Star Struck Style

August 12 is Hussein Chalayan’s birthday.

When I pulled up Hussein Chalayan’s chart, I saw exactly what I expected to see. He has a Leo sun, Mercury in Virgo and Venus in Libra.

One in fifteen Leo natives will have the same configuration. It often results in a well-rounded individual who doesn’t necessarily give off Leo vibes. I’ve always associated Hussein Chalayan’s “intellectual” designs with a more Virgo-like approach to fashion, and yet he can be a consummate showman who can make headlines during fashion week.

I haven’t really paid attention to what he’s been doing during the pandemic. It’s designers like him that I worry about the most because I don’t know how well they were doing before the retail market crashed. Just yesterday, I walked around the giant mall by my house and I saw whole bunch of chain stores liquidating their inventory. A lot of the independently-owned labels are still in business because they haven’t expanded their retail footprints by selling huge parts of themselves to private equity companies. Yet designer brands that mostly sold in department stores are also suffering because the department stores are either closing or dealing with major supply-chain issues. The entire men’s designer section at Simons (a Canadian retailer) was empty because nothing had shipped for F/W 2020.

It’s all kind of sad, but I can’t say that I don’t know what it’s like. Hussein Chalayan turns fifty today and is probably facing the fact that he might need to be looking for something else to do in the future. While I don’t have a time of birth for the designer, I can say that 2021 looks better for him (and Leos in general) if they can rely on partnerships to take them places that they haven’t been before. Are you listening, Christopher Kane? Jeremy Scott? Ricardo Tisci?

It’s a brand new world out there in fashion retail. I don’t know a lot of Leo natives who adapt well to change, but that’s going to be a theme they need to embrace in the months ahead or things are just going to get worse.