The light and fluid designs of Skall Studio's SS26 collection. Photograph (above) by Andrea Heinsohn for DAM.
AMID the tranquil garden of Copenhagen’s Designmuseum Danmark,
Skall Studio unveiled the new Spring/Summer 2026 collection, La Danse – Act II, a reflective journey into movement and emotion. This season, the design duo of sisters Julie and Marie Skall explored softness, and
a more fluid expression of femininity in their designs. Flowing silhouettes in sun-washed tones,
crafted from natural fibres, evoke the early light of a new day, while
nostalgic Liberty florals reappear with quiet charm.
For the first time, the
label introduced accessories made from innovative, plant-based materials
derived from Sicilian orange and cactus, extending its commitment to
sustainable, animal-free design and the show was also complemented by Le Sundial’s sculptural jewellery. The presentation featured live classical
music, transforming the event into a sensory encounter with stillness and
grace. Founded in 2014 by the Skall sisters, the label draws on its
roots in Northern Jutland, where their family once collected seashells ~ a
symbol still central to their philosophy of conscious, connected living. ~ Antonio Visconti
See all of the highlights from the Skall Studio SS26 collection by Andrea Heinsohn below
Mobile habitats awaiting the Zeuneriana marmorata eggs float on the water in Venice. Photograph: Marco Zorzanello.
By Miriama Young
It was late January when I got the call. I’m asked to bring my sound art to a collaborative ecology and design project, Song of the Cricket, for the Venice Biennale of Architecture. When such as invitation arrives, you have no choice but to jump in.
I see an image of the site for the project: the Gaggiandre at the Arsenale – a medieval shipyard that serviced the Venetian military at its imperial peak.
Once a resplendent hive of industry, it is even detailed by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy:
As in the arsenal of the Venetians,
all winter long a stew of sticky pitch
boils up to patch their sick and tattered ships
that cannot sail (instead of voyaging,
some build new keels, some tow and tar the ribs
of hulls worn out by too much journeying;
some hammer at the prow, some at the stern,
and some make oars, and some braid ropes and cords;
one mends the jib, another, the mainsail)
The Gaggiandre is a cavernous, church-like space flanked by stone colonnades, wooden roof beams, and situated, in true Venetian style, on a bed of water. With long reverberation times, music in this space would need to be slowly unfolding, drawing the listener in and inviting them to meditate.
It is a place of reflection, both metaphorically and physically. To a sound artist, creating for the Gaggiandre is a dream.
Art and the Anthropocene
The Song of the Cricket exhibit has been on display at the Biennale since May. Its purpose is to bridge ecological research with sound art to raise awareness for our fragile biodiversity, with a focus on the critically endangered Adriatic bush-cricket, Zeuneriana marmorata.
Zeuneriana marmorata is a rare species found in wetlands in north-eastern Italy and Slovenia.Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
What better place than Venice – a city slowly sinking – to reflect on where we stand in this moment of environmental collapse?
The exhibit was created by a large team of collaborators. It features several mobile habitats populated with Zeuneriana. Some of these habitats sit on the Arsenale lawn, while other symbolic habitats float on the water as life rafts. Alongside the enclosures, my pre-composed “sound garden” plays through speakers onto the lawn.
At the end of the Biennale, the team, led by landscape architect and ecologist Alex Felson, intends to use the life rafts to ceremonially transport incubated eggs to a new home on the mainland.
The installation features mobile cricket habitats on the lawn, as well as symbolic life rafts on the water.Miriama Young
Sounds of nature and Vivaldi
On the lawn, the chirrup of live courting bush-crickets blends with pre-recorded sounds of their ancestors. These ancestral sounds might double as a lullaby for newly orphaned eggs, as adults only live a few months.
The accompanying sound garden is richly diverse, created from an array of fauna sounds drawn from Northern Italian wetland environments, including the Eurasian reed warbler, the cuckoo and, my personal favourite, the green toad.
My intention is for the soundscape to transport audiences to a different time and place: to a future where these species thrive in a healthy ecology.
Excerpt from the Song of Crickets sound installation.
Miriama Young and Monica Lim1.73 MB (download)
There is a second element to the sound installation, created with support from sound technologist Monica Lim. Informed by the music of Antonio Vivaldi, this element serves to further activate the untapped airspace and enhance visitors’ experience of the site.
Born in Venice in 1678, Vivaldi is a ubiquitous and avoidable cliché for locals. Yet his music was the perfect inspiration for this project, as it encodes a hidden ecological story.
Vivaldi incorporated the literal sounds of nature into The Four Seasons (1723), with particular species’ songs annotated onto the score.
The Song of the Cricket borrows elements from Vivaldi’s Summer: Allegro non Molto. In the short section I drew from, the cuckoo, turtledove and goldfinch are all musically described and credited by Vivaldi.
And although they are not expressly mentioned, I imagine bush-crickets also pervade Vivaldi’s Summer movement, as we know they were once prolific in the Venice lagoon, and would have filled the summer air during his lifetime. You might hear them in the rapidly repeating (tremolo) string gestures.
The cricket’s song serves as a indicator of an ecosystem’s health. But the sound of crickets in Venice today is largely missing.
Our take on Vivaldi is slowed down 30 times, magnified and fragmented, voiced through synthesizers, and piped into the Gaggiandre through five speakers – creating an immersive experience that feels at once futuristic and Baroque.
Bridging the past and an imagined future
The decision to borrow from music of the Western historical canon (in this case Vivaldi) fits into a burgeoning movement that composer Valentin Silvestrov coined “eschatophony”.
This is presumably a portmanteau of “eschatology”, the study of the end of the world, and “phony”, which in this case relates to sound (such as symphony). Here, we are left only to wrestle with and re-contextualise our musical past, to create “echoes of history”.
The inclusion of sound is still a novelty at the architecture Biennale. Of the 300 exhibits this year, I can count on one hand the projects that incorporated sound. All of them were special.
Sound creates a remarkable theatre, both through its immediacy, as well as its capacity to elevate a project beyond the prosaic, into the poetic.
Venice is a city where history pervades at every turn. The Song of the Cricket invites listeners in, offering them space to reflect, and to imagine a future where ecosystems might once again thrive.
Miriama Young, Associate Professor Music Composition, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne
American Vogue editor Anna Wintour at the Met Gala she oversees in New York. Photograph: Charles Sykes/Invision/AP. Cover picture of Stephane Rolland Haute Couture AW25/26 by Jay Zoo for DAM.
By Jye Marshall and Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne
Queen Elizabeth II and Anna Wintour
at British designer Richard Quinn's
2018 runway show.
AFTER 37 years at the helm, fashion industry heavyweight Anna Wintour is stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief of American Vogue.
It’s not a retirement, though, as Wintour will maintain a leadership position at global fashion and lifestyle publisher Condé Nast (the owner of Vogue and other publications, such as Vanity Fair and Glamour).
Nonetheless, Wintour’s departure from the US edition of the magazine is a big moment for the fashion industry – one which she has single-handedly changed forever.
Fashion Magazine Fever
Fashion magazines as we know them today were first formalised in the 19th century. They helped establish the “trickle down theory” of fashion, wherein trends were traditionally dictated by certain industry elites, including major magazine editors.
In Australia, getting your hands on a monthly issue meant rare exposure to the latest European or American fashion trends.
Vogue itself was established in New York in 1892 by businessman Arthur Baldwin Turnure. The magazine targeted the city’s elite class, initially covering various aspects of high-society life. In 1909, Vogue was acquired by Condé Nast. From then, the magazine increasingly cemented itself as a cornerstone of the fashion publishing.
Cover of a 1921 edition of Vogue.Wikimedia, CC BY
The period following the second world war particularly opened the doors to mass fashion consumerism and an expanding fashion magazine culture.
Wintour came on as editor of Vogue in 1988, at which point the magazine became less conservative, and more culturally significant.
Not Afraid to Break the Mould
Fashion publishing changed as a result of Wintour’s bold editorial choices – especially when it came to the magazine’s covers. Her choices both reflected, and dictated, shifts in fashion culture.
Wintour’s first cover at Vogue, published in 1988, mixed couture garments (Christian Lacroix) with mainstream brands (stonewashed Guess jeans) – something which had never been done before. It was also the first time a Vogue cover had featured jeans at all – perfectly setting the scene for a long career spent pushing the magazine into new domains.
Anna Wintour's first Vogue cover in November 1988 featuring a revolutionary mix of what we call today hi/o: a Christian Lacroix heavily bejewelled top and a pair of Guess Jeans.
Wintour also pioneered the centring of celebrities (rather than just models) within fashion discourse. And while she leveraged big names such as Beyonce, Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Kate Moss, Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, she also featured rising stars as cover models – often helping propel their careers in the process
Wintour’s legacy at Vogue involved elevating fashion from a frivolous runway to a powerful industry, which is not scared to make a statement. Nowhere is this truer than at the Met Gala, which is held each year to celebrate the opening of a new fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
The event started as a simple fundraiser for the Met in 1948, before being linked to a fashion exhibit for the first time in 1974.
Wintour took over its organisation in 1995. Her focus on securing exclusive celebrity guests helped propel it to the prestigious event it is today.
This year’s theme for the event was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. In a time where the US faces great political instability, Wintour was celebrated for her role in helping elevate Black history through the event.
Not Without Controversy
However, while her cultural influence can’t be doubted, Wintour’s legacy at American Vogue is not without fault.
Notably, her ongoing feud with animal rights organisation PETA – due to the her unwavering support for fur – has bubbled in the background since the heydays of the anti-fur movement.
Wintour has been targeted directly by anti-fur activists, both physically (she was hit with a tofu cream pie in 2005 while leaving a Chloe show) and through numerous protests.
This issue was never resolved. Vogue has continued to showcase and feature fur clothing, even as the social license for using animal materials starts to run out.
Fashion continues to grow increasingly political. How magazines such as Vogue will engage with this shift remains to be seen.
A Changing Media Landscape
The rise of fashion blogging in recent decades has led to a wave of fashion influencers, with throngs of followers, who are challenging the unidirectional “trickle-down” structure of the fashion industry.
Today, social media platforms have overtaken traditional media influence both within and outside of fashion. And with this, the power of fashion editors such as Wintour is diminishing significantly.
Many words will flow regarding Wintour’s departure as editor-in-chief, but nowhere near as many as what she oversaw at the helm of the world’s biggest fashion magazine.
Jye Marshall, Lecturer, Fashion Design, School of Design and Architecture, Swinburne University of Technology and Rachel Lamarche-Beauchesne, Senior Lecturer in Fashion Enterprise, Torrens University Australia
The question of whether fast fashion can ever be sustainable has become increasingly heated since the advent of ultrafast fashion, where brands produce on demand and sell directly online.
By Harriette Richards, RMIT University and Jon Hewitt, RMIT University
Last week, the ultrafast fashion brand Princess Polly received B Corp certification. This certification is designed to accredit for-profit businesses that provide social impact and environmental benefit.
Established on the Gold Coast in 2010, a 50% stake in Princess Polly was acquired by United States-based A.K.A. Brands in 2018.Since then, it has grown its global reach as a low-cost, high-turnover online retailer.
So can ultrafast fashion ever be sustainable?
Who is Princess Polly?
Princess Polly distinguishes itself from other fast fashion retailers through a mission to “make on-trend, sustainable fashion accessible to everyone”.
As part of this mission, Princess Polly is a participant of the United Nations Global Compact, which commits them to sustainable procurement. The 2024 Baptist World Aid Ethical Fashion Report placed them in the top 20% of 460 global brands assessed.
Yet, on the sustainability rating website Good On You, Princess Polly receives a “Not Good Enough” grade, due to their lack of action on reducing plastic and textile waste or protecting biodiversity in their supply chains, and the absence of evidence that they pay their workers a living wage.
Regardless of how they make their clothes, Princess Polly produces a lot. At the time of writing, the brand has 3,920 different styles available on their website (excluding shoes and accessories).
Of those, 34% (1,355 styles) are listed as “lower impact,” which means items are made using materials such as organic cotton and linen, recycled polyester and cellulose fabrics. There are also 720 items on the website currently listed as “new”: their daily new arrivals means they are constantly adding fresh items for sale.
Overproduction, no matter what the garments are made from, is inherently wasteful. Even when clothes are purchased (and 10–40% of the clothing produced each year is not sold), the poor quality of fast fashion items means that they end up in landfill faster and stay there for longer, contributing to the ongoing environmental disaster.
Sustainability communication
In Australia, 1,096 companies are accredited with B Corp status, including 152 fashion businesses.
B Corp assesses the practices of a company as a whole, rather than focusing on one single social or environmental issue. Businesses must score at least 80 out of a possible 250+ points in the B Impact Assessment to achieve accreditation.
Organisations are assessed in five key areas – community, customers, environment, governance and workers – and must meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability.
Third-party accreditations such as B Corp, Fairtrade and Global Organic Textile Standard are often used by brands as a marketing tool.
These certifications can enhance consumer trust without the need for detailed explanations. For fashion brands, accreditation can help them stand out in a crowded market. They can provide legitimacy, attract ethical fashion consumers and reduce consumer scepticism.
While B Corp aims to provide assurance to consumers, activists have accused it of greenwashing. In 2022, the organisation came under fire for accrediting Nespresso, a brand owned by Nestlé, which has a reputation for poor worker rights and sourcing policies.
B Corp is now facing renewed condemnation for issuing certification to Princess Polly.
Who needs certification?
Other B Corp certified Australian fashion brands such as Clothing the Gaps and Outland Denim have built their reputations on their ethical credentials. For values-driven fashion-based social enterprises such as these, accreditations can provide valuable guarantees regarding ethical processes.
According to our research, however, there are several barriers fashion-based social enterprises face when pursuing ethical accreditation.
The cost of accreditation, both financial and in terms of time, skills and resourcing, is a significant challenge. And there is no certification that covers all aspects of environmental sustainability and ethical production. As a result, fashion-based social enterprises often require multiple accreditations to fully communicate the breadth of their ethical commitments.
Despite the costs involved, if fashion-based social enterprises don’t acquire certain certifications they risk being ineligible for government grants and tenders, such as social procurement contracts.
Differences between fashion-based social enterprises and fast fashion brands are stark. While Clothing the Gaps, Outland Denim and Princess Polly now all hold B Corp certification, the former score much more highly on the B Impact Assessment.
The value and credibility of the certification is diminished when it extends to unsustainable ultrafast fashion.
Is it possible for fast fashion to ever be sustainable?
The question of whether fast fashion can ever be sustainable has become increasingly heated since the advent of ultrafast fashion, where brands produce on demand and sell directly online.
Fast fashion took seasonal trends from high fashion runways and made them available to consumers at low costs within weeks. Ultrafast fashion takes trends from social media and reproduces them extremely cheaply for mass consumption within days.
Both fast and ultrafast fashion’s low-cost, high-volume models encourage consumers to value quantity over quality. Using permanent sales and discounts, these brands incentivise multiple purchases of items that may never actually be worn. Online “micro trends” and “haul” videos further spur this overconsumption.
The overconsumption of fast fashion means lots of it ends up in landfill.Dipanjan Pal/Unsplash
Princess Polly may be using more sustainable textiles and engaging in more ethical forms of production than some of its ultrafast fashion counterparts. But this is not enough when the business model itself is unsustainable. Accreditations such as B Corp are unable to account for this nuance.
Princess Polly claims to make sustainable fashion, yet it is also proudly trend driven. As an ultrafast fashion brand, it relies on overproduction and overconsumption. The idea that this can ever be “sustainable” is simply an oxymoron.
Harriette Richards, Senior Lecturer, School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT University and Jon Hewitt, Lecturer, Fashion and Textile Design, RMIT University
Clothes communicate a great deal of information about us, including our social position and the causes we espouse.
By Sarah Richmond
With a few exceptions, philosophers have had little to say about clothes. Maybe this is because the topic seems frivolous, or feminine, unworthy of the attention of a predominantly male collection of thinkers.
Perhaps, too, the transience of fashion, and the fact that clothes belong – quite literally – to the domain of mere appearance, also has something to do with it. In A Philosopher Looks at Clothes, an engaging and informative book, Kate Moran, philosophy professor at Brandeis University in the US, urges us to think again.
As Moran points out, clothing looms large in life. Every day we dress, deciding how many layers to wear and whether we need a coat – or might a cardigan suffice? We gaze critically at other people’s choices (“OMG, those shoes!”). We wonder how to rise to the challenge of an imminent Eurovision-themed party.
From a historical point of view, also, our species-specific recourse to clothes stretches back to the earliest human society. In mythical time, it begins with Adam’s and Eve’s discovery, in shame, that they were naked. If fashion is transient, clothes, per se, are not.
Clothes, Moran tells us, serve three basic purposes: protection, modesty and decoration. At once, these introduce questions of deep philosophical interest. Are the purposes equally important? Why, throughout human history, have we refused to settle merely for protection, desiring for example that a hat should be of some favoured colour or shape? To what extent do our decorative choices express our personal identity? Do clothes ever qualify as works of art? Why is modesty an abiding concern, given that we all know the contours of the unclothed body?
In many contexts, and especially today, clothes invite ethical and political assessment. Clothes communicate a great deal of information about us, including our social position and the causes we espouse.
We may knowingly exploit this, choosing to flaunt an obviously expensive garment or to wear our football team’s scarf. In other cases the meanings are imposed. The uniforms forced on prisoners, for example, emphasise subordination and erase their individuality.
Poignantly, research into textile history has uncovered a streak of resistance in even the most ill-treated captives. In concentration camps during the second world war some prisoners altered their uniforms, or mended them, or added pockets. As Moran remarks, these actions were not just practical; their aim, too, was to “recover some sense of identity and dignity”.
Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch (1906).Thiel Gallery, Stockholm
In the brilliantly conceived series by Cambridge University Press to which this title belongs, each author discusses some general topic from a perspective that is philosophically informed and at the same time personal.
We need more books like these, to counteract the entrenched pretence of disinterestedness in philosophy. (Nietzsche, exceptionally, saw through it, denouncing philosophers as “advocates who do not want to be seen as such … sly spokesmen for prejudices that they christen as ‘truths’”.)
Knowledge of the significance, in an author’s life, of her subject-matter enriches the reader’s imaginative experience of a book. Describing herself as an “ardent hobbyist” who sews her own clothes, Moran provides an additional facet to her account of today’s fashion industry and its scandalous environmental costs.
The reader knows that Moran herself has found an alternative. This lends a certain authority to her judgement that, however futile it may seem for any one person to step off the fast-fashion bus: “There is an important moral difference between being inefficacious and being innocent.”
Moran shows how many areas of philosophy can illuminate the phenomenon of clothes: not only ethics and political thought, but also aesthetics, theories of communication, of personal identity, of gender and cultural appropriation.
For readers unfamiliar with academic philosophy, these forays offer a path into a rich conceptual landscape. Along the way, we are offered a multitude of riveting facts. Who would have guessed that pink has not always been for girls, and blue for boys? And there are pictures, too. My highlight was the “revenge dress” that Princess Diana wore to a gala dinner in the midst of hostilities with Charles, in a successful bid to divert press attention from his appearance on TV.
Sarah Richmond, Honorary Associate Professor of Philosophy, University College London (UCL).
