Plenty of lingerie companies claim to sell the “world’s best bra.” But no one bra will be the “best” for everyone—people with small boobs shop differently than people with big boobs; women who are nursing have different needs than those who’ve had mastectomies. The “best bra” is what’s right for you, at that given moment in your life. In the age of online reviews, though, it doesn’t hurt to start your search with the most highly-rated options on the market. And if you’ve looked at all the usual suspects—the Nordstroms, the Amazons, the Bare Necessities—you’ve probably already heard about the wonders of the Natori Feathers bra.
Natori’s Feathers collection isn’t new (and the brand has been around since 1977). And at first glance, its signature plunge bra doesn’t seem all that different from other lace-trimmed styles in any department store. But the magic of the Natori Feathers bra isn’t in being the sexiest bra—it’s that it’s so damn comfortable. (There are other factors that work in its favor too: It’s available in a bunch of different colors and in sizes 30A through 36G.)
The Natori Feathers is one of the brand’s signature styles, and retails for under $100.
Natori
I was getting a bra fitting at Town Shop, the famed lingerie store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, several years ago when I first tried the Natori Feathers plunge. I walked out with one in a blue-purple shade (a color I normally wouldn’t have picked out), in a 34D (a size I had never worn before). It didn’t take long for it to dethrone all the beige T-shirt bras I had been hoarding since college as my Absolute Favorite Bra. Why? The mesh outer cover contoured my breasts and molded around my torso—I could wear it for long hours and forget I had a bra on. And somehow, the colorful fabric was pretty much undetectable under everything, including white tees.
It’s not the flashiest undergarment in my intimates drawer, but it’s definitely my favorite. And while you might not see it on your social feed like the latest Savage x Fenty launch, the Natori Feathers has a devoted fan base.
Lady Gaga wearing the Natori Feathers bra at Mark Ronson’s Grammys after party.
Gabriel Olsen
When Lady Gaga wore a black Natori Feathers bra to the Grammys after parties, senior culture editor Mattie Kahn chatted me the link. “I just wanna say I own this bra and it is great,” she wrote.
Turns out, Kahn was also introduced to the Natori Feathers at Town Shop. (“I grew up on the Upper West Side, which means that like many, many women, I got my first bras there.”) Two or three years ago, she says, she went to replenish her bra supply, and one of the store’s clerks suggested she try the Natori. But she was skeptical: “For context: I’m 5’2 and wear a 32D. I have only ever wanted my boobs to shrink, not to look bigger. I don’t do plunges. I don’t do push-ups. I do black T-shirt bras that sometimes feature subtle lace. But you don’t cross the women at the Town Shop. You strip. They make suggestions. So I decided to go for it.”
She left the store with four Natori Feathers.
“It fits like a dream,” Kahn says. “It’s comfortable, but also kinda sexy. And it’s seamless under shirts of all kinds and fits. I have recommended it to 90 percent of the women I know, from cup size AA to DD. It’s a cult and a gift. I intend to wear it forever.”
You might also recognize the Natori Feathers from your TV screen…
HBO
It’s been featured on shows like Insecure, Girls, and Riverdale.
HBO
Cora Harrington, the founder of The Lingerie Addict and author of In Intimate Detail, has written about the Natori Feathers bra manytimesover theyears. And though she remembers not being overwhelmed by it the first time she saw it, a representative for the brand reached out and sent her one to try —and she hasn’t looked back since. “It’s a bra I purchase again, and again, and again,” she says.
Something is happening on Riverdale this season that’s more exciting than Archie’s abs. No, I’m not talking about Cheryl and Toni’s relationship—though that’s amazing and deserves 20 minutes of screen time per episode, minimum—or anything to do with the Black Hood. (Spoiler alert: It’s Hal Cooper! Except not spoiler alert because even the most casual viewers called that back in November 2017.) I’m talking, of course, about the cult storyline teased during the season two finale. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
You remember it, right? Shaken up by the realization her husband is a masked murderer, Alice Cooper decides to meet Edgar Evernever, leader of “The Farm,” a spiritual group that her daughter Polly joined in the second season. We don’t know much about “The Farm,” except it more or less caused Polly to cut out Alice and Betty from her life completely. She returns to her mom and sister at the end of season two, though, to convince them to join “The Farm.”
And she’s halfway successful. In the season three premiere, we learn that Alice is all about “The Farm.” Her hair is different. She’s talking different. She even thinks it’s a good idea for Betty to burn her diaries because, according to Edgar, they’re keeping her in the past when she needs embrace the future. Betty’s attitude toward Polly, her mom, and “The Farm” can basically be summed up with this GIF:
All Betty wants to do is ride in Archie’s weird jalopy and swim in some dirty pond, but nope, Alice and Polly are determined to convert her to “The Farm.” They do a little digging and find out Betty’s been lying about seeing a therapist and is forging Adderall prescriptions (???) as a post-Black Hood coping mechanism. Obviously, Betty wants nothing to do with them when they confront her about this, so she storms off, makes out with Jughead a ton, and returns to the most bonkers scene in Riverdale history.
“The Farm” has convened in Betty’s backyard and is doing a seance that involves Alice dropping Polly’s twins in a fire. Betty then sees the twins shoot up in the air—as if they’re flying—before she collapses into a seizure. That’s literally how the episode ends. I know! What the hell? Was this real? Was it a hallucination?
“That is the exact question that Betty is trying to figure out in the second episode,” Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa tells Glamour about this jaw-dropping ending. “‘What did I see? What part of that is real? Was all of it real? Even if it was a hallucination, where did it come from? What caused the seizure?’ There’s so many things to unpack, and very soon other people are also seeing crazy things.”
“We love urban legends like the Slender Man and stuff like that, so we wanted to tell a really creepy and twisted cult or satanic murder story, so we did a lot of research about cults and we looked at a lot of stuff like that,” Aguirre-Sacasa says in regards to “The Farm’s” origin. “Season one we did a more traditional murder mystery, season two we did a more traditional serial killer, so [now] we wanted to do something a little darker and more twisted this season.”
If you’re thinking, “Wow, this sounds way more interesting than any time Jughead’s appeared on screen ever,” you’re exactly right. This cult plot line is, hands down, the greatest thing to happen to Riverdale since it made Cheryl an Olympic archer. The above synopsis is just a small taste of the true insanity that unfolds during the premiere.
If only the episode focused more on it. Unfortunately, we still have to put up with a storyline involving Jughead going across Ghoulie lines (groan) to rescue the Serpents’ dog . We also have to deal with his narration and the fact that he wears the same white tank top in basically every scene. Thankfully, the cult narrative is potent enough to make even the most ridiculous Jughead line bearable.
There are seriously so many directions this story can go. Alice and Polly could force Betty to join “The Farm” against her will, only for Shirtless Archie and Bow-and-Arrow Cheryl to rescue her. Or what if Betty puts on her black wig, murders Edgar, and Veronica helps her dispose of the body? And then Betty returns the favor by helping Veronica take out Hiram Lodge! Murder! It’s the bread and butter of Riverdale!
Actually, wait, I know exactly how this plot should unfold: Betty joins “The Farm,” likes it, and Cheryl has to come in with her vicious, vicious words and bring her back to reality. Just throw in Hot Sheriff Keller randomly lifting weights, and you have the best parts of Riverdale all in one narrative. Fingers crossed Jughead’s scowling plays second fiddle to this all season. It’s what we deserve.
Riverdale airs Wednesday nights at 8 P.M. ET on The CW.
It Bags tend to be exorbitant status symbols—often logo-laden and from iconic fashion houses with names like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Céline. Typically, they’re considered “investment pieces” that climb well into triple-digit price tag territory, or even past the $1,000 mark. On rare occasions, though, an accessory that’s devoid of some pedigreed designer name and logo, a style in the (relatively) more affordable $100 to $300 range, suddenly becomes ubiquitous in stylish circles. Such was the case with the two-toned Herve Chapelier nylon totes of the late nineties and early aughts; now, in the age of Instagram, it’s Cult Gaia’s Ark bag.
A half-circle constructed of open-weave bamboo, the design was conceived in 2014, but took a full two years to really blow up your feed, and maybe even your IRL social circles, according to Cult Gaia’s founder, Jasmin Larian. The Ark was the very first bag she ever created, in fact, and the brand itself came about “by accident,” in her words. All pretty unusual circumstances leading to an It Bag’s ascent.
“My mom was a fashion designer and I was surrounded with design and creativity my whole life, so I always knew I wanted to have my own line,” Larian explains. She studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, and when she was wrapping up her senior year, she sketched out a full ready-to-wear collection of dresses and gowns—and, at the same time, whipped up some flower crowns for fun (FIT is located right next to the city’s Flower District, after all), as well as head scarves using vintage fabrics she’d been collecting over the years. “That picked up really by accident, and everyone wanted to flower crowns and headscarves,” Larian recalls. A friend of hers encouraged her to focus on the unique, whimsical accessories she’d created more or less on a whim, since the demand was clearly there, so she launched a website to sell the headpieces while she was a couple months away from graduating college.
Larian landed on the name Cult Gaia for her budding business—Gaia is the goddess of Mother Earth and the daughter of chaos. “For me, chaos is a creative force: I think everything beautiful in the world is made of chaos,” she explains. As for the “Cult” moniker, it’s a bit aspirational (and a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts): “Every great brand is cultlike, in attracting like-minded people.”
PHOTO: Christian Vierig
The success of her earliest, almost accidental signature headpieces had to do with branding and elevating a simple concept: “We were the first to brand the flower crown; I didn’t invent the flower crown, I didn’t reinvent the wheel, but I was the first to do it as a really beautiful, handmade, luxury piece,” she says. Though the Ark bag was still a ways off, “that’s when I think the Cult Gaia brand’s DNA was solidified: creating pieces that are elegant, classic, really attention-grabbing, and a little out of the ordinary.”
Larian introduced the first-ever Ark bag in 2013, but back then, “it just didn’t take off! So I was kind of like, ‘OK, next’” she says. She decided, instead, to focus on flower crowns and turbans. She didn’t completely scrap the Ark bag, though, quietly promoting it by sending it to friends and family to wear, nor did she try to design another handbag that might hit it bigger than the Ark.
Sales started to pick up steam “after sending to a few friendly [messages] on Instagram—it was when people saw how to style it, which is really what Instagram is about,” Larian says. She can’t pinpoint one particular moment or celeb spotting that changed everything, though the brand did have a few in 2016, including Jessica Alba. “Instagram started picking up and being a real thing, and we were ahead of that, posting photos of the flower crowns, and then we started doing that with the Ark bag. It was the perfect storm.”
“People loved it, but no one felt like they could pull it off until they started seeing it a lot on social media,” Larian says. “It’s such an attention grabber: When you wear it out, people stop you on the street, especially men, which was super interesting; it happened with my flower crowns too, where men would say, ‘Wait, what is that?’ It’s a conversation starter that’s unique and different, at a super-attainable price point.” Seeing the Ark bag ’grammed on many different women, famous or not, is what really propelled the piece’s success, Larian underscores. “People saw the functionality of it, and it’s a really a piece of art; it looks beautiful just placed on a table, and it has beautiful packaging, which to me is key, as gift giving has been a huge driver of the Ark bag’s sales.”
Once the Ark bag was a bona fide success—with fans like Alba, Michelle Williams, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and basically any influencer worth her formidable following—the orders (and the first wave of retailers wanting to stock the hit piece, like Net-a-Porter and NYC’s Fivestory) poured in. Sales of the Ark bag tripled from 2016 to 2017, and it accrued a wait list of more than 1,500 people, according to Larian. Since then “I’ve focused on building our team and just putting one foot in front of the other!” she says of how she contended with such a massive surge of interest once the bag (finally) took off. “Fake it till you make it.”
PHOTO: Christian Vierig
She’s also had to contend with copycats of her It Bag, be it fast-fashion brands or other indie designers. As many indie designers with a runaway-hit design have dealt with in the past, Larian came face-to-face with the issue of knock-offs, as more caged, bamboo-esque handbags started cropping up everywhere. “It’s frustrating for sure, but optimistically helps us stay ahead and on our toes,” she explains. (On Wednesday WWD reported that, as part of ongoing litigation, the designer issued a response to a lawsuit filed by Steve Madden, in which, according to The Fashion Law, Larian alleges trade dress infringement totaling over $15 million. Glamour has reached out to Cult Gaia for comment.)
Larian has also introduced new items that riff on the aesthetic of the Ark (like an Ark-shaped earring), which have sold well, as well as two new bag styles that have evolved the sculptural motif of its signature product, the Lilleth (which debuted in spring 2017) and the Luna (which was introduced for fall 2017). These have also been big sellers for Cult Gaia, though not of the magnitude of the Ark’s success. Larian also expanded the Ark beyond the original bamboo version, releasing pricier acrylic iterations for spring 2017, followed by glittery versions in fall 2017.
The power of creating an It Bag for Larian is how it’s allowed her to achieve her bigger-picture goals as a designer, thanks to the exposure of one fateful, sleeper hit accessory. “The beauty of this bag is that it took me ultimately to where I wanted to go, which is making ready-to-wear and having a lifestyle brand, building out our brand ethos,” she explains. “If we didn’t build the audience that Cult Gaia has now because of that bag, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing now.”
Besides the designer’s deep-seated ambitions to have a full-fledged ready-to-wear collection, it’s also necessary for the brand’s longevity: “It was always important to me to do more than accessories, because I don’t think a brand can be sustainable for the superlong run if they’re just offering one category. I don’t think it’s realistic to always bank on an It Bag.”
PHOTO: Christian Vierig
That means branching into new categories, like, most recently, shoes: On May 7 Cult Gaia debuted its first five footwear styles, ranging from $225 to $350 a pop, in collaboration with Net-a-Porter. They nearly sold out within four days. “We were asked to do an exclusive shoe line, and it’s something I always wanted to do, so I felt like it was super serendipitous,” Larian says of the sophisticated mules and sandals, which riff subtly on the look of her famous bags. “To me, shoes are another opportunity to give our girl wearable art that’s timeless and not overdone, at an attainable price point.”
“I love our woman, I want to offer her more, and I want to always outdo ourselves,” Larian says. “I want to make this a true lifestyle brand, one iconic piece at a time.”
And yes, those pieces may well be bags: “Product is queen for me, and I love the development process: It takes so long to get it right, and it’s so gratifying when we have something that I feel like we really nailed,” she says.
While the Ark’s success was a fluke, to a degree—or, at the least, a slow-build process—she underscores the importance of quality, not quantity. “What I would tell anybody starting out in fashion is to have that one item” that becomes a strong, singular hit, Larian says. The gamble, of course, is figuring out (or stumbling upon) that unicorn of a best-seller. And patience is key.
Determine the true value of that product you’re eyeing with Glamour’s new Cost-Per-Wear Calculator:
It’s the end of summer. RIP, but there’s no denying it now—we’ve got just a few sweet weeks of solidly warm temperatures left, until it’s onto the jeans, jackets, and boots of early fall. And even if you’re fine with fall but know, just know, that after PSL season comes winter, here’s a silver lining: the end of summer makeup sales are out of control right now, especially looking at this week’s Sephora Weekly Wow sale.
As the brand announced a couple of weeks ago, it’s posting a fresh set of deep-cut deals every week until Nov. 1. Each week’s collection is lightly tied together by a general theme, so the first week brought us palette madness, the second, a mix of feature-specific kits, and the third, some skin saviors.
All good stuff, but this week’s selection blows the rest out of the water: we’re looking at an assortment of full-size beauty cult classics, all prices slashed to $15 and under. On the eye front, there’s Benefit Cosmetics’ They’re Real! mascara, a defining, volumizing, and curling major player. Originally tagged at $24, it’s down to $15.
The mascara’s joined by Urban Decay’s likewise beloved eyeshadow Primer Potion, otherwise known as the primer everyone and their mother loves for finally making their eyeshadow stick. It’s available in the original, translucent shade, along with its multiple variations: the Anti-Aging, a smoothing and plumping twist, Eden, a brightening gold, Sin, a pale nude shimmer, and Caffeine, a warm, matte brown. Each one is typically $24, this week, knocked down to $14.
Rounding out the sale are Tarte’s three spins on liquid lipstick, with different finishes so you can pick your favorite flavor. Tarteist Creamy Matte Lip Paint dries matte, but maintains a moisturizing, moveable finish; the Tarteist Quick Dry Matte Lip Paint is also matte, but super long-wearing (my personal fave); and the Tarteist Glossy Lip Paint, which, per its name, combines pigment and shine.
They’re all $11, because sometimes things are good. As ever, stock is limited—so if you’re interested, it’s best to act fast.
