Skip to main content

Curated: Summer 2026 Style Makers

A change in season shouldn't require us to abandon the past that resides in our closets, but rather the addition of a piece or two to elevate our style for the upcoming season. With fast fashion, digital creators, and influencers, we have gotten lost in the chaos of “new,” “more,” and “outfit of the day,” as though something new every day itself is fashionable.

Cancún, Mexico

Fashion, one's style, is not and cannot be always new. One's style is a reflection of our personality, mood, and perception of ourselves. It is quite unrealistic and damaging to one's mental wellness if the expectation is to change every day—brand new everything. It is also very damaging to the earth, as pointed out in Guilt of Disposable Fashion. Fashion, style, is about curation—a collection that reflects our individualism rather than a bin of polyester.

As summer approaches and you are taking inventory of the summer pieces in your closet and are in need of one or two pieces to elevate your style, consider these curated Summer 2026 Style Makers.


This post contains affiliate links.

_____
More:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ChatGPT, Where Is Your Ethics?

It was about a month ago when I first thought of writing about artificial intelligence and its lack of intelligence. I had several ideas for the title, one of them being “Where Is the Intelligence?” I was furious that day after realizing that ChatGPT had failed, and a month of editing work had to be reviewed and possibly corrected for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and language mechanics. Takashi Murakami at The Broad, March 2026 The honeymoon phase was over. How does one miss spelling, grammar, punctuation, and language mechanics errors when assigned editing tasks? It was a costly lesson for me in trusting that an AI would consistently apply the basic tasks of editing, which include copy editing: correcting errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. I didn't question it because it included corrections of grammar, punctuation, and spelling at times. I didn't realize that it wouldn't consistently deliver the work. Consistency in work. Isn't that what we expect fr...

Tôm Rim: Caramelized Prawns

Inspired by Anaïs Aa Dao Van Manen’s Vietnam, the cookbook published by Phaidon , I set out to cook Vietnamese food for myself. There is a certain satisfaction—a quiet, private sense of achievement—when we learn to cook within a familiar cuisine that our hands have never actually prepared. I did not realize, until drifting through the pages of Vietnam , how central caramelized sugar is to the cuisine—often referred to as a caramel braising sauce. After my first failed attempt at following the Tôm Rim recipe from the cookbook, I turned inward to develop a version that simplifies the process while preserving the dish’s essential tension: the salinity of fish sauce meeting the sweetness of caramelized sugar. INGREDIENTS LIST [serves one with rice] fourteen whole prawns, shells on, slit along the back and deveined two tablespoons of vegetable oil one tablespoon of sugar one tablespoon of fish sauce one tablespoon of Cambray onion, white part only, diced one tablespoon of red onion, diced o...

Was I Wrong to Have Accused White Men?

It began as an ordinary morning. Coffee. Stretching. The familiar ritual of scrolling through Apple News and The New York Times. Then it wasn’t ordinary. A gunman had entered a dance studio in Monterey Park and killed eleven people. First nine, then ten, then eleven. The numbers shifted. The dread did not. The studio was largely patronized by Asian Americans, located in a Chinese American community, on the eve of Lunar New Year. The specificity made it intimate. It felt close. I paused. Should I go to the ceramic studio as planned? Should I stop at Whole Foods afterward? A White man did it. That was the sentence that formed, fully constructed, in my mind. There is a racist White man loose in the greater Los Angeles area with a gun. Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash As a Korean American woman, I felt fear move quickly and without permission. Monterey Park is not far from Koreatown. Not far from Downtown. We know how one violent act can loosen something dormant in others. Late...

Lemon Honey & Soy Sauce Chicken

I know I promised myself I would not reset and start anew here. Still, so much has happened since the beginning of September that continuing as if nothing had changed no longer felt honest. I am grieving love lost and feeling anxious about what lies ahead. At the same time, I am breaking away from the domestic violence I endured over the past year. Leaving brought old wounds to the surface, including childhood traumas and secrets I carried quietly for far too long. Shame once convinced me that the abuses inflicted on me were mine to hide. While it is still difficult to speak openly, I am beginning to understand that healing only happens when we do not hide ourselves along with the abuse. I do not know if I will ever forgive or forget. What I do know is that I want to heal. I want to tend to the wounds and allow the scars to soften with time. You may be wondering what any of this has to do with the Lemon Honey and Soy Sauce Chicken recipe. Nothing, and yet everything. This is th...

Are We Living in 1864?

My heart sank. There it was on my iPhone: a New York Times headline— Justice Dept. Asks for 1-Day Sentence for Ex-Officer Convicted in the Killing of Breonna Taylor . It took me back to 2020. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd made headlines and triggered Black Lives Matter protests across the nation. Thousands of us marched, raised our fists, shouted Black Lives Matter, kneeled, shouted I can't breathe, and continued to march as we shouted no justice, no peace. Untitled by Robert Longo, 1981, at The Broad It was the year that made many of us realize that we hadn't changed much since the brutal torture and murder of Emmett Till in 1955. He was only fourteen years old when two white men brutally beat and killed him. There was no justice for Emmett Till 70 years ago. The judge rejected the Justice Department's sentence recommendation of one day and sentenced Brett Hankison to 33 months in prison for violating Breonna Taylor's civil rights. Was i...

Summer Capsule: Flip Flops et Sandals

Flip-flops and sandals once lived at the margins of style—practical, unassuming, and rarely invited into conversations about taste. They belonged to errands, beach days, and the quiet acceptance of comfort over consideration. To wear them beyond those boundaries felt, at best, indifferent and, at worst, careless. Kāʻanapali Beach, Maui Something shifted. What was once dismissed as too casual began to be reexamined through a different lens—one that values restraint over excess. Designers pared them down to their essentials, and in doing so, revealed a kind of clarity: clean lines, deliberate simplicity, and an ease that resists overthinking. In a landscape saturated with structure and embellishment, sandals and flip-flops offered something quietly radical—absence as intention. Now, they move with purpose through spaces that once excluded them—paired with tailored trousers, anchored beneath sharp silhouettes, and integrated into wardrobes that understand proportion and balance. They no l...

At the Intersection of Law & Humanity: Immigrants

Americans who believe in enforcement are not automatically endorsing cruelty. Americans who believe in compassion are not automatically rejecting the rule of law as it applies to all of us. Yet in our current climate, those positions are treated as mutually exclusive. Immigration, perhaps more than any other issue, has become the stage on which we rehearse our all-or-nothing instincts. Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash I am Korean American. I carry my U.S. passport card with me everywhere I go. Some of you already know that. It has quietly become my default form of identification. I did not wait for a second inauguration to begin doing that. The election itself was enough. My parents waited years for lawful permanent residency before we immigrated to the United States. I became a citizen after I turned eighteen. I identify as Korean, a heritage I am immensely proud of. I am also a citizen of the United States. An American. It is simple. It is also complex. I believe a sove...

Can We Please Return to Civility?

It is my word, civility. Merriam-Webster defines it as courtesy, politeness, a polite act or expression, and training in the humanities. Civility, for me, means exercising humanity with mindfulness toward others and the world we share. It is such a beautiful word, and I miss it. Not the word, but civility among us. I've been thinking about it quite often, even before former President Trump won the election and his return to the White House became inevitable. It was unsettling to watch such a hateful man win this nation's presidential election. Pasadena, California I am not concerned about his plan to deport unlawful residents of this nation. I am concerned that I will be targeted in a massive sweep as a Korean, so I will be carrying my United States Passport Card, a federal government-issued identification, as proof of my U.S. citizenship. Is it inconvenient? Not at all. It is the size of my California identification card. Unlawful residents. I rarely use undocumented or illega...

Japchae, aka Stir-Fried Korean Glass Noodles

I had been saving the return of Succession the way one saves a silk dress or a perfectly timed disappearance—waiting for the right conditions. Thanksgiving weekend offered the necessary quiet: a lull in obligation, a cultural permission slip to indulge. Kendall Roy’s season-two coup left me hungry for Logan’s reckoning, but what arrived instead was far more unnerving. Kendall’s jittery insistence on relevance—his compulsive self-exposure masquerading as strategy—was exhausting to witness. I paused the episode more than once, breathing through it. The turtleneck and gold chain were almost beside the point, though culturally unforgivable. What lingered was the ache of watching someone unravel in public, mistaking visibility for redemption. Families are often our most elegantly disguised hazard. For years, I mistook endurance for virtue and proximity for love, believing that self-erasure was the price of belonging. It took time to understand that choosing myself was not a rupture but a ...