FROW News #131: Gap Gets Its First Handbag, Floral Street Makes Solid Perfume Refillable & Lush Questions the Scroll 👀✨
A new season usually asks us to look forward, but this week’s news keeps one eye on what came before. Simone Rocha is reshaping familiar adidas sportswear, Kickers is returning to the communities that made its boots matter and women’s histories are being put back onto the streets of Birmingham and Manchester.
Elsewhere, a British womenswear name is entering the conversation, Dyson is cooling down the straightening process and Lush wants us to look more closely at the apps taking up so much of our time. September is properly underway and it has arrived with plenty to talk about. Let's dive in ⬇️
Simone Rocha Has Put Pearls on adidas, and It Works ⚽
Tracksuits and pearl brooches should not necessarily make sense together, but Simone Rocha has never been particularly interested in leaving femininity where people expect to find it. Her first collaboration with adidas Originals takes the brand’s familiar sportswear and rebuilds it through her own world of volume, tulle, frills and embellished details.
The Firebird jacket has been cropped and exaggerated, the Beckenbauer track top reveals a tulle layer beneath it and the Superstar jacket gains puffed sleeves. Football socks come with pearl and diamanté details, while the footwear includes a Taekwondo ballerina, Climacool Mary Jane and fuzzy Japan slip-on.
First seen on Rocha’s London runway in February, the collection launches on 10th September with prices ranging from £23 to £350. This is not simply adidas with a few bows attached. Rocha’s fingerprints are all over it.
Cerene Wants Grown Women to Enjoy Getting Dressed Again 👗
Catherine Jobling and Rebecca Nye helped shape womenswear at AllSaints and Ted Baker. Now they have started a British brand of their own. Cerene is backed by NEXT but independently owned, with a debut collection created for women who want grown-up clothes without losing the personality.
Its “fiercely feminine” wardrobe includes asymmetric broderie blouses, fluid dresses and tailoring that can move between work and everything that happens afterwards. The Emma cotton broderie blouse costs £89 in sizes 8-18, while dresses begin at £119. The full collection is available now through NEXT.
Gap Is Giving Its Denim Somewhere New to Go 👖👜👖
Gap has spent nearly six decades making the jeans, hoodies and everyday pieces many of us grew up wearing. Now it is taking those familiar details off the hanger and turning them into GapBag, its first dedicated handbag collection.
Designed by former Coach creative director Reed Krakoff, the collection arrives on 8th September with five bag families. The Five-Pocket Tote borrows its stitching and pocket details from Gap denim, while the Hoodie Tote takes its cues from the Arch Logo sweatshirt. Selected styles will be available in the UK, giving our jeans and hoodies some very familiar-looking company this autumn.
Kickers Is Looking Back at Who Made the Kick Hi Matter 👢
With Eliza Rose at the centre of the new release and vintage specialists Wavey Garms helping to tell its story, Kickers is looking back at the generations that carried the boot from school corridors into clubs, record shops and British street culture. The updated Kick Hi 75 arrives on 9th September for £120 in red, black, navy and tan, with extra cushioning added inside, but without polishing away the rebelliousness that made people wear it in the first place.
Elie Saab’s Red-Carpet World Is Coming to H&M ✨
Most of us know Elie Saab through the sort of dresses that sweep down red carpets, not something we could casually add to an online basket. That changes on 22nd October, when the Lebanese couturier launches his first major high-street collaboration with H&M.
The 55-piece collection takes Saab’s signature glamour beyond the gown, with daywear, coats, embellished knitwear, sharp tailoring, shoes and accessories joining the eveningwear. Fine lace, gradient sequins and a midnight palette of black, gold and emerald green run throughout, while a chocolate-to-black leather jacket sits at the top end of the collection.
It is already shaping up to be one of autumn’s biggest fashion drops. The collection will be available online and in selected H&M stores.
Dyson Wants Straight Hair Without Quite So Much Heat 💇🏽♀️
Dyson has revisited its Corrale straightener with a removable attachment that cools the hair immediately after the heated plates pass over it. The new Corrale CoolShine launches on 15th September for £249.99, with four heat settings from 145°C to 210°C and flexing copper plates designed to gather the hair.
Dyson says adding the cooling step produces more shine and reduces damage compared with using the straightener without the attachment. Heat styling has not suddenly become harmless, but this could make the usual choice between a smooth finish and happier hair feel a little less unforgiving.
KIKO Has Built an Entire Club Around Colour 🌈
KIKO Milano has opened Club K, and subtlety was clearly not on the guest list. The collection includes lipsticks in 30 colours, eye pencils and liquid shadows in 24 tones and mascaras in five shades, with lip combinations starting below £9. Whether you stay loyal to brown liner or finally try the brighter shade sitting in your saved folder, Club K is available now online and in KIKO Milano stores.
VIEVE’s New Concealer Does Not Want to Hide Everything 🪞
Concealer does not always need to erase every trace of a face. VIEVE’s Skin Nova Concealer has been created for sheer-to-medium coverage that can be worn under the eyes, built where needed or blended more widely across the complexion.
It has a radiant finish and promises up to 12 hours of crease-resistant wear. That flexibility means it can join a full routine, but it also makes sense for mornings when foundation feels like one decision too many. Skin Nova Concealer costs £28 and is available from VIEVE and exclusively at Space NK.
Paula’s Choice Is Matching Hannah Waddingham’s Energy 💧
Paula’s Choice could have introduced its latest moisturiser with another quiet instruction for women to turn back the clock. Instead, it has chosen Hannah Waddingham, a woman hardly known for making herself smaller, as the face of the new Pro-Collagen Peptide Plumping Intensive Moisturiser.
The £49 formula uses peptides and hydrating ingredients to help the skin feel firmer, plumper and more supple. More interestingly, its message treats intensity as a strength rather than something women should be encouraged to soften with age. In Waddingham’s hands, that does not feel like a line somebody invented for a beauty advert. It feels entirely believable.
Floral Street Has Made Solid Perfume Refillable 🌸
Fragrance bottles look lovely on a dressing table. They become considerably less charming at airport security or when rolling around beneath everything else in a handbag. Floral Street’s new Scentsticks solve that problem by turning four of its fragrances into solid, refillable scents that twist up like a balm.
Wild Vanilla Orchid, Arizona Bloom, Electric Rhubarb and Wonderland Peony are available in a case with fragrance for £25, while refills cost £14. The formula is alcohol-free and leaves a subtle shimmer on the skin, so it can be reapplied without a cloud of perfume announcing it to everyone nearby. The Scentsticks are available now from Floral Street. No liquid, no breakable bottle and no airport-bag negotiation. It is fragrance designed around where we actually take it.
Stella McCartney Has Taken the Pram Into Her World 👶🏽
Stella McCartney and Bugaboo have created a limited collection for parents who do not believe personal style should disappear behind the pram. The Fox 5 Renew, Butterfly 2, Butterfly 2 Plus and Dragonfly Plus have been reworked with vegan leather alternatives, Falabella-inspired chains and vintage-style medallions.
The collection launches on 15th September, with the Fox 5 Renew priced at £1,850. Matching mittens, a footmuff and tote complete the line, giving the nappy bag some rather glamorous company.
Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s The Devil Book Asks Who Really Holds the Power 📖
A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and later quarantines with him in his London flat. While there, she tells him about T, the man to whom she once sold control of her body in exchange for money and gifts, before a knife and a death threat forced her to run.
That is the unsettling centre of Asta Olivia Nordenhof’s The Devil Book, published this week in paperback for £9.99. At only 128 pages, it is a short book carrying questions much larger than its size. It asks what money can buy, what consent means when power is unequal and whether freedom can exist inside a transaction designed by somebody else.
Manchester Is Getting a Jewellery Week of Its Own 💎
Manchester’s first Jewellery Week, I Wanna Be Adorned, takes place from 10th-16th September with work from around 200 UK jewellers spread across exhibitions, talks, workshops, open studios and trails. Founders Jo Lavelle and Eve Redmond want jewellery to be encountered as culture and craft, not simply something waiting beneath a shop light.
Among the programme is City of Suffragettes, an exhibition responding to Manchester’s feminist history. Many events are free, while guided walks and selected workshops require tickets, so it is worth checking the full schedule before heading out.
Lush Wants Us to Question Who Controls the Scroll 📵
Lush left Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat in 2021, arguing that it did not want to keep asking customers to use platforms it believed were causing harm. Now it has launched Safer Socials, bringing together resources about persuasive design, privacy and the systems created to keep us scrolling.
There is also a new Ctrl Shower Gummy, a £7 jelly-like body cleanser created to resemble an app icon. Seventy-five per cent of its sale price after tax will go to organisations working towards safer online spaces. It raises an uncomfortable but necessary question. How much of our screen time can honestly be described as a failure of self-control when some of the world’s most powerful companies have built their products to make leaving difficult?
Birmingham’s Women Are Going Back Between the Lines 🚶🏽♀️
Birmingham’s history is often told through its buildings, industries and famous men. On 19th September from 11am to 12.30pm, Women Between the Lines will take a different route, following the women who shaped Ladywood, the canals and the city beyond the names most likely to appear on a plaque.
Led by Iris Bertz and Jen Wilbur, the 90-minute walk begins at Edgbaston Reservoir and ends at the Library of Birmingham’s Discovering Lisel Haas exhibition. Suffragettes, Women’s Liberation activists, artists, musicians, an architect, a roller skater and women whose lives rarely enter the official version of the city all form part of the story, accompanied by a poem from Simone Word Smith.
Tickets cost £15 and booking is required. The organisers state that the route is not accessible to wheelchair users, which is important to know before booking. The walk offers a chance to see Birmingham through the lives of women whose stories have too often been left between the lines.
And just like that, the first FROW News of September is complete. There are handbags to watch, solid perfume to slip into one and a few important September dates now in the diary. We’ll see you back here next week.
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