Very Cabmate #10

From JW Anderson's New Approach to Thoughts on the Original Hermès Birkin Auction. Plus: The Most Timeless Pieces on Sale

Jul 12, 2025

Filtered through a Cabmate lens on the fashion industry and beyond, here’s this week’s round-up of what to see, read, listen to, and shop:

Very Cabmate

Last week, shoe designer Emme Parsons shared her three go-to summer sandals as part of our Style Staples series. Two of those pairs, along with many other styles, are now 40% off.

Style Staples with Emme Parsons

Jul 5

Emme Parsons launched her eponymous brand in 2017, starting with just three sandal styles. Her goal: To create silhouettes that are both timeless and relevant.

Read full story

The Loop Heel, ~~$615~~ $369. The Hugo, ~~$515~~ $309

Jonathan Anderson takes a new approach at JW Anderson. The brand has announced it will stop staging runway shows and instead present its collections through a store concept—a personally curated space, selling all sorts of art and craft objects as well as clothes and accessories, described by Anderson as:

“This is my world, what I collect, that’s part of me.”

The Resort 2026 lookbook, featuring friends of the brand like Luca Guadagnino and Bella Freud, offers an early look at what’s to come: clothing and objects that reflect a more intimate, real direction. This is authentic brand-building—done very well.

JW Anderson, Resort 2026. Photos: Courtesy of JW Anderson

At Centre Pompidou, Wolfgang Tillmans’ exhibition Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us exhibition us explores over thirty-five years of the artist’s work—spanning portraiture, still life, documentary, abstraction, and multimedia formats.

With the Accès libre par Celine initiative, Celine is offering select days of free admission to the public: August 28, and September 22, 2025.

Summer in the city: (as always) Fran says what we’re all thinking.

Charlotte Chesnais demonstrates that timeless jewellery is never bound by gender. Shot by Charlotte Stouvenot the brand’s sculptural pieces—seen here on Marco van den Hove—carry that sentiment effortlessly.

In Sans Toi, an 80-page book created with designer Kostas Murkudis, photographer Jonas Heintschel captures time in stillness. If timeless storytelling were a book, this would be it.

Sans Toi Jonas Heintschel — *Sans Toi* by Jonas Heintschel available at IDEA, £18

Something that's decidedly not very Cabmate but does need a little note: The original Hermès Birkin being sold for 7 million euros.

Jane Birkin, known for her activism and humanitarian work with organizations like UNICEF and Médecins du Monde, donated the original bag in 1994 to the French AIDS charity Association Solidarité Sida. Worn and marked with stickers from those very same charities, it was later sold in 2000 to Paris-based collector and vintage store owner Catherine Benier for an undisclosed sum—though certainly nowhere near 7 million.

This latest sale, with the bag now ending up in the hands of a private collector rather than supporting a cause, says more about the times we live in than the bag itself. One can only imagine what Birkin would have made of it. Luckily, as always, some things can’t be bought — least of all, taste. Let’s leave it there.