Chanel Denim

Chanel Denim

From Currently Cringing by Anisha Ramakrishna

May 7, 2026 · 50 min · Season 6 · Episode 211

About this episode

Anisha discusses the complexities of fashion representation and cultural commentary through the lens of recent events at the Met Gala.

This week Anisha is recording with what she describes as a tiny Victorian child mining coal directly behind her left eye, which is honestly a metaphor for everything we're about to discuss. It started with Chanel putting Babitha Mandava in what looked like a CVS run outfit at the Met Gala while Zendaya got architecture, narrative, and cinema. One Instagram comment later and the internet decided Anisha had personally dissolved Greenpeace. The discourse was unhinged. The think pieces were unhinged. The reaction videos were extremely unhinged. And somehow Anisha still plans to wear Chanel, which apparently is the most controversial sentence a brown woman can say on the internet in 2026. But this episode is not really about denim. It's about who gets styled with imagination and who gets "effortless." It's about why luxury includes brown women as consumers but not always as the fantasy. It's about the Met Gala becoming tech prom after Jeff Bezos wrote the check and Mark Zuckerberg showed up looking like AI-generated khakis. It's about Lauren Sánchez and why billionaire glamour that would have been iconic in 2008 now reads as economic rage bait. And it's about why people are financing…

People in this episode

Host: Anisha Ramakrishna

Topics covered

  • fashion discourse
  • Met Gala
  • luxury branding
  • cultural commentary
  • personal experiences in fashion

Keywords

  • Chanel
  • Met Gala
  • fashion
  • luxury
  • cultural commentary
  • brown women
  • discourse
  • economic rage bait

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Greenpeace, Elie Tahari

More episodes of Currently Cringing

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Currently Cringing podcast page.