The name describes the condition. An idle fixation is something you're thinking about when you're not trying to think about anything. The Philip Treacy shoes for Valentino that recur every few months. The Galliano DR collection and the gown whose hem was lined to look like the inside of a teacup. Theyskens' first seasons at Nina Ricci, where everything seemed to float just slightly above the body it was made for. These are not the biggest stories in fashion history. They are the things that got in and won't leave.
This is not a trend publication. We don't cover what's happening this season in any systematic way. We write about things when we have something to say about them — which sometimes means a collection from 2003, and sometimes means a scene from a film, and sometimes means a single garment that we have been circling for years without quite being able to say why.
We take fashion seriously as an art form with a specific history and specific practitioners who understood something profound about what clothes can do. We think the most interesting fashion writing happens at the intersection of art criticism, cultural history, and the honest acknowledgement that some things are just extraordinarily beautiful and that this is worth paying attention to.
We are not interested in conspicuous consumption or status signalling dressed up as taste. We are interested in the Lego Batman problem: what it means when the costume is the self, and the self is the costume, and the mask stays on because there is nothing underneath that requires different clothes.