The other morning I asked my dad for a sign.

Since his passing, my sister and I have come to believe he visits in the form of hummingbirds. In some traditions, they carry blessings from those we’ve lost. I can’t fully trust in signs, but a large part of me will always hope that those we lose don’t leave forever. Less than thirty seconds after I asked, a hummingbird hovered outside my patio doors.

I’m no dad. But perhaps this will be your hummingbird.

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When I was fifteen, my dad passed suddenly. I’ve now lived more years without him than with him, and still, I find myself wanting to call him almost every day. He was only 56. That number still makes me angry.

He was a passionate musician. A talented drummer, curious about any instrument he could get his hands on. But he didn’t pursue it. He chose stability instead. Built a successful business. Provided for his family in a way that gave me opportunities he never had.

I’ve spent a long time holding both of those things at once. The gratitude and the ache. The life he built for us and the life he set aside to build it. He gave me everything. And I’ve spent the beginning of my thirties wondering what he would have made, if he’d had more time.

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We’re all going to die someday. Most of us know this and promptly file it away.

It’s easier that way. The fear of suffering, of the unknown, of what gets left behind, is easier to manage from a distance. So we keep it there. Somewhere between the things we’ll deal with eventually and the things we’d rather not deal with at all.

But here’s what shifts when you stop looking away: it becomes the most clarifying fact of being alive.

A hundred million people have come before us. They are gone, and yet nothing around us is untouched by them. Every idea, every object, every tradition carries the fingerprint of someone who no longer exists. They shaped the world from the inside and then stepped out of it. What they left behind stayed.

We will do the same. The question is just what we’re leaving.

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For the last ten years I’ve built a life around stability. Safe roles. Strong companies. A career I’m genuinely grateful for. And still, a question keeps surfacing. What is all of this for? How long am I going to keep choosing it?

I built C’est Cool because I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who chose differently. Founders who walked away from the predictable path and built something that could only have come from them. I told myself I was doing it for them, to give underrepresented creatives a platform, to tell the stories that should be told. And that’s true.

But I was also doing it for myself. Gathering evidence. Watching to see if it was possible. If someone like me could step off the edge and build something that lasts.

My dad built his life so that I could have choices he didn’t. I think about that constantly. The weight of it and the gift of it. That the most loving thing he ever did was hand me time he never got to keep.

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You and I are not going to last. But what we create might.

Not because art is more noble than other work. But because it’s where individual perspective becomes something that can travel further than a single lifetime. What you noticed, felt, survived, loved, been confused by: translated into something someone else can hold, long after you’re gone.

My dad did this without ever calling it art. He shaped how I see the world in ways I’m still discovering. He is gone, and he is not gone. The people we love have a way of outlasting themselves, through everyone they touched, and everyone those people touch in turn.

That’s what making something does. It’s just a more deliberate version of the same thing.

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You don’t have to quit your job. You don’t have to call yourself a creative or a founder or an artist. You don’t have to have it figured out.

But it’s worth asking, deliberately and honestly: when it’s over, what do you want to have left? Not the title. Not the resume. The thing that carries something of you into the lives of people you’ll never meet.

Mortality is not a sentence. It’s the condition that makes the question urgent. That forces us, if we let it, to stop deferring and start deciding who we actually are and what we actually want to make of the time we have.

I don’t know for certain that hummingbirds carry messages from the people we’ve lost. But I know that what we make does. Put something into the world that could only have come from you, and it will reach people after you’re gone. Shift something in someone you’ll never meet.

That’s not optimism. That’s just how it works.

Make the thing. You won’t be gone forever.

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Speak soon,

Kelly

Mariana Ertmann needed a sandalwood comb. Not any comb, but one that felt right in her hand, carved from real wood, weighted properly, something that carried a sense of permanence. She looked everywhere and found nothing that met the standard she had in her head. So, naturally, she went to her father-in-law’s garage.

She brought with her a photograph of an antique comb, the kind that felt like it belonged on a vanity table in another era, and determination. What followed was an afternoon of sawdust and trial and revision, a drill and a saw and two people figuring it out together, until the shape in the photograph started to exist in the world.

That is how Borne works. Not from a trend, not from a market gap, but from a specific, unmet need that Mariana decided to solve herself. Down to the last detail.

“The more passionate and nerdy and obsessive with the little details you can be,” she says, “the more you’re able to understand and then translate it in a way that people will notice.”

The tassel on The Silk Comb is hand-knotted silk, made by women in a region of Thailand with a generations-long practice of working with the material. Mariana found them through her seamstress in Houston, who found them through a family member, who passed along a phone number. The tassel is attached by Mariana herself, for every single order. The box it arrives in took six months to get right.

This is what the brand is.

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Mariana grew up in Bogotá, studied design there, and moved to Houston by way of family connections and an interior design internship that turned into a full-time position. She spent years learning the industry from the inside, putting energy into other people’s visions, growing increasingly aware that she had one of her own.

The city she landed in was not exactly a natural fit. “Houston can feel closed off,” she says, with the warmth of someone who has made her peace with it. “But there’s a lot of room for opportunity. If I weren’t in Houston when I started my creative journey, I probably wouldn’t have gotten here.”

What Houston gave her, unexpectedly, was space. Space to go to estate sales on weekends and develop a quiet obsession with antique objects. Space to start noticing the difference between a polyester shirt and a cotton one, and to understand why it mattered. Space to take trips to New York and discover that the fashion world she had always found intimidating was actually populated by interesting people, some of whom were genuinely worth knowing, and some of whom were not quite as formidable as their Instagram suggested.

“You can’t compare yourself to others based on social media or based on what you hear from others,” she says. “You just have to experience life for yourself.”

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Borne launched in January 2025 with a clear point of view: that objects should be chosen slowly, kept long, and mean something. Under it live two distinct worlds. The Edit is the vintage curation side, an evolving selection of antique pieces that Mariana sources, photographs, and presents with the care of someone who truly values what she is looking at. The Atelier is where her original designs live, objects imagined to age with you, to work their way into your daily rituals, to become the kind of thing you reach for without thinking.

The vintage funded the designs. The designs gave the vintage a context. The brand became a universe rather than a store.

Her eye was trained over years of antique hunting, estate sales, and a deepening love for the Art Deco period specifically. “Art Deco is that perfect transition,” she says, “that still honors craftsmanship and quality while making it functional and timeless.” It sits between the ancient and the modern in a way that mirrors her own sensibility: a design school background in modernism, an obsessive personal interest in what came before it.

Each piece in the Atelier has a provenance worth knowing. The Spira Cuff begins in the Andes: a Colombian emerald sourced in partnership with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, prototyped in a Parisian atelier, and finished in New York’s Diamond District, where Mariana discovered her production partners were Colombian. Full circle, she says. The Silk Comb, carved locally in Houston and finished with the silk tassel made by women in Thailand. Packaging that took six months to get right: custom boxes lined in black velvet, revised and revised again until they matched what she had always envisioned.

“I am so happy that I did not settle,” she says. “The devil is in the details. And I hope people will see that the minute they receive a Borne box.”

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New work is already forming. A collaboration with Christina Grasso, the New York tastemaker known as The Pouf, began with a shared fascination and arrived as a first prototype the morning of this conversation: a gold-plated lighter case pendant, tasseled, designed to be worn as jewelry or used to light candlesticks, the kind of object that is beautiful before it is anything else. Mariana held it up to the camera and the craftsmanship was immediately legible.

Longer term, Borne is moving toward a collection that pairs each wearable piece with a decorative object counterpart, and eventually toward furniture, perhaps the refurbishing of antique pieces. She has already been doing this for herself. Her couch, she mentions, was in very bad shape when she found it.

When asked what she would tell someone just starting out, Mariana skips past the expected answers and lands on something more useful: do your accounting from the beginning. Set up QuickBooks. Save every expense. Be frugal where you can, because you will want those resources later and you will not be able to predict when. “As creatives, we forget about that side of the business completely,” she says. “We’re focused on visuals.”

The other thing she would say, with equal conviction: be smart about who you build your life with. “You need a supportive husband,” she says, laughing, then catching herself. “Or don’t marry, and you have all the time for yourself.”

And underneath both of those, something quieter. Give your obsessions respect. Follow your curiosity into whatever corner it takes you. The sandalwood comb, the Colombian emerald, the silk tassel from Thailand: none of those details exist without a person who took her own instincts seriously enough to follow them all the way down.

Borne is still in its early days. Still being reinvested in, still finding its people, still becoming what it is going to be. Mariana knows this and is not in a hurry. She wakes up, walks her dog, reads Wuthering Heights. She dreams big and tries to stay present. She writes a handwritten note with every order, knowing that one day there will be too many to do that.

She is in no rush to get there. But she is getting there.

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Thank you for being here,

Kelly

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It’s that joy I remember clearly, and also somehow forgot to bring with me. So when I started stumbling upon these designers and creatives, I felt something close to genuine gratitude. Reintroduced to a version of myself that knew getting dressed, and seeing the world, could just be fun.

Florentina Leitner

The first question I asked myself when I found her: who is she? Immediate interest, immediate curiosity. Her pieces feel like a reconnection to childhood, but through the lens of the cool older girl I imagined when I was younger. There’s a softness, a femininity, and an ease of experimentation. The kind of creativity only a young girl knows, before it sometimes gets quietly taken from her.

An Austrian designer who used clothing as narrative long before launching her own brand, Leitner spent years designing womenswear for Dries Van Noten before going out on her own in 2021. It is a world I feel called back to. A future I am interested in inhabited.

Kasia Kucharska

Berlin-based Kasia Kucharska takes traditional craft and pulls it into new territory. Her garments are built around sustainable manufacturing techniques, which we love, but they are so much more than an eco-friendly label. They are one-of-a-kind pieces made by someone who knows how to have a good time. Forget traditional and trade it for natural latex.

Chrissie Abbott

The first time I saw Chrissie Abbott’s work, I didn’t have words for it. I still might not. Collaged, maximalist, and not scared. It pulls from early internet aesthetics, retro-futurism, and the kind of color only someone with genuine joy in their practice reaches for. It feels like stumbling into someone’s very specific, very vivid imagination. I discovered her through a recent collaboration with Hattie Stewart, and I haven’t looked away since. It just feels right.

August Barron

Obviously, August Barron. Fashion duo Bror August Vestbø and Benjamin Barron are the princesses of my modern world. Bror said it best in an interview with Dazed: “When you’re little and queer, you feel it immediately — the disconnect between who you want to be and who you’re supposed to be. I think that makes you sensitive to contradiction forever. Our clothes are about that — clothing that’s open to different experiences in a way.”

Somehow, that tells you everything.

May we all find our way back to the things that made us feel most like ourselves.

Speak soon,
Kelly

One has been celebrated, elevated, applauded. The other, expected. Duties done, yet treated as part of the job description rather than anything to be triumphed.

I don’t have to assign either story to a gender. It’s a dynamic so woven into the fabric of society that you already know exactly what I mean. The man leads. The woman supports.

In that arrangement, femininity was reduced to something delicate. Decorative. Passive. As if softness exists in opposition to power, rather than as one of its most complex forms.

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If you look at history, it’s easy to see how deeply that narrative intertwined itself within society. Women positioned as caretakers, bodies, and extensions of someone else’s life rather than the architects of their own.

We couldn’t vote, open a bank account, or move freely through the world without being tethered to a man in some way. We are the first real generation of women living in a world where it’s acceptable to demand equality.

And yet, growing up, the world asked of us, quietly and consistently, to be less feminine. The highest compliment a girl could receive was that she wasn’t like other girls. Chill. Easygoing. A guys’ girl. The one who didn’t make things complicated.

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I spent most of adolescence trying to be that. Downplaying the things that were naturally and genuinely me, because the culture around me had made it clear they didn’t matter. Looking back, it felt less like growing up and more like a slow departure from myself. As if the destination was somewhere closer to male. Because male was where the credibility and relevance lived.

This was less a personal experience, and more a logical conclusion of a world designed to make us feel that way. But recognizing it is where everything changes.

Softness was supposed to be our weakness. The quality that made us easy to overlook, to manage, to redirect into domestic purpose. Softness was a liability. The reason we needed protection, guidance, a structure built by harder hands.

But softness is more than fragility. It is the capacity to hold contradiction, to be simultaneously strong and gentle, serious and light, ambitious and present. It is emotional intelligence, which turns out to be intelligence. Full stop. The ability to listen without losing yourself, to build community without demanding hierarchy, to create something and allow it to be seen, touched, and changed by others.

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Women have always been doing the real work of civilization. We raised the children who became the leaders. We held the social fabric together, subtly, consistently, without recognition.

Long before we were allowed into institutions, we were the institutions. Informal, uncredited, essential.

And now we are also in the room. Building businesses, questioning culture, shaping brands and products and creative practices that bear our point of view. The results, messy and incomplete and still far from equal, are already undeniable.

Think of the qualities women bring. The refusal to separate feeling from strategy. The understanding that how people experience something matters as much as what it produces. The instinct to build community and not just category.

Qualities that represent the difference between something that merely functions and something that lasts.

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Some days it feels like women are holding up entire systems. The mental load, the emotional labor, the invisible coordination, all of it performed daily by women who are also building careers, ideas, lives of their own.

C’est Cool was never meant to be exclusively for women. But I find myself returning to them. To what they’re creating and putting into the world. Not necessarily more deserving of attention than what men are building, but more present to me right now. More urgent, somehow. Like something that has been waiting a long time to be properly seen.

Being a woman is the opposite of limitation. It’s a range most systems were never built to hold. The capacity to feel something fully and still function, to grieve and still show up, to be soft and still be formidable. The way we make things more beautiful, not as decoration but as philosophy, as a way of insisting that the world should be livable and not just productive.

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That is the power. And it’s our job to keep claiming it. So that when female-run businesses emerge, we get excited. And when our daughters grow up, it’s in a society that sees their inherent strength and capability. That they are celebrated, elevated, and applauded in the same ways we hope to see our sons.

The world has always been shaped by what women carry. It’s just finally starting to recognize it.

Speak soon,

Kelly

Here, a few things that caught my eye this week.

Ariana Goitía

Upcycled Curtains, by In House Blend

Shibori Pleats, by Julia Heuer

A Family Affair, by Amrit Singh

More next week.

Kelly

At night they adjusted the shape together. Should the cylinder be taller? Should the base widen slightly? Would the balance feel softer if the bowl opened more? There was no Shopify site, no roadmap for what it would become, only curiosity and the quiet stretch of time the pandemic had unexpectedly given them.

Today that lamp forms the foundation of Ceramicah, a design studio whose handmade lighting now lives in homes and projects around the world. But the story of the company is not simply about entrepreneurship. It is also about the experience of a woman in one of the first generations granted real permission to be many things at once, and the slow process of figuring out how those identities coexist in real life.

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Alex and Micah met in architecture school when they were nineteen and twenty. Their relationship unfolded alongside the early stages of adulthood, a decade spent building careers, moving cities, and gradually shaping the lives they wanted. “We’ve basically spent our entire twenties together,” Alex says. “Which also means we’ve watched each other change completely.”

Architecture had always been part of Alex’s orbit. Her father and grandfather were architects, and for a long time the profession felt less like a choice than a continuation of family history. Yet even as she studied it, she knew she did not want to inherit that path exactly as it had been handed to her. “I remember thinking, I don’t want to take over your company,” she says. “I want to build something that’s mine.”

After graduating she moved to Los Angeles and began working in interior design, eventually launching her own firm. Micah moved toward real estate development, drawn to the broader world of buildings rather than the practice of designing them. Both careers allowed for creativity in their own ways, but ceramics had always lived somewhere deeper for him. In high school he took ceramics class five different times, eventually convincing his parents to buy him a kiln off Craigslist. Like many early creative instincts, it had simply been filed away as impractical.

When the pandemic arrived, the rhythm of their professional lives shifted almost overnight. Real estate slowed dramatically, while Alex’s interior design business suddenly accelerated as people began rethinking their homes. For the first time in years Micah found himself with something rare: time without expectation.

He returned to clay almost instinctively. At first the pieces were simple vessels, bowls and vases that allowed him to rediscover the tactile process of shaping something by hand. Eventually curiosity led him toward something more complicated. He began experimenting with lamps, ordering electrical components online and reverse engineering other fixtures to understand their structure.

Alex watched the process through the lens of a designer accustomed to thinking about proportion and atmosphere within a room. “He operates from this deep curiosity about how things work,” she says. “And I operate from curiosity about how things feel.” The combination created a quiet dynamic between them, one focused on mechanics and the other on experience.

By 2021 Alex had reached a point of exhaustion with her interior design firm. After years of juggling clients and projects, she stepped away from taking on new work just as the lamps Micah had been making began attracting attention online. At the time Ceramicah barely existed as a formal company. The website had no checkout functionality, and customers discovered the pieces through Instagram before sending direct messages asking if one was available.

Orders were invoiced manually. Their living room slowly transformed into a shipping station while the second bedroom became a makeshift workshop. Clay dust found its way onto nearly every surface of the apartment, and they kept track of orders on a handwritten list marked with Roman numerals. “We were just winging it,” Alex says now. “I think people feel like they need everything perfect before they start. But you don’t. You just need enough proof that someone cares.”

The moment the business began to feel real arrived through a Los Angeles design showroom called Lawson-Fenning. The introduction came through Alex’s network from her years working in interior design, a career she had only recently stepped away from as Ceramicah began to take shape. Through a chain of mutual connections, the showroom discovered the lamps and decided to carry them. For a studio still in it’s early stages, the exposure was significant.

In hindsight, the moment feels less like coincidence and more like continuity. The relationships Alex had spent years building in one creative world quietly resurfaced to support another.

The partnership also clarified something Alex had understood instinctively from the beginning: positioning matters. Handmade ceramics often live in craft marketplaces or niche online shops. Ceramicah entered the design world through the front door, presented less as pottery and more as sculptural lighting.

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Ceramicah was never only a product experiment. From the beginning, it was also a partnership between two people learning how to build something together while sharing a life.

Working with your spouse can sound romantic from the outside, but in practice, it asks for an unusual level of clarity. The lines between work and life blur quickly, especially in the early stages of a business where everything feels urgent and personal at the same time.

In the first years of Ceramicah, Alex and Micah were doing almost everything themselves. Production, packing orders, managing sales, answering customer messages. Conversations that once revolved around dinner plans often drifted naturally toward kilns, inventory, and shipping schedules.

Rather than letting those boundaries dissolve indefinitely, they made a decision early on that would shape both the company and their relationship. They began working with a therapist, not because something had gone wrong, but because they understood how much communication a partnership like this requires.

Through that process they gradually defined their roles more clearly. Micah focused on production and product development, while Alex stepped fully into operations, branding, marketing, and sales. The structure gave the company stability and allowed each of them to lean into their natural strengths.

“You have to protect the relationship first,” Alex says. “Otherwise the business can swallow everything.”

As the company stabilized, Alex found herself confronting another realization. The business, no matter how fulfilling, could never be the only outlet for her creativity. Ceramicah paid the bills and allowed her to build something meaningful alongside the person she loved, but she still felt drawn toward other forms of expression, including music and writing.

For a long time she resisted that instinct, unsure whether wanting more creative outlets meant she was somehow ungrateful for the success of the company itself. Eventually she stopped fighting it. “I would come back from a music session feeling like I was floating,” she says. “And I realized I needed that in my life.”

What Alex began to recognize is something many women quietly carry. They grow up hearing they can be many things at once, yet still feel an unspoken pressure to place everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. Careers grow, businesses demand attention, relationships deepen, and somewhere along the way the creative instincts that once felt essential begin to drift to the edges.

Returning to music reminded her that creativity was never optional. It was a form of clarity, a space that allowed her to reconnect with herself outside the roles she played for other people. The time spent there was not a distraction from the work of building a company. In many ways, it made the work possible.

For Alex, the answer has not been choosing one identity over another, but learning how to let them coexist.

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Six years after its beginnings in their apartment, Ceramicah remains intentionally small. The team consists of four people, and each piece is still produced by hand in Los Angeles. Their original Tera Lamp remains the heart of the brand, though Alex and Micah are currently preparing to unveil a new product line this spring.

“It feels like the sophomore album,” she says, laughing.

The studio will continue to evolve over time, expanding into new objects and collaborations. But growth, at least for them, has never been the goal on its own. What matters more is preserving the conditions that made the company possible in the first place: curiosity, creativity, and the freedom to keep experimenting.

In a culture obsessed with speed and scale, Ceramicah moves differently. The work unfolds slowly, shaped by hand and expanded only as much as the life around it allows. When Alex reflects on the path that brought them here, the lesson she returns to most often is trust.

“When you trust yourself,” she says, “you can also trust your timing.”

Perhaps that is the true model her story offers. Success does not have to collapse a woman into a single identity. Sometimes it becomes one part of a much larger life, built carefully alongside the other selves she refuses to leave behind.

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Thank you for being here.

Kelly

Imitation has become second nature. Ideas circulate quickly, get reworked, and reappear in slightly altered forms. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it rarely holds the same weight. The work that stays with you usually comes from a different place. It feels considered from the beginning. As if it couldn’t have been made by anyone else.

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This week’s drop is a reflection of that. Women whose work carries a clarity that goes beyond aesthetics and into something more personal.

Milla Tombroff

I discovered Milla Tombroff through this silver piece designed to hold cigarettes and matches. It stopped me in my tracks. Covered in stones, texture, and detail, it feels like it’d have the capability to overwhelm, but instead it draws you in. The more you look, the more you see. I feel this way about all of her pieces. A Brussels-based jeweler by trade, Milla makes handcrafted heirlooms built to withstand trend, as the most interesting objects always do.

Zeynep Satik

Furniture is like clothing for your home. It should be just as considered, not just in how it looks, but in how it holds a space. That’s what draws me to Zeynep Satik’s work at Animate Objects. Her pieces don’t disappear into a room. A chair with a floral back that leans surreal. Tables with legs that feel carved instead of constructed. There’s a clear pull from modern art. The Runa Chair below references Max Ernst’s The Couple in Lace. Function is there but not as the reason you look. Each piece carries a presence. Something you place in a room not to fill it, but to define it.

Jada Veerle

I was drawn to this particular piece by the artist, Jada Veerle, based in East London. A work that is intense in a way that’s hard to look away from. The bodies feel warped and crowded together, like everything is happening too close. She describes this piece as coming from her poetry about watching people she loves struggle with addiction. You don’t need to know that to feel it, but once you do, it lands harder.

Zoe Mohm

Based in Paris, as all great creatives seem to be, Zoé’s work takes the chunky silver cool girl and makes her a little stranger. Her pieces feel messy and beautiful and imperfect. Almost like they’re living. There’s not a single piece that isn’t capable of holding your attention. An visual experience that can only be shaped by human hands.

Julia Fernandez

I discovered Julia Fernandez through this animated ceramic stool and immediately became drawn to everything else. Her work gives a sense of movement to objects that typically feel static. Ceramics that act as sculpture and animation, never fully one or the other. She moves across disciplines seamlessly, taking something traditional and making it feel entirely new.

It’s a privilege to spend time with work like this. To look closely, to write about it, and to share it with you. If we’re responsible for anything, it’s staying open enough to be inspired and generous enough to pass that on.

These artists are doing exactly that.

- Kelly

“Be confident in the depth of your curiosity, not the depth of your knowledge.”

It’s a funny human conflict. We all know that no one really knows what they’re doing, and yet at the same time, everyone wants to be right. The ego tells us that the more we know, the better we are. And the more we can prove it, the more valuable we become.

I’ve been thinking about what happens when you turn that on its head.

I read this quote months ago and keep coming back to it, usually in moments when I feel frustrated with the people around me. My instinct, more often than I’d like to admit, is to assume I’m right. That my answer and my way of doing things is the correct one. That if everyone else could just get on my page, we’d be better off. I can catch it now and course correct, but it’s still there. And it narrows things.

A great deal of our lives is spent in collaboration and in proximity to other people’s minds. We learn from each other, build together, and grow alongside each other. But the moment it becomes my way or the highway, the exchange ends. You stop listening and start waiting.

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I’ve always wanted to know everything. And more than that, I’ve been scared of what it means when I don’t. There’s a kind of grace in that uncertainty that I’m only now starting to understand.

For a long time, I filled the space with answers, opinions, and certainty. It’s exhausting. It feels like constantly trying to stay one step ahead of the moment you’re exposed for not knowing. And in doing that, I missed out on something better.

The conversations that flow. The ones where you ask one more question instead of offering a conclusion. Where your perspective shifts mid-sentence because you’re paying attention. Where ideas form that no one could have arrived at alone.

That only happens when no one is trying to win.

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The people I’m most drawn to now aren’t the ones with the fastest answers. They’re the ones paying attention. The ones who ask questions that slightly disarm you, or make you rethink something you thought you understood. The ones who are comfortable not immediately knowing.

I felt this most clearly from the most successful person I know. The CEO of a multi-billion dollar company and arguably one of the most powerful people in his industry. Not the path we’re building at C’est Cool, but undeniably a version of success.

You’d assume he got there by being the smartest person in the room. But that’s not what I’ve seen. I believe it’s because of his curiosity.

He doesn’t rush to insert his opinion or prove his intelligence. He asks questions. He leans on people who know more than he does. He builds through them. When he does speak, it’s because he actually has something he cares to say. Not because he feels the need to fill space.

There’s a level of confidence in that that feels entirely different.

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That’s the shift I keep coming back to. Not trying to be the one with the answer, but becoming someone who knows how to stay in the question a little longer.

Letting a conversation breathe instead of steering it. Asking one more question before offering a point of view. Being willing to say “I don’t know” without rushing to cover it. Trusting that something better tends to come from that place.

I think that’s also part of what we’re building with C’est Cool. Not a space where people perform what they know, but one where curiosity has room to lead. Where taste is shaped through exploration over expertise.

The most interesting work, the kind that actually moves culture forward, rarely comes from someone trying to prove they’re right. It comes from someone willing to follow a question a little further than everyone else.

And if we are all really connected, curiosity changes how we meet each other. And ourselves.

What’s driving your curiosity? What questions are you sitting on?

<3 Kelly

I love what a good outfit does to you. The way it shifts your mood. The way it sharpens how you see yourself. Sometimes even how you move through the world. There’s a certain kind of outfit that makes you feel like the best version of you, even if nothing else has changed.

And that’s the point. Clothes aren’t responsible for who you are. They’re responsible for transporting you.

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Designers create the pieces, yes. But stylists are the ones who bring them to life. They sit across collections, across aesthetics, across worlds, and piece things together in a way that feels entirely their own. Often, they’re the ones responsible for the look.

Personal style is one of the most enjoyable forms of self-expression we have. A space to experiment. To try something on without overthinking it. To play.

And for me, looking to stylists is one of the easiest ways to find that inspiration. The ones I’m drawn to make getting dressed feel exciting again.

Jamie-Maree Shipton

She’s everything I imagine my alter ego to be. Zero rules. Tons of play. Unexpected combinations that somehow just work. Sometimes colorful, sometimes worn-in, always interesting.

I discovered her through Julie Kegels, one of my favorite designers right now, and it made immediate sense. Her taste feels current in the only way that actually matters right now. There’s no overthinking it.

And that’s exactly why I love her.

Loïcka Grâce

No matter how much I try to pull myself into color, maximalism, experimentation…I always come back to monochrome. Clean lines. Texture. Pieces that feel like they belong to you, not the other way around.

Loïcka understands this instinct completely, but never lets it feel boring. Her work plays with texture, cutouts, and subtle drama in a way that keeps the eye engaged without overwhelming it. Effortless, but intentional.

She also recently launched a magazine titled Trust Issues. Parisian, of course. We love her.

Ann (@aaanettes)

I discovered her through what might be the best outfit dumps I’ve seen on Instagram.

Not maximalist, but definitely not minimal. Just a great time. The kind of dressing that feels expressive without trying too hard to be. Her looks are everything I wish I could wear more often. The kind of outfits your younger self would have been obsessed with.

She understands how to use color and contrast in a way that feels almost like composition. My fashion girls will get it.

Georgina Downe

And just like that, we’re back to beige.

But not basic beige. Think 18th-century sculpture beige. The kind that feels studied. Like it took time to arrive there. Her work sits somewhere between masculine tailoring and quiet sexiness. Structured, clean, but still undeniably feminine. Think Magda Butrym, Acne Studios, Camilla and Marc.

It’s all very considered. And very good.

Tell me who we should be watching next. I’m always chasing the next great eye.

Leave a comment

Speak soon,
Kelly

Georgiana Stegaru, the founder behind the Bucharest-based label, describes it as the moment she felt most proud. It makes sense. The gallery wall is a more honest frame for what CraXittude actually is.

What began as a personal design problem evolved, quietly and deliberately, into a fully formed creative vision. Georgiana wanted clothing she couldn’t find anywhere else. Natural fabrics that felt good against skin. Pieces that inspired individuality and creativity. Shapes that were architectural and fluid, structured and alive. Something with an edge that the market, at least the market available to her in Bucharest, simply wasn’t offering.

“I’ve never been interested in the fashion system,” she says. “My work started and exists outside it.”

So she built her own.

By training she is an engineer. By profession she is a product manager at Microsoft. These are not separate facts from the work she makes. Her technical thinking shapes the geometry of CraXittude’s silhouettes directly: the structural precision of the Monolith coat, the calculated draping of the Sierra dress, the deconstructed logic running through her collections. Engineering and design, in her hands, turn out to be the same conversation.

Growing up, Georgiana passed through phases that most people keep separate. There was the girl who admired runway shows. Then the teenager who rejected fashion entirely, drawn instead toward rock music and anything that defied the mainstream. That sensibility never left. You can see it in the work: something gothic in the foundations, even when the surface is clean and minimal.

She taught herself to sew and draw patterns, then let the process take over from there. Unlike conventional designers who begin with sketches, Georgiana starts directly with the material. Flat fabric becomes three-dimensional through folding, tension, and structural exploration. A rectangular block folded one way becomes trousers. Pulled at a corner, it becomes a blouse. Scraps from one piece inspire the next, becoming vests, jackets, studies in what a material can do when nothing is wasted.

“Sometimes I start with an idea,” she says, “and while playing with the fabrics, I get another one and it becomes something new.”

This is how CraXittude’s pieces tend to be made. Not designed in the conventional sense, but discovered.

The label began in 2017, with Georgiana participating in local fairs, testing whether her vision resonated beyond her own wardrobe. It did. Interest built gradually: friends first, then strangers, then international boutiques. Today, made-to-order pieces ship to customers across Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan, each one purchased with the deliberateness that the work invites.

The brand has grown alongside a full-time career and a growing family, not despite them. That independence from commercial pressure is, in many ways, what keeps CraXittude’s creative integrity intact. There is no obligation to chase trends, produce seasonally, or design for mass appeal. The work can remain exactly what it is.

Georgiana is quick to credit her technical background for more than just the shapes. Running a brand, she says, requires the same clarity as managing a product: know who you are designing for, and think about the business early. "If you are not thinking of the end customer," she says, "you can lose the opportunity to build something sustainable."

The materials are sourced with the same intentionality as the designs. The label works primarily with natural fibers: cotton and linen from artisans and suppliers like deFlorian in Romania, Noteboom Textiles in the Netherlands, and FabricSight in Spain. Alternative natural materials appear frequently. Piñatex, a leather-like textile made from pineapple fibers, is used in accessories, while experimental samples made from seaweed hint at future developments.

“I’m always curious when I see new innovative materials,” she says. “It opens possibilities.”

She is working toward B Corp certification, researching how to build circularity into the brand so that pieces can be returned, reworked, or responsibly retired. This is not a marketing position. It is the natural extension of a belief that was already oriented this way before the brand existed.

“My lifestyle takes into account my impact and my family’s impact on the environment,” she says. “This was on my mind from the [beginning].”

It shapes the names too. Pieces from her collections have names that feel like small poems: Steinfall, structured and asymmetric. Katachi, flowing geometry. Nordlith, deconstructed.

The brand’s tagline, “ethical avantgarde non-fashion,” is both a description and a refusal. A refusal of trends, waste, and the idea that sustainability has to look a certain way. CraXittude’s clothes are precise, unusual, and made to last.

They are not trying to be liked by everyone. They are trying to find the people who understand them.

So far, those people keep appearing.

À bientôt,

Kelly

That number tells you something. So do the names.

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Previous semi-finalists include Jacquemus, Simone Rocha, Grace Wales Bonner, Virgil Abloh, Demna Gvasalia, Ludovic De Saint Sernin, Rachel Scott, and Tolu Coker. The prize does not need you to be convinced of its credibility. What I want to do is make sure the six women in this cohort get the particular attention they deserve.

Iamisigo by Bubu Ogisi

A new fan of Ogisi, I was transformed by her November showing at Lagos Fashion Week. Operating across Africa, Iamisigo is much more than a conventional fashion brand. It is a contemporary wearable art practice, treating the human body as a canvas for expression, meaning, and art.

Each piece is made by hand in close collaboration with artisans across Africa, combining recycled materials, ancestral craftsmanship, and experimental approaches to construction. The result is something mesmerizing and deeply alive.

Colleen Allen

New York-based and previously nominated for the CFDA Prize, Colleen Allen has built a practice around a figure rarely centered in fashion with this kind of rigor: the witch. Not as aesthetic, but as archetype. A symbol we cannot help but love and understand.

Her collections read as rituals of transformation. Femininity without restriction, grounded in ease and movement. Charli XCX wore her to her wedding reception. Rama Duwaji chose her for the iconic shoot by Szilveszter Makó for The Cut. She describes her work as a search for her own feminine embodiment, and you can feel that searching draped and structured in every silhouette.

Golshaah by Golnar Ahmadian

Iranian-Canadian and based in Toronto, Golnar Ahmadian brings her architectural eye to fashion. Her brand, Golshaah, is sculpted, layered, and precise. The work of someone who thinks in structures and then deliberately disrupts them.

The commitment to thoughtfulness runs across everything she touches. There is a quiet rebellion important to her work. Tension between structure and freedom that never fully resolves and is better for it.

Julie Kegels

Based in Antwerp, Julie Kegels designs from feeling. Her collections are built around the identity of a woman — not a particular woman, but the complexity of womanhood as a state of being.

She likes to characterize her work as strange, but she means it in the best possible way. Rooted in craft, in intuition, in careful study. She has spoken about wanting to make something imperfect. And in that imperfection, something far more honest than polish.

MAZ by Manuela Alvarez

Colombian designer Manuela Alvarez works at the intersection of architectural design and material research. A single piece constructed with 20,000 glass beads. Another crafted with structural spikes knitted via hand-operated machine.

Her brand, Maz, collaborates with artisans across Latin America to develop original handcrafted textiles, with every piece being fully traceable. The team is made mostly of women, alongside indigenous and traditional artisans across Colombia.

This is slow fashion practiced at a depth most brands only gesture toward. Her 2025 collaboration with Adidas brought that ethos to a wider audience without diluting it. What she is building feels less like a brand and more like an ecosystem.

Petra Fagerström

We have spoken about Petra before and we’ll speak of her again.

The Swedish-born, London-based Central Saint Martins graduate defines her brand through the woman she designs for. Contemporary womanhood through dress. Her signature lenticular pleating integrates digital precision with the handmade — a tension she navigates with unusual grace.

Her work comes from places and things that frustrate her. She has described her role as one of respect and service toward women, portrayed through dignity. And perhaps most memorably: the woman who wears fashion determines where culture moves.

She is paying very close attention to that woman. So are we.

Three of these twenty designers will be selected. Whoever wins, these six names are worth holding onto regardless of the outcome.

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They are already building something worth watching.

Speak soon,
Kelly

Never once did I question hearing Spanish spoken beside me in a grocery store or at dinner. Our cultures overlap. They influence one another. They coexist, as they have throughout the history of this country.

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But in today’s political climate, many individuals who have planted roots in the same soil I have are being told they do not belong. Families who built lives here are being treated as temporary. Disposable.

It is our right to question policy. It is our right to stand beside our neighbors. And it is our responsibility to acknowledge the cultural contributions that shape the cities we claim to love.

This week’s Cool Drop is rooted in that acknowledgment. Designers and founders whose Latin heritage informs not just where they live, but how they create.

Susana Vega

Founded in Venezuela in 2008, Susana Vega’s brand extends beyond jewelry design into full visual storytelling. Her journey began in her family’s jewelry shop, making this more than a business. It is continuation.

Her pieces carry color, texture, and vitality. They feel rooted in heritage but unbound by limitation. Jewelry as celebration, and as inheritance.

Michelle Del Rio

Daughter of a Chicano and Indigenous father and a Colombian mother, Michelle Del Rio’s work feels deeply personal. Her collections are not simply constructed from fabric, but from research, reinterpretation, and lineage.

I discovered her through the Popz Spring/Summer 26 collection, described as a study in heritage expressed through silhouette. Ease meets attitude. Structure meets memory. The pieces feel considered in a way that suggests they could only have been made by her.

Avemus

Based in Mexico, Avemus describes dressing as “an act of connection between who we are and what we aspire to be.” That idea alone is reason enough to pay attention.

The silhouettes hover just outside minimalism. Natural fabrics sculpted into forms that feel familiar yet unexpected. Nothing overly decorative. Everything intentional. A quiet assertion of identity through shape and material.

Zut

A long-standing C’est Cool favorite, Zut was founded by two Colombian women more than thirty years ago. Specializing in leather and suede, each piece is crafted in their Bogotá workshops.

The designs are informed by ancestral practices, translated into objects that feel both contemporary and enduring. Timelessness that still feels alive.

Alexia Ulibarri

Based in Mexico City, Alexia Ulibarri creates garments that are unapologetically expressive. Her work is flamboyant in the best sense of the word. Joyful and emotional.

Her collections often explore what it means to be a woman beyond the garment itself. Not simply dressing the body, but acknowledging the woman within it. You can feel that she loves what she does. And that kind of energy is contagious.

Culture is not abstract. It lives in what we wear, in what we build, and in what we pass down.

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And in times like these, it feels especially important to highlight the creators whose roots continue to shape the creative landscape far beyond borders.

Thank you for being here,
Kelly

My senior year of college, I covered an entire wall with torn-out pages from Vogue. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I embraced a bohemian phase. Then came minimalist neutrals, in pursuit of calm.

None of those aesthetics lasted, because none of them meant anything. They were moods. And moods are fleeting.

What has endured are singular discoveries. Pieces found when I wasn’t looking. Books from a small shop in a foreign city. A ceramic bowl that felt too beautiful to leave behind. Objects created by founders who build slowly, with intention, with time.

That is what makes a space feel like yours.

This week, I’m adding a few names to your radar that may be just what your space needs to take shape.

Sur Sur

Small-batch and handmade, my introduction to Sur Sur came through this fringed bedcover discovered in Oaxaca. The kind of piece you will never find through an algorithmic search.

Sur Sur embodies everything we value at C’est Cool. Textiles sourced and designed globally, rooted in tradition, craft, and time. The antithesis of fast interiors and the epitome of luxury defined by intention.

Lily Clark

Less about decoration and more about the inspiration of. Los Angeles-based artist Lily Clark works with stone, ceramic, and metal to shape water itself. Her practice is rooted in fluid dynamics, exploring how water moves, rests, and transforms within constructed forms.

While much of her work is not commercially available, her presence here feels essential. A reminder that interiors are not only about objects, but about our relationship to nature. We evolved within it. Our spaces should remember that.

Jessi Burch

Based in New York, Jessi Burch began with jewelry before translating her expertise in metal into the home.

Her cutlery set alone could transform a dinner table into sculpture. Serving pieces, trays, objects that feel less like décor and more like future heirlooms. Designed to be used, to last, and to be passed down.

Broyt

Founded by RISD graduate Eve Singer, Broyt was born from a reverence for substance over excess. The brand focuses on vintage and one-of-a-kind objects available for both rental and purchase, bridging gatherings and editorial projects alike.

Each piece feels considered. Collected and intentional. A reminder that not everything in a home needs to be owned forever to be meaningful.

The most beautiful interiors are not designed in a weekend. They are accumulated. Discovered. Lived into.

Speak soon,

Kelly

Every single aspect of our daily lives was made out of thin air. The words we speak. The rules we live by. The jobs we do. The art we’re moved by. The clothes we wear. The value we exchange. All once did not exist until someone, one day, decided it should. And they simply made it up.

Is what they created the best method, the best design, the smoothest function? In some cases, yes. In others, not quite. It’s why as a society we are constantly evolving. We learn more, we change. Or we learn more, and we try to get other people to change. Or we deny new learnings as a way to deny change. Its a complicated system you only have to turn on your tv to remember.

I have been thinking a lot about how it is all made up. And in realizing that, I’ve started to rethink my place in the world. What do I really believe in? What do I want more of in my life? What do I disagree with, and what would I like to see changed?

The core of it, once my eyes were opened to this constructed world, I felt a new sense of empowerment. If so much came from nothing, I can create from nothing too. Expect my “nothing” is actually something. I am a human with lived experience, with perspective, with a lens only I can see through.

And it’s through that lens that we create art.

I spent most of my life believing that creativity was reserved for artists. I once wanted to design clothes, but quickly talked myself off that ledge when I realized there were people way more talented and better suited for the job. And that’s where the self-doubt began.

Creativity is not reserved for artists. It’s a biological impulse. A tool we use to shape experience into meaning. A tool in which we can make our mark and bring something into the world that wasn’t there before.

Creation moves life forward. Not just through survival, but through expression. It’s not about recognition or output. It’s about reconnecting to aliveness. It reveals what you notice, what you care about, what you’re drawn to. And in that process, you become more yourself.

And in becoming more yourself, you find connection. To yourself. To other people. To community. To love, both inward and outward.

Maybe this feeling doesn’t concern everyone. But for me, it’s become an undeniable truth in my search for meaning and happiness.

I have a dear friend who works in finance. She loves music and art, but her career, where she spends most of her days, is behind a desk looking at numbers.

On a recent trip together, she opened up about her love of art. Her grandfather was a painter and she was curious if she had the skill in her too. She suspects she did. But trying would be intimidating. Trying means risking failure.

Fear isn’t comfortable. We’re wired to interpret it as danger. Safety feels like survival.

But the conscious truth? Being bad at art will not kill you. Avoiding risk so completely that you never grow into your potential might actually do more damage.

I’ve written before about viewing creativity as resistance. Art influences culture. It shapes society. It can bring things to light in ways a speech cannot. But beyond societal change, there’s a quieter shift that happens within us.

Sometimes we sense something is missing. Something is slightly off. We can’t always articulate it, but we can feel it.

A creative practice can surface what logic cannot. It can help you understand what you like, what you care about, what you are drawn toward, and where purpose might live for you.

Perhaps you’re doing just fine without art. If so, you’re likely not reading this. But if you’re feeling less than fine, I encourage you to create in whatever medium feels natural or fun.

Not to share with anyone, unless you want to. Not to prove anything. Not for a profit.

Create as a way to reconnect with yourself. To express your unique experience. To build confidence and solidify the teaching that you have the ability to fail, improve, fail again, and improve more.

Creation does not need to be perfect. It simply needs to exist.

So if it’s fear you’re feeling, create anyway. For your own good, and perhaps, for the good of this world.

Thank you for being here,

Kelly

As I made my way through post-show imagery this season, something became impossible to ignore. The lack of female representation at the creative helm. Not on the runway. Behind it.

That’s not to say this season failed to move me. Quite the opposite. I was reminded of everything I have always loved about fashion. The theatricality. The otherworldly aesthetics. The moments so visually arresting that language feels inadequate. You don’t need to explain why it’s special. You simply know.

This season gave us Jonathan Anderson’s Christian Dior. Alessandro Michele’s Valentino. Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli. All clear reminders that you do not need to be born female to design for women with sensitivity, intelligence, and beauty.

Still, it is women I want to see more of. Especially in industries where we so clearly dominate as consumers, patrons, and cultural drivers.

So this week’s Cool Drop highlights the five fashion houses led by female creative directors during Spring Haute Couture Week. (This count reflects houses listed on the official Haute Couture calendar, excluding invited presentations.) The women behind them, the collections they presented, and the moments that stayed with me.

Silvana Armani for Armani Privé

Silvana Armani, the niece of Giorgio Armani, spent more than four decades working alongside him. For the last twenty years, she served as his closest collaborator on the Armani Privé couture collection.

Following his recent passing, this season marked her first as sole Creative Director. A debut that felt quietly powerful. Feminine, elegant without excess, and couture with an unmistakable sense of wearability.

Julie De Libran

The collection from the eponymous brand of former Prada alumna Julie De Libran was inspired by the iris. Once a symbol of royalty in French history, the flower carries meanings of faith, hope, and wisdom. Themes that felt especially resonant here.

The inspiration was also deeply personal. An homage to De Libran’s French grandmother, who lived in Provence, not far from where Vincent van Gogh painted his iconic irises. Her grandmother was a painter, seamstress, and knitter, and it was through her that De Libran was first introduced to dressmaking.

With that context, the collection reads intuitively. Modest tailoring appeared alongside layered silhouettes and textured treatments that felt quietly subversive. It was a portrait of the modern French woman shaped by lineage rather than nostalgia. Grounded in history and informed by craft.

Sohee Park for Miss Sohee

Originally from Seoul and not yet thirty, Sohee Park presented a couture collection that felt like the most refined form of fantasy. Couture as modern costume, where every piece carried a once-in-a-lifetime quality.

The work lived at the intersection of childlike imagination and grown-up fairytale. Dreamed-up silhouettes, ornate craftsmanship, and theatrical detail that edged into excess, but with intention. A world I would happily step into.

Sofia Crociani for Aelis

Under the direction of founder Sofia Crociani, the house continued its commitment to a modern vision of couture. The collection unfolded through sculptural silhouettes, elongated lines, and a palette that allowed form and fabrication to take precedence. There was a sense of calm precision throughout, garments shaped with architectural clarity rather than theatrical flourish.

True to the house’s philosophy, sustainability remained integral. The collection was crafted using existing fabrics and surplus materials, reinforcing Aelis’s belief that innovation and responsibility can coexist at the highest level of craftsmanship.

Celia Kritharioti

Founded in 1906, Celia Kritharioti is the oldest couture house in Greece, and one of the few remaining couture maisons still led by its founding family. Today, Celia Kritharioti herself stands at the helm, carrying more than a century of craftsmanship into the present with remarkable confidence.

This collection was nothing short of breathtaking. A full-bodied expression of fantasy and femininity, executed with an almost obsessive level of detail. Sculpted bodices, dramatic volume, intricate embellishment, and fluid movement worked together to create garments that felt otherworldly yet exacting in their construction.

It was a reminder of what couture is meant to do when done well. Transport you. Overwhelm you. Leave you momentarily speechless. A holy shit show, in the most reverent sense of the phrase.

Until next time,
Kelly

A jewelry collection is not built overnight. It requires patience, instinct, and a collector’s eye. It evolves slowly, shaped by memory, meaning, and repetition. The best pieces become part of the person wearing them.

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As I reimagine my own personal style, my jewelry collection has evolved alongside it. If you find yourself in a similar moment, or are beginning to think more seriously about curation rather than accumulation, I hope this drop feels like a thoughtful place to start.

These pieces stopped me in my tracks. I suspect they may do the same for you.

Sophie Buhai

I first discovered the brand through a sterling silver lighter, price upon request, which felt like an immediate signal of restraint and confidence. Sophie Buhai founded her namesake label in 2015 with a focus on heirloom-quality jewelry and accessories designed for daily wear while remaining entirely independent of trend. Based in Los Angeles, her work is quiet, sculptural, and deeply considered. The kind of jewelry that grows more compelling the longer you live with it.

Lhasa

Founded by L’École Van Cleef & Arpels graduate Elisa Kalinina, the name Lhasa translates to “world of the gods,” a reflection of the brand’s intention to ignite inner strength and symbolism. While the designs extend beyond overt symbolism, there is something powerful about wearing pieces that hold personal meaning. I grew up wearing a horseshoe as a reminder of my own good fortune. That same quiet reverence is what initially drew me to Elisa’s work.

CUNZU

CUNZU is a mission-driven label working in close collaboration with artisans in Guizhou, China, with the aim of supporting and sustaining local craft communities. Founder Di travels between Paris and China, immersing herself in regional traditions and working directly with artisans to honor ancestral techniques. The resulting pieces feel deeply rooted, sculptural, and entirely one of a kind. Jewelry as history, memory, and art.

SACH

Founded by three cousins, Lola, Alejandra, and Manuela, between Madrid and their shared creative upbringing, SACH carries a sense of inherited intuition. Influenced by their mother’s artistic sensibility, the designs feel both bold and refined. There is an undeniable goddess energy in the work. Something felt rather than explained. You simply understand it when you see it.

Until next time,
Kelly

An obvious starting point for me is in attempting to understand the lives and journeys of those who came before, whose very experience and soul and art is embedded in our culture, inspiring many subconsciously as to how they operate and understand their own existence.

It’s a common reflection of mine that this is all made up. Humans making decisions, sometimes based in fact and discovery, often based in ego and power and inflated self-importance.

So understanding these decisions helps us understand how we got to where we are now, why we’re here, and how to unravel the best and the worst of our existence.

If only we had a few more hundred years to add on to our individual lifespans, we might just have the time. Perhaps Bryan Johnson will solve this for us.

Within this reflection, I find myself seeking out artists, creatives, and innovators who have challenged the system to build something of their own. (If you’re new here, welcome to C’est Cool.)

“Cool,” a generally overused and meaningless word dependent on its orator, became something of an exploration for me as I began to dissect its subjectivity.

While this opening is tangential, I must eventually allow it to bring me to the artist Lorraine O’Grady. I am not an artist, a writer, or by myopic professional terms, a creative. What I am is curious.

And Lorraine O’Grady, multidisciplinary artist, piqued my curiosity as a woman whose work was a call to action to dismantle racial hierarchies and anti-feminist structures.

So, I dug deeper.

Lorraine O’Grady starring in Ahohni’s Music Video for Marrow (2016) at age 81. O’Grady’s lined face and intense eyes convey such intelligence and emotion that she essentially becomes part of the music.

Lorraine O’Grady was born in Boston to Jamaican immigrant parents in 1934. Before she ever stepped into an art gallery, she had been a government analyst, a translator, a rock music critic, and a writer. She didn’t enter the art world until she was in her mid-40s, but when she did, she entered with her whole history. That history, full of intersection, intellect, and contradiction, shaped how she approached every piece.

Her breakout performance, Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, was staged in 1980. She crashed a gallery opening dressed in a debutante’s gown made of 180 white gloves. She whipped herself with white chrysanthemums and shouted poems about the complacency of the Black art world and the racism of white institutions. It was jarring, elegant, angry, and precise. It said: I belong here. And so do others.

Three years later, in Harlem, she entered a parade with a giant golden frame mounted on a float. Dancers jumped off and began “framing” members of the crowd. A child. A grandmother. A police officer. Art Is... was a love letter to Black joy and community. It didn’t shout. It invited. It said: you don’t need to be inside a museum to be a masterpiece.

Both pieces were public and visceral. They were caring, but not in the soft, romantic way. More in the way that disrupts when necessary. Her work often arrived in spaces where she was not expected. And that was the point.

She used performance to critique the structure of art itself. And when she wasn’t on stage, she was writing — essays that would go on to shape feminist and critical race theory. In “Olympia’s Maid,” she rewrote one of the most famous paintings in art history by asking the reader to consider the Black maid in the background and to center her, finally. That essay alone altered how scholars talk about race and the body in Western art.

O’Grady was not asking for inclusion. She was naming the absurdity of her exclusion. She was asking why we were ever missing from the frame at all.

She spoke often about hybridity. About both and. About how her entire life had been defined by contradictions that weren’t contradictions at all, once you saw the whole picture. She was American and Jamaican. Black and middle-class. Artist and critic. Personal and political.

Her diptychs — paired images placed side by side — mirrored how she saw the world. Opposites belonged together.

In one of her most moving works, Miscegenated Family Album, she placed photos of her sister Devonia next to ancient Egyptian sculptures of Queen Nefertiti. The resemblance was uncanny. But it was more than visual. It was an insistence: our lineages are deep. Our histories are connected. We are not new here.

And when you step back, you see that much of O’Grady’s work is about memory as proof. Of presence, power, and self. She was not simply building new worlds. She was remembering the ones that had been buried.

She did this work slowly and with intention. A need for depth that resulted in later recognition. She didn’t market herself. She didn’t play the game but she played her role. And eventually, the world took notice.

In 2021, at age 86, she received her first major retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. It was called Both/And. A perfect title. Because that’s what she gave us. Not one truth but the space to hold many.

She refused to simplify herself or anyone else. That refusal was political.

Lorraine O’Grady passed away in late 2024 at the age of 90, having lived to see herself rightly celebrated as a trailblazer. But the truth is her legacy was already secure long before the retrospectives and obituaries.

It lives on in every artist who picks up a metaphorical golden frame to show people the beauty in themselves, and in every curator who is unafraid to mix the political with the poetic.

O’Grady carved out a space for Black female subjectivity in contemporary art, and in doing so, expanded the space for everyone to be more free. In the spirit of C’est Cool, which celebrates creativity across cultural lines, O’Grady’s life reminds us of the power of art to bridge worlds.

In one of her early cut-up poems, O’Grady wrote, “This could be… the permanent rebellion… that lasts a lifetime.” Her entire career was a kind of permanent rebellion, one that lasted not just her lifetime but reverberates for years to come.

Now it’s up to the next generations to carry that spirit forward, both and beyond.

Thank you for being here,

Kelly

Sources & Research: “We Were All Just Catching Up to Lorraine O’Grady,” The New York Times. Artist bio and archival materials from lorraineogrady.com. Job History (from a feminist retrospective), Lorraine O’Grady. The Wattis Institute. “‘Comeback? I Haven’t Ever Been There’: Artist Lorraine O’Grady on Why Her Retrospecitve, at Age 86, Feels Like Her First Big Break",” Art Net.

Consider this an open notebook moment. The kind of discoveries that stop you mid-scroll or mid-thought and remind you why curiosity matters. Things that feel considered, expressive, and made with care. Too good not to share.

Clara Colette Miramon

Berlin-based womenswear designer Clara Colette Miramon creates clothes for pop icons and for the girls who simply want to dress like one. I discovered her through this metal breastplate corset, a piece that exists comfortably between art and fashion. Her work is a little wild, a little playful, and unapologetically expressive. Exactly the kind of energy worth leaning into. Seen on Cardi B and Doja Cat, and carried at female-founded Café Forgot in New York.

Les Thèmes

I was stopped in my tracks when I saw this vintage shell champagne cooler. She’s perfect, and she’s sold, but that’s okay because the founder of Les Thèmes, Rebecca Goddard, has an impeccable eye and a wealth of equally thoughtful pieces worth discovering. From mother-of-pearl plates to jewelry and hair combs, the aesthetic feels romantic, modern, and restrained. Timeless and effortless.

Anna Boutashkova

Munich-born and London-based, this emerging shoe designer is currently studying at the Royal College of Art. If you’re drawn to shoes that lean more art object than accessory, she’s one to keep on your radar. An Instagram discovery for now. She isn’t selling her own pieces yet, but when she does, I’ll be first in line.

Happy Organics Co.

I feel like Omer Gilony would love this. A TikTok discovery founded by beekeeper Jessica Gonzalez, she makes the cutest beeswax candles straight from her California farm. I’m currently obsessed with the Heirloom Tomato. Picture three or four tucked into a table centerpiece. Cuteness aside, I switched to beeswax candles a few years ago after learning how harmful it can be to inhale most conventional candles (hello, formaldehyde and synthetic fragrance). These feel like a small, beautiful upgrade for your space and your air.

Petra Fagerstrom

Petra Fagerström works with lenticular pleating, a term I admittedly had to look up. Seeing her work, the concept becomes immediately clear. Images are printed onto vertically pleated fabric, creating a shifting visual effect that transforms depending on the viewer’s angle. The result is inventive and striking, but her practice extends far beyond technique alone. Her collections are produced using upcycled and deadstock materials, a commitment that has earned her both the Mercedes-Benz Sustainability Prize and the Chanel Atelier des Matières Prize. Conceptually rigorous, materially thoughtful, and quietly futuristic.

I’ve found that the most exciting discoveries often arrive without announcement. You’re simply paying attention and suddenly something clicks.

If one of these sparks inspiration, curiosity, or even a small sense of joy, then this drop has done its job. That quiet exchange of attention and appreciation is what C’est Cool is built on.

Until next time,
Kelly

It’s a rare feeling. One that might be worth millions if you could bottle it and sell it. The quiet reassurance that, out of more than eight billion people living on this spinning rock, at least a few understand what it feels like to be you. Not entirely. Not perfectly. But enough.

That’s what The Chiffon Trenches did for me.

If you’re familiar with André Leon Talley, you may already be wondering where this is going. And if you’re not, a brief scene-setter feels necessary. Talley was an icon of the fashion world. A protégé of Diana Vreeland. An editor under Anna Wintour at Vogue and House & Garden. A confidant, depending on the era, of Karl Lagerfeld or his rumored rival, Yves Saint Laurent. He helped launch Jean Paul Gaultier’s career, worked alongside Andy Warhol in the early days of Interview, and called Lee Radziwill one of his closest friends. His life moved between Paris and New York, often in rooms filled with Loulou de La Falaise, Betty Catroux, Oscar de la Renta, and Annette de la Renta.

So what does this very connected, very accomplished man have to do with me?

Maybe the same thing he has to do with you.
Let’s see.

Because for all the grandeur, André Leon Talley did not come from privilege. He was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Durham, North Carolina. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was largely raised by his maternal grandmother, a woman he adored and revered. He did not grow up surrounded by luxury as we tend to define it now. His earliest exposure to beauty came from watching his community prepare for Sunday church. Perfectly pressed suits. White gloves. Hats worn with intention. Dressing as a form of pride, care, and self-respect.

That was his first fashion education.

He devoured Vogue. He studied art and culture. He paid attention. He cared. After studying French literature as an undergraduate, he earned a scholarship to Brown University with plans to teach French. Life had other ideas. While at Brown, he found himself drawn to friends at RISD, where his love of dressing and visual expression was immediately recognized. Fashion was not a hobby. It was a language he already spoke fluently.

That pull toward something familiar, something essential, only grew stronger.

After completing his master’s degree, he moved to New York and took an unpaid internship under Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974. There are paths we are not meant to stray far from. And even when we do, somehow we are guided back. Back to the work that animates us. Back to the things that make us feel awake, aligned, alive.

From that relationship with Vreeland came the career many of us now know. Talley went on to serve as Paris bureau chief at Women’s Wear Daily and W. He worked at The New York Times, and eventually Vogue, where he became the first Black male creative director in the magazine’s history. Throughout his career, he pushed designers to cast more Black models. He advised the Obama family and styled Michelle Obama for her first Vogue cover. His work as a fashion journalist spanned six decades, and through it all, he advocated for diversity, taste, and excellence.

What strikes me most is not the access or the accolades. It’s that none of it was preordained.

He was not born on third base. He studied. He worked. He endured rejection, invisibility, and exclusion. He combined mastery with kindness, intellect with generosity. And he built a life that was both improbable and undeniable.

Reading The Chiffon Trenches reminded me of what I loved long before ambition entered the picture. The spectacle of design. The reverence for craftsmanship. The deliberate slowness of couture. The hours, the thought, the precision required to create something truly singular.

But even more than that, it reminded me of a belief I had as a child and quietly misplaced somewhere along the way. The belief that possibility is not reserved for the chosen few. That you do not need to be born ahead to move forward. But you do need to commit. To work. To sacrifice. To study. To fail. To grow. To become.

That is the inner child André Leon Talley reconnected me with.
The one who believed that becoming was possible.

And maybe that’s what he has to do with you, too.

À toute à l’heure,
Kelly

Fashion has long been a boundary breaker. It opened doors for women to build careers before that path was widely accepted. It created spaces where queer people could express themselves freely. In a world where many industries remain dominated by a single archetype, you do not need to “get” fashion to respect its impact. Art, culture, society. It shapes us whether we are paying attention or not.

Recently, I have begun a deeper exploration of fashion history. After stepping away from the industry over the past few years, I have felt reinvigorated by the art and cultural weight that fashion carries. But what feels most important is understanding what shaped it. To truly understand anything, you have to understand its evolution.

Through this process, I have found myself rediscovering some of fashion’s greatest muses. Male designers and creative directors who were so deeply inspired by the women around them that they allowed those women to influence their most iconic collections. Yves Saint Laurent. Tom Ford. Azzedine Alaïa. Karl Lagerfeld. Each had multiple muses they designed for. While some of these women remain lesser known, their influence is undeniable.

Loulou De Falaise

Loulou de la Falaise was born into fashion. Her mother worked for Elsa Schiaparelli, and her father was a French aristocrat. She later became one of Yves Saint Laurent’s closest friends, remaining by his side for over thirty years.

In the late 1960s, she moved to New York, modeling for Vogue before designing prints for Halston. While working as a fashion editor in 1968, she reconnected with Saint Laurent, captivating him with her warmth, instinctive style, and flea-market sensibility. She was soon placed in charge of accessories for the house, though her role extended far beyond titles. While another of Saint Laurent’s most referenced muses, Betty Catroux, favored restraint and was most often dressed in black, she credited Loulou as their “pick-me-up,” a source of color, energy, and optimism.

Loulou’s intuitive eye became essential to Saint Laurent’s creative process. She understood the woman he designed for because she was that woman. Her influence lived not only in jewelry and accessories, but in the spirit of the collections themselves.

Farida Khelfa

Muse to both Azzedine Alaïa and Jean Paul Gaultier, Farida Khelfa’s modeling career may have opened doors, but it was her creative vision that secured her place in the upper echelon of Parisian fashion culture.

Born to Algerian parents and raised in a housing project in Lyon alongside her ten siblings, Khelfa left home at sixteen and made her way to Paris. She found both refuge and community at The Palace, the legendary nightclub that served as a crossroads for artists, designers, and cultural provocateurs shaping Paris at the time.

It was there that she met a fifteen-year-old Christian Louboutin, who offered her a place to stay at his mother’s apartment, where she remained for months. At The Palace, she was also introduced to Jean Paul Gaultier, who asked her to model for him. He later said of Khelfa, “To me, she embodies beauty.” Her relationship with the house evolved over time, eventually leading her to become Couture Director.

Photographer Jean-Paul Goude later introduced Khelfa to Azzedine Alaïa. The two formed a deep bond rooted in their shared North African heritage and cultural understanding. Alaïa encouraged her to expand beyond modeling, giving her the confidence to step into a more influential creative role. She would eventually lead the design studio, shaping collections from the inside.

More recently, Khelfa has served as a muse for Schiaparelli, a fitting continuation of a life defined not by visibility alone, but by influence, instinct, and enduring creative power.

Betty Catroux

Betty Catroux met Yves Saint Laurent in 1967. Both tall, blonde, and strikingly thin, her androgynous presence embodied the couturier’s physical and emotional ideal. They formed an immediate and unbreakable bond, often referring to one another as “twins.”

As a teenager, Catroux crossed paths with Coco Chanel and briefly worked around the house as a model. She later described the experience as humiliating and left fashion altogether, turning to photography to support herself.

It was Saint Laurent who offered her a different kind of influence. Though never formally employed by the brand, Catroux became one of his most enduring muses, shaping his vision of modern femininity from the outside. What set her apart was her indifference to fashion itself. Uninterested in trends or spectacle, she developed an effortless style that resisted both masculine and feminine codes, most often donned in black.

She became one of the living embodiments of Le Smoking, the tuxedo that redefined women’s power dressing, and a lasting symbol of Saint Laurent’s belief that strength and elegance were inseparable. Decades later, Tom Ford dedicated his debut YSL Rive Gauche collection to her, calling her “the ultimate Saint Laurent woman.”

In 2020, Anthony Vaccarello honored her legacy with the exhibition Betty Catroux, Yves Saint Laurent: Féminin Singulier, cementing her place not just as a muse, but as a cultural figure whose influence spans generations.

Lee Radziwill

American socialite Lee Radziwill was the younger sister of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, though she spent her life carefully avoiding being defined by that proximity alone. Where Jackie embodied diplomacy and restraint, Lee moved with a quieter, more personal elegance.

Her style was timeless, composed, and deeply instinctual. She favored clean lines over embellishment, allowing exceptional fabrics, proportion, and tailoring to do the work. Her clothes never overwhelmed her. They appeared to belong to her, shaping the body with ease and intention rather than spectacle.

Radziwill’s influence stretched far beyond her social circle with designers repeatedly cited her as a reference point rather than a traditional muse. Tom Ford often referenced her as the embodiment of understated glamour. Marc Jacobs admired her ability to make simplicity feel personal and modern. Tory Burch has spoken to the lasting relevance of her refined, lived-in elegance.

What made Lee Radziwill enduring was not visibility, but discretion. She dressed for herself, not the moment, and in doing so became a lasting reference for women who value confidence over performance. Her legacy lives in the idea that true style is not declared. It is quietly understood.

Jacqueline de Ribes

Jacqueline de Ribes was deliberate, theatrical, and fully in control of how she was seen. She once said she dressed “to be remembered,” a statement that reads less as vanity and more as authorship. Every look was composed with intention. Nothing was accidental.

Born into French aristocracy, de Ribes understood early on that style could function as power. She treated clothing as a language, using proportion, color, and drama to construct an image that was unmistakably her own. Long before personal branding was a concept, she was practicing it with precision.

She served as a muse to Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, both of whom recognized her instinctive understanding of silhouette and spectacle. Yet de Ribes was never content to exist solely as inspiration. In the late 1980s, she founded her own couture house, translating her visual authority into ownership.

Her designs reflected the same sensibility she embodied. Bold, graphic, and unapologetically elegant, they carried a sense of drama without excess. De Ribes proved that a muse could also be a maker, and that self-curation could evolve into creation.

What set Jacqueline de Ribes apart was her refusal to disappear behind the myth. She did not simply inspire fashion. She directed it. Her legacy lives in the idea that style, when wielded with intelligence and intention, can become a form of lasting influence.

I find nothing more compelling than the people who inspire art and culture. Those whose experiences and preferences shaped their style, and whose style ultimately shaped popular culture.

While these women’s influence peaked throughout the 1970s and 1980s, their presence continues through the archival references that shape fashion today.

Which leaves us with a question. Are there any great modern muses alive today? I will have to report back once I spend more time in this decade.

Who’s your muse?

À bientôt,
Kelly