Trends: A Sole Collection
Lucy Kaplan, Juliet Corwin, Riley Stevenson, Elsa Eastwood, Ava Satterthwaite, Annabelle Stableford, and Anika Weling
February 12, 2026
In my youth, a jar of pickled herring claimed the back right corner of the fridge. I can’t quite point to my father’s Jewish ancestry as the reason; it seemed more of a personality quirk that compelled him to crave tangy fish on a seeded cracker before his three o’clock nap. My brother and I followed suit, curious eaters tempted by scores of gefilte fish and gravlax at break fast, Passover, and the occasionally attended Saturday service. On weekends, we grabbed bagels with whitefish from Lenny’s, a half-decent deli we remained loyal to for the name it shared with our late grandfather. Not the finest in the city, but every New Yorker knows that the best sandwich comes from the place around the corner. After our westward relocation, my appetite persisted. No longer able to race down the stairs and across the street to satisfy my hankerings, I stacked the cupboards with tinned fish of my own choosing. Smoked sardines in olive oil, thinly filleted mackerel, salmon preserved with lemon—a hazy ode to New York winters gone by. Salt and sour clung to the walls of our kitchen, reminiscent of the mom-andSole ME copy 25 copy (3).inddc 14 trendy to forget to eat. Somewhere around fifth grade, I think. pop shops we once frequented. This one, our own. When I left home, I folded my f ixation into my suitcase—not a trend, but a history. I etched a pair of salmon onto my upper thigh, drawn with a dark ink that felt like blood. A finelined reminder of Passover and Grandpa Lenny and my father’s pickled herring. Last month, I remember in health class, how my teacher told us about thigh gaps and how to check if we had them. After class, a group of us stood in a circle, touched our ankles together, and prayed for emptiness. We’d skip meals and then skip SILENT HUNGER WAS THE LANGUAGE OF THE STRONG. “ ” JU LIET CORWIN I stopped dead in my tracks at a familiar crosswalk in New York. There it was: the closure sign in Lenny’s window, dated two years prior and peeling at the edges. My stomach roiled as the word imposter came to my lips. I was sulking in a city that held my past and escaped my future. That same week, my father sent me a pair of winter boots, a tin of smoked f ish stuffed inside the left footbed. Somehow, he knew I was mourning. Sweet Girls By Juliet Corwin I try to remember when it became 14 rope during recess. When we got lightheaded during P.E., we’d lie and say we had cramps. (Most of us hadn’t started our periods yet.) When our bellies grumbled in class, we’d pretend not to hear it. We’d look at magazines of flat stomachs in low-rise jeans and poke at our pudge. We bragged about how long we could go without eating. We’d sneak chips and cookies when the others weren’t looking and hope the crumbs didn’t leave a trail. To eat was to be weak. We couldn’t give in to the gnawing. Silent hunger was the language of the strong. It became honorable to ache for food, a rite of passage into the womanhood we so desperately awaited. 11/26/25 4:46 PMAnd nothing could taste as good as skinny felt, right? I remember the shame that blushed at my cheeks after I caved and ate the pasta and chicken that my mother had lovingly cooked for me. On-Campus Observations From An Off-Campus Oyster Farmer By Riley Stevenson To be on a college campus is to be surrounded by trends. Spend fifteen minutes on the Main Green and you’ll see a dozen micro-trends, some here to stay and most bound to disappear into the backs of closets; new accessories worn in creative ways over ever-lowerslung jeans held up by a kaleidoscope “ HIS WORLD IS ONE OF SALT, FROST, AND FIREWOOD, OF WEARING THE SAME MUDCAKED SWEATSHIRTS TO WORK AND SEEING THE SAME FLEECECLAD OLD PEOLE IN OUR SMALL MAINE HOMETOWN. RILEY STEVENSON of belts all turning to dust. My boyfriend is an oyster farmer from a small town in Maine. His world is one of salt, frost, and firewood, of wearing the same mud-caked sweatshirts to work and seeing the same fleece-clad old people in our small Maine hometown–a life without much room for personal expression through trendy clothes. Observing the trends of our campus is his favorite activity when he comes to visit. He walks into the Blue Room, sympathetic to all of the college students hunched over their laptops, buys a coffee, and sits on the terrace overlooking the Green, noticing. As a freelance journalist and astute business landscape rendered big bands unviable. It died again in the 60s, when bebop became esoteric and cerebral, a “musicians’ music”. Young people wanted to rock instead of think. It went out with the Old Guard—with observer of the human condition, he is uniquely primed to note and catalogue, dedicated to his craft of perceiving what has changed since he last stepped foot on both this and his own college campuses. After I am done with class “ he barrages me with questions and commentary about what he’s noticed, like an off-duty WE MAY TALK OVER IT AT COCKTAIL PARTIES, LET IT WAFT OVER OUR HEADS IN ELEVATORS, BECAUSE WE, LIKE THE YOUTH OF THE 60s, HAVE ENOUGH TO THINK ABOUT. WITH MUSIC, WE SCROLL AND SKIM SURFACES. anthropologist, notebook in hand. He is excited, irascible, brimming with observations, seeking confirmation, ever-excited by his day’s work.“Does anyone here use a backpack anymore? Could the jeans get any baggier? Do you think anyone wants to buy my pre-paint stained Carhartts?” I shake my head at him and laugh, knowing the questions are the fun part, their ” answers irrelevant. We walk through the Green hand in hand as he tells me about his findings. I marvel at the ELSA EASTWOOD ” Armstrong and Ellington, Billie, Dizzy, and Dexter—and again with Bird, Monk and Miles, with Wayne and Coltrane. They say we’ve succumbed to the musical Big Mac of commercial pop, and not even Wynton Marsalis can bring us back. I believed them. Then last year, I won a ticket through an Arts Institute lottery to see Jon Batiste in concert. I never win anything on that website. I knew him only as the bandleader on The Late Show, but I had to go. Arriving at the venue just before 7pm on a Thursday, I stepped past a nauseatingly long standby line of fans clutching setlists and trading deep-cut references with fervor. I recognized some from my music theory courses and offered a few guilty waves over worlds we occupy, the observations that allow us to see how others see their world, how lucky I am to share this world with someone as thoughtful and observant as he is. Jazz is Dead By Elsa Eastwood They say jazz is dead. It died first after World War II, when a changing 15 my shoulder as a woman scanned my ticket. I chose a seat in the very front, just beneath the grand piano—the piano on which my jazz hero would perform a reharmonized “Star Spangled Banner” unlike anything I’d heard. His expansive fingers stretched across the keys like vines, entwining gospelinflected voicings with modal color, face contorting in testimony. His was a music of lineage and remembering, pain and power, the improvisatory human experience; a music that traverses valleys and wades through Sole ME copy 25 copy (3).inddc 15 11/26/25 4:46 PM“That’s the trend, Mom.” rivers, moving through space and psyche. It was sacred and lyrical, percussive and raw. Creation and truth-telling unfolding in real time. The arrangement lasted 15 minutes. Standing with the crowd, hand to heart, I soon shook with tangled sobs of peace, joy, and heartbreak at what felt like the most perfect convergence of sound and history. The old and patriotic, broken open in one trembling instant. I say jazz is alive. It’s adapting to a changed landscape, vivified by its own endurance, shedding its skin in the dark. It emerges between genres like a ghost in the machine. We may talk over it at cocktail parties, let it waft over our heads in elevators, because we, like the youth of the 60s, have enough to think about. With music, we scroll and skim surfaces. But if allowed, it will instruct. It will wait for us to remember how to listen. It will continue to send messengers to remind us that, bruised but dignified, it still pulses beneath the noise. The Chronicles of the Traveling Pants By Ava Satterthwaite The first time I asked to borrow my mother’s bell-bottoms, her face “ STILL, IN THOSE BELL-BOTTOMS LIVE FIELDS OF HER ROSE AND LAVENDER FRAGRANCE, DENIM THREADS INTERWIEVING LIKE STRANDS OF HAIR SHE’D DUTCH BRAID BEFORE BED. AVA SATTERTHWAITE scrunched in disbelief. “That’s the trend now?” she asked, befuddled. I never wear them, of course – the tide of the trend shifted long ago. Still, in those bell-bottoms live fields of her rose and lavender fragrance, denim threads interweaving like strands of hair she’d dutch-braid before bed, silhouettes of her twirling between twill ruffles like we’d dance in the kitchen to “Better Than Revenge” and “Fearless.” All around me are reminders of adolescence. Pink bow UGGs mellow into classic tans. Black puffer vests I followed her to the attic, where we coiled between stacks of doodle-laced notebooks, faded letterman jackets, and clusters of swollen crates— one labeled CHRISTMAS DECOR, another RECORDS + CDs, a third DENIM. It was like Narnia – an entire world of memories hidden behind her wardrobe. She found the bell-bottoms under a mound of distressed overalls and low-rises and threw them over her shoulder. Snickering, she asked if I’d like a flower headband or some fringe boots to finalize the look. But, as I stood in the mirror, smoothing the creased flares and fiddling with the waistband, a tear skimmed down her cheek. “That’s the trend?” she echoed, voice faltering. I nodded. “It’s just like I remembered.” ” When I came to college, my mother snuck those bell-bottoms into my suitcase as a farewell, her scribbled note stuffed between its folds. Call Your Mom! it insisted – like I’d need the reminder. Frankly, the further I wander from home – from childhood – the more striking our resemblance becomes. I listen to “Landslide” with such reverence it feels biblical. I add crushed Kellogg to my cookies “for some crunch” and dark chocolate chunks “for the bite” like she advised. I drink iced Sauvignon Blanc and shake my leg so excessively the whole table wobbles, its steady thrum reminiscent of our once shared dinner table. I never considered my s e l f sentimental until I rediscovered her bell-bottoms looming in the recesses of my dorm-issued wardrobe. 16 overtake matted lime-colored North Faces. Like my mother, I’ve been fossilized over and over, my fleeting memories buried beneath old boxes and new clothing, my own forsaken Narnia. The trends, timeless and teenage-dirtbagish alike, fill these archives with precious evidence of our evolution. I grab the bell-bottoms and look toward a clouded mirror. I’m much older now: cheekbones more defined, brows furrowed tensely. The denim is stiffer now, too. It holds me a little tighter, and I think warmly of my mother’s arms. It’s just like I remembered. Merriam-Webster By Annabelle Stableford trend noun a : a line of development : approach b : a current style or preference : vogue c : a general movement : swing d : a prevailing tendency or inclination : drift Approach: To identify three intrigues: two trends of my life, and for fun, a not so subtle trend that consumes me, which you may discover hidden throughout this text (although I am no mastermind). Vogue: So it goes, it is not in vogue Sole ME copy 25 copy (3).inddc 16 11/26/25 4:46 PMbe in vogue, nor am I in vogue. But I persist. Swing: According to my memory, everything that ever happened to me happened when I was eight. There were troubled nights and tears culminating in the visit to the energy healer, who proclaimed me a blind farmgirl in a previous life (that escapes me as well a pendulum now, coming back in crisis to explain everything). And the drunk man at the natural hot springs and the woman who told me to look away, to imagine his image washing away in the river (except “ Quarantine Trends By Anika Weling It’s sad to think of what I will say when my children ask me what I did during the COVID-19 pandemic, the most prominent event of our generation. I wish I could say I did anything useful. I could lie and say I helped save lives or protect rights, but in reality I sat in bed for months on end, fixated on a little LED screen I REFUSE TO FORGET MY LIFE: THE SHARPNESS OF WORDS, THE KIND THAT ONCE YOU READ THEM, THEY HARBOR WITHIN YOU. eight inches from my face. I listened to the distant hum of the news from my living room, an ominous loop of ANNABELLE STABLEFORD every time I try, the current reverses). And when I read Tuck Everlasting and in the story discovered a profound magic all for myself (novels, within my realm of independent reading now!). Ex. “You have a favorite spot on the swing set / you have no room in your dreams for regret.” 1 Drift: “Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away.” I refuse to forget my life: the sharpness of words, the kind that once you read them harbor within you; the ten hardboiled eggs I watch someone eat at breakfast, all in one go (perhaps not profound, but noteworthy); the things that happened to me when I was eight and in all the eras after. All of this goes into my Volumes, my Immortal Histories, my Moleskines (2019-2024) and Leuchtturms (2024-present), my most critical trends. I don’t let any of it drift away. Ex. “Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away.” 1 ” muffled, monotonous voices with nothing good to say, so I hid under my covers. I watched video after video on how to make dalgona coffee, while hating coffee, and how to 1 Attribution of quotes (spoiler warning): Taylor Swift do Tiktok dances, which I had no desire to ever learn. I saved DIYs and recipes to a folder, only to never look at them again. Propped up in bed, I took online classes while the world fell apart around me. The numbers rhythmically continued to climb. One million. Two million. Ten million. No one ever taught us what to do in the case of a pandemic. No one thought we would need to know. So in the utter chaos around us, we turned to distraction to survive, to escape. Never-ending entertainment f lashed passed us as we chased a relief we could never quite reach. We fell into rabbit holes where we never had to stop and realize what our lives had become. It’s trend, after trend, after trend. Around me, everything is still, everything is quiet.
Sole Magazine
