EDITOR'S LETTER: CREATURES OF HABIT

Hello there Couturesquies! Welcome to the CREATURES OF HABIT issue, our October/November exploration of routines, status quos, traditions, the patterns that we fall into and seek out as beings, their rippling effects - both positive and negative, and how/when are we supposed to subscribe to them or break them. This is the time of year where our daily rituals shift from those of the warm summer months into the moisture rich, layer filled ones of the fall and winter. Time begins to slow. Days slide into night earlier and earlier.

This issue poses many questions: What habits do we as a society and industry have? Are they helpful or harmful? Do we break them, if so how? As we near the end of this decade, how have we changed the status quo for the better? Or even then, have we changed at all? Are we indeed creatures of habit, doomed no matter how you spin it to fall into patterns that don't serve us any good?

With the two major fall holidays - Halloween and Thanksgiving - around the corner, and the season getting me deep within my namesake feels, the topic of habits and traditions couldn't be more poignant. October sees the reintroduction of spooky szn staples into our daily consumption - horror films, skeletons, and (the spookiest of all) pumpkin spice - as well as an opportunity to dive into the realms and histories of the supernatural, spiritual, and, yes, the occult. While November gives us the space to reflect on the ideas of tradition. As author Matthew Scully once said, “Sometimes tradition and habit are just that, comfortable excuses to leave things be, even when they are unjust and unworthy."

Halloween, the supernatural, and horror - though October traditions - take us to a place that daily life many times doesn't allow us to go. "The horror film creates a space for dealing with demons, unstable behaviours and our deepest, darkest perversions," says Sophia Satchell-Baeza for i-D. She further quotes film critic and author Martyn Conterio on why horror is so mused, "Confronting death. Embracing the irrational. Acknowledging the sheer weirdness of being. The meeting of the known and the fantastical. The recognition of beauty in ugliness....all commendable attributes of big screen terror, for sure." We see horror explored in fashion collections season after season, from the shows of Lee Alexander McQueen to Calvin Klein SS 2018, Comme Des Garçons AW 2019, Prada FW 2019, and Simone Rocha AW19. As Liam Hess put it, "Horror has an uncanny ability to hold up a mirror to the times we live in."

So, that’s what we’re gonna do this month. Try to hold the mirror to the routines we inhabit. Question (and try to answer) where our traditions and habits have taken us as well as predict where they will take us in the future. How does the theme CREATURES OF HABIT speak to you? Please send in your writing, industry essay, editorial, short film, illustration, photography, collage, et al—through our Submit page, and have a good autumnal season.

All the love,

Autumn Breeze

Editor in Chief