We’re all having anxiety spirals. Fashion is having literal ones

Shortly before my central nervous system decided to quiet-quit on me, I fell hard for an Alaïa dress. It was made with a stiff curl of fabric—a telephone cord of a gown, really—that began at the bust and then wound down the torso, the back, the butt. The dress was designed by golden Belgian boy Pieter Mulier, who spent over a year developing a merino-based textile that could hold the same shape as Meg Ryan’s peeled apples from Sleepless in Seattle. It debuted as Look 20 in Paris last year, then landed on Zendaya during the Dune 2 press tour. If you want to buy it on Net-a-Porter, there are exactly two left in black, both going for $13,290.

When I first reviewed the runway collection last summer, I called the dress “astounding,” printed it out, and taped it above my desk. Other critics said it was “astonishing” and “powerful” and—thank you, TikTok—“fucking great.” That’s all true, but soon, I started believing the piece was an accurate metaphor for an emotional tailspin. It spirals out in a quiet, contained freefall that looks normal and cool while actually working 10 times harder just to stay intact. The Alaïa Le Spiral Robe is a dress. It is also, basically, an anxiety attack.

I know this because I recently had one. It started after a few things went poof at once: a one-two punch of promised big jobs that fell through within a week of each other; a milestone birthday that firmly knocked me out of the “up-and-coming” demographic; a frank talk with my partner about our separate life goals; a failed attempt to get into Polo Bar on a Saturday night.

Stirred by my brain’s slightly divergent wiring, this cocktail of events created a period of what a professional might call “generalised anxiety.” According to the experts at Harvard Health, symptoms can include “a constant sensation of distress,” with symptoms like “muscle tension, a hammering heart, or dizziness.” Mine felt more like the space between my heart and my belly button were replaced by those taped-together soda bottles used to make tiny tornados at a school science fair.

My mom told me to look for a doctor. Instead, I looked for clothes

The feeling of high-key dread nested inside my body for months. Every time I inhaled, my gut started swirling with accusatory questions: What if I’ve blown my chance at success? Why didn’t I do something useful with my career? How long will it take my boyfriend to realize I’m a curse? Should I buy those LifeStraws, just in case? Are my friends suddenly realizing I’m a loser? How could I ever have thought I’d be happy? What happens when there’s global collapse and nobody wants me in their apocalypse camp? I could not leave my head, which meant I often couldn’t leave my house.

My mom told me to look for a doctor. Instead, I looked for clothes. I wasn’t ready to admit that this emotional plunge was more than “just a phase.” Plus, I could rationalize my feelings by using the world as a measuring stick. Election has become a four-letter word. An algorithm is holding our self-worth hostage. Truth is merely a talking point for pundits. We light candles to pray for cities on fire. “Surely,” I thought, “I’m not the only one who is spiraling out here.”

The Spring 2025 runways seemed to prove me right. Bottega Veneta’s new offerings include spiral-sleeve knits that cling to the arms for dear life and a “rib spiral dress” that circles down the body like mascara tears swirling a drain. Victoria Beckham swapped her in-control pencil skirts for "spiral seam" ones that mix prim, pretty florals with a flying leap of a silhouette. Jason Wu’s deconstructed jackets start with strong shoulders and a buttoned-up carriage, then begin to unravel at the bottom. Proenza Schouler and Balenciaga featured shredded coats and dresses that looked like fuzzy, frayed nerves. Even the luxury fine-jewelry world has acknowledged anxiety through design: After getting stressed out at the dentist, one of Bucherer’s designers created the Dizzler ring for Tourneau, which allows its wearer to twist and rotate its diamond-and-gold center with a pleasant, mindful whir.

Onscreen, the costumes from Wicked swirled too, with spirals grafted on Ariana Grande’s opening bubble dress and smocked through Cynthia Erivo’s black textured gown. Her signature black pointy hat curls down from the tippy top, as if tracing the whirling plunge of her broom. In A Complete Unknown, Monica Barbaro plays Joan Baez in a white T-shirt that’s literally coming apart at the seams. When the papal hats from Conclave are shot from above, they look like spinning red windmills—at least, to me.

“You know something’s up,” I reasoned, “when even your pants are on a downward spiral.”


Affordable fashion brands are, likewise, feeling shaky. There is a mostly harmless handbag line called Status Anxiety, which proclaims its affliction on pebbled leather bags, along with a Christopher Esber top that includes a “Miriam Jasper stone, which relieves stress and anxiety,” sewn into its neckline. The denim du jour, the coveted barrel jean perfected by Rachel Comey and Agolde jeans, winds its fabric around the leg in one long, controlled curl. Guess who wears them? The literal character of Anxiety from Inside Out 2. (Hers are brown and paired with a dizzying yellow striped jumper.) “You know something’s up,” I reasoned, “when even your pants are on a downward spiral.”

I called the sociologist and author Martha Beck to confirm the theory. She’s the author of Beyond Anxiety, a new book that explores the scientific links between chronic unease and creativity. “Fashion is a very anxious discipline to begin with,” she said, noting the notoriously long hours, fickle trend cycles, public judgment, and constant job hopping. “And sociologically, there’s no way you can be calm if you’re aware of what’s happening in the world.” Beck explains that creativity and anxiety live as “neighbors” in the brain, which means “creative types are more prone to anxiety—but also, the act of creativity itself can really calm it. The arts are kind of key to the dungeon door in that way.” (She also laughed when she saw the shredded Bottega Veneta hems of Spring 2025. “I can see how you’d feel a lot of anxious energy there!” she said.)

Perhaps I hit the apex of anxiety chic when I sat down with Samuel Ross, the London-based creative director of A-Cold-Wall. He handed me the new Big Bang watch he’d designed with Hublot that had a transparent face. Through its remarkable titanium and carbon case, you can see the UFO-level precision of each gear as it pulses across the milliseconds. Holding this watch feels like clutching a tiny beating heart in your hand, literally seeing the future become the past in real time. The sensation froze me with fear, then shame. What if I never stop feeling this way? How can I be so ungrateful and unhappy, even though I’m healthy and alive? When will everything else crash down around me? Isn’t failure what I deserve?

Like organic honey and true love, anxiety doesn’t have an expiration date

This being a fashion meeting, Ross was expecting questions about luxury style. Instead, I blurted out, “Aren’t you scared that when you hold this watch, you’ll just be reminded of all the time that you’ve wasted and everything you haven’t done?” Apparently, none of the LVMH brands make a luxury straitjacket, because nobody from their lovely PR team hauled me out of there. Instead, Ross laughed and kind of agreed. “Watches do remind you to be a little more intentional,” he said. “But also, you know that you can’t be intentional every second of every day. Nobody can. Sometimes you just have to let things be. Hang out a little while. Appreciate what might become exciting or beautiful in its own time.”

Like organic honey and true love, anxiety doesn’t have an expiration date. You cannot fast-track its cycle, and you certainly can’t shop it away—though Beck did mention that colors like green and sky blue have a proven soothing effect on the nervous system, while at a recent Miu Miu party Gigi Hadid cheerfully told me she sometimes “protects” herself from Fashion Week nerves with a cool, strong-shouldered vest. “Add a little volume and weight,” she said. “It might make you feel a little bigger, a little more powerful.”

Maybe the wide legs of those Rachel Comey jeans weren’t spinning out; maybe they were giving my body some needed breathing room

As I turned over Ross’s advice and Hadid’s good-natured anecdote in my mind, Beck gave me one more thing to chew on: “I actually don’t think you’re obsessed with that Alaïa dress because it represents panic,” she said. “I think you were drawn to it because the spiral is one of the purest, most present structures in nature. Ivy spirals when it grows, and shells do, and galaxies. I think that dress is a reminder that you’re part of bigger things than just this worry. I wonder how things change if you frame it that way.”

The idea became kind of an olive branch between what I was feeling (dread, regret, humiliation) and what I was living: a life that felt askew but still rollicked along—a lived understanding that broken glass and party glitter both shine. In that context, maybe the wide legs of those Rachel Comey jeans weren’t spinning out; maybe they were giving my body some needed breathing room. Maybe the fringed bottoms at Proenza Schouler weren’t unraveling but were moving through space with more freedom. And maybe Alaïa’s Le Spiral robe wasn’t on a downward doom loop; it was enacting the very human process of circling fear, stabbing through it, and wearing the scar tissue like a war prize.

Ultimately, I took my wishful Alaïa budget and diverted it to a psychiatrist. I’d like to retrain the vicious cycle of dread, doubt, and shame that lives in my brain rent-free, right alongside Marc Jacobs’s 2005 campaign with Rachel Feinstein. I hope, very deeply, this will work. I suspect that this hope, and the people in my life who help kindle it, is what can ultimately yank me away from this dickwad of a disease. But even as I work on this, I cannot lie: I’ve still got Alaïa dress alerts set up at Vestiaire, the RealReal, eBay—what the hell, even First Dibs.

If my brain is going to obsessively circle something, let’s make it couture.

Lead image credits: Collage by Sarah Oliveri

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