Clio Peppiatt launched her eponymous label in 2015, with an internship at Alexander McQueeen confirming her love of fashion and a passion for slow-fashion, hand-sewn embroidery. Her collections often include entire hand-sewn garments.

A shy child with parents both working in fine art, Peppiatt’s unique embroidery designs take their inspiraiton from astrology, tarot imagery and even serpent symbolism. Simply stated, the embroidery symbolism seeks to probe people’s minds — or more likely — their unconscious minds.

It was David Vail’s [IG] photograph’s of Clio Peppiatt’s fall 2022 campaign that caught our eye. Oliver Volquardsen styles models Nyaueth Riam and Vaughan Ollier in images that resonate as a scenes in a modern-day southern-nights play.

They make us think of Elizabeth Taylor [or two of them] channeling the playwright Tennessee Williams. They appear as actors or more in hot, sultry and humid southern summer nights scenes, perhaps in a play with a name like ‘Cat[s] on a Hot Tin Roof’.

In the next moment — totally unrelated to the campaign — Melinda Gates entered stage left, with daughter Phoebe, a student at Stanford, and her boyfriend of color. Phoebe adores her Clio Peppiatt dress — see IG snap at end of campaign images — and Melinda was doing well with the boyfriend.

I note this fact because this true global citizen — Phoebe Gates at 19 — endured serious hate online this summer as a result of her romantic relationship.

So you see where AOC is coming from with this southern nights, Tennesee Williams playwright connection.

Additionally, Phoebe Gates has honored her mother’s relentless work globally on women’s reproductive health, including abortion, writing this essay in July for Vogue. Melinda Gates remains a practicing Catholic, driving bishops crazy as one of the major funders of abortion rights worldwide.

Gates has joined forces with MacKenzie Scott [formerly Mrs. Jeff Bezos] , who donated a stupendous $275 million to Planned Parenthood in March, 2022. Michael Bloomberg remains the biggest multi-year funder of Planned Parenthood for decades, but the recent Scott donation left people breathless.

People love the stories that are woven into simple images on AOC — in this case an ad campaign from an emerging designer, taken by a young Irish photographer based in London. We always google for connections and more often than not, those beautiful images take us to new and interesting learning places.

We always want to know who wears these clothes. What’s the background of the designer or model or photographer? What makes her tick?

Learning about Phoebe Gates was a pleasant bonus just now.