StyleZeitgeist Podcast

On this episode we host the American artist Banks Violette. While this is not an episode about fashion per se, Violette and StyleZeitgeist have much in common culturally. He has been working for over two decades at the intersection of fine art and youth culture, making compelling work that deals with the dark side of the American society and the counterculture it produces. We talk about growing up...

This special episode of the StyleZeitgeist podcast was recorded live at MoMu, Fashion Museum Antwerp, as part of the opening weekend program for The Antwerp Six exhibition on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of their first collective showcase.  Just like for many fashion enthusiasts, The Antwerp Six loom large in Eugene’s and Philippe’s imagination. On this sprawling episode they talk about ho...

We are back with the fashion critic and writer Philippe Pourhashemi to review the Fall / Winter 2026 women’s season. Eugene and Philippe discuss Demna’s runway debut at Gucci, the sophomore outings of Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta, J.W. Anderson at Dior, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and much more. We talk about the killer collection Daniel Lee presented at Burberry, a...

On this episode we speak with Jeppe Ugelvig, the editor of Viscose journal, and a scholar, writer, and curator who works at the intersection of fashion and art. We talk about the fall of the fashion media and why independent media and criticism are paramount if we are to have a thriving fashion ecosystem, the problematic relationship between luxury fashion and its clients, the no less problematic...

On this episode we discuss the Fall / Winter 2026 season with the journalist Philippe Pourhashemi. We talk about nice clothes versus fashion, the trio of shows at Pitti Uomo, the increasing irrelevance of Milan, about auteurs like Rick Owens and Rei Kawakubo, who all delivered strong collections, why Sacai keeps going from strength to strength, why Dior and Louis Vuitton continue to disappoint, an...

Intern Pierre (not his real name) is a professional investor who runs an eponymous Substack where he deftly dissects the smoke and mirrors put up by the luxury sector. His specialty is sharing access to privileged, investment grade information that lay people are usually not privy to. On his first ever podcast appearance we discuss the importance of reading a financial statement, on the insolvable...

In this two-part episode Eugene Rabkin and Philippe Pourhashemi discuss this past season of many debuts, whether the so-called "great reset" was successful, and address two main narratives that are gripping the fashion media, the power and tact (or lack thereof) of the sideline fashion commentariat, and whether designers are out of touch with the needs of modern women. In episode one Eug...

In this two-part episode Eugene Rabkin and Philippe Pourhashemi discuss this past season of many debuts, whether the so-called "great reset" was successful, and address two main narratives that are gripping the fashion media, the power and tact (or lack thereof) of the sideline fashion commentariat, and whether designers are out of touch with the needs of modern women. In episode one Eug...

Our guest on this episode is Gene Pressman, of the great retail family that made Barneys into a New York fashion institution that has become part of the city lore and that has left an indelible mark on fashion itself. Barneys was a trailblazer, a temple for true fashion cognoscenti. Gene's new book, out September 2nd is called "They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World&ap...

Our guest is Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe, one of the most talented Belgian designers you have probably never heard of. We speak about his career arc, from assisting Josephus Thimister at Balenciaga to building out the womenswear at Jil Sander with Raf Simons, to the short but brilliant life of his own brand, why he quite the fashion rat race and has quietly worked behind the scenes at houses like Loew...

The Turkish Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan burst onto the London fashion scene with a brilliant 1993 graduate show Tangent Flows. With work that blended philosophy, science, technology, history and fashion, Chalayan became the pinnacle of conceptual fashion. Today, Chalayan designs and makes art, teaches at HTW in Berlin, and is a mentor at Forecast Mentorship Program 2025. In this wide-ranging...

We are back with the fashion journalist Philippe Pourhashemi to reflect on the Spring / Summer 2026 menswear season. We discuss many collections, starting at Pitti Uomo in Florence and ending with Paris. We dissect J.W. Anderson's debut at Dior, including the new ad campaign, Julian Klaussner's runway debut at Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens's moment of grandeur, Craig Green's retu...

On this episode we speak with the German fashion designer Lutz Huelle, who has built a brand with a cult following from scratch. Lutz tells us about growing up in a small German town in the '80s, his friendship with the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the dream world of the '90s London youth culture and Central Saint-Martins, how he ended up designing the Artisanal and knitwear lines dur...

Apologies for the hiatus, but we are back with a bang! On this episode we speak with Patrick Scallon, Paris-based communication consultant who was the head of communications at Maison Martin Margiela from 1993 to 2008 and at Dries Van Noten from 2008 to 2023. In the fashion world Patrick is a legend, having helped shape two of the most iconic independent brands. He was awarded the Chevaliers des A...

On this episode we speak with Robert Williams, Luxury Editor at the Business of Fashion. We start with Robert's unique career journey as an American student in Paris (it wasn't like Emily's), before going on to discuss the challenges of maintaining independence in fashion journalism. We explore the evolving landscape of the fashion industry over the past decade, discussing the inter...

On this episode we speak with Emily Segal, the founder of the brand strategy agency Nemesis, publishing house Deluge, and the author of the novel Mercury Retrograde. Emily came to fame in the 2010s as the co-founder of the collective K-Hole, which coined the term "normcore." She went on to work with everyone from Prada to Supreme, and learned a few things along the way, some of which we...

We are back with Philippe Pourhashemi to review the women’s Fall / Winter 2025 season. We discuss the debuts of Veronica Leoni at Calvin Klein, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten. We also give our impressions of what is likely to be the last collection of Daniel Lee at Burberry, and dive into the shows of Undercover, Rick Owens, Comme des...

Natasha Degen, the chair of Art Market Studies at Fashion Institute of Technology and the author of Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion after Andy Warhol, is back on the podcast to discuss the ever more insidious relationship between fashion and art. We discuss her concept of Art Pop, which are commercial ventures that are given an air of an art project, what the second rounds of collaboration bet...

We are back with the journalist and critic Philippe Pourhashemi to review the Fall / Winter 2025 men's season. We discuss the Setchu runway debut at Pitti Uomo in Florence, and touch upon the meaning of and the need to put on a fashion show, Peter Copping's debut at Lanvin, the new direction at Dries Van Noten, and the shows of Auralee, Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens, and more. We talk ab...

On this episode, we speak with Ana Andjelic, the strategic branding mastermind who knows her Bs from "Brand" to "Baudrillard," author of the Sociology of Business Substack and of the new book Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture. We discuss how the luxury industry went off rails through over-expansion, the difference between the luxury and fashion mentality and the luxury an...

On this episode we speak with Astrid Wendlandt, the founder of the fashion news website Miss Tweed. This year Miss Tweed came to prominence as the first to break many fashion appointment news, and has made plenty of powerful enemies, such as Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, and Johann Rupert, the owner of Richemont. But Wendlandt is no rumor-monger; she is a veteran journalist who for decades has...

Eugene Rabkin is back with Philippe Pourhashemi to discuss the Spring / Summer 2005 women's shows in Paris and Milan. They talked about Alessandro Michele's debut at Valentino, the need for change at Rick Owens, their different takeaways from the Dries Van Noten without Dries debut, the stagnant and bland luxury market, why Haider Ackermann is a brilliant choice for Tom Ford and what it...

On this episode we speak with the London-based fashion and interior design journalist and photographer Mark C. O'Flaherty. Mark is the author of The Narrative Thread, a book about the relationship of fashion collectors to their clothes, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, the World of Interiors, among others. We talked ab...

So, you want to get a job in fashion? But how? Or are you curious about what goes on behind the scenes of creative director musical chairs? On this episode we speak with Alice Bouleau, Partner at Sterling International, a premier executive search agency. Alice places creative directors and high level executives all over the world in some of the most prestigious fashion houses.  We dive deep into h...

So, you want to launch a brand? But do you know how it all actually works? For this episode we invited our old friend Joseph Keefer, who has had a long career in fashion on all fronts; retail, production, merchandising, and design, and who has launched his brand JKEEFER in 2020 in New York City. Joey is one of us, he grew up in the skate, punk, and hardcore scenes in Washington, DC. He started in...