Well, would you look at that: It's the changing of the seasons. But as temps cool and the sun sets before you've even closed your computer for the day, you might once again find yourself in need of a hit of dopamine dressing, or putting clothes together in a way that produces happy-making chemicals in your brain.
While this was easy to accomplish in spring/summer with bikini tops as shirts (freeing!) and summer camp-inspired jewelry (nostalgia!), cold weather brings a particular set of obstacles, mainly subpar meteorological conditions and a customarily muted color palette. But neither factor is a match for Cuddl Duds' first-ever outerwear launch, featuring puffers, vests, and coats that are as warm as they are cheerful. Ahead, see four full looks we've built around these new styles that'll keep you cozy and your spirits high.
For premium transitional dressing, layer this ultra-soft quilted jacket over an equally cozy turtleneck and leggings. A jaunty pom-pom beanie and riding boots complete the urban-equestrian picture.
Cuddl Duds Quilted Cozy Jacket, $, available at Kohl's
Cuddl Duds Softwear With Stretch Long Sleeve Turtleneck, $, available at Kohl's
Cuddl Duds Fleecewear with Stretch Legging, $, available at Kohl's
Cuddl Duds Two Tone Color Cuddl Pop Hat With Pom, $, available at Kohl'sPros: This long black coat feels like you're still in bed, and 2) it can definitely lift your mood when layered over gray co-ords. And with the addition of a snug hat and sneakers, the entire coffee-shop line will swivel around to look at your 'fit.
Cuddl Duds Teddy Cardi Coat, $, available at Cuddl Duds
Cuddl Duds Softwear With Stretch Long Sleeve Turtleneck, $, available at Cuddl Duds
Aritzia Free Lounge Cropped Sweatpant, $, available at Aritzia
New Balance XC-72 Sneakers, $, available at New Balance
Cuddl Duds Two Tone Color Cuddl Pop Hat With Pom, $, available at Cuddl DudsThis is giving major "off-duty celebrity on a ski holiday" energy. The eggplant puffer keeps your core toasty while bottoms in a matching color and a sturdy boot add interest.
Cuddl Duds Cushy Cozy Vest, $, available at Cuddl Duds
Cuddl Duds Ultra Cozy Legging, $, available at Cuddl Duds
SOREL Out N About III Classic Booties, $, available at SOREL
AMYO Classic Huggie Earrings, $, available at AMYOMonochromatic white looks mega-fresh >> freshness makes us feel nice. Here, the snuggliest, fluffiest anorak gets paired with rib-knit pants and accessories that suggest you're ready for an action-hero ski chase at any moment. NB: While penne alla vodka might also improve your outlook on life, we recommend something cream-based for this look.
Designer Anifa Mvuemba is known for her beloved brand, Hanifa, which is full of vibrant and bold colored designs. On Tuesday (Nov 16), she debuted her first in-person Hanifa runway show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The show was a huge milestone for Mvuemba’s brand and represents how far it has come — last year she went viral for her virtual show Pink Label Congo on Instagram live and was set to showcase at New York Fashion Week but the show was canceled due to the pandemic. Mvuemba always pays homage to her Congolese roots through her collections and this time was no different. Her debut show was called “Dream” and the theme speaks to the brand’s journey and its mission to represent women of all shapes and sizes. Mvuemba celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the brand by bringing the fashion industry back to where it all began: her hometown. The designer is no longer just dreaming. She has proved to herself that anything is possible.
R29Unbothered was in D.C. for the Hanifa show and looking out into the audience, the support for the brand was overwhelming; several Black women showed up wearing their favorite pieces from her previous collections, the Pink Congo Label and Hanifa Capsules, a testament to the community that continues to rally behind the fashion designer. The 35-piece collection showcased at the event solidified exactly why we’re all rooting for her. In addition to the models being diverse and ranging in various body types and sizes, the Fall/Winter 2021 ready-to-wear collection represented Hanifa’s signature styles, such as bold colors, abstract patterns, and ribbed knitwear. With this collection, she took her signature looks a step further by including modernized suiting, structured denim, fringed tops, and footwear. Mvuemba also made sure to incorporate the beloved silhouette that longtime fans of her collections are used to knit midi dresses in an eye-catching color palette.
If you’re someone who’s never shopped the brand before but is looking to bring a more luxurious style to your everyday wardrobe, this collection will not disappoint. We just know that our favorite pieces from the collection will be seen everywhere. (Select pieces will be available on November 19th on Hanifa.co.) R29Unbothered had the opportunity to chat with Mvuemba about her exciting collection and what’s next for the designer.
R29Unbothered:What inspired the collection and the overall theme?
Anifa Mvuemba: “I wanted to honor where we came from, where it all started, to celebrate 10 years of Hanifa. [I wanted to] celebrate what we’ve accomplished to embrace change. I wanted to showcase and highlight details, colors, fabrications, and all the many facets of the Hanifa brand like footwear, outwear, knitwear, etc.”
Why was it important to have your first runway show in D.C. versus showcasing at NYFW?
AM: “D.C. is home. It’s important to know where you came from, to support the local artists and creatives. Most people make it ‘big,’ leave D.C., and never come back. I wanted to make a change and to honor the city where it all started.”
How do you want your audience to feel when they wear this new collection?
AM: “I design with every woman’s body in mind. I want them to exude femininity and confidence while accentuating their natural curves. This entire collection has statement pieces; there’s no way that my customers won’t be the center of attention wearing my pieces.”
Besides clothing, you also debuted two different styles of shoes. Is it safe to say Hanifa will be expanding more into footwear?
AM: “Absolutely! This is only the beginning. This footwear collection was long overdue as I have always loved footwear and have been experimenting with designs for years. Now that we have the space to expand, I’m ready to create more.”
What inspired the Zoe Boot and Zeta Sandal?
AM: “I strive for my customers to not only look good but to feel good as well. When designing these shoes, I wanted them to be comfortable but also unique. The Zoe Boot literally feels like silk and the Zeta Sandal feels like you’re walking on air. I also wanted something that reflects the Hanifa brand by being minimalist, bold, and colorful.”
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
It was the color of the year — at least, it was for fashion types. Few cared about Pantone’s gray and yellow when there was “Bottega Veneta green” to covet. While former designer Daniel Lee had toyed with the color in earlier collections, he went full-throttle with the shamrock creations at the brand’s Spring 2021 show. Models walked through a green room wearing green knit dresses and green leather shoes. There were green suits and green bags. While arriving at the tail end of Lee’s three-year stint, it was this vibrant green — along with the previously released Pouch bag and Puddle boots — that grabbed attention and skyrocketed the Italian luxury label (which Lee called “a sleeping giant” at the start of his tenure) to unprecedented popularity. It was the green that many wondered about, too, when Lee’s sudden departure from the label was announced last week. “No more BV Green?” tweeted New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman on November 10. “No more pouch bag? Oh boy.”
While a new creative director, Matthieu Blazy, has already been confirmed, it’s unclear what this shift means for Lee’s legacy at the company. Will Bottega Veneta continue to embrace this specific shade of virally hyped green? Will Blazy want to introduce his own colorway, perhaps a Blazy Blue?
It would be naive to pretend as though BV Green was created in a vacuum, a sole product of Lee’s imagination, especially since big bold greens have been bubbling up in the collective consciousness for several years now. The most official color of the past decade was Greenery, Pantone’s 2017 color of the year. Then there was “neo-mint,” a weird, slightly off-putting seafoam-y color that was hailed by interior designers as the next big thing. For me, the most influential green was found on Dakota Johnson’s kitchen cabinets, but I realize that’s a niche obsession. (Though that Granny Smith color did show up frequently on the backs of avant basic influences, thanks to Instagram favorite brands like Paloma Wool and House of Sunny.) The most likely predecessor to BV green though is “slime green.” For a few years, that highlighter bright, bratty, and brash green was everywhere. It somehow felt like an antidote to the peach soft tyranny of millennial pink. Slime green wasn’t gentle and natural. It was loud, obnoxious, and self-aware. It was a digital green, reminiscent of ‘90s aesthetics and early internet culture. It was kind of ugly. That was kind of the point.
Green in general has a reputation for being hard-to-wear, which is probably due in part to its history as a color of wickedness, witches, sin, and ghosts. (Yes, ghosts.) From the start, slime green was a statement color, as is BV’s matte, bold green. It wasn’t the only green that Lee used at Bottega Veneta, but, perhaps because of its similarity to slime green, it’s the one that mattered most.
If you go to the Bottega Veneta website and try to order one of their distinctive woven leather bags, you’ll find a couple of different green options. There’s the minty, pastel hue called “fountain,” the teal one dubbed “mallard,” the bright emerald “racing green,” and finally, there’s “parakeet.” It’s this last one that made the biggest impact, appearing on everything from the brand’s leather goods to knitwear and ready-to-wear. It’s the color favored by Hailey Bieber, who has been photographed wearing a *distinctive* pair of Bottega Veneta feathered jeans. She’s since posted more evidence of her parakeet love to Instagram, showcasing the brand’s leather bags, puffer vest, and shoes.
What is parakeet? As far as I can tell, it’s Kelly green with an avian name. (While I don’t claim any great expertise on budgerigar as a species, I do think their feathers tend to look a bit more brown; and I can say with absolute confidence that there is not a parakeet on earth that looks like Bieber in a leather puffer, unfortunately.) It’s flatter and more saturated than the neon-loud slime green. It’s lighter than emerald and shamrock, more yellow than mallard, less yellow than chartreuse — or, as BV, calls the latter, “kiwi.” They could have called it Kelly green so close is the match, but that doesn’t sound all that grand or exciting. Perhaps if the brand had known how hard this green would have hit, they would have just called it “Bottega Veneta green.”
The back story of the hue goes something like this: According to etymologists, Kelly green comes from a common Irish surname, and while people in America tend to associate it with sports teams and St. Paddy’s drinking culture, it was once a rather meaningful color for the Irish independence movement. In the late 18th century, it became a symbol for the Irish Home Rule movement. It’s still on the Irish flag today, separated from the orange stripe by a swath of white. (Given that Lee is English and Bottega Veneta is Italian, it’s unlikely that there is any historical significance behind the hue for either.)
The color’s use (and Lee’s work in general) marked a turning point for Bottega Veneta’s public perception. This was never a brand known for loud statements. In 2008, the New York Times cemented the “stealth wealth” designer status of Bottega Veneta in an article titled, “You’ll Know How Much You Spent.” In contrast to immediately identifiable logo bags, Bottega Veneta leather goods were never designed to advertise their owners’ wealth. They were intended to showcase taste.
Under Lee’s tenure, the brand did things a little differently though. Bottega Veneta was both more and less visible. It could disappear from social media, yet its buzzy pouch bags showed up on so many influencers that Fashionista launched an investigation into the phenomenon. The bright green was likewise hard-to-miss, popping up not only on It girls everywhere but even in the form of an installation in Seoul. It was instantly recognizable, unique enough to stand out but never too alienating. It was versatile, too: On some, that green looks preppy and traditional. On others, it looks subversive and cool; on leather, the Kelly green looked dramatically incongruous and rather sculptural, while on knits, this color seemed fuzzy and muppet-like, a Kindercore dream. It should be noted that all obscenely bright colors have this chameleon effect, but green feels somehow more interesting than Louboutin red or Hermes orange.
Yet it’s a familiar color, too; the color of a well-kept lawn. And, like a freshly mowed, expertly fertilized patch of grass, it’s not quite natural. To me, this green equivalent of topiary. Nostalgia, controlled, a little bit surreal, alive. Most importantly (at least for the financial success of a brand), it had the power to transform ordinary objects, like a pair of utilitarian rubber rain boots, into an instant hit.
Color trends are notoriously hard to predict. It’s not just enough to pick a pretty color — it’s about how it interacts with textures, how it reflects light, how you describe it, how you present it, how you see it, and, perhaps most significantly, what new associations you can create between a color and a culture. So while it doesn’t matter whether you call the color parakeet or Kelly green or BV green, it will always be the hue associated with associated with Lee’s time at the company.
BV green is nothing special, yet during the summer of 2021, it was the only color that mattered. It captured the zeitgeist, the sense of relief that many people were feeling, the desire to re-emerge into public life and make a big splash, the desire to be one with nature. If Blazy abandons the hue, the remaining items might become even more enviable, coveted and resold for years to come like Tom Ford’s Gucci pieces or Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton designs. Or it could be a flash-in-the-pan, a color trend that disappears as quickly as Lee departed from the company, gone like Gen Z yellow and melodramatic purple. It’s hard to know. Personally, I hope it’s indicative of a turn towards sharper, more defined colors, shapes, and looks. Pastels dominated the pre-pandemic years with their wishy-washy ways. It’s time for something new to take root.
At Refinery29, we’re here to help you navigate this overwhelming world of stuff. All of our market picks are independently selected and curated by the editorial team. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Tamsin Blanchard and Lily Fang have never heard of each other, but maybe they should.
Blanchard, age 52, is one of the sustainable fashion OGs: She started writing about fashion’s impact on the environment for British newspapers in the ‘90s, wrote a book on the subject in 2007, and has spent her decades-long career trying to push the industry to embrace better practices, most recently through her work at advocacy group Fashion Revolution. In the last couple of years, Fang, 25, has emerged as one of the most prominent voices on TikTok focused on sustainable fashion, where she educates her 55K-plus (mostly) Gen Z followers about garment workers’ rights and the problem with fast-fashion hauls.
Blanchard and Fang both value the sense of camaraderie they feel with other people working in the “ethical fashion” space. But since Blanchard’s community comes from her in-person work with Fashion Revolution and her years in the newspaper trenches, while Fang’s consists largely of her peers on social media, they’ve never overlapped.
“I don’t have much of a two-way conversation with a lot of folks that are older than me [in the movement],” Fang says. “But I would totally be interested in that.”
That these two leaders representing different generations of the sustainable fashion community have never interacted isn’t just a coincidence — it’s emblematic of the way the movement at large often works. Twenty-four-year-old Megan McSherry, another standout voice on sustainable fashion TikTok, notes that her priority is just to get sustainability information onto the platform. Because otherwise, she says, her peers might never encounter it.
“We’re not reading the newspaper; not all of us are listening to news podcasts or the radio or wherever that information normally is disseminated,” she says.
It’s unsurprising that a generation that’s disinclined to pick up a paper from the newsstand might miss out on the informational groundwork — not to mention generational wisdom — laid out by the likes of Blanchard. But even for people closer in age than McSherry and Blanchard, there can be a disconnect. The speed with which new social media platforms crop up might be to blame: As each successive network has taken off, from Twitter to Instagram to TikTok, new leaders have tended to emerge on each social media site. As this progression continues, prominent voices from whichever platform was hot the year before don’t always migrate to the new platform, and expertise can get lost along the way.
I wish that there could be more dialogue between this younger generation that’s so passionate about this issue, and these experts that have established themselves as important people in the industry.
Megan McSherry
But if the sustainability movement wants to make real progress, finding ways to better bridge those gaps is crucial. When Blanchard first started out as a journalist in the ‘90s, anti-fur campaigns, sweatshops in the supply chain, and brands introducing clothing made from recycled plastic water bottles felt newsworthy. In 2021, the same kinds of stories still make headlines as though they are brand-new. After decades of work, with hundreds of articles and a handful of books under her belt, Blanchard is understandably impatient for more progress than what she’s seen so far.
“I am sick of talking about it, and I am a bit sick of listening to people talk. I just want things to start to actually change,” Blanchard says on the phone. “We need to start actually doing this stuff.”
Forty-three-year-old Jasmin Chua, the sourcing and labor editor at Sourcing Journal, agrees. She has been writing about fashion’s environmental impact since 2007. She says that the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, which killed at least 1,132 garment workers and injured more than 2,500, served as a wake-up call for many in the industry. But despite all the momentum that built after the tragedy, there’s so much that hasn’t shifted, she says.
“When it comes to worker rights, we’re still talking about living wages. That hasn’t changed in the decade-plus that I’ve been working in this space,” she says. “Brands still have the same excuses.”
So what will it take to create real progress in the sustainability movement — the kind of progress that would render a sweatshop headline from 1993 obsolete today?
It might help to take cues from the climate movement, which is made up of a broad group of organizations and individuals fighting for action to limit climate change. Like the sustainable fashion movement, the climate movement is only a few decades old, though it’s connected to the even older environmental movement. But where the sustainability movement has sometimes struggled to create cohesion across generations, the climate movement is increasingly leaning into the strengths that different age groups can bring to the table.
With organizations like teen-led Fridays for Future on one end of the spectrum and Elders Climate Action on the other, the climate movement has actively sought to combine the energy of young leaders with the expertise of their elders. The result is a powerful alchemy of parties who can work together to bring about real change.
I am sick of talking about it, and I am a bit sick of listening to people talk. I just want things to start to actually change.
Tamsin Blanchard
Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director of UPROSE since 1996 and co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance, reflected on this dynamic at an event for the book All We Can Save earlier this year. “We need to be able to share power across the table so that [the youth] don’t take 20 years to learn what it took us a minute to learn,” she says. “We don’t have time for them to learn [everything from scratch]; we have to be nimble.”
As an elder in the movement, she welcomes young people’s leadership and insight but rejects the idea that “the kids are going to save us all.” Because while, according to McSherry, Gen Z knows more about the issues with fast fashion than those before them, that doesn’t mean they’re doing what it takes to change the system.
“It’s tricky to be simultaneously the generation that is perpetuating these systems and making fast fashion faster, and also the generation that probably knows the most about these issues and is trying to create change,” she says, alluding to the way that her peer group has fueled the rise of hyper-fast fashion brands like Shein. “There’s just a big amount of cognitive dissonance in our generation.”
The kind of intergenerational community that brings together the urgency of youth with the embodied wisdom of age is not as present as it should be in the sustainable fashion movement. But there are exceptions. Aja Barber, a sustainability consultant and author of Consumed, is in her late 30s, but she has found her niche on Instagram, which many associate with the generation below her. On the app, she says she’s built relationships with people across a wide range of ages, including many who are significantly younger than herself, and she has garnered an audience of 249K followers.
“I’m definitely a senior in the Instagram world; I consider myself an Instagram elder,” she laughs. But Barber sees her age as a “privilege,” and believes she can offer a perspective that her younger colleagues in the movement can’t. “I’m old enough to remember what the world was like before fast fashion [exploded],” she says. “A lot of young people aren’t.” The implication is that she might be able to help young people better envision a future without it, too.
Outside of the world of social media, or at least in a world not totally dependent on it, there’s also intergenerational cross-pollination happening through dedicated advocacy groups. Though Blanchard might not be chatting with the next generation’s TikTok stars, she’s connected to young designers through her work with Fashion Revolution, an organization that has been influential in raising awareness and providing education around sustainability. Meanwhile, Remake, started by 43-year-old Ayesha Barenblat and bolstered by youth “ambassadors” on social media, was the driving force behind the #PayUp campaign that called for fashion brands to pay garment workers for the clothing they completed prior to orders being canceled in the midst of the pandemic.
We need to be able to share power across the table so that [the youth] don’t take 20 years to learn what it took us a minute to learn.
Elizabeth Yeampierre
Even if there’s much that still hasn’t changed since the ‘90s, there are areas where the movement has seen real growth, especially when it comes to intersectionality. While Barber might have stood out among her peers for highlighting how sustainability is connected to race, class, and fatphobia, Fang, McSherry, and much of the generation they represent see those intersections as a given.
And it’s striking to hear that both Chua, who reads and writes for traditional media outlets and mostly hangs out on Twitter, and McSherry, who prefers TikTok and Instagram, agree on what it’s going to take to create the necessary change in fashion: policy and government regulation of the industry.
Maybe, if the movement can figure out how to better facilitate intergenerational cross-pollination, the age demographics Chua and McSherry represent could come to not just agree on what’s needed, but actually work on those things together. Intergenerational learning takes a lot of humility, says Chua, but the payoff could be a sense of connection to something much bigger than oneself and one’s peer group.
McSherry agrees.
“I wish that there could be more dialogue between this younger generation that’s so passionate about this issue, and these experts that have established themselves as important people in the industry,” McSherry says. “I think we could create a lot more change if there was a bit more collaboration.”
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
