definitely hard. It is impossible, however, to get here when you’re constantly distracted. When you don’t let yourself get bored.

Boredom

With writing, it’s not the actual writing that is time consuming. It’s the sitting down to write. You can stare at a blank page for hours before something you want to bring to life comes through. You can spend days filling pages only to scrap them.

So much of making creative work is not actually being in flow, but it’s getting yourself there.

It’s the clearing that comes before it. And none of this work is for naught. It’s part of the process — layers of slop that need to dissolve before the core of whats good starts to take form.

But you can’t just go to the core without first waffling through this process. You have to give yourself time and permission to “waste.” To not be distracted, to let boredom take hold.

I worry that boredom is going extinct. That it is becoming as luxurious a commodity as time. I see it sometimes when I’m with my daughters and I’m answering this or that message from my phone while they’re looking around and one is humming to herself and the other flings a question out of both her mouth and nowhere, about something so abstract it could only come from a mind blank as a canvas.

When I am not suffocating under the invisible weight of the device, divorcing me from the present moment and what great creativity emerges within it, I feel intense relief that my kids still stretch effortlessly into the abyss of spectacular nothing.

It encourages me to dive in too and in this abyss is always — always — where my best ideas come to the fore.

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An uncomfortable seat

But it’s uncomfortable to get here. There’s a layer of, to put it plainly, pain, one must tolerate on the way to flow.

Because in the quiet of the boredom is when the thoughts and questions and feelings we push away and avoid and distract ourselves from coming in too-close contact with have a chance to be heard, to be seen.

So often we erect entire personalities around avoiding what hides in the recesses of our thoughts but really our hearts. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to uphold these personas, but we tell ourselves it’s easier to avoid what is hidden than to let it pass through. I think many of us worry about what will happen if we acknowledge the pain. Worry we will fall apart.

Often the pain doesn’t want much more than to be seen in its trueness for a mere, miniature moment.

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A cultural temp check

Across so many categories of art, we are living in an era of reboots, re-ups, re-issues. We’re so nostalgic.

Are we?

Or is it just a refusal to feel boredom? To touch into the “pain” on the road to newness?

I rewatched The Devil Wears Prada last night. The original became canon. It lifted the first lid on what the fashion industry is like, sensationalizing much of it like good entertainment does, but painting a portrait accurate enough to let it pass for fact.

It also enunciated a truth so often dismissed in American culture on the role fashion plays in virtually all of our lives.

I think this often overlooked quality of the movie is part of what made fashion fans embrace it in the first place. Instead of cynically reducing what many of us do, what (presumably if you’re here) all of us love, to a pile of dumb, turquoise belts, it erected a quality of respect for the trade.

The reissue was fun — nostalgic, but will not earn a place in the canon. This is what gets missed with so many reinventions: the tacit characteristics that make originals so good are just that — tacit. Most people don’t know why a piece of work touches them, stays with them, but they know that it does, and that’s enough. It’s the luxury of being a consumer of work as opposed to the maker of it.

But if you want to create the kind of work that does this? I suspect a need to cultivate enough discipline to deny the knock of distraction, to let ourselves feel the boredom, the discomfort, the pain. All of it. This is what underpins the work. What carries it through a transmutation that becomes beauty.

Maybe this is where the stereotype of the tortured artist really derives from: their willingness to not just feel the full range, but to jump into it. In a healthy approximation of the stereotype, I think you get someone like Matthieu Blazy (Chanel’s new creative director), who has cultivated enough faith (perhaps by experience) to trust that beyond the discomfort is a special kind of liberating levity that allows you to move more flexibly, with more clarity, through your own system. That on the other side of torture, there is freedom.

On the other end, in the most severe instances, is any number of the creative geniuses we lose to the precise ailment of distraction, avoidance. Of pushing the torturous nag away so far as to lose themselves.

I will agree that it feels good to leave reality sometimes. Necessary, even urgent. It’s what we do when we consume art — and as makers, these short trips away can be exactly what ignite the next body of work to come through.

But more and more as the passage of time begets me, as I busy-mom-bounce from one task to the next, and avoid the bats lingering in my own mental caves, I recognize the value in stopping. In depriving my senses of the device. In letting it feel like my head will explode, like my heart’s going to drop into the base of my pelvis.

Let it.

I’m at the tail end of a 4-hour layover seated at the center of a terminal. Until just now, when I reached for my phone, I’ve bored as hell, in a twisted bliss.

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This year more than in years past, a subtle echo of genuine appreciation laces the street corners. Winter is always long, always ask that we go in to battle what psychic demons remain in power within us but this last one in particular was severe. Yet here we are, in tact. If that’s not confidence provoking, you tell me what is!

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This is the start of an ascension, I am sure. Some kind of actually-seismic shift. You can’t necessarily see it in the clothes, but you can feel it in the disrobing, the thaw.

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The trouble for me with this turnover is that in the thrill of the thaw, I can feel like I’m losing myself.

Or no, it’s not that I’m getting lost — it’s more like I’m backing away —walking further from myself. Like in the rush of reasons to: speed up! Get dressed! Get outside! Have a run, check down the to-do list, I forget where I am. If I am even here.

So I close my eyes for a second. This initiates a slow down incompatible with the buzz but essential to actually reaping its benefit.

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It takes a good 2 minutes to start to come down and my eyes have to stay closed. I have to get through the dizzying cave-in that often feels like my skull is collapsing into my forehead until a quiet kicks in and the chest flutters stop.

Here is where I start to hear myself again. Where the aperture starts to widen. But this is not the time to do anything. To jot down a thought, to look at a picture, to read an email; no inputs just yet.

I have to stay with where I am. Give it more time — like at least fifteen minutes — until my body knows I can trust the calm.

This is when my mind gets the signal that it’s not caving in, and when I get here, it’s a huge relief.

I’m so grateful for every impulsive response I did not express. Grateful to feel the slope between the impulse and what is festering underneath it. Grateful to know what energy actually requires for exertion. Grateful to have let dissolve what did not demand discharge…

I drain myself responding so quickly to the push notifications that kick on in my mind even though I know that there’s a natural focus setting I could switch on by closing my eyes.

Closing my eyes and listening to the slope of my breath going in and out.

When I slow down, I open up and find effortless understanding for the expressions of creativity that arrest me —

For the reason I’m compelled to pick up my phone and snap this pic or that, why my chest calms when I see the lush green, what subtle creative impulses will land and spread into the expanse that lay ahead.

Slow is not lazy. Slow is measured, slow is smart.

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There’s a quality of mapping that I cherish and nurture about bringing awareness to what moves me — breaking it down to understand becomes a set of coordinates that help me find my way back to motion when I’m stuck. Beauty when I’ve been away for too long. Gratitude when I’m lost in the slop.

26 unsolicited outfit ideas

By now it’s been raining for the last several days. The heat was a mere taste of what lay ahead, but I loved touching into what it forecasted. I can’t wait to tie a cotton bandana into my hair. I think we’re going to want to wear full! summer! black!.

and spring jackets, baby

A season of bikini tops styled as bras is coming…

A season of bodysuits, halters, tubes and baby doll tops.

A second coming of the year of public pajamming.

But mostly, I’m just glad I closed my eyes.

Somewhere between the dizzying thrill of the season and destabilizing distance of trying to catch all its whims, I found softness, quiet, the slow down, an opening.

Now what to do, what to do with it.

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There are loads of rodeo buckles out there too (no doubt thanks to Khaite and Celine’s spring belts — and an overarching stylistic return to the old west, which has been well in motion since last summer). But low rise pants (bottoms, really, bc skirts and shorts, esp those that read cargo are not excluded) have had a longer, more subtle lead time on their quest towards the apex they’re approaching now.

They reflect a mood more than a specific trend — away from sexless clothes, towards something messier, a little more…nasty.

Which maybe is not so literal — like the “nasty” outfit may not be overt (could be mistaken for elegant or utilitarian or whatever —),

because the concept of clothes that are full of sex as opposed to deprived of it is more about bringing to light what often remains in the dark intimacy of our secret lives. And the material contained here is going to look different person to person, style tendency to tendency.

But now that we’ve been teased with the first salty sweat beads to drip down the city’s spine into its exposed butt crack, the question is how to wear these pants?

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If we’re assuming the shape and material of pant is slouchy and low rise respectively, the best answer for how to wear is with a top that flutes out, like something baby doll, a little bit femme.

Or maybe there are two answers — some kind of tight-to-the-body tube or suit or even a baby tee are great too. The bodysuits in particular are good because they keep you held in. Then you can add a shirt unbuttoned over like a jacket if you want more security —

In either instance, I’ll often add a belt to bring some weight to the overall look.

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If low rise pants aren’t for you but you still want in

If you don’t have (or want to have) low rise pants but want to attempt no-stakes participation in this hip-hugging trend, you can:

a) roll over a pair of elastic waist pants, as seen in a few instances above —

b) belt a shirt in a low-rise spot

If low rise is not for you but you like the vibe

Try a pair of straight leg, slouchy mid rise pants — like these from Golovanoff or these from All Three.

All the same dressing rules apply.

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In sum that’s: lightweight pants, often slouchy and straight, sometimes whimsically elasticated at the ankle, or scrunched in nylon like jobs…or denim, as paired with: halter tops of any stripe, bodysuits, a spandex tube (or tank), ye trusty baby tee or the simplest of a lightweight cotton thing.

The end! Any q’s, let me know. I’m here,

Leandra

There’s a feeling of excitement and newness when the markings of a seasonal change are in progress. There is also much stimulation, which can put you at risk of combustion. Keeping it simple with wardrobe bread and butter (jeans and t-shirts or button downs, in my case), while taking small risks with new expressions via accessory allow me to localize the feeling of excitement without losing the plot completely. For spring (and prob summer) 2026, I’m thinking about:

Wire frame sunglasses

Mostly because they are a more delicate way to complement an outfit, so they give you permission to get more bold with your clothes: colors, shapes, layers. I love them styled with wild hair too.

A long strand of beads

Ileana Makri’s ‘Globetrotter’ collection is it, but anything can go here.

I personally love what a long strand of pearls does to a baby tee or a tube top, or how it breaks up dark colors, orrrrrrr, if it’s something like the collage-d blue strand of evil eyes, they can serve as breakthrough point —

Generally speaking, I think this accessory impulse reflects what I’m discovering as a summer-long inclination towards a shrunken (baby) tee or tube top. An example of the work in progress, ppl!!

Speaking of that tube…

A tank (or tube) — exposed shoulders and boots

Many ways to slice this one (as evidenced above) but I felt the expression of going bare on top and really anchoring down below come in hot towards the end of last summer, when I was all hopped up on the old west coming back in fashion. Nothing new necessary here! Just a trusty sleeveless something (love the durability of a Flore Flore tank, but All Three’s ‘Claire’ is my all-time pick) and your favorite (cowboy?) boots.

A non-whimsical statement belt

What is having a better decade than belts? This expression is a transition hit for two reasons. The first:

Nothing breaks up simple jeans and a tee better. And if you’re wearing a double serving of white, leather also anchors the lightness. Which relates to reason no. 2–

All of our fabrics are about to get soooo lightweight. A solid leather belt will do good job grounding them. (And giving them better context when they are kind of out there, like in the instance of 👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻these orange pants.)

Shoes to sexify your sexless clothes

Because what’s coming for us is the summer of nasty — sweaty and messy and naked in glory, but it would be cookoo bananas to abandon the wardrobes we’ve cultivated over the last decade and change. A wild pair of shoes could throw off kilter even the most unbecoming capri pants, so give them a shot.

Last thing I’ll include which wasn’t technically planned, but which I’ve found myself wearing a lot:

Silk shirts styled as jackets over shrunken t-shirts or tanks with lightweight pants, or when it’s 80 degrees like it got to be last week, tiny shorts and/or mini skirts.

The shirts specifically have to be silk so they flow and it’s better when the tee/tank hugs your form. Kind of like dressing for the beach, but not.

This is all I have for you today — have a great week!,

Leandra

This simple white t-shirt has occupied almost all the terrain on my browser of late. There’s nothing like a good one — and when I say good, I mean good, —enough to wear as the main event, anywhere: to work, on a date, to run errands, on the weekend, to complete a workout (see: knee cap leggings, patent mocs). Even, if styled diligently, to a formal wedding:

I think I’ve developed this fixation on identifying the best simple tops because there’s soooo much going on in style these days with prints and pants shapes (that low rise is here to stay!) and skirts (coming in hot), and jackets (as the new tops, you know) really shifting what we want to wear.

But nailing the t-shirt’s been easier than finding the exact right tank. I think because I know exactly what I’m looking for:

• Crew neck,

• cap sleeve

• and a little short

• but not so short that I can’t tuck it into high waist jeans.

I’ve tried this from Los Angeles apparel, which is honestly great (I just wonder about how long it will be great for), and this from Leset, but I think Flore Flore’s ‘car’ style (specifically in ‘baby’) is the one.

The why

It’s great with many bottoms shapes, high and low rise: silk pants, jeans, cargos, wool; with something long or short (mini skirt, tiny shorts, a portmanteau of the two),

This is because the neck is high and crew, so for the bottoms, the ratio of exposed skin to nudity is no problem with short things, but it’s also shrunken, so it hugs the form and also makes it the right counter shape for big or heavy bottoms.

And it sits comfortably within any jacket (or shacket) collar: from classic to standing to opera/boat, to no collar at all —

And the material is rigid and pretty bonded, so it’s an easy wear with no bra, but a seamless one (meaing you won’t see the bra) with it. From experience with prior Flore Flore tees, can also tell you the material sustains its shape over time. The one possible upset is that the collar might discolor. I personally don’t care because sometimes I like to look a little sloppy, but laying that out there so you have all the info.

All said and done though, the truth is, the white baby tee is the ultimate tee because it’s as compatible with mid-rise jeans as a Taurus with 800-count Egyptian cotton.

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Happy birthday Morgan, Ariela and Abie!!!! See you next time,

Leandra

• a Friday night dinner (the equivalent of a rehearsal dinner, so the dress code is fancy but not black tie),

• Saturd…

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I get pretty overwhelmed by it. Send me outside for a walk around the corner and in the time it takes for me to get me there, my senses burn out, nerve endings feel raw. Everything may as well be THE SLOP, but lately, I’m finding that keeping it simple with my clothes — like simpler than simple with not just a uniform template but the actually-same top and bottom over again — makes letting the creativity that feels emo and alive come through me in a much gentler, calmer process. It’s more precise, less chaotic. I get the whole uniform thing. So:

The pieces

I used Flore Flore’s ‘Esme’ muscle tee, and Aflalo’s Bradum pants. These two pieces are like wardrobe bread: good with so many proteins, endless condiments. The shape and material on the tee make it good enough to wear solo, but the neckline is an ideal crew to style under things too.

And the pants have a side zipper which gives them more polish than a pair of elastic waist pants, but the fit is relaxed (mine are a size 2, for reference) so they have a ‘Gala’ quality about them. The cleanness of the waistline makes them a solid breeding ground for belts or shirts tied around the waist, styled as belts but tbh, overall, it’s pretty remarkable the difference an accessory can make.

The looks

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And something about that vibrated through me, and I told her that they (the clothes) were in fact my closest friends until soon after college, which wasn’t because (now I’m talking to you), I chose them (the clothes) over people, but I did find a clarity in their seams that I couldn’t find elsewhere. A specific kind of order, an explanation that soothed me when everything else felt chaotic.

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They became a language that helped me to learn myself in relation to myself and the world around me. To erect an opinion, articulate it, edit it, and drop it into the world like a golden beam that sprawls out as it touches down, mystic and impossible to believe yet somehow still very real.

Clothes helped me access freedom when I couldn’t find it in myself even though I knew in my bones, my bones knew better than me, that I used to live so close — in the cleavage, really — of chest unbuckled, wild hair in the wind, eat-the-world-with-your-whole-self freedom.

In this way, they helped me break through and transmute great pain in the chasm between that nascent freedom and the various ways we let ourselves become slaves to the third party.

Revisit last week's letter here

Whenever I see someone walking now still, I can tell when they’re doing big work with their clothes. Barreling through what emotional upset arrests them, relentlessly out with the sword, until the vibration of what’s been unlocked trickles out.

It’s always the same and that’s what I can feel: the pleasure, the hurt. Celebration. A shiva. The actual sensation varies by person but in every instance it’s inspiring — relieving! — because there is an unflinching clarity underneath it all. And that reminds me of what makes clothes great.

It is to say so little of them, and so very much of the life-affirming faith they can deliver when you decide you want to get to know as you would get to know yourself — tied up in knots, subsequently undone, pulled apart and then put back together. Upside down, right side up, tossed left, then twirled, over and over and over again, until something, anything starts to make sense.

It’s like you’re pulling a thread, but the thread’s moving you — closer and closer to what is true. It’s hard not to find freedom here. To honor the conversations they have helped you have with the deepest parts of your own psyche.

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So yeah, they’re my friends. Hell yeah they’re my friends! 26 conversations are here, for your listening pleasure.

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A sick second-hand skirt suit edit

Could I, for example, reach for them instead of jeans and make them work just as I would any other pair of safety pants: to chill, to mom, to work, to be serious, to be sultry, to party, to be the party —

I think the trick boils down to:

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• length of skirt (right below or above knee)

• waist line (low rise as opposed to high — this takes the garment from sexless to hot)

  • and shape (straight, not exactly pencil, but closer to it than a-line or flare; more new Chanel than old Prada)

    • but the one exception to this mandate is this shape from Tory, which hits because of the rise and the subtle v-waist:

      

    

In the spirit of determining whether a skirt could be as versatile as a pair of jeans, here are a week’s worth of outfit ideas for different daily life scenarios incorporating some good ones at market right now —

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Monday’s ambitious errand runner

You wake up, your mind starts racing, the sun is out, you want to feel great, you want to continue holding all these thoughts in your head — or no, actually, you want to drop the thoughts without dropping the ball. You have some work to do, you have some errands to run. You don’t plan to see anyone you know but you want to feel yourself, want to be comfortable. You’re leaving home this morning and won’t be back until after you pick up your kids from school. Physical settings on the docket: walking, sitting, reaching.

Tuesday lunch with not non-business associates

Ladies who lunch! You swept the racing thoughts off your mind and now you’re ready to slow down the littlest bit. Key problem being that the adrenaline you released on Monday is borderline begging for a similar release. So: you take yourself out for a run. Come home, play a song, dance to it. Look at your calendar and marvel in the 1.5 hour, unscheduled block ahead of a work lunch that’s casual enough for you to wear what you would to see friends, so:

Wednesday at work (or, idk, your kids school book fair)

The vibe is: formal enough that I project responsibility, maturity, wholesome values, etc., without robbing myself of the desire to express personality. Nothing like an elastic waist band on a royally red silk skirt to help drive this one home —

Thursday, to cull from the field

Of creativity. Because the week is almost over and you have a stretch of boundless time to do whatever you do when you need to reconnect. I opt for loooooooong city walks to procure mental clarity and like to get myself in the right head by dressing up. Shoes have to be walkable but the rest of the outfit can be as untethered to reality as I want —

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Casual Friday at the office

A return to reality, and a practical opportunity to get freaky without actually getting freaky!!! The great thing about a low rise skirt, especially one with a bit of elastic in its structure (like the Esber thing below), is that it counterbalances an oversize, casual button down shirt without making you look like you’re swimming in your clothes. The roominess of your top half is made up for with the clinginess of your lower —

Saturday night live, baby

Where you going? What you doing? Can I come? What should I bring? I don’t have plans, but if I did, I’d go for a look I am turned to many times over the course of the last year. It’s a canvas more than anything else, that has a shot at changing every time you wear it with the add or removal of a belt, a necklace switch, a shoe choice.

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Unless, that is, I was going to dinner and wanted to take it down exactly one notch:

Sunday brunch

Be the tulips you wish to see in the world.

Or don’t.

And on the 8th day, God created Italian fashion —

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What’s the best white spaghetti strap tank top? Pictured is not a white tank but it is a perfectly, graphically striped halter (the print reminds me of the optical illusion-y plaid on this button down from Matteau), which I’ve been wearing a lot in the same way I would a white tank. But what is missed in the simplicity of the tank (better for jeans, main-event necklaces) is made up for in the halter’s busy-ness: a good jolt under so many different, festive jacket types with simple pants (or the star of next week’s letter: mid-length skirts).

But first: chill, non-legging pants

Re tank, the best one I’ve known is this from Frances de Lourdes, but it’s a little sheer to wear without a bra (with a bra the straps are too visible), so it’s more of an under-jacket hero.

This one is ideal because of the scoop neck, but it’s not spaghetti strap so does something different when I try to style it with a choker-type necklace, or want to feel a touch dressier (such as styled with pants like these — in the pink or the blue).

Also have to show you these clogs while we’re here.

But back to the tanks: Flore Flore’s got a good square neck, but I prefer the scoop. Ditto that Eterne, but the material being a more rigid cotton, or some kind of blend that’s more like the Frances tank feels crucial. This one from Sprwmn is almost good (and for this matter, so is Kye’s ‘Recline’ tank), but the v-necks throw me off a bit. Also, the material preference on the tank I’m after is with limited stretch and not ribbed.

Spring jackets, baby

The three most viable based on how well they’ll:

• wash,

• display a good neckpiece,

• pair with an everyday belt

• and correlate to a pair of straight leg jeans (or surprise stretch work pants)

are:

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Are you feeling dried up and crusty, or has your great thaw started? A new pattern I’m detecting surrounds a familiar sense of aggression coated in the subtlest bit of desperation that kicks in this time of year and produces an oddly exquisite dance with its most polarizing opponent: the urge to soak in renewed faith or hope and creative urgency.

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