Harry was said to be nostalgic for his old life after returning to the UK for his grandad’s funeral.
Scene: a hotel room in New York, one spring morning in 2013. I’m staring at a photograph of a young soldier with the word TRUTH emblazoned underneath her tentative smile in white font and a red box like a Barbara Kruger, pinned to Vivienne Westwood’s “Climate Revolution” DIY top.
John Maynard Keynes once observed that dating from “say, to two thousand years before Christ—down to the beginning of the 18th century, there was no very great change in the standard of life of the average man living in the civilised centres of the earth. Ups and downs certainly.
It was the mid-2010s: Taylor Swift was in her 1989 era, filled with crop tops and Polaroids. As notable as her songs (“Blank Space” remains a bop) were her crew of high-profile friends, known collectively as The Squad. (Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, and Lorde were a few of the members.) The culmination of this very public display of friendship was Swift’s indelible 2016 Fourth of July bash in Rhode Island, attended by Blake Lively, Cara Delevingne, and Uzo Aduba and involving matching swimsuits.
This summer’s key trends include low-slung parachute pants, cropped T-shirts, and fisherman sandals with socks. But the look that’s gained the most traction? All-white ensembles, typically combined with a minimalist silhouette (courtesy of the post-Succession obsession with quiet luxury). Jennifer Lopez and Hailey Bieber fully embraced the sleek look of the season at a white-themed, celebrity-packed party in the Hamptons, wearing two different takes on a white summer dress.