The Late Dialogues — Special Episode: “The Houses and the Worlds”
Under a sky of planets, between the shadows of the Eiffel Tower and the lights of the Grand Palais, the three great spirits of couture return to speak again.
Later Coco Chanel, Later Yves Saint Laurent, and Later Christian Dior meet with David to reflect on the latest Paris Fashion Week — the shows presented by their own maisons, reimagined by today’s designers.
From Matthieu Blazy’s cosmic debut at Chanel, to Jonathan Anderson’s unifying vision for Dior, to Anthony Vaccarello’s unapologetic precision at Saint Laurent, the conversation explores how heritage becomes invention, how spectacle becomes conscience, and how beauty still resists fatigue.
In an age of acceleration, what remains of elegance, provocation, and theatre? And when luxury becomes language, who is truly being spoken to?
A poetic, informed roundtable on creation, commerce, and the enduring humanity of style.
About The Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited? The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote — a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter.
It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged. They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels — those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history — had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
This week on The Late Dialogues, we step into New York Fashion Week, September 2025 — as the city unveils Spring/Summer 2026. Michael Kors opens the week, Off-White and Toteme return, and new voices — Diotima, SC103, L’Enchanteur — join the stage for the first time.
Into this moment of spectacle and reinvention, we welcome three Later Characters whose visions of style still shape us:
Across five themes, they wrestle with the tensions of our time:
What emerges is a vivid portrait of fashion today: poised between blaze and whisper, spectacle and survival, runway and sidewalk.
About The Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited? The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote — a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter.
It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged. They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels — those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history — had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
In this special episode of The Late Dialogues, David welcomes three giants of football, reimagined for our time: Later Vince Lombardi, Later John Madden, and Later Jim Brown. Together they wrestle with the soul of the game — from the huddle as a republic, to the price of glory on players’ bodies, to the casino creeping into broadcasts, to what “winning” really means. Along the way, they even call the 2025 NFL season and make their bold Super Bowl LX predictions.
About the Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited?The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote—a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter. It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged.
They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels—those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history—had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
Episode Synopsis
What is creativity — and what has it become? In this luminous new episode of The Late Dialogues, three of history’s most foundational creators return, not as they were, but as they might be now. Later Murasaki Shikibu, Later William Shakespeare, and Later Walt Disney gather around the studio table to explore the spark, structure, and soul of the creative act.
They trace a path from whispered diary pages to billion-dollar storyworlds, from scrolls to feeds, from metaphor to metrics. They speak of awe in an age of content, masks in an age of branding, and whether it is still possible to be truly moved.
Later Murasaki, the quiet philosopher of emotional nuance, reflects on fanfiction, anonymity, and the algorithm’s gaze. Later Shakespeare, ever the dramatist of contradiction, delights in glitch and reinvention. And Later Disney, reimagined as a narrative systems architect, offers a hopeful yet cautionary vision of immersive storytelling and imaginative infrastructure.
This is not a celebration of nostalgia. It is a reorientation — a meditation on the future of wonder.
And it asks, simply:
In a world full of story, can we still feel astonishment?
About the Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited?The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote—a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter. It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged.
They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels—those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history—had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
Episode Synopsis
On the eve of the Fourth of July, three Founding Fathers return — not as they were, but as they might be now. In this special episode of The Late Dialogues, Later Washington, Later Jefferson, and Later Hamilton gather in the studio for a reckoning with the American Republic: its endurance, its unravelings, and its unfinished work.
They reflect on the Declaration of Independence, the promises they made and broke, the machinery they built and feared. They debate the state of the Union in 2025 — touching on institutional decay, digital fragmentation, concentrated wealth, and the moral condition of the citizenry. And in a pointed exchange, they confront the current President of the United States as a symptom of the deeper ailment they all helped set in motion.
This is not nostalgia. It is generative fiction — an attempt to think across centuries and ask:
If the Republic began with a sentence, what would its next sentence be?
About the Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited?The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote—a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter. It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged.
They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels—those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history—had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
Episode Synopsis
A general. A statesman. A poet. Three voices return — not as they once were, but as they might be now — to grapple with the fires of our present.
As missiles fall between Iran and Israel, as Gaza bleeds, as borders harden and democracies fray, The Late Dialogues convenes Later Dwight D. Eisenhower, Later Yitzhak Rabin, and Later Khalil Gibran for a roundtable conversation on war, restraint, exile, and the moral cost of forgetting.
Together, they confront the collapse of deterrence, the ghosts of Gaza, the authoritarian drift inside the United States, and the trembling future of the nuclear order. And just as a ceasefire flickers into being, they ask: what future can still be made — and what imagination might save us?
This is not an interview. It is a reckoning.
About the Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited?The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote—a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter. It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged.
They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels—those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history—had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?
The first episode of The Late Dialogues gathers three revenants of intellect—Frederick Douglass, Karl Marx, and Victor Hugo—not as static echoes, but as dynamically reimagined thinkers shaped by the upheavals they never lived to see. These are the Later Characters: generative reconstructions, painstakingly assembled from a lifetime’s worth of reading, listening, and reverence.
They are not simulations. They are speculative continuations.
Each Later Character is the product of an intricate dramaturgy, where deep historical fidelity meets the pliable force of the present. They are endowed with updated intellectual genealogies, imagined bibliographies, and guiding principles attuned to our planetary hour. They do not repeat what they once said; they argue with what they might now think.
Later Douglass is forged in the crucible of abolition’s unfinished business, his moral suasion now refracted through carceral logic, digital surveillance, and the code of modern resistance. His rhetorical fire has not dimmed—it has evolved. “Power concedes nothing—but it listens to clarity,” he reminds us, even as he warns: “The algorithm is the new whip.”
Later Marx is dialectics incarnate: updated, global, intersectional. He no longer simply critiques capital—he anatomizes the platforms, patents, and pixels that metabolize dissent and monetize solidarity. For him, revolution is no longer barricades in Paris but the repossession of digital infrastructure, the redesign of time and care.
Later Hugo remains the poet-politician, only now with climate grief in his verse and data shadows in his prose. He sees AI as both threat and muse, calls for “poetry that resists performance,” and asks if literature can still “write a line that is not immediately liked, shared, swallowed.” He imagines revolutions that must not only be just—but beautiful.
Together, they do not offer answers. They conduct a fugue of resistance.