In Studio With: Serena Sefyan - From Beirut to the World: Gucci, Chanel & Beyond

The Met has announced that John Galliano will be the subject of its huge 2027 exhibition, and the reaction has split people right down the middle. Some feel it is a long overdue celebration of one of the greatest designers alive, and others do not believe he should be honoured at all, given what he said back in 2011. In this episode I wanted to sit with all of it properly rather than pick a side in a sentence, so I get into what actually happened, why it happened, and the pressure of an industry that has broken some of the most brilliant people it ever produced.

Demna just spent a reported ten million dollars turning Times Square into one enormous Gucci hallucination, fifty screens running fake adverts for Gucci chocolate, Gucci pets, even a Gucci hotel that doesn’t exist. The spectacle was clever and the ads were genuinely fun. The problem, for me, was everything that came down the runway underneath all of it. In this episode I get into Demna’s GucciCore and why I think it missed. I talk about a collection that felt like a bit of Tom Ford, a bit of the Frida Giannini years and a bit of his own Balenciaga, all stitched together without doing full justice to any of them, and why being compared to Tom Ford is not the compliment people think it is. I get into the business reality too, the declining sales, the pressure on the house, and why eyeballs are the bare minimum when you have this kind of budget. I also ask the bigger questions. Can Demna actually save Gucci, what do the next collections need to say, and why does fashion keep recycling the same handful of names while so many brilliant designers, especially women, never get a shot at the top. This is my take and only my take, so if you watched the same show and loved it, I want to hear from you as much as I want to hear from those who agree with me and didn’t like it. Fashion is a conversation, there is no universal right or wrong, and the disagreement is the whole point.You can find me on Instagram @nakullax You can email the show at [email protected]

Lesa Amoore had multiple Vogue covers. She walked for Armani, Versace and the biggest luxury houses in the world. She worked across Milan, Madrid, Munich, Paris and New York during one of the most iconic eras in fashion history. But Lesa’s story goes far beyond the covers and the catwalks. She speaks openly about her experiences at Elite Paris under Gérald Marie, the unwanted advances she had to fight off alone, and being pressured into a cosmetic procedure she never asked for. She talks about witnessing things on a yacht in Monte Carlo connected to Prince Andrew, and finding herself in the same circles as Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. She also speaks about her advocacy work, her photography career, and everything she has learned from a life spent inside this industry.

The Met Gala. The most talked about night in fashion, the most photographed steps in the world, and one of the most misunderstood events in modern culture. This episode we are pulling back the velvet rope and getting into what this event actually is, how it actually works, and why the version you see on your feed is only a fraction of the full story. We are talking $75,000 a ticket, a guest list controlled by one person, brands extracting over a billion dollars in a single evening, and a room full of the most powerful people in the world who cannot walk in their outfits or use their phones. From the Naomi Campbell and Anna Wintour feud that reportedly got a supermodel with 66 Vogue covers kept out of the room, to the Marilyn Monroe dress worn for four minutes and may have been permanently damaged, to Demi Lovato leaving straight to an AA meeting, to the unwritten rules that have ended careers and decades long relationships overnight, this episode has all of it. The insider stories, the psychology behind why even the world’s most powerful people lose themselves over a dinner invitation, the finances nobody talks about clearly enough, and the gap between the mythology of this event and the reality of what goes on inside. Follow Nakul on Instagram @nakullax

Every model needs an agent. That is not up for debate. But the agent sitting across from you could be the person who protects you from the worst this industry has to offer, or the person who quietly delivers you into it. In this episode Nakul goes into the full picture. The good, the bad, and the genuinely sinister. Because understanding both sides is what actually keeps you safe. We go into the scout system. The legendary scouts who changed lives with a single conversation. Kate Moss discovered at JFK Airport at fourteen, Gisele Bundchen spotted at a McDonald’s in São Paulo, Naomi Campbell approached in her school uniform in Covent Garden. And then Daniel Siad, named approximately two thousand times in the declassified Epstein files as a scout and recruiter of young women for Jeffrey Epstein’s network, who was sending girls from small villages in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Latvia directly into Epstein’s orbit. We also go into the promoter system. The nightclub circuit operating at the edges of fashion week in New York, Milan, Paris and London, how it works, who is behind it, and why it remains one of the primary access points for exploitation in the industry today. And we go into agents. The extraordinary ones who fight for you, educate you, and stand by you when things go wrong. And the ones who leave you out to dry the moment it costs them something. Nakul shares his own stories from both ends of that experience, plus the red flags and green flags every model needs to know before signing anything. Raw, honest, and from someone still inside the industry.Follow Nakul on Instagram @nakullax www.instagram.com/nakullax Email us at: [email protected]