Everything Ain’t For Everybody
+ bring back gatekeeping, rent a Birkin, Temu sartorial subplots and more
Hey, hi, hello! Welcome back to Fashion Tingz.
This week I went to a live Threads of Conversation podcast recording, hosted by my Substack friend turned IRL friend Georgia Graham. Taking place at The Groucho Club in Soho, it was a great way to spend a warm spring evening.
W. David Marx, the American fashion and culture writer based in Tokyo, director at Human Made, EIC at The New Japan, and author of Ametora, Status and Culture, and Blank Space, was the guest in question.
I’m familiar with Marx, having read some of his books, and I’m intrigued by his thought process and approach to work. I also got to meet some Fashion Tingz readers in the flesh, and I couldn’t be more grateful! Community at its finest.
— J’Nae xoxo
IN THIS EDITION: Gatekeeping is back in fashion. Lemaire releases a controversial campaign in China. Gap is on the up as vibes translate to value. Saks Global trims head office corporate workforce. Glitch goth is the self-aware aesthetic for 2026. $800 a month can get you a Birkin with a catch.
“Everything ain’t for everybody.”
When Law Roach dropped that line on TikTok, I had to admit it struck a nerve. Because it’s something I’ve been thinking about recently, but I don’t have his credentials or star power, so it’s not like I’d admit it out loud. We’re taught that with enough effort, taste, or openness, we should be able to appreciate and belong in everything. But this just isn’t the case, because it’s not how the world works. What makes the line hit is that it gives permission to draw boundaries without dressing them up as failure or closed-mindedness. Yeah, it can feel uncomfortable to admit out loud, because initially it sounds like exclusion. But I think it’s more about alignment. Taste, values, timing, even identity, all of these shape what resonates with us. Not everything is supposed to be for everyone. If it did, individuality would collapse into sameness, and what a bore that would be.
Saying something so eyebrow-raising can feel riskier than going along with the crowd in this day and age. It requires a kind of self-trust, or a couple of hundred thousand followers to back up such a sentiment. It’s easy to feel like we need to justify our preferences, or soften them so they’re more acceptable. It’s one thing to say a trend isn’t for us; it’s another to accept that we might not be the audience for certain spaces, conversations, or even people, without taking it all so personally. This is gatekeeping rebranded.
In an era where fashion is algorithmically flattened, endlessly duped, and delivered next-day, the idea of gatekeeping feels almost… radical. Or at least, deliciously contrarian. For years, gatekeeping has been cast as fashion’s villain: exclusionary, elitist, the final boss of the “you can’t sit with us” brigade. But Roach’s provocation and the growing chorus behind the bring back gatekeeping movement suggest a shift. Not toward snobbery for snobbery’s sake, but toward something more nuanced: discernment.
At its core, gatekeeping isn’t just about locking people out. It’s about filtering. Historically, fashion has always had gates — editors, buyers, stylists, subcultures — deciding who gets access and who doesn’t. Who gets to participate, who stays on top, and who’s pushed to the sidelines. Think of Anna Wintour shaping decades of taste at Vogue, or the tight-knit circles around early streetwear scenes where access wasn’t bought, it was earned.
Before social media, taste trickled down. Now it floods. The internet didn’t just democratize fashion; it detonated it. Anyone can access runway looks, archive references, and styling hacks within seconds... Which is a good and a bad thing. But it also means everything is everywhere, all at once. Trends? They peak and die in the same week. Personal style? The algorithm and big tech swallow that. So when people say “bring back gatekeeping,” maybe what they’re really asking is: can we slow down? Can we care again?
Seen this way, gatekeeping protects meaning. Take subcultures, for example. Whether it’s punk, goth, or niche corners of streetwear, these spaces have historically used gatekeeping to preserve identity. Not to exclude for sport, but to ensure that what’s being worn means something. When everyone adopts the aesthetic without understanding its roots, it risks becoming costume. The hyper-visibility of fashion has made it incredibly easy to participate, which I’m all for, but much harder to belong beyond surface-level optics. Gatekeeping, in its healthier form, doesn’t always shut the door. Sometimes it deepens the conversation.
If we’re honest, the bring back gatekeeping discourse is also a reaction to burnout. Trend cycles have become so aggressive that they border on absurd. Micro-trends flare up and fizzle out before parcels and one-click orders even arrive. Fast fashion, the high street, even premium brands are getting in on the action, thriving amid the chaos. But the more accessible everything is, the more disposable it becomes. Gatekeeping pushes back. It resists the idea that style is something you can simply buy into overnight. It suggests that taste requires time, context, and a bit of restraint when and where applicable.
Of course, fashion houses didn’t just stumble into gatekeeping; they engineered it. Hermès is the textbook case. The Birkin bag is strategically elusive. You don’t just walk in and buy one, heaven forbid. There’s a dance that has to be played beforehand: purchase history, relationships, timing. The barrier isn’t just financial, it’s psychological. And it works because the Birkin becomes a narrative of access. Similarly, Supreme built its empire on controlled scarcity. Drops, queues, limited runs — be there or miss out. The gate wasn’t so fiercely locked and guarded, but it wasn’t obvious either.
Gatekeeping can misfire, though. When brands lean too hard into artificial exclusivity without cultural substance, it feels hollow. Consumers today are savvy; we can smell when scarcity is manufactured without meaning. That’s when gatekeeping stops feeling like curation and starts feeling like manipulation. And I don’t know about you, but that’s a game I want no part of.
Critics aren’t wrong to be wary. Gatekeeping has historically been used to uphold power structures, keeping fashion elite, inaccessible, and often exclusionary along lines of race, class, and body type. That particular version of gatekeeping deserves to stay in the past. What’s emerging now is less about who can’t participate and more about how we all choose to. It’s about resisting the pressure to adopt every trend, buy every drop, or perform every aesthetic. We don’t have to buy something just because we saw it on TikTok, and we don’t have to shop in the same stores that everyone on the internet and their mothers are heading to. We have a choice! We have free will!
So, we’ve established that gatekeeping is having a moment. Not in its old form, but something adjacent is lingering in the air. These are hyper-visible times we live in, where opacity is a luxury. When everything is documented, the undisclosed becomes desirable. When everything is available, restraint reads as taste. This new era of gatekeeping is about meaning, preserving the personal in a world that constantly pushes for the performative.
So maybe Roach is right. Not everything is for everybody. And if that means I can get my hands on archive goods and thrift gems I’ve been hunting down for years, I’m good with that. Just don’t come for me.
Lemaire is in hot water after Chinese netizens call out the brand for offensive campaign imagery. The French fashion house recently unveiled a campaign for its Objets Senteur collection featuring a long braided linen piece called “Tresse.” To many Chinese viewers, the imagery echoed the Qing Dynasty queue, a hairstyle imposed under duress and tied to memories of cultural subjugation. The campaign landed just as the brand was celebrating the opening of its largest flagship store in Shanghai — a moment intended to signal expansion, not cultural missteps. The brand admitted it had “not sufficiently considered differences in perception and sensitivity across cultural contexts,” a sentence that reads less like contrition and more like a well-tailored shrug. This story is a familiar one in fashion: a reminder that symbols are not empty vessels ripe for the taking. They arrive preloaded with history, politics, and memory. And when those layers are ignored, controversy is bound to follow.
Gap, once the patron saint of mall basics, is behaving like it has a personality again, and the receipts prove it. Over the past year, the brand has been on a campaign hot streak: a viral splash with K-pop group Katseye, a spring push starring Parker Posey that piggybacked on her White Lotus moment, and a carousel of collaborations with labels that actually have cultural currency: Sandy Liang, Cult Gaia, Beis, and Madhappy. Behind the scenes, Zac Posen has been rerouting Gap into Hollywood’s slipstream, dressing everyone from Timothée Chalamet to Anne Hathaway in the polished GapStudio line. And, in a plot twist shareholders rarely get to enjoy, the vibes translated into value. Gap Inc. achieved $844 million in net income in fiscal 2024, with the flagship brand leading the charge as fourth-quarter 2025 sales were up 8%.
Is Ganni okay? CEO Laura du Rusquec slipped out the door last week, and interim executive Hans Hoegstedt has taken the reins quietly, but at a moment that’s anything but. The brand has spent recent seasons chasing “progressive luxury,” trading Copenhagen for Paris Fashion Week and nudging prices upward in the process. The ambition was clear: evolve from cult favourite to global contender. The result, however, is a label caught mid-metamorphosis. It’s no longer the breezy, accessible darling it once was, and it’s not yet fully convincing in its new, rarified lane either.
My favourite magazine shop in London, magCulture, is now open at Selfridges. The shop selected 200 magazines for the space, and in my humble opinion, their curation level is unmatched. You never know what niche zine or independent publication you're going to stumble upon, and that’s the beauty of it. Visit with a healthy budget and an empty tote bag.
Saks Global has decided its corporate headquarters could do with a little streamlining, trimming 16% of its headcount. In practical terms, that means about 640 employees will be shown the door, less than 4% of the company’s roughly 16,000-strong workforce. The pruning, notably, stops at the front lines: store staff, distribution crews, and everyone outside HQ can carry on, untouched by this particular bout of cutbacks.
Registration is now open for the next round of the INSIDE LVMH Certificate. In roughly 30 hours, you can collect insider insights and a certificate that adds a bit of polish to your portfolio. Just don’t linger too long, as applications close May 11.
Miley Cyrus and Disney have drawn a firm line in the sand: the original Hannah Montana wig is not for sale, especially not to Kim K. The logic is simple: if anyone gets custody of that era-defining hairpiece, it’s the person who made it iconic in the first place. And as for letting it go elsewhere, particularly to someone with a reputation for treating vintage pieces badly, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. This had me cackling.
Jennifer Rauchet, wife of Pete Hegseth, the United States Secretary of War, has found herself at the centre of an unexpected sartorial subplot. Whispers are circulating that her White House Correspondents’ Dinner look may have come courtesy of Temu. Observers were quick to note that her petal-pink gown bears a striking resemblance to listings not only on Temu but also on Shein, paired with Steve Madden rhinestone heels and an appliqué bag seemingly sourced from Amazon. Of course, there’s nothing scandalous about a bargain. But the optics do raise an eyebrow: there’s a certain irony in arriving at one of Washington’s most high-profile evenings dressed in globally sourced fast fashion — especially when your household is closely associated with an “America First” ethos.
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has entered her domestic era and turned it into a brand. Her new lifestyle venture, Mémoire, is less a pivot than a logical extension of time well spent at home. At 39, and with a résumé that includes fronting campaigns for Burberry and Tiffany & Co., founding the beauty label Rose Inc (from which she stepped back in 2024), and a 15-year run designing lingerie for Marks & Spencer, Huntington-Whiteley is now setting her sights on interiors.
‘Glitch Goth’ is shaping up to be 2026’s most self-aware contradiction: an aesthetic that insists the error message is the message. In a post-AI visual landscape obsessed with polish and seamlessness, the glitch re-emerges not as failure but as flair. It’s a deliberate fracture in the feed, a hazy splice of past and future. The ingredients have been drifting around for years — distortion here, digital decay there — but only now are they cohering into something more ambitious.
There’s a new $800 a month fast pass to a Birkin, if you’re in the market for one. An invite-only tier called Privée, from membership club Vivrelle, is turning aspiration into a monthly line item: for $800 (on top of a standard membership), you can rotate through a closet stocked with Hermès heavyweights, plus a supporting cast of glitter from Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Bvlgari. Luxury, it seems, is entering its subscription era: not forever, just for now, and billed monthly.
Inspiring your take on gatekeeping🧚♀️I agree, it does preserve culture roots