In his second collection for 7 For All Mankind, Nicola Brognano challenges the increasingly cyclical, social media-driven nature of the fashion industry head-on. What first appears to be a tribute to that glamorous creature of a bygone, and sorely missed, era, the early-2010s party girl, reads more sharply as a sophisticated dance with the attention economy.
Brognano seems to be designing for a woman who no longer exists, or, at least, one who grew up ten to fifteen years ago. The collection is undoubtedly inspired by the it-girls younger Millennials and older Gen Z-ers grew up revering: Cara Delevingne, Alexa Chung, and Gossip Girl’s Serena van der Woodsen. That style has recently come back around, and Brognano’s collection offers a veritable smorgasbord of TikTok’s favorite motifs du jour: capris, polka dots, and aquamarine. Look 19, for example, incorporates all three, but in a way that feels fresher and more sophisticated than it does on a six-inch screen. Its success comes largely from the undone, multi-layered styling, as well as the narrower cut of the blazer and capris. The look is so current-yet-cool that it feels almost suspiciously well placed to go viral at this very moment, just as the early 2010s are having a huge comeback.
This is fashion’s regular trickle-down filtration system flipped on its head. Normally, mass-market retailers rip off the runway, flooding social media feeds with inferior versions of what the rich fashion set is wearing. Brognano’s genius lies in reversing that motion: he reclaims an aesthetic that has already been endlessly iterated online and restores some of the texture, specificity, and glamour stripped from it along the way.
The club-ready business-casual aesthetic of the late 2000s and early 2010s emerged from the genuine lifestyle of a certain kind of ambitious, upwardly mobile, well-employed young woman. Clutching a BlackBerry, she stomped from a HIIT class to the office to the club, slinging her laptop-less work bag casually under her arm. This was more than a decade before Covid: no one worked from home. She was not constantly available to her employer, nor to the attention-sucking algorithm of her Instagram Reels page. She could dance like a madwoman in the club without fearing that someone might film her, and she met her boyfriend at a bar, not on Hinge.
The collection is undoubtedly iterative. Brognano designs the same bag, the same shorts, the same capris, and the same scarf in several different colorways. In this way, too, he plays with the algorithm. Every once in a while, though, a break appears in the dizzying fog of multi-colored options: a look that feels genuinely fresh, authentic, and unexpected.
Look 31 features a loose, slightly asymmetrical mustard-yellow dress. While its accessories, a rectangular bag tucked casually under the arm, purple platform pumps, and a fantastic tangle of polka-dotted neck scarves and pearl necklaces, reference the recurring motifs of the show, the silhouette and color palette of the dress itself are singular. This is the stand-out woman Brognano’s collection is designed for: the woman who, unlike her algorithm-addled peers, has remained largely offline. The result? She has retained the increasingly rare ability to think for herself, becoming a trend-setter rather than a mindless follower. She does not look like a slightly different iteration of the collection’s other looks. In fact, it feels as though the other looks are trying to copy her.
So, who is the 7FAM collection designed for: the algorithm, or the woman it has been ripping off? The answer is simultaneously both and neither. In this strong second season, Brognano reveals himself as a designer who is in on the joke — and maybe even cracking a few of his own.
