“What’s been most surprising to me is how heteronormative my lifestyle has become,” says photographer Emli Bendixen as she reflects on her journey of leaving London, buying a home and having kids. “I never thought this would or could happen for me, primarily because I always had this perception of myself as being unable to live this kind of life. A very real feeling of being different had been simmering inside of me for so long.” As a queer woman of colour, she talks warmly and openly about how parenthood has helped her completely redefine what a family is and can be.

These days, Bendixen lives in Bristol with her girlfriend and their two children: one a toddler, the other still a baby. Life is busy and full and beautiful as she balances the all-consuming early years of motherhood with being a working photographer. At home, she’s been making images of her little family and their day-to-day lives since the very beginning, collecting them together in a series called Forgetful Mothers.

Born in South Korea, Bendixen was adopted to Denmark when she was just three months old. “Growing up in the Danish countryside was idyllic in many ways but adoption starts you off on the back foot, slightly off kilter, I guess,” she says thoughtfully. “I was always aware not only of my physical otherness to my white friends but also of the fact that unlike them, I didn’t – and still don’t – know my biological parents or anything about them.” As a result, she says, she felt different from very early on and her childhood was tumultuous and complicated. “That’s where my interest in other people’s families came from,” she adds, “trying to understand what others had that I didn’t.” Discovering her queerness at age 23 was another stage in learning what set her apart. 

I never thought this would or could happen for me, primarily because I always had this perception of myself as being unable to live this kind of life. A very real feeling of being different had been simmering inside of me for so long.

Before starting a family herself, Bendixen began feeling around the edges of queer parenthood with a project called Modern Families, in which she photographed all types of family set-ups across the UK. “When I started that series, it was with an outsider’s eye,” she says. “I didn’t have a classic family structure and never understood what people talked to their parents about, or the bonds that they shared. It just felt incredibly alien and overwhelming to me that people would put so much faith in others just because they grew up under the same roof or were connected by bloodline.” Thus, Modern Families became a sort of aspirational endeavour – the concept was foreign but she still wanted the intimacies of a family unit some day. Just like that first project, Forgetful Mothers explores the perception of family, confronting and resolving questions like ‘What do they think of us?’ – but this time by turning the lens inwards.

Forgetful Mothers is what Bendixen playfully calls “the grown-up version” of her previous series Forgetful Girls, a collection of homemade mini zines she put together each year for her girlfriend’s birthday. “We are both exceptionally forgetful people – that’s where the title came from originally, an ongoing joke between us! We used to go away a lot and would struggle to remember the details of what happened and where,” she laughs. “Forgetful Mothers came about when our first child was born so it’s basically a little annual just for us, a reminder of the year past, in pictures.”

The images that make up the Forgetful Mothers series are gorgeous – a radiant constellation of tonal and tender domestic scenes bathed in the glow of afternoon light. We see Bendixen’s partner in bed and laughing on the phone; her baby being breastfed; a flurry of little moments of the family eating or playing together.

There’s a rare self-portrait of Bendixen, too. It’s night-time and she’s sitting at the foot of the stairs, her head resting sleepily against the wall. “I photograph the things I want to see, and the things I want to remember,” she explains, “everyday small scenes and incidentals that I can’t help but inject extra beauty into.” She’s particularly drawn to the little oddities and imperfections of normality, which she attributes to her personal history. “It’s a pretty diverse background, which I think is why I thrive when things are a bit off. That’s all I know.” She adds that photography has always been “a form of exploratory escapism” for her. That’s interesting because while these pictures mean escapism for her, for those of us looking in from the outside, they are doing the important work of normalising the experience of this young family.

Photographing the ones we love is almost always an emotional experience. Bendixen calls it “incongruous” and says she is still working out how much of her family’s bubble she wants to put out in the world. “The most intimate moments, that I understand to be some of the strongest images, are generally offline. I have a lot of concerns about the consent of my children and what might happen to photography ownership in the future – especially online – so I try to edit my own pictures in a way that shows the emotional experience without giving away too much of the physical one.” The irony, she says, is that she has spent years trying to find out what family is and now that she has it, and understands it, she hesitates to share her findings. That’s parenthood at its most instinctual – an overwhelming desire to protect and preserve the privacy of our own. 

“What’s this I’m reading in the paper? It’s a load of absolute shit, that’s what it is. What’s the matter with you? Are you stupid or what? I’ve never read so much rubbish in my life.”

It was February 2010, and I was at my desk in the Guardian office. Philip Green didn’t need to introduce himself. His habit of bellowing down the phone was unmistakable, and I had just written an article about how I was falling out of love with Topshop after a decade being in thrall to its shop floor. Green never did take kindly to criticism of the golden child of his Arcadia empire.

Of the thousands of businesses that have been brought to their knees by the pandemic, Topshop is the most high-profile scalp; Arcadia Group collapsed into administration on Monday. In its prime, it was the most glamorous store the British high street has ever had. From late 1990 until a few years ago, it was the rock star of retail. Its dresses regularly featured on the pages of Vogue. Every Saturday, the 90,000 sq feet of its flagship store on Oxford Circus were packed with shoppers high on catwalk-adjacent clothes at accessible prices. When Beyoncé flew into London, the store opened an hour early so that she and her team could shop privately on their way to rehearsals. At London Fashion Week, where the brand staged a bi-annual show from 2005 until 2018, the Topshop front row regularly outshone designer labels with the glossiest celebrities, the sharpest new trends, the most copious champagne. At those catwalk shows, Green would position himself in the place of honour, with Anna Wintour on one side and Kate Moss on the other. He was the uncontested king of the high street.

The story of Topshop’s glory years – and of its fall – is closely tied to Green, but the story of its rise belongs to someone else. Topshop’s ascendancy was a phenomenon under the stewardship of Jane Shepherdson, several years before Green arrived. As brand director, Shepherdson created at Topshop the kind of brand that had never before existed. Until then, high street fashion had tended to fall into two generational camps. There were sensible skirts-and-blouses for grownups, and then there was “youth” fashion – basic denim, brightly coloured T-shirts, generically skimpy party dresses, cheap rip-offs of catwalk silhouettes. Topshop changed this, thanks to Shepherdson’s unerring taste and her eye for the best fashion school graduate talent with which to fill the design studio. Topshop offered high-fashion sophistication at a high street price. In 2006, Paolo Roversi shot a Topshop advertising campaign between shooting covers for Italian Vogue.

Fashion is never just about clothes, and Topshop on a Saturday in the noughties was a playground. The democratisation of style that it represented felt like a progressive and cheering development, and the loud music and video screens lent the stores a festival mood. There were on-floor stylists and walk-up nail bars. Green, who bought Arcadia in 2002, had little time for the nuance of design but he immediately grasped the value of the shop floor experience that Shepherdson had created at Topshop (“Fashion Disney,” she once called it). There are not many points on which Green and I agree, but he was right about one thing: he knew that the business of fashion is about emotion. A man ruled by ego, he instinctively knew the power that clothes have to make you feel good about yourself. For a certain type of consumer, a Savile Row suit signals status to everyone who matters; Green understood that the same principle could be rolled out for a £50 leather biker jacket that could be sold by the lorryload.

The rise of Topshop is a tale of how fashion reached its zenith. In the first decade of the 21st century, culture shifted away from words and towards pictures. The world’s operating systems became ever more visual on a granular level, as mobile phones segued from being about the spoken or typed word to being about images. As a result, fashion became ever more visible. The luxury industry grew, so fashion brands became wealthier and more powerful. Fashion weeks evolved from being industry-facing showrooms for clothing into major media events. At the Oscars, the red carpet became as high-profile as the awards themselves. Fashion, the arena where visual messaging meets identity politics, found itself in the spotlight, and Topshop rode the crest of this wave. In May 2007, just a few months after the arrival of the first touchscreen iPhone, the first Kate Moss for Topshop collection went on sale. Launch night brought Oxford Circus to a standstill. Moss, dressed in a long ketchup-red dress from the collection, struck mannequin poses in the shop window to entertain the waiting crowds, before being escorted by a beaming Green to a cordoned-off VIP area, where friends including Meg Matthews and Sadie Frost joined her. This was a world of supermodels, champagne and rock’n’roll, and the name above the door was Topshop.

 While the rest of us were busy navigating that classic complex sartorial conundrum: 'how to make the comfiest loungewear Zoom-meeting-appropriate', it seems that there were a number of celebrities still *bringing it* when it came to their wardrobes.

Fashion shows may have been cancelled, awards ceremonies post-March may have gone virtual and the opportunity to be 'spontaneously' snapped by adoring fans whilst out and about in a full Fendi look may have been thwarted by national lockdowns keeping everyone indoors, but a quick look back over the last twelve months confirms that there were some undeniably memorable fashion moments.

Brought to light by Google who has just released its annual 'Year In Search' report, we're reminiscing over those Super Bowl half time looks, Lizzo's iconic look whilst twerking mid-basketball game and, of course, Harry Styles. Full Stop.

Here are the ten most searched-for fashion moments over the last twelve months, and the looks that subsequently defined 2020. (These, and the matching tracksuit - obviously).

Miley's little sister took the top spot this year thanks to her inimitable, bold style. And with no one look in particular piquing the public's interest more than another (she rarely goes low-key, let's put it that way), we're hazarding a guess that this epic sheer leotard worn with thigh-high boots at the CMT Awards was up there with her most talked-about.

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ESPN host Maria Taylor found herself in the second spot after she was embroiled in a row with a radio host who unnecessarily commented on one of her outfits. She shut down the conversation by Tweeting ""Hey ladies, remember you can wear whatever you feel confident in," and we all fell a little bit more in love with her.

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Did anyone else forget that awards season happened at the start of this year? So maybe it wasn't a total write off... It certainly doesn't feel like one when we remember this fuchsia cowboy outfit on Lil Nas X, which was the third most-searched outfit of the year.

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Perhaps the only award Billie Eilish hasn't won this year, the super successful star's head-to-toe Gucci look at the Grammy Awards - complete with matching lime green hair - was only the fourth most searched-for look of the year. We expect that the five Grammys she won that night make up for it.

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This black t-shirt dress may look perfectly innocent from the front view, but thanks to Lizzo being Lizzo and getting up to twerk along to her song 'Juice' at the Lakers game fans couldn't take their eyes of the shirt's cut-out on the back revealing her thong. Fast-forward a few weeks and the 'visible-thong' is a certified trend. Lizzo, we bow down.

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No one is surprised at this outfit's appearance on the most searched-for list, we'd be lying if we said we didn't account for many of those entries. The bodysuit alone featured over 12,000 sequins and 15,000 hand-sewn Swarovski crystals... someone needs to get that in a museum, pronto.

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Any other year, any other outfit, style icon Travis Scott wouldn't be a surprising name to see on a list of the year's biggest fashion moments, but his seventh spot this year is unfortunately down to the ridicule he received for his Batman Halloween costume which was - according to fans - more reminiscent of a 'cockroach'. Travis even deactivated his Instagram account temporarily during the backlash before returning and deleting every trace of the outfit.

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Often spoken about for her fashion choices, Melania Trump's wardrobe was another on this year's top 10 most-searched list for no one look in particular. This Valentino number was no doubt up there, though, with the Internet going wild for its perfect green-screen shade that rendered it supremely meme-able.

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Need we say more? The genderless approach to fashion. The collars. The pearls. The Vogue cover. In *that* dress. Swoon.

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It wasn't only J.Lo up on that stage, you know? Another Super Bowl wardrobe that garnered so much attention that it snagged tenth spot on the most Googled looks of 2020 was Shakira's - complete with 5 outfit changes, no less. This Peter Dundas two-piece was undoubtedly a major highlight.

 In a normal year, shoppers would look to Clare V, the Los Angeles-based handbag maker best known for its mid-priced purses, for a shimmery, metallic clasp bag to accessorise their holiday party wares.

But in 2020, with fewer parties on the calendar, the brand is hoping comfort-first clothing — which for Clare V means rhinestoned, puffed-sleeve knit sweaters and matching sweatpants — will prove just as popular as its fête-specific gear. So far, so good: apparel currently makes up 30 percent of the label’s sales, up from 10 percent in 2019.

“In any holiday season, you would see us having a lot of holiday bags, sparkle bags, things that people want to bring to parties,” founder Clare Vivier said. “And this year, it was clear that there was just not going to be a market.”

Across the industry, brands have recalibrated their holiday plans, as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic put a damper on the party season. Resort, pre-spring, or holiday collections usually include flashier, fun clothes made for celebratory nights out. This year, fashion’s approach to the holidays include changing product assortment or, at the very least, the marketing around it.

“This is a very practical holiday season,” said Jessica Ramirez, retail research analyst at Jane Hali & Associates. “And retailers are being really practical with inventory.”

According to data from retail analytics firm Edited, the number of new styles of holiday party dresses arriving online across the US mass market has declined by 21 percent compared to 2019. Instead, more customers are searching “Christmas” and “festive” knitwear, and “glam pyjamas” — silk, satin and feather-trimmed pieces — Lyst data found.

This year’s holiday shopping season represents a conundrum for brands eager to cash in on the high-volume sales month traditionally focused on lively social events. In a year where sweatpants, pyjamas and activewear dominated fashion, fashion brands have had to adjust their own offerings just to survive. Retailers learned too late the perils of useless inventory, when clothes for the spring festival season sat stale after consumers cancelled travel plans under the virus’ first wave. For this holiday, they were keen not to make the same mistake twice, Ramirez said.

E-commerce retailer Revolve, best known for its Instagram-ready, trend-focused items influencers are tapped to help sell, is still selling sequin-adorned, crushed-velvet and satin minidresses alongside beaded clutches.

But much of its offerings this holiday season are focused on separates rather than dresses and jumpsuits that the Revolve shopper “can dress up or dress down for super-intimate at-home events and small gatherings,” said Lauren Yerkes, vice president of buying and merchandising for Revolve. “There is still some element of novelty that she is looking for, whether it be her top, a leather pant, a speciality knit. She wants some element of fun during the holiday season.”

Festive separates were also in high demand for the plus-size retailer Eloquii, chief executive Mariah Chase said. Its customers were still keen on celebrating the holidays, even if only virtually or in accordance with social distancing guidelines.

Still, there may be some pent-up demand for festive holiday dressing from consumers who have largely spent nine months stuck at home, not unlike how Americans are driving a Christmas tree boom to fight the Covid-19 blues.

This is a very practical holiday season, and retailers are being really practical with inventory.

Reformation is still selling glitzy styles, like a $248 gold sequinned wrap dress, and telling its customers, “You probably don’t need anyone to tell you to stay home this New Year’s Eve...However, it’s still a damn good excuse to wear a fire dress.” The brand said that its customers have continued purchasing dresses, but that its holiday and New Year’s Eve collections this year are “much smaller compared to previous years.”

In addition to offering more comfortable styles, fashion brands have also leveraged the unusual holiday season to test new collection ideas and marketing strategies, said retail consultant Robert Burke. For example, Jacquemus offered an all-pink Christmas capsule collection (a standout in a season drowning in gold lamé, crystal embellishment and satins) that did little to evoke the holiday season but excited shoppers nevertheless. Some items from the collection — made up of affordable gifting-ready keychains, socks and knitwear — sold out quickly.

California-based Vince, meanwhile, focused less on differentiating its Pre-Spring collection (which was designed in late 2019) from what it might normally offer in a given holiday season. Velvet dresses with a double-V neckline and tromp l’oeil pleats, luxe cashmere and tapered trousers were hardly divergent for the brand, creative director Caroline Belhumeur said. But the marketing surrounding the collection, executed in June, focused on entertaining at home. The collection campaign imagery, an intimate lookbook that photographer Josh Olins shot featuring artist Conie Vallese sprawled barefoot across a sectional sofa — not at the centre of a crowded seasonal soiree — apparently resonated with consumers. Belhumeur said that the brand’s marketing emails to subscribers have been opened more frequently.

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