What’s in Madewell’s secret sauce? Whatever the brand uses to spike its apparel with universal appeal is nothing short of magic. And, try as we might, we just can’t seem to stop browsing Madewell's site. As of today, it's gotten even trickier to tear ourselves away because Madewell’s hosting its Insiders Sale event with 20% off sitewide if you're a Madewell Insider Loyalty Program member. There's no need for a promo code — and you have until March 21 to stock on some early-Spring essentials.
The cool-but-casual retailer always seems to have our number with its selection of trust-worthy jeans, chic sweaters, and Spring-ready dresses that don’t skimp on function. Click through to peep a selection of our favorite slashed-price scores ahead — and know that there’s plenty more where that came from (for a limited time).
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. All product details reflect the price and availability at the time of publication. If you buy something we link to on our site, Refinery29 may earn commission.
Madewell Greywood Crop Cardigan Sweater, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Birchmoor Sweater Tank, $, available at Madewell
Madewell The Plus Perfect Vintage Wide-Leg Jean in Edmunds Wash, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Lightspun Pull-On Balloon Pants, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Plus Balloon Jeans in Whistler Wash, $, available at Madewell
Madewell The Sydney Crossbody Bag, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Kickoff Trainer Sneakers in Neutral Colorblock Leather, $, available at Madewell
Madewell The Curvy Perfect Vintage Jean in Lunar Wash, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Brodale Sweater Tank Dress, $, available at Madewell
Madewell MWL Curved-Hem Sweatshorts, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Cotton-Linen Relaxed Larsen Blazer, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Rosseau Square-Neck Crop Cardigan Top, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Square-Neck Tiered Midi Dress in Textured Seersucker, $, available at Madewell
Madewell The Perfect Vintage Straight Jean in Reinhart Wash, $, available at Madewell
Madewell Relaxed Henley Tee, $, available at Madewell
Madewell High-Rise Loose Flare Overalls, $, available at Madewell
Every gamer says “gg” at the end of a tough battle, but the real-life road to a good game has just as many thrills, challenges, and adventures. With GG, we’re celebrating the gamers who are pushing the status quo and playing to win online and IRL — and that’s why, in partnership with H&M (shop the retailer’s spring collection today), we’re putting the spotlight on virtual fashion visionaries, who are making a name for themselves as clothing designers in the metaverse. Here, they share how they became entrenched in the world of virtual clothing, where they draw their inspiration, and how real-life fashion trends can influence in-game designs.
Thirteen years ago, 7-year-old cSapphire started playing Roblox — a simple building-block game that has evolved into an expansive virtual universe where users wield creative control over the games they play and the avatars they create. But after four years of using Robux — the virtual currency on Roblox — to customize her character, she was frustrated by the lack of sartorial options. None reflected her personal style. So, she did something about it — and taught herself how to design her own virtual clothing.
Now, cSapphire, at 20 years old, is one of the most sought-after virtual clothing designers on Roblox, striking partnerships with brands and becoming the first recipient of the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Award of Metaverse Design.
“It was personal at first, but I decided to put my clothing on sale to see if people would buy them, and they slowly did,” says cSapphire, who launched a fashion group in 2015 to unite clothing designers (complete with judges and themed runway shows). In 2018, she started earning money for the designs she uploaded, describing her aesthetic then as “casual boho,” often drawing inspiration from Tumblr. “I’m one of the OGs. A lot of designers look up to me because I’ve been doing it for so long.”
And as one of the firsts, she didn’t have access to the virtual garment-making tutorials and resources that are so prevalent today (it’s why, cSapphire says, clothing design on Roblox is more popular than ever). While, yes, it’s easy to discern a “bad” design (like not adding textures or copying-and-pasting designs and logos from real-life clothing), she doesn’t consider any design as “bad,” because “I started where the ‘bad’ designers started,” she says. “It’s all a learning process, and it’s not very hard to learn — you just have to be dedicated.”
cSapphire is heralded as something of a virtual apparel-designing doyenne — and it’s evident by the popularity of her designs (her best-selling outfit to date is an early creation: a gray hoodie with a black bandeau that has seen about 600,000 sales), of which she uploads once or twice a year as these substantial 20-look collections.
According to the Roblox’s 2021 report, the top-selling items on the platform last year were dominated by “casual wear,” which is indicative of how players want to dress their avatars: ‘fits that mimic real-world clothing. And that’s what makes virtual clothing creation so compelling for both new and veteran designers — the vast ocean of inspiration from IRL collections that would fit seamlessly in the metaverse, like say H&M‘s trend-forward spring drop (starting at $9.99 with sizes XXS to XXL and 0 to 18 in bottoms), which features eye-catching highlighter-green tie-front tops, ’90s-style distressed denim, outsized denim shackets, and Y2K-esque crop tops.
Nathan Alexander, a 22-year-old virtual clothing designer who’s known by his Roblox moniker DopeSir, takes a similar approach, dropping collections of looks (along with a theme, cover art, and special names) as opposed to uploading one here or there. “I like doing my releases as if it’s an actual clothing collection, like I’m a designer at New York Fashion Week. It’s my creative outlet,” says Alexander, who started creating in-game fashion in 2013, going on to earn money from clothing sales. A point of pride: He sketches out all his designs, using runway photos as a source of inspiration. “My aesthetic has always been edgier, more avant-garde. My whole persona on Roblox is this fashion runway witch — my character’s skin is green and has neon yellow hair. It’s a ridiculous visual, but I love it.”
And that’s precisely what differentiates the metaverse from real life, and by extension, the clothes in either space: the freedom to wear whatever you want, the freedom to be whoever you want. In Roblox, you can take the fantastical route or you can simulate reality — and cSapphire has done both, dreaming up fantasy, sparkly fairy outfits and designing clothing that reflect her personal style.
“Right now, I’m really obsessed with pink and light colors, and I like to dress more casual,” says cSapphire, naming a heart-printed pink sweater dress as her favorite outfit, and an angelic Y2K-themed line as her most-beloved collection (a collaboration she did with another Roblox creator). “Y2K and ’90s are big fashion trends now — definitely crop tops, low-rise jeans, and a lot of pink. Virtual luxury is really in, too, because for some people, they can’t buy them in real life, so they want to have them on their virtual avatars.”
But what’s bound to be the next big thing to hit Roblox is the rollout of Layered Clothing, a 3D modeling technology (still in beta mode with the plan to launch in the “very near future”) that will not only mimic the way clothing drapes, but also allow users to layer items on their avatars, empowering them with infinite possibilities, boundless customizable combinations. And at the forefront of this new development is 18-year-old CoffeeNerd, a full-time Roblox game developer for her family’s game studio Simple Games, who ventured out on her own to learn how to use Layered Clothing. (Fun fact: She knows how to make clothing in real life, too.)
“I normally do scripting, but once I learned about Layered Clothing, I had to try it and incorporate my love of clothing design,” she says. “I spent the next year trying to figure out the software because it’s cool, it’s creative, and the possibilities are going to be endless.”
Without any tutorials or guides at her disposal — not unlike cSapphire’s experience nearly a decade ago — CoffeeNerd describes the process as “definitely not easy.” There were hair-pulling, keyboard-throwing moments, but it was all worth it: After logging hundreds of hours of trial-and-error, she’s been able to whittle down the time it takes to create a single clothing item from a week to two days (her apparel-making knowledge came in handy, knowing how different fabrics naturally lay and fold).
“If I could actually figure out Layered Clothing, I would be one of the only ones to know how to do it, and I could create whatever I wanted, play with any styles, and give other users the options to express themselves — that’s what motivated me to keep going,” says CoffeeNerd, who used real-life clothing and Pinterest images as reference materials, and has since designed silk ball gowns, crop tops, and swimsuits (currently, Layered Clothing pieces aren’t available to sell). “I think Layered Clothing will be a very big part of Roblox — I can’t see any player who wouldn’t want the ability to customize their look. I’m excited for when we can start working with brands, like H&M, and bring their real-life styles into the virtual world. It’s exciting.”
And vice versa: cSapphire hopes to release real-life clothing alongside her virtual designs for her next collection drop — further proof that the line between the metaverse and the real world is beginning to blur. “Having an audience is really surreal because you’re releasing items that you feel are a part of you,” she says. “I just like to make stuff and share it with people. It gives me a voice, and it’s really awesome.”
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For an industry that’s built on seasonally reinventing the way we see the world, fashion has a dirty little secret: it relies an awful lot on clichés. The little black dress. Day-to-night dressing. The much-vaunted “investment piece.” And, when it comes to its human equivalents, there’s the never-changing paper doll that is fashion’s image of the “French girl,” the muse of Pinterest boards and aspirational listicles the world over.
When I set out to write Dress Code, I knew that I wanted to devote a chapter to the global fixation on “French girl style” and look at what that undying myth really says about our culture at large. As ELLE’s Fashion Features Director, I receive several pitches per week about how to emulate the aesthetic. But the appeal goes far beyond the fashion bubble: Bestselling guides from French Women Don’t Get Fat to How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are promise to re-train us to live, eat, dress, and moisturize like those across the Atlantic, while hit shows like Emily in Paris make narrative hay out of the friction between the French and American ways of life.
While digging into its history for the book, I found that the modern French girl archetype was already in evidence by the 1950s, with actress Brigitte Bardot upending what it meant to be sexy and insouciant. The ’60s brought us the lissome yé-yé girls and French New Wave heroines who still clog every mood board on the planet. Every era since has had its own Francophone heroines, with current-day pinnacles of chic like Caroline de Maigret and Jeanne Damas parlaying their je ne sais quoi into everything from coffee-table books to beauty lines.
Writing about Bardot in Esquire, Simone de Beauvoir called her “a negligent waif” who “goes about barefooted” and “turns up her nose at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice” (this, despite Bardot’s well-known love of thick eyeliner and a liberally hair-sprayed bouffant.) At various points in the story, de Beauvoir compares the bombshell to a “child” and a “creature.” Her 1959 account of Bardot sounds not unlike the way we talk about her compatriots today. As I write in the book, “They’re not calculating. They’re not trying too hard. Their innocence is fetishized long into adulthood. Almost every aspect of this feels sexist—these women aren’t a chore to be around, they don’t overthink, and they don’t have the tiresome qualities that adults do. At the same time, they know more than we do — about how to dress, eat, and live.”
This fixed idea of French girl style is not only regressive but classist, too. It pulls from the dictates of BCBG (bon chic, bon genre or good style, good class) which practically requires an ancestral line that amassed enough tweed jackets and strings of pearls for you to mix with your Levi’s to get the perfect street-style photo op. It’s largely centered on wealthy areas of Paris, as opposed to the slightly-smaller-than-Texas-sized expanse that makes up the entire nation.
And it remains static when it comes to race and body type. As I write in the book, you’ll see more baguettes and berets in these guides to French style than you will people of color. Plus-size French women exist, too, but they never seem to make it onto the mood boards. France has always been a diverse country, and as its demographics continue to change, the popular imagination still clings to the white, thin, aristocratic French woman as the sole model of “It” girl appropriate for lionizing. Rather than women like Yseult, a plus-size pop star of Cameroonian descent, who, despite being a bona fide celebrity within France, rarely shows up on American listicles featuring French girl style.
Our need to attribute the ease, languor, youth, and health of the French girl to some magical properties conferred by the contents of her closet and makeup bag feels like a form of consumerism-driven denial. When you look closer at why some aspects of life in France might be superior, they all boil down to things you can’t buy at a beauty counter or denim bar. The social safety net the country is famous for has ensured that people have more stability and free time, in the form of government-sanctioned work-life balance, universal healthcare, and ample vacation time.
If we really want to be more like French women, the perfect red lipstick and LBD will only get us so far. The most enviable thing about them isn’t their perfectly air-dried waves or haphazardly styled marinière shirts. It’s their less visible, less glamorous, but politically hard-won advantages. If we really want to live more like French people, we should start by calling our reps.
Véronique Hyland’s Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink is available for purchasehere.
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