Table of contents for October 2025 in Harper's Bazaar

IT’S A GOOD TIME TO BE OBSESSED. We are increasingly submerged in a vast web of data streams and algorithms to continually feed and fuel our greatest and most all-consuming passions, enthusiasms, loves, tastes, infatuations, and desires. Our cultural obsessions—Beyoncé, Rihanna, Taylor, whatever is trending on TikTok—have never been bigger. But the very same infrastructure also helps support our smallest ones; this is the era of the uberniche, the microtrend, the subsubculture. We are primed for our obsessions—and have the tools to explore them as deeply as we want. Is that necessarily a good thing? Not always. Some rabbit holes can lead to dark places. But there is something decidedly life-affirming about the idea of fostering and nurturing the healthiest forms of obsession—with an important cause or a creative project,…

WHY DON’T YOU…GET IN THE HABIT of being obsessively curious. Ask questions. All of the time. A lot of them. Admire people’s career trajectory? Ask them to tell you how they got to the top and not to skimp on the details. In a taxi? Ask drivers their life story. (They have seen it all and always have the best stories.) That chic woman on the subway? Ask her for the exact hue of her lipstick. Ask a lot of questions, more than you answer. It’s one of the more sincere forms of flattery. WHY DON’T YOU…CEDE YOUR FATE to the cosmos. Completely follow the horoscopes for the entire month. When feeling in free fall, just focus on looking chic. A great Manolo pump is a statement of fabulous intent in an…

Legendary perfumer Olivier Cresp, the nose behind Mugler Angel and Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue, says there is one category to pay attention to this year: gourmands. “Out of every 10 fragrances launched in the States, six of them are gourmands,” he explains. But there is one emerging scent trend he also has his eye on: “Cleanness, like you’re under a shower. When you’re clean, you feel good. You feel comfortable.” Cresp’s insight points to a larger movement: It’s no longer enough to just smell great; the best perfumes will make you feel that way too. That’s the idea behind the winners of our annual Fragrance Awards. Ahead, our list of the new scents that make us feel cool and confident, clean and fresh, and young at heart. COOL AND…

Here are a few of the things I’m obsessed with right now: wearing skirts again just because they feel good (a midi length; I don’t like short skirts), piling on earrings, my Lisa Eisner Saint Christopher necklace, a good leather jacket, layered quilts on a bed, and floral upholstery fabric. Harper’s Bazaar is a luxury fashion magazine. Maybe it’s a given that we are a team that delights in obsessing over beautiful things, and in this way, almost every issue could be seen as being devoted to obsessions. But this month marks the first time we have decided to dedicate our issue’s theme to obsessions. Because I believe our obsessions are about much more than stuff; they are about who we are, how we connect and form community, and how…

There was a chunk of time in the last decade when ambitious women were encouraged to lean in: to work later and harder and be better than their male counterparts—to do whatever they needed to do to get that seat at the table, regardless of what-ever else might be going on in their life, including raising kids. Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill ascended the corporate ladder right on schedule. They had each worked at Harper’s Bazaar for more than a decade and gone on to land the final boss roles as editors in chief of InStyle and The Wall Street Journal’s style supplement, WSJ Magazine, respectively. There they were, in the front row at every fashion show, hosting extravagant celebrity-filled events, wielding their influence across every platform. And then they…

THIS PAST SUMMER, Telfar Clemens marked the 20th anniversary of his namesake brand the way many designers do: with a blow-out show. But Clemens’s celebration didn’t come with champagne; nor was it held in some impossible-to-get-to venue. He invited everyone to an alley behind his New York flagship store, where his cult-beloved Telfar Half Tank tops hung on clotheslines as family, friends, and megafans gathered, their Telfar shopping totes in hand, to witness a procession of shiny, circular-pocket cargoes, bodycon dresses with exposed seams, and loose, pastel-hued suits come down the runway. It was the designer’s biggest collection to date—nearly 200 looks in total. It was also quintessential Telfar, whose vision of luxury has been defined by an inherently inclusive brand of cool, with an ethos embodied by the motto…

MAYBE it’s the sold-out Row flats. Maybe it’s tropical fish. Maybe it’s antique books or Finnish rugs or toothpaste from around the world. (That was mine for a while.) When you are passionate about something, it becomes luminous, a bright light that guides you day-to-day in pursuit. The object of your affection might seem unimportant or trifling to a disinterested observer, but once you fall for something, it no longer matters what its objective value is. It becomes the center that holds, the order in the chaos. It sifts the fine and endless shower of input—the limitless flood of everyday life—and gives it shape. Obsession sounds dangerous, like quicksand, but in the right amount it’s enriching. It provides us with a kind of engine, with inspiration, with a focus that…

High above the swelter of Milan in mid-July, on the fourth floor of a handsome building flanked by magnolias and studded with balustrades, Laura Sartori Rimini is pouring mineral water into a pair of cups laid out on a silver platter. The calm of the rambling bourgeois apartment—where, for the past three decades, Sartori Rimini and her business partner, Roberto Peregalli, have run the design firm Studio Peregalli Sartori—belies the fact that, to use a not very Milanese term, it is crunch time. As April is to accountants, July is to interior architects who create penthouses and fincas and chateaux for clients who typically own several homes and expect to use them by the season. “The worst periods are before vacation and before Christmas, because we’re really in the moment…

“With my MUSIC, I’m OBSESSED with the overall CONCEPT,” says GIVEON EVANS. “That’s what makes music LAST, especially if it’s a STORY people can GRAVITATE to.” In the realm of pop, perhaps no subject has been as thoroughly rhapsodized and romanticized as love. But for Evans, who performs as Givēon, it was the act of looking back—at failed relationships, at his own part in their unraveling—that provided the source material for his most recent album, Beloved. “I love exploring the nuances of love and relationships in general,” says the 30-year-old R&B singer, who is also a passionate rom-com enthusiast, with 2005’s Hitch topping his list. To achieve the emotional depth he was after on Beloved, Evans drew inspiration from records he grew up listening to in his family’s vinyl…

Florence, Italy—the city that birthed the Renaissance—played host to Gucci’s resort-show festivities this past spring. Models sashayed through the 15th-century Palazzo Settimanni before a candlelit dinner at the cloisters of the Santa Maria Novella. The night ended on a sweaty 600-year-old dance floor in the refectory, where Julia Garner, Paul Mescal, and Yara Shahidi were among the throng grooving to the sounds of Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter and music producer Mark Ronson, who was DJing at the event. Models and editors kicked off their heels and jumped on sofas as Ronson presided from an elevated booth bathed in glowing neon light. (Only Bethann Hardison, the pioneering model and activist, dared climb up to confer with him on his playlist.) The vibes were vibing, all big sunglasses and broad smiles. When…

It used to be the case that Milan was not the favorite fashion capital on the circuit. “It was gray and kind of heavy with sadness,” recalls designer Tina Lutz Morris, founder of the cultish Lutz Morris handbag label, who recently opened her by-invitation-only boutique on Via San Pietro all’Orto. But in the last decade, the city has had a glow-up. “Milan has become so optimistic and much lighter,” she says. She also means literally, as the facades of several historic buildings, including the Duomo, were cleaned before the 2015 World Expo. Plus, a major infrastructure upgrade has been achieved ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics: A new metro line connects Linate airport to downtown Milan in 15 minutes. David Prior, cofounder and CEO of the influential Prior travel club,…

KATE MOSS WAS just 18 years old when she became the face of Calvin Klein’s fragrance Obsession—a legendary campaign that would help set a new tone for fashion in the early 1990s. Her path to Obsession began almost incidentally, though, on a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar. In 1992, Moss, then a rising star in her native U.K., was cast in a fashion story photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for editor in chief Liz Tilberis’s first issue of Bazaar. With her slight stature and soulful gaze, Moss stood in stark contrast to the larger-than-life supermodels who were dominating fashion. But in front of the camera, she was captivating. At the time, Klein was searching for a way to reposition Obsession, with sales of the scent flagging. At the urging of both Demarchelier…