Welcome to Big Style, a portal to a world where clothing meets culture, authored by Senior Style Reporter Rachel Tashjian. Want to send thoughts, wishes or feedback? Or: have a question big, small or especially strange? (Where to find the best butter, the best butter dish or the best butter scene in cinema history?) Reach me here: bigstyle@newsletters.cnn.com   

Mentioned in this issue: radiant babies, men dressing like Robert Mapplethorpe, the power of obvious ideas, going wow for Chloé Zhao, paintings with great outfits, and more… 

Did a glamorous pal forward this email to you? Click here to receive the newsletter yourself, which is known in the business as “subscribing.”

America is hurtling towards its 250th anniversary with a confusing mix of apprehension and jingoism. Some 76% of Americans say cost of living is their biggest economic concern. And polls suggest other countries’ views on the US have soured. 

But at least one group is feeling all razzle-dazzle about the US: European luxury brands. Over the past month, labels like Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton have docked on our shores to show us their fancy, expensive Cruise collections. (A “Cruise” collection has very little to do with boats and is mostly an outdated term for the clothes that appear in stores between the spring and fall. Packed with celebrities and occurring outside the usual schedule of fashion shows, they are a fabulous marketing opportunity for brands, although in truth, few people who aren’t glued to the Vogue Runway app know they’re happening.)  

This past week, I went on two cruises (if you will) in New York: Gucci, in Times Square, and Louis Vuitton, in the Upper East Side’s recently refurbished Frick Museum. As I got my sea legs, I realized: Americans are the world’s most honest consumers of luxury goods. We have no discernment, and that is our power.   

At Gucci, staged at outrageous expense in the middle of Times Square, the brand’s artistic director Demna sent out finance and tech bros, their suits pinched by big backpacks; it girls feeling themselves in peacoats worn over seemingly nothing; and fur-coated gals flapping the keys to their dumpy walkups around their fingers. Tom Brady modeled a Tom of Finland-inspired getup (what’s going on with all these guys doing Mapplethorpe drag?) and Paris Hilton served a 1970s version of an overexposed socialite. Laptops jutted out of too-small “it bags,” because we Americans don’t really have the time or patience to find a bag that looks good and works; we just get what’s expensive or dope or both and make it work.  

This is today’s luxury consumer, at least in America: tacky and feeling great.  

Here is every mid-commute finance bro who fancies himself Patrick Bateman. (Getty Images)

Demna, who arrived at Gucci a little over a year ago and is tasked with a daunting turnaround, has always been a documentarian of style as much as a designer: his muses at his former house Balenciaga included Berghain regulars and security guards. 

Now, he is attempting something more meta: showing shoppers as they are, not as luxury marketers and image-makers wish them to be. This is the style one arrives at when spending every dollar feels like balling out or getting scammed; when every grocery or electric bill feels outrageous, and thus putting a $3,000 handbag on a credit card feels like a dangerous coup you deserve. 

Demna’s ambition failed in his recent Milan show, which was just too cynical. But here in the heart of Times Square, where there was less sturm und drang (and more drag and drag: hello Lady Bunny!) — it ROCKED!  

Just a New York gal in her status fur, pulling out her phone to add a Resy notification for an opening at an overrated restaurant. (Getty Images)

Fashion is supposed to be the business of aspirational mirage. Look at recent Chanel or Dior ads, and you see elegantly dressed women in very pretty clothes enjoying themselves. Happy! But also: inaccurate. Not because we are unhappy (surely, some of us are happy??), but because most luxury consumers do not wear clothes that way: understated, confident, plucking the best pieces like an art curator and combining them with cultured panache. In New York, you see a guy in Hoka sneakers and black jeans and an Hermes “H” belt; a woman in Fendi-print rainboots and a Gucci logo handbag and a Fear of God sweatshirt.  

But Demna is the only designer brave or crazy enough to show us who we actually are — with tenderness. 

Maybe Nicolas Ghesquière, of Louis Vuitton, is getting there too. He is a much more sophisticated designer than Demna, but at his Wednesday evening show at the Frick, where the brand recently announced a three-year partnership, he plunked a collaboration with Keith Haring into the middle of his mystical collection of technical ruffles and pop-meets-Renaissance leathers and cord work.  

A collab with Haring is not daring — or is it? (Getty Images)

Could there be anything more uncool in 2026 than a Keith Haring collab? It’s so Uniqlo, so outdated streetwear brand, so ubiquitous to the point of meaninglessness. And yet its obviousness — those radiant figures on the back of a leather vest, on high-top sneakers, on little bags, on a mini-smock — was charming in that very American way, where at the end of the day a good slice of pie is better than any dessert and Bruce Springsteen’s reverb sounds patriotic regardless of his embittered lyrics. 

Will people buy Demna’s Gucci or Vuitton’s Haring? I’ll bet yes, because it’s rare to see designers look upon that eager consumer not as a father figure hoping to teach them something, but totally without irony. 

Louis Vuitton didn’t simply invite Zendaya, Emma Stone and Jennifer Connelly to stare at the Frick’s Gilded Age-assembled collection of fabulous paintings as its Haring wares strode by. Artist Tschabalala Self was among the contemporary artists in the audience, and I asked her to connect the dots by telling us the three best-dressed paintings in the Frick’s collection. 

Immaculate! (Courtesy of the Frick Collection)

Jean-Honoré Fragonard

The Progress of Love: Reverie, ca. 1790–91

The Frick Collection, New York

“The Progress of Love: Reverie depicts a young, daydreaming woman in an 18th-century French garden. Created by the Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the painting’s subject reclines opulently against a monumental stone pedestal topped by a lush orb and plump cherub. The woman is immaculately dressed from head to toe. Her flowing fabric cascades elegantly and naturally echoes the silhouette of the foliage behind her.”

That orange dress: early athleisure? (Courtesy of the Frick Collection)

Anthony van Dyck 
James Stanley, Lord Strange, Later Seventh Earl of Derby, with His Wife, Charlotte, and Their Daughter, ca. 1636
The Frick Collection, New York

“At the center of this work, painted by the Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck around 1636, stands a little girl in a distinctive orange dress. The color refers to her 'orange' heritage, as a descendant of William of Orange. Here we see that fashion can, and often does, transcend pure aesthetics to communicate a deeper political identity. James Stanley and his wife, Charlotte, are dressed in elegant clothing typical of the period, with Charlotte adorned in an ice-blue gown. The color of her dress is light and delicate, a reference to her femininity and a life of leisure.” 

Some very functional ensembles. (Courtesy of the Frick Collection) 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Three Soldiers, 1568

The Frick Collection, New York

 “In Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 16th-century painting, we come to understand fashion through uniformity and function. The three soldiers depicted in this work wear the same garb, reflecting both their station and responsibility within the society at large. It is not through their clothing that their personalities are understood, but rather through their actions. The revelry in which they partake whilst wearing their uniforms reveals their humanity and a softness that stands in contrast to the stoic nature of their military apparel. Here, we learn that personal style is not only expressed through what you wear, but also through how you perform.” 

Let us take a moment to recognize that no one looks as cool at Cannes as director Chloé Zhao. She is a jury member — there to promote nothing (except perhaps her own discernment and genius???) — and every outfit she’s worn, like a spiked and spotted Schiaparelli suit and a satin Prada dress with big mitten-y pockets, is an oddball smash. She looks at once highly stylized and extremely liberated.  

Chloé Zhao makes an out-there ensemble look like the only choice in the world. (Getty Images) 

Big Style is edited by CNN’s Fiona Sinclair Scott and Miriam Elder.