Category: Fashion

WINTER ESCAPE – MY DECEMBER GETAWAY IN BEVERLY HILLS

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(A December diary from Los Angeles)

December in Los Angeles has a unique atmosphere.
While the rest of the world dons heavy coats and struggles with the snow, here the city lights up with lights, endless parties, rooftops that touch the sky, and warm afternoons scented with eucalyptus and ocean. It’s the perfect time to treat myself to a little personal escape: a ritual I repeat every year to recharge, breathe in beauty, and prepare for a new beginning.

This year I chose Beverly Hills .
Its balance of glamour and tranquility, its boutiques that look like movie sets, its hotels that look like something out of a Sofia Coppola Christmas movie… and that quintessentially Californian way of making you feel on vacation even when you’re just minutes from home.

My refuge was the Peninsula : windows overlooking the city, a suite filled with golden light, and slow breakfasts with avocado toast, matcha latte, and a planner bursting with ideas. Some for new projects, others for future trips, and still others simply for the pleasure of putting them down on paper.

Between an impromptu photoshoot and a shopping break on Rodeo Drive , I rediscovered how necessary it is to take time away from the hustle and bustle and return it to what truly matters: creativity, curiosity, wonder.
These are always the moments when the truest insights emerge, new directions, that subtle feeling of being exactly in the right place.

My getaway ended with dinner at The Ivy , one of my favorite restaurants: warm lights, a private party atmosphere, and gratitude for a year that taught me more than I expected.

And as Los Angeles prepares for its bright holidays, I take away a simple thought: Beauty is not a place — it’s a state of mind .

See you in the next story.
Always on the move, always with our hearts in California.

— Sara

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

CHANEL METRO AFFAIRS – MY SUBWAY NEW YORK MINUTE

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CHANEL METRO AFFAIRS 

I’ll admit it: flying in from Los Angeles and ending up squeezed between those rusty red columns on the 5th Ave Subway platform, with trains rumbling by every few minutes, wasn’t exactly how I pictured walking into a Chanel show. In L.A., they roll out a red carpet even to get a latte; here, the only red thing in sight was the steel beams scratched by decades of commuters. And somehow, it already felt right.

Matthieu Blazy didn’t just “bring Chanel into the subway.” He did something far more delicate: he dropped haute couture into the most honest, unfiltered place in the city, without cushioning it, without elevating it, without giving it a protective halo. He let it sit there, in the raw pulse of real life, exposed to speed, noise, distraction. And as I waited for the first look to step out of the train car, I felt something thrilling: Chanel wasn’t trying to interpret New York.
It was listening to it.

The first model exited the train like she’d done it her whole life. Bold jewelry, black turban, a shot of red at the waist — a visual punch with the wattage of Times Square, yet refined through that French discipline that gives structure even to chaos. Then the leopard tweed appeared, purring with confidence, and suddenly I realized we weren’t watching clothes at all. We were watching attitude.

One thing about the subway: nothing stays still. As I photographed a model in a beautifully cut pinstripe suit, a train pulled out behind her, dragging that metallic roar that is the city’s true soundtrack. Blazy knew it. He wanted it. He turned the environment itself into part of the creative direction, as if the world, for once, had agreed to collaborate.

And the colors — the reinvented animal prints, the long dresses skimming the platform, silhouettes moving with the same rhythm as commuters bracing for a stop. Chanel, a house that often exists inside immaculate spaces, was here breathing, sweating, reacting. And it was perfect.

What struck me most was this: nothing, absolutely nothing, looked out of place.
Tulle, feathers, sequins… everything fit seamlessly into a setting we had instinctively labeled as “wrong.” But maybe that’s the lesson: fashion isn’t an altar — it’s a passageway. And Blazy, by choosing this subway, reminded us with almost brutal elegance.

I left the station feeling like I’d witnessed a collision rather than a show. A beautiful, intelligent, coherent collision.
Proof that Chanel can own any environment — but more importantly, that it can still surprise those who thought they had it fully figured out.

As I climbed the stairs back to street level, I smiled. Sometimes it takes a train to understand where fashion is headed.

— Sarah Dalmonte, Los Angeles → New York

 

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

FALL WINTER 2025/26 – FASHION RETURNS TO ITS BODY

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From the runways of Europe, a return to matter, warmth, and sensory memory.

One word defines this season: tactile. After years of digital aesthetics and almost virtual silhouettes, fashion returns to the body — to its weight, its desire, its need for touch. The garment is no longer projection, but skin, refuge, and experience.

Across Paris, Milan, London, and New York, the catwalks reveal an autumn wrapped in dense textures, sculptural pleats, ironic bows, and knitwear that becomes architecture. Protection returns as a theme, yet never denies desire.

The Greek drape — soft, intellectual, imperfect — becomes the new language of sensuality: dresses twist, knot, and fall like living statues. Ancient grace meets contemporary rhythm in a hymn to slowness and harmony. The fur trend, whether faux or sheepskin, brings tactility to the forefront. The modern woman no longer wears armor to face the world — she wears warmth, a soft barrier that allows her to remain sensitive without being fragile.

Black dominates once again, not as austerity but as movement — it flows, envelops, and seduces. Asymmetric drapes and liquid lines restore femininity as a spiritual presence. Then irony enters the scene: bows, plush toys, and childlike nostalgia. Fashion remembers innocence and reclaims it with adult awareness. Tenderness becomes avant-garde.

The female dandy returns with stiff collars, jabots, and romantic dual tones — a kind of wearable theater. Meanwhile, pocket-bags merge function and fantasy, turning practicality into design. The slip dress reclaims intimacy: lingerie becomes attire, the skin becomes statement. A quiet sensuality takes the stage.

And the sculptural knitwear closes the circle — garments woven like landscapes, filled with patience and the poetry of hands. This fall/winter doesn’t speak of trends but of presence — a fashion that listens instead of shouting, that seeks warmth over spectacle.

Because the true revolution now is remembering that to dress can still be a human, sensual, poetic act.

 

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Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PARIS FASHION WEEK SS26: THE SYSTEM’S NOISE, THE DESIRE’S SILENCE

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PARIS FASHION WEEK: MY IMPRESSIONS

Paris wrapped on October 7. Eight days of runways, presentations, showrooms, cocktails, and nonstop rumor mills. The calendar was that of the grand seasons: women’s prêt-à-porter Spring/Summer 2026, from September 29 to October 7, with a dense cluster of debuts and course corrections that—on paper—should have jump-started the creative narrative.

Outside the tents, the real world isn’t on pause. We’re in a hard transition: even the “fashion customer” now weighs a purchase against other priorities. Desire doesn’t vanish—it gets selective. Faced with this, I saw two opposite, often irreconcilable reactions: on one side, the obsessive return to archives as a security blanket; on the other, the gamble of “anything, as long as they talk about us,” which produces noisy, sometimes gratuitous objects. I’m not pointing to the usual aprons or meme-ready oddities: it’s the underlying confusion that stings—the inability to choose one idea and carry it through without hiding in déjà vu.

The paradox is that the machine still works. Paris remains the week that concentrates the most attention and media value across fashion month. The circus still draws, massively.

The spillover is huge as well. Events tied to PFW generate hundreds of millions of euros every year for the city—and surpass a billion if you include fairs and related activities. Hotels, restaurants, transport, production studios, artisans, PR, content creators: an ecosystem that lives off the Paris showcase.

Here’s the crux: a gap has opened between the strength of the system and the audience’s emotional reality. Many maisons walked collections rich in good intentions and short on courage: reworked archives, nested citations, hypertrophic styling as a stand-in for a clear idea. Where there were directional changes—and directors—I sensed respect for the DNA but also a committee-level caution: homage the founder, sanitize the codes, reduce risk. Meanwhile, life asks for clothes that survive the day, not just the feed.

This isn’t a crusade against spectacle. Fashion can be language and theater, and Paris remains the most powerful stage. But “making noise” no longer cuts it: we need vision that translates into use, not disguise; rigorous editing, not accumulation; that quiet quality that makes you want to wear things, not just photograph them.

What do I take home from this PFW? The confirmation that the audience is ahead: buying less, buying better, and asking for meaning. And the hope that creative directors reclaim the healthy risk of making a choice, instead of the sterile risk of excess. The market forgives a misstep; it does not forgive vagueness.

Paris stays queen of the calendar and will remain so as long as it can tell a present that isn’t afraid of the future. Next season I want fewer archive fishing trips and more aesthetic responsibility: not the umpteenth “archive remix,” but a new idea with the courage to become everyday. That’s where fashion starts to matter again.

Context note. Womenswear SS26 took place in Paris from September 29 to October 7, 2025; it was a season thick with creative-direction debuts and strategic repositioning, reaffirming PFW’s centrality across the global month.

Postscript for industry folks. If the media engine keeps growing and the spillover stays massive, there’s room for quality. Fill it with wearable ideas, not noise. Otherwise, the gap between runway and wardrobe widens—and the audience simply stops crossing it.

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

CHANEL SS26 – FRESHNESS YOU CAN WEAR

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CHANEL SS26

 

Paris, Grand Palais. Something felt different this time. Chanel didn’t look like a museum anymore. It looked alive. With Matthieu Blazy stepping in, everything seemed to breathe again — lighter fabrics, easier shapes, and that kind of energy that belongs to people, not mannequins.

Watching the show, I caught myself smiling. I saw dresses and jackets that I’d actually wear, not just dream about. The silhouettes were soft, the movement effortless, and the colors — finally — full of light. Florals, tweeds, and bows reappeared, but they felt new, less nostalgic, more spontaneous.

At my age, I don’t want to look “perfect.” I want to feel beautiful without trying too hard, and this Chanel felt exactly like that. I can see myself mixing one of those tweed tops with denim, or wearing a silk blouse under a leather jacket. It’s fashion that leaves you space, that lets you breathe.

What Blazy did here isn’t revolution; it’s translation. He took the classic codes and turned them into a language people can actually speak — everyday, anywhere. The result is still elegant, but softer, freer, more human.

And that’s why I loved it. This Chanel doesn’t shout. It moves, quietly, with grace.

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

 

VALENTINO SS26 – WHEN THE NARRATIVE OUTSHINES THE COLLECTION

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VALENTINO SS26

 

At Paris Fashion Week, the scene unfolded in an uncertain light, almost war-like. Figures emerged from the darkness only to fade away like distant memories. Alessandro Michele didn’t present a simple collection—he built a story. And that story ended up swallowing the clothes.

Titled Fireflies, the show evoked the image of small lights surviving in the dark. It was a poetic, melancholic metaphor: fragility that shines even as everything else collapses. The flickering lights along the runway highlighted seams, textures, threads, and fabrics that reflected light only in fragments. There was no euphoria, only tension. Everything spoke of endurance and vulnerability.

The silhouettes were soft yet unsettling—draped skirts, glossy velvets, blouses with bows and wide sleeves, silk dresses that fell like sheets of light. There were sequins, but muted; flowers, but broken apart; colors, but veiled. No triumphalism here—Michele chose silence as his aesthetic language.

And in that radical choice, the message seemed to overpower the garment. The narrative prevails over the collection. The runway became a theater of the soul, where clothes were merely instruments to tell a story of spirituality, memory, and survival. Beauty remained, but it felt restrained, as if afraid to reveal itself too much.

At the helm of Valentino, Alessandro Michele continues to speak of dreams, poetry, and elegant chaos. Yet in this Parisian debut, there was a new sense of unease—the urge to turn the brand into a language rather than a showcase. There is genius in that, but also melancholy. The light of his “fireflies” doesn’t illuminate fashion; it reminds us that sometimes fashion is only a pretext to tell the story of life itself.

And as those silhouettes moved through the half-light, one question lingered: when the dream becomes stronger than the dress, what happens to the dress?

 

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director

Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

 

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PIERPAOLO PICCIOLI DEBUTS AT BALENCIAGA – A SOFTNESS IN THE TEMPLE OF SHADOWS

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BALENCIAGA ss26 IN PARIS

I watched Pierpaolo Piccioli’s first Balenciaga show from Los Angeles, far from the noise of Paris and the flash of the photographers, and maybe that distance helped me see it for what it really is: not a revolution, but a gentle correction. Piccioli promised to bring grace, warmth, and poetry back into the house of Cristóbal Balenciaga — a beautiful and, at the same time, risky intention, because when you touch a monument, every gesture carries twice the weight, and every trace of softness risks disappearing under the pressure of its own legacy.

There were moments that truly caught me: the green balloon skirt, light and sculptural at once; the long red feather skirt moving like a living flame; the white dress covered with petals, almost breathing on its own. These are the kind of pieces that make you say, I’d wear that — or at least, I’d like to try it on — and that’s something Balenciaga hadn’t made me feel in a long time. Still, there’s a visible tension between two worlds: the tenderness of Piccioli and the cold monumentality left behind by Demna. It’s a subtle but constant difference that you can feel in the volumes, in the bold colors, in the way the fabric meets the body without apology. It’s elegant, yes — but still searching for a voice that’s truly its own.

From here, from Los Angeles, the collection felt like an act of mediation rather than a declaration. It’s as if Piccioli were trying to find a human heartbeat inside a digital skeleton — and that, honestly, I deeply respect. Because fashion, even when it wants to be conceptual, must always come back to desire: that intimate spark that makes you look twice, that curiosity that draws you in, that impulse to imagine yourself inside a garment, not just in front of it.

In the end, what I saw on that runway wasn’t perfection but potential — a whisper of warmth in a house built on coolness, a fragile, feminine, slightly uncertain whisper, but perhaps for that very reason, real. And it’s from that quiet voice, vibrating more from intuition than force, that something new might be born — something worth waiting for.

 

 

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

LOEWE SPRING/SUMMER 2026 – THE COOL DISTANCE OF ART

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LOEWE SPRING/SUMMER 2026 

 

From Los Angeles, I followed Loewe’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection — the first designed by new creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the founders of Proenza Schouler. It’s a major shift for the Spanish house, one that has always moved between fashion and art, between craftsmanship and provocation.

McCollough and Hernandez bring their American vision — precise, graphic, and disciplined — into a European institution.
The result is an intriguing hybrid: sharp tailoring, clean lines, and shapes that look drawn with a ruler rather than stitched with a needle.
It’s fashion that thinks — but rarely warms.

Watching from L.A., away from the lights and seduction of the live show, I could read the message more clearly. Loewe wants to evolve, to become more contemporary, more global. Yet in doing so, it loses a touch of that sweet oddity that once made it so magnetic.

There are strong ideas here: architectural volumes, rigid fabrics, sculptural accessories. Everything is immaculate, perfectly coherent. And yet — something’s missing. It’s not minimalism, it’s control. Not coldness, but distance. And when fashion becomes too cerebral, it risks losing its poetry.

Maybe it’s just a matter of time — every creative transition needs to breathe. But from where I sit, with a Californian eye and a heart that still beats for boho chic, I find myself missing a bit of freedom, a bit of imperfection — that kind of beauty born from the unexpected.

An impeccable collection, yes. But one still searching for a soul.

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

 

DIOR AT PARIS FASHION WEEK: TALENT PRESENT, DIRECTION STILL BLURRY

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DIOR AT PARIS FASHION WEEK

By Sara Dal Monte

Paris opened with a behind-the-scenes debut for Jonathan Anderson at Dior. You can sense a skilled hand at work: smart technical choices, seams that trace the body without stiffening it, accessories that lock the look with precision. And yet, for all the craft, a clear through-line didn’t emerge. The talent is there; the compass hasn’t settled on Dior’s true north.

There were moments that landed. Structure stayed light, the body kept its ease, and femininity felt constructed rather than decorated. When the lines stayed clean, Dior edged into a present tense that doesn’t need to shout. That’s where a real conversation with now felt possible: not nostalgia, but memory used as vocabulary.

Then the hats arrived. A few interesting, several gratuitous. A showpiece accessory can be a signature, but when it tries to explain the entire collection it does the opposite: it distracts. It softens the responsibility of the cut and looks like it’s asking for applause the clothes should earn on their own. Noise we don’t need, especially when the rest asks for attention.

What’s missing is a deeper alignment with Dior’s DNA. Not museum-level reverence, but an honest engagement with the codes: a measured waist, a disciplined shoulder, that play of fullness and air that made the house an idea before it became a style. Here, the echo is there, but it stays an echo. I want the point where heritage plugs into 2025 and shifts tempo without turning into a caption.

Ironically, the accessories are the most convincing territory. Bags with crisp geometry, hardware used like punctuation, shoes that straighten the stride and turn it into a line. When the image starts from those accents and the clothes follow, the proposal breathes. The issue is consistency: those moments appear, but they don’t add up to a system.

Overall, it reads as work in progress. The artist’s hand is visible, the appetite for restraint is there, but the show still needs that single directive that binds silhouette, proportion, and memory into one recognizable sentence. Dior doesn’t need a well-made costume; it needs an idea that runs through it.

My take: a competent collection, bright in details, not yet resolved as an identity. If this is the start of a path, fine. But the next step has to pick a lane and defend it. Dior deserves a clear voice. I’m waiting for that.

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte

Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America 

PARIS FASHION WEEK: STELLA MCCARTNEY, GOOD INTENTIONS, LITTLE SURPRISE

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STELLA MCCARTNEY
By Sara Dal Monte

I watched Stella McCartney’s show hoping for that click that makes you sit up straighter. It never came. I recognize the consistency of her message and language, but the result felt like a long replay of familiar themes, neatly arranged and light on risk. It wants to be responsible and contemporary, but lands as polite rather than necessary.

The construction is smooth, yet rarely gripping. The menswear-tailored suits don’t add a new line, the slip dresses offer a tidy, predictable sensuality, and the sporty inserts feel more like filler than an idea. Too often it read as a wardrobe already on the sales floor—shiny and ready, not especially memorable. A runway needs a reason to stick; here, the reason is hard to find.

I’m not questioning the ethical framework or material research, which I respect. What’s missing is a formal spark: a cut that shifts the eye, a proportion that makes you reconsider the body, a detail capable of turning a garment into an image. When everything is this correct, the feeling slides off. It’s like a perfectly played song that never changes key.

Accessories fare better. Some bags have a convincing industrial clarity, with crisp volumes and thoughtful handles, and a few metallic accents provide the only real “beat” of the show. The shoes, in the leaner styles, give the looks a credible stride. Those were the moments when I felt an idea get close to real life with a bit of character.

The rest hovers in cautious balance. It doesn’t ask much of the eye; it doesn’t ask much of the body. I understand the desire for wearability, but wearability isn’t the absence of risk. It’s risk resolved well. Here, subtraction turns into caution, and caution, over time, slips into flatness.

My takeaway: a clean, respectable collection. I’m not arguing with restraint; I’m arguing with inertia. In a week that demands clear visions, this show leaves me little to take home beyond a few solid accessories. No real opening. And when I leave a runway, I need at least one slit where the light gets in.

 

 

 

 

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Sara Dal Monte
Digital Journalist | Photographer | Art Director
Los Angeles • Sure-Com America