012: It’s doomsday for the SSENSE sale
012: It’s doomsday for the SSENSE sale
Plus Glossier retinol, underrated Italian leather shoes, and a tinned fish sale for hot girls.
Part offensive strategy, part obituary, today’s send marks the end of an era. Never before has the SSENSE sale given us the length and breadth she served over the last few months. When the sale’s officially over, I might even have to get a hobby.
I can’t remember everything I’ve bought over the duration of the sale, but in writing this email I bought a couple last-dash things at prices too attainable to not immediately attain them. Some $54 Jacquemus poplin boxers and the Gil Rodriguez wrap-around swimsuit for $80 (more info on Private Sale below if you don’t see this price on your end). In the past week, I also purchased a leaning coat rack that’s helping me get my life together before fall.
Role switching, last week’s top clicked links were this Maryam Nassir Zadeh sale at Luisaviaroma (an extra 25% off with FR25), Hereu x Cecilie Bahnsen’s latest shoe collab, and the Hoka x Engineered Garments sneaker collection.
Friends don’t let friends miss out on the last days of the SSENSE sale—share this post to make a friend (and me!) very happy.
What’s new
Central Saint Martins grad by way of Sydney, Australia, Jordan Dalah Studio has landed at Maimoun. A tight edit of deliriously puffy, dreamlike garments fold in visual cues from Where the Wild Things Are, Heathers, and Henry VIII’s heaping mutton arms as immortalized by Hans Holbein the Younger (at least to my eye).
Knits for grownups, Rus released its edition no.5 fall collection: Space Matters. An exercise in “focusing on the tactile and emotional awareness of inhabiting the clothes rather than on the viewer’s perspective,” the collection’s colors were inspired by James Turrell, while its shapes were informed by Ruth Asawa wire sculptures—references worth the out-of-ego experience Rus is reaching for.
As the Glossier customer ages, so too do the brand’s product offerings. A euphemistic “radiant” is the new “dewy,” and Glossier’s new Universal Pro-Retinol is said to achieve just that, plus a suite of other anti-aging effects without the harshness (or muscle, admittedly) of a prescription retinol like tretinoin.
When it comes to exquisitely minimal bath and beauty products, no one does it better than Nature of Things, whose sand-brushed bottles immediately add importance to a vanity or teak board. The contents, too, are upper echelon. A just-released collaboration with Brock Collection seems fitting, featuring fine women’s things for performing one’s toilette: a rejuvenating facial mask, headband, sleeping eye mask, and aromatherapy pillow.
CAMPERLAB, avante garde arm of the Spanish shoe brand, presents Eki, an attention-garnering lug sole that can be found on battered leather and cow hide boots and fluorescent boat shoe styles.
Also of note: Brazil’s biggest fashion brand Farm Rio’s fall collection landed stateside and it’s beautiful, Dr. Martens re-collabed with Suicoke for FW21, and Hunter is the latest victim of British plague Peppa Pig (but actually I’m charmed).
What’s on sale
I’m three pairs deep into Dear Frances’ boot lineup, two of which are the same silhouette in different colors/textures. This Italian-made brand is woefully overlooked considering how spot-on its styles and how high quality the construction. Right now, it’s running a 20% off sale across the entire site with SUMMER20, including SKUs that are already on final sale. You can get my near-and-dear pink Ana boots, usually $760, for just $365.
Nonna’s sale is in full effect, dragging down prices on the season’s more visible cult items—Priscavera’s sunrise pants, patchwork Sea pieces, and looooots of MNZ shoe exclusives. The LA-based shop is easy to love for a million reasons, but a few hundred dollars off is the million and first.
Ulta’s annual 21 Days of Beauty event is like a three week-long Prime Day for drugstore beauty nerds (who maybe also don’t shop on Amazon). The deals change daily, but we have some transparency on what’s coming up—and some things might entice non-regulars. Sunday Riley Tidal is half off on the 7th, Credo Beauty picks including Indie Lee cleanser and squalane facial oil (also stocked at SSENSE) are on sale the 10th, and CosRx pimple patches are 50% off on the 13th.
My MO for tinned fish is just grabbing a different nice-looking tin or two each time I hit the supermarket or if one whispers at me when I’m out. But if you’re more calculating, Patagonia Provisions is having an up-to-40%-off sale, and it’s a good excuse to stock up on reliably good preserved seafood treats. It’s got other things too, like jerky and soup mixes, and my pantry is proof enough that you don’t actually need to go camping to enjoy any of them.
If the coat rack outside my front door hadn’t succumbed to the weight of far too many piled-on winter coats, I wouldn’t have sought out a replacement, and therefore wouldn’t have made my way onto Burke Decor’s email list or heard about their current sale. I’m ultimately grateful to the Pangaia puffer that buckled the rail and started off this Rube Goldberg of buying things, because the sale is quite good—the whole site is 20% off with LAGOON.
Miaou is having the kind of sale that’s good for anyone who was going to buy the thing anyway. Just a small handful of pieces are marked down, and nothing too crazy (up to 30%), but who am I to snub a deal?
When you think about it, Fleur du Mal was like the original Orseund Iris/Mirror Palais type, and even if the web design and general aesthetic framing doesn’t exactly hit, the pieces often do. It’s offering 45-75% off new styles, plus an extra 20% off sale with WORKIT20.
Even if swimsuit shopping season is over for you, Solid & Striped’s sitewide 30% off sale still counts. Obviously, boatloads of swim is there for the taking (including already-discounted styles), but dresses, workout sets, and boxers make good year round investments.
A few more: CVS Epic Beauty Event is like an even more drugstore-y Ulta event, Daily Sleeper lounge dresses and marabou PJs are up to 50% off, PerriconeMD is doing 35% off all skincare with VIP35, linen queens Posse are hosting a tempting online Warehouse Sale, and third-gen Turkish shoe brand Havva is offering 30% off sitewide with GIMME30.
What else
Fast fashion is ethically problematic, but even the industry’s cream has to reckon with demands for immediacy. Farfetch has just launched a pre-order platform to offer early access to what it’s pegging as next season’s slipperiest items. Shop ahead of time to skip sellout victimhood.
Print is dead, and so goes in-person shopping. Khaite is attempting to resolve the fit discrepancy of online ordering by partnering with AI service BODS. You can upload photos of yourself or tweak proportions of online renderings to see what a garment might look like on your own actual body.
I can’t stop thinking about: Retroactively adding MNZ’s perfect Julian bag (on sale here) to last week’s bag roundup, ditto these Instagram rubber shoes to the shoe bible.
The SSENSE sale ends tomorrow night
Here, the best things to buy under $350 while you still can.
SSENSE is famously secretive about the terms of it sale. I’d asked my PR contact there twice about a precise end date, but as it happened, they wouldn’t even tell him. (Apparently it’s “not something they want to promote.”)
But we knew it had to end eventually. Overnight, the site slyly updated its homepage banner to flash between the long-standing “SALE Up to 70% OFF” and a newly added “SALE Ends Soon.” Most threateningly, it affixed a cutoff time: September 1, 2021 at 11:59pm EDT.
It’s a race against the clock, and clicking through the pages of the SSENSE sale section can feel like a funeral march, except with the reward of highway robbery designer waiting at the grave. To make the most of the little time we have left together (us and the sale), I went through as many pages as was mortally feasible and pulled out the very best things to buy while we still can. Presenting post haste:
These Margiela tabi loafers from the men’s section are the only thing I’m including that’s over $350 (by a hair), but I’m dropping them anyway because the moment I saw them, they went directly to the group chat—I described this exact pair as “a wardrobe-defining investment capable of shutting down entire city blocks” in my recent shoe-centric send.
A few more picks from the men’s section not just for men: these Maryam Nassir Zadeh slacks and one of her famed vests, $54 Jacquemus boxers and a boxy, oversized short-sleeve button-down, and the nicest pair of drawstring pants you’ll ever own by Lemaire.
I’m not really sure what the deal is with this brand Random Identities, but it seems decent and its pieces are all marked down really low, at like $50 (also very gender neutral).
From the women’s section, I think anyone could find a core wardrobe block or two from Blossom, LE17SEPTEMBRE, and/or Low Classic, three Korean brands nailing the comfy, fine-finished tailoring thing at favorable sale prices—this utility jumpsuit, long knit cardigan, and linen-blend shirt are my respective picks, but it would be to your benefit to explore each of their sale sections in their entirety.
Good Re/Dones are under $150, and if you believe in denim jacket season, this Levi’s one is doing something really interesting proportionally and is under $70.
A Vetements x Star Wars skirt that I’m inexplicably in utter adoration of is more than $1,000 off, and it’s reversible so it’s like buying two skirts (I think this is an example of me talking myself into buying something through my own newsletter—I might still very well get it).
Here’s a good not-quite-a-puffer from THE coat folks, Kassl Editions—the rest of their sale styles are also chef’s kiss. It’s in the same visual universe as this Lauren Manoogian wrap cardigan thing that’s at just the price I’ve been waiting for to buy some Lauren Manoogian, probably lower even at $117.
Continuing on the outerwear tip, this patent trench is the most affordable coat from Saks Potts you’ll find anywhere right now (“Stick to outerwear” – a not-wrong Thistle Brown), and that Nanushka leather puffer is starting to look real good again at under $340.
I’m limiting it to four dress recommendations, some of which may look familiar from my IG story reccs, but cheaper now: this poofy blue Cecilie Bahnsen number for $266, this Georgia Alice with a grown-up cutouts for $245 that’s giving big dinner party hostess, a sexy Jacquemus dress that hasn’t been overdone for $238, and a jolly Dries Van Noten dress that feels like loungewear and is only $130.
And because SCREAM (shoes categorically rule everything around me), let’s bring it full circle with a pair of Peter Do slip-on loafers, snakey MNZ slides, tooled leather cowboy slingbacks from the singular Charlotte Knowles, and one final pair of these gorilla grip thigh-high Wandler boots.
PRIVATE SALE BONUS SELECTS: One thing SSENSE does differently about its sales is that it actually does run exclusives (as opposed to other retailers that just wield the language of “private” or “friends and family” to drive urgency). Available only to select customers, the sale is visible when logged into your account—below the “Sale Only” box, you’ll see a “Private Sale Only” filter, too.
Just by talking about the Private Sale here, I’m violating the site’s terms and services, but unfortunately for me the deals, which are fewer but can be deeper than those public facing, are worth the risk. Just don’t narc on me, ok.
The Gil Rodriguez bi-color wrap swimsuit is $80; a neutral Nu Swim bikini is $97 while others from the brand are just over $100; Nodaleto loafers featuring a more wearable height of the brand’s signature bulbous Bulla heel are $293; a chic and warm-looking puffer from Fear of God’s diffusion line, Essentials, is $102; and these special handmade gold-silver earrings by Alighieri are $159.