Crypto News: Peak peacock season

Hey all, Max Berlinger here, a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and your intermittent style correspondent at Bloomberg Pursuits. I hope you're all having a wonderful fall so far and have decorated your home with many gourds and are contemplating what to be for Halloween.

This is the perfect time for me to be writing this newsletter, for two reasons. First, the monthlong, four-city caravan known as Fashion Week just ended in Paris and, second, it's officially fall, which many smart people (like me!) think of as the Best Time of Year for Dressing™.

In the 2007 documentary The September Issue, which depicted the making of Vogue's big fall fashion issue, then-fashion editor Candy Price Pratts said it best: "September is the January of fashion." I love that line of thought.

I'm also loving the new trend in looser, more relaxed suits for the office. Here's how to wear it. Source: Vendors

In the natural world, autumn is a time of, well, death. But for the style-obsessed, it's a time of rebirth, or at very least, reinvention. After those dog days of summer, which are about surviving the heat by way of sartorial subtraction, fall is about addition. Adding clothes, yes, and lovely layers, but also finesse and personality.

Which, of course, brings us to coats. I recently wrote a story about what I think will be the Big Look come winter: long, lean, languorous coats. We dubbed them "Ozempic coats," which I think is pretty funny, but some people didn't get the joke. (As a matter of fact, a couple of brands wouldn't participate in the story because they took issue with that phrase.)

From Burberry to Dries Van Noten, luxury fashion brands embrace the "Ozempic" coat for fall. Source: Vendors

In seasons past, designers have really leaned on bigger, bulky designs. The puffer, for example, has been the coat for a few years, and its proportions had become so voluminous it was edging toward downright unwieldy.

But I think this year we'll see a real return to a long overcoat with a clean, slim silhouette. Something that grazes the body and adds élan and a bit of dynamism to your look. After years of casual wear, people are ready to dress up again and add a little panache to their wardrobes. A coat like this is just a no-brainer—you toss it on over what you're wearing and it just finishes the outfit.

Plus, coats can be part of the "quiet luxury" trend, too. Like Bottega's oversized embossed leather number, which looks expensive without a logo. Source: Bottega Veneta

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The suit hasn't been much of a topic of conversation since the pandemic, but like a cockroach that refuses to die, it's rearing its head once again. Although as with many things in fashion today, it's taking a more relaxed approached.

The revival is coming about because younger guys are embracing it as a novelty—it's not something that's required of them, so they see it as a fun option to add to their rotation.

After years of strict, body-hugging tailoring, workwear gets a roomy reinvention. Source: Vendors

Post-pandemic, we're seeing it reworked in a looser cut, something with a bit of volume. We're calling it "Armani Light" (sorry, I think that's a funny name, too).

It's "light" because we haven't yet seen the linebacker shoulder pads and super-pleated folds typical of the late 1980s, but there's just something a bit more elegant and laid-back in this new type of tailoring. You can read more about it here.

I chatted with Laura Montgomery, the costume designer of the much-hyped new film The Apprentice—out this weekend!—which is about the early days of Donald Trump's real estate career.

The film takes place in the late-1970s and ends around 1983, before those more dramatic Armani looks took hold of Wall Street, but there's still a lot of interesting insight.

And there's also Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, who brings her own glorious fashion to the fore. Photographer: Pief Weyman

What I really enjoyed is how the clothes reinforce the trajectories of its two main characters. There's Trump, who goes from collecting overdue rent at his father's public housing buildings in cheap suits to a mogul wearing Brioni while slapping his name on shiny midtown skyscrapers.

His mentor is the notoriously slimy lawyer Roy Cohn, who has a florid sense of style but ultimately succumbs to a darker fate, which Montgomery underscores with her fashion choices.

The movie, starring Sebastian Stan as Trump and Succession's Jeremy Strong in a scenery-chewing turn as Cohn, is fun and informative, an origin story that's especially relevant this fall. The clothes certainly help conjure a very specific milieu. I recommend it.

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Since we're talking about fall fashion, check out this story I wrote for GQ about why a hoodie and shorts has become broadly accepted as the best outfit to wear for fall. While I don't personally wear the combo a lot, it generally looks great.

And if you're interested in more weird trends, read this other GQ piece from a few years back that explored the meme-ification of gray sweatpants—and the idea of gray sweatpants season—which became a lurid shorthand term that seems inclined to turn up yet again.

My expertise on suits aside, I'm not a big suit-wearer. But this Alex Mill double-breasted suit with pleated pants certainly looks good!

Worth a watch: The Secret Behind Zara's Fast Fashion Success Source: Bloomberg Originals

As for Fashion Week coverage, I tend to read either Rachel Tashjian in the Washington Post or Cathy Horyn at New York. Because as Kamala Harris's mother might have said: Fashion does not just fall out of a coconut tree. It exists within the context of all that came before it—and both writers are great at diving into the sociocultural history of it all.

But even better than that, Tashjian and Horyn are great at describing clothes—I know that may sound strange, but this is really hard to do when most everyone these days can see the clothes online as soon as they hit the runway. Tashjian's story on "Who will be next at Chanel?" is fun, and Horyn's review of designer Jonathan Anderson's always-provoking collections for Loewe was another highlight for me.

Similarly, Bloomberg's Watch Club recently discussed the serious history behind this Dracula watch that has its own coffin. Source: Chronoswiss

Everyone went nuts for the Saint Laurent show this year, the first part of which featured slouchy suits (see above!), ties, glasses and pompadours all based on the designer Yves Saint Laurent's personal style. You can watch a video of the show but beware, it's very chic. The brand also recently introduced some marketing images featuring my personal favorite icon, Chloe Sevigny. They're on a roll!

But overall, I found the fashion weeks to be pretty uneventful. It feels like we're in a holding pattern because of a softening luxury market and so many open creative director positions at some of the larger fashion houses.

The big news was that Alessandro Michele, formerly of Gucci, presented his first runway collection for his new employer, Valentino, and it looked very much like a continuation of his work (i.e. idiosyncratic poets from the Romantic Age meet twee Wes Anderson hipsters). The other big thing to note is luxury behemoth Chanel is still without a creative director and everyone is gossiping about who it could be. Bets are on Hedi Slimane, who just left his post at Celine.

Also: Nike just replaced its North America boss ahead of the arrival of incoming Chief Executive Officer Elliott Hill. Photographer: Nike

On a different note, I highly, highly recommend the FX show English Teacher. It's laugh out loud funny, totally charming and, I think, an irreverent yet earnest depiction of the insanity of what it must feel like to be both a student and a teacher in the social media era.

My big podcast listen is always Pivot, hosted by Scott Galloway, a professor and businessman, and longtime tech journalist Kara Swisher. They have terrific chemistry as they plow through current events, mostly covering the big political, business and tech stories of the day with humor and insight.

If you love cars, you'll also find that killer rat-a-tat-tat when Bloomberg's bi-coastal duo of Hannah Elliott and Matt Miller talk shop with industry experts and auto enthusiasts. Source: 731

I've been enjoying the New Yorker culture podcast Critics At Large as well. The hosts do a great job of extracting one or two items in the zeitgeist (say, the Miranda July book All Fours) and take the big picture view such as exploring depictions of middle age in literature.

And don't miss this story by New York Times music critic Jon Caramonica on the pop star Chappell Roan. Like many, I became obsessed with her and her music in the spring and summer and her rocky relationship with being a public persona. Can you blame her? She's 26, and in the course of just a few months went from basically anonymous to one of the more famous people in the world. Caramonica does a fair and deft exploration of her rise and dovetails it with we want and expect from famous people today.

If what you want from famous people is a chance at owning their stuff, Christie's is selling Angelina Jolie's vintage Ferrari 250 GT. Photographer: Alberto Pizzoli/Getty Images

And lastly, it never fails to impress me how stupid Emily in Paris is, and how I continue to be charmed by it. Much like the show, the titular character is annoying yet captivating (to me, at least). She goes to Rome in the second half of the most recent season, and it's a nice change of pace. Same stupidity, different backdrop! Arrivederci, Emily!

Why Hollywood loves horror movies, in four charts. Illustration by Ariel Davis

In the past decade, horror movies have captured a growing share of the North American box office and now regularly account for about $1 billion worth of annual ticket sales, or 10% of moviegoing in the US and Canada. As we approach Halloween, click to see why … if you dare.

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