What is fashion without legends and folklore? No, we’re not talking about iconic designers and supermodels, or the Taylor Swift album — we’re talking about literal mythology.

When Ayra Starr began to sing, it was as though the constellations had aligned. “I would say that my music feels celestial, it’s heavenly,” she describes, beaming a smile under the midday sun. Through her euphoric vocality, the 19-year-old yields spiritualism and glimmering confidence with the authority of a cosmic deity.

Freya Allan was aflame with talent in The Witcher’s first season. Playing an orphaned Princess Cirilla, forced to escape her fallen kingdom, she stumbles into the thicketed wilderness to seek a beast-hunter proclaimed, by dying relatives, to be her destiny.

Not since the days of 90s-era Naomi baring little more than leopard spots in an Azzedine Alaïa catsuit has there been so much sartorial pussy power. Catsuits are no longer just a caricature of femininity. In 2021, they’re a newfound symbol of defiant sexuality in film, fashion and music.

Duality is at the heart of Ashnikko’s behemoth mixtape, DEMIDEVIL, that beats to a strong feminist pulse. Alice May Stenson sits down with the singer to discuss its whip-cracking trajectory.

If an atomic collision occurred between childhood pop culture and arts-and-crafts class, you’d find Maya Golyshkina’s imagination somewhere in the middle. There lies an eclectic papier-mâché planet where inhabitants flaunt bog roll bras and Ronald McDonald reigns supreme.

Delirious butterflies and distressed jeans: How Masha Popova is getting the fashion industry into a spin. Upon graduating from CSM in 2020, the designer has been evolving in the way a caterpillar would. Cocooned in a bubble of self-made design ready to spread her wings and flourish.

The sweet taste of success: ‘Backyard Boy’ singer Claire Rosinkranz on viral fame, candy-coated pop music and life at seventeen. As a normal girl living in a viral world, she finds herself coming to terms with cyber stardom mid-pandemic.

Throughout his design career, the late Kenzo Takada wove a lavish cultural tapestry from the threads of Eastern heritage and Western sophistication. Alice May Stenson pays tribute.

“If punk had to have a motto, it wouldn’t have been ‘let’s fuck,’ but ‘fuck you,’” cultural theorist Carlo McCormick writes in the opening dialogue to Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985.  When you dust off your dad’s dirty records you’ll find that punk was never pure.

Rubber is rife – with its bodycon, skin-sculpting, elastic appeal – stretching across the catwalks and high street alike. There’s no sign of it shrinking.

Ahead of the new decade, Alice May delves into fashion's dust-riddled archive. As we approach the eve of 2020, another year closes but so does another decade. Fashion is very much a thing of transformation – taking cultural insights from the world in which it exists.