Clementine is wearing an ice necklace made by stylist and a top from stylists archive

Heat is the New Normal

It’s hard to hold global warming in your head when your eyelashes are icing over.  When it’s freezing outside, the crisis can feel theoretical - like something happening to other people, in other places, in another season. But a cold snap doesn’t cancel a warming planet. Climate change isn’t a steady climb; it’s a system pushed off balance, where extremes - heat, cold, floods, fire - show up like uninvited guests and refuse to leave quietly. Even when today (or this week) feels intensely cold, the bigger, long-term pattern is still that Earth’s average temperature is rising over decades. This story lives in that contradiction: shivering through winter while the planet keeps warming.

PHOTOGRAPHY HELENA GOÑI @helena_goni
TEXT AND STYLING JESPER GUDBERGSEN @yessirjesper @favorite.management using only upcycled materials, vintage, archive and personal pieces as well as pieces by independent designers
HAIR TAKYUKI UMEDA @um_takayuki @87artists 
MAKEUP SHAINA EHRLICH @shaina.ehrlich @bornartistsrep 
CASTING MOLLIE MAGUIRE @molliemaguire @molliemaguirecasting 
MODELS CLEMENTINE CHALFANT @clementinechalfant @freedommodels GEM NUNEZ @gem.nunez @xyneagency LEV @xyneagency YUKI @yukibeniya @musemodelsnyc  
THANK YOU FRANCESCA VALENTE @francesca__102@102nyc

At the moment, large parts of the US are experiencing extremely cold weather due to disruptions in the Polar vortex - a band of frigid air around the North Pole, which has dipped south, bringing Arctic blasts across North America. This cold air, often linked to rapid Arctic warming from climate change, pushes temperatures far below average, affecting large swaths of the country and creating severe winter conditions. So around the US, our bodies are experiencing cold, while our brains are trying to hold onto the fact that the planet is, in the long run, warming. It’s that cognitive dissonance: How can global warming be real if I’m freezing? - and the answer is that weather is short-term; climate is the long-term average and trend.

  • Clementine is wearing stylists own top and a head piece from photographers personal collection
  • Yuki is wearing a top by Aisling Camps from stylists archive
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Maybe the strangest thing about climate change is how easy it is to misread it in the moment. When it’s cold enough to sting, global warming can feel like a rumor. The memory of sweltering days has faded fast and an overheating planet feels like something happening somewhere else. But weather is a mood swing. Climate is the long game. One freezing week doesn’t undo a warming world; it just proves how warped the system has gotten, how extreme can show up on either end.

So yes, maybe there’s something kind of perfect about making a heatwave story while a lot of us are bundled up. Because the point isn’t to wait until the crisis is aesthetically convenient. The point is to stay awake when it’s easy to look away. To talk about heat before it’s at the door. To treat the body not as vanity, but as a frontline sensor.

This is a beauty story, but it’s also a timing story: a reminder that the “new normal” doesn’t arrive all at once. It arrives in flashes. And we’re already living inside it.

  • Gem is wearing her own clothes and accesories and a hair piece by Sandy Liang
  • Clementine is wearing stylists own top and a head piece from photographers personal collection
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There’s a point in every hot day when your body stops negotiating. The air turns syrupy. Sidewalks radiate. Your scalp starts producing its own weather system. You reach for a hair tie, then you remember: this isn’t a one-off heatwave anymore. This is actually the baseline shifting.

Science is blunt about what’s happening. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) puts it without poetry: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” And the records are stacking. The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Global Climate 2024 describes 2024 as likely the first calendar year more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55 ± 0.13°C above the 1850–1900 average.

Lev is wearing his own jewelry
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“Climate change is not a vibe. It’s infrastructure, labor, housing, health, and access. It’s also grief, because something we loved about seasons is changing.

But grief doesn’t have to become paralysis. It’s about hope, without the delusion. Here’s the hopeful part that doesn’t insult your intelligence: we still have agency. It’s not infinite, not without pain, but it is real."

The body keeps the score.Heat is not just uncomfortable; it’s dangerous. The World Health Organization notes: “Heat stress is the leading cause of weather-related deaths.” That fact doesn’t belong only in hospitals and policy briefs. It belongs in the way we plan our days, commute, work, gather, dance, and dress. It belongs in the way we treat heat like a serious environmental exposure, not just “summer being summer.” The planet heating up also means the texture of life changes. Nights don’t cool down the way they used to. Humidity lingers. Heat domes settle over cities. Indoor air gets recycled and dried, then you step outside into a wet blanket. Your hair takes the hit from both directions.
Heat isn’t equal. The warming planet doesn’t distribute discomfort fairly. Heat lands hardest where there’s less shade, more asphalt, older buildings, and fewer resources, often in neighborhoods shaped by historical inequities. You can feel that truth in the small things: who has AC, who has cover, who gets a safe cool night, who is stuck in uniforms, on shift, outside.

Climate change is not a vibe. It’s infrastructure, labor, housing, health, and access. It’s also grief, because something we loved about seasons is changing.

But grief doesn’t have to become paralysis. It’s about hope, without the delusion. Here’s the hopeful part that doesn’t insult your intelligence: we still have agency. It’s not infinite, not without pain, but it is real.
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it like this: “Individual years pushing past the 1.5°C limit do not mean the long-term goal is shot.”

That matters because “1.5°C” isn’t a cliff you fall off - it’s a risk meter.
The more warming, the more damage; the less warming, the less damage. Which means action is never pointless, even late in the story. And there are actions at every scale: Agency looks small and large at once: personal choices, community care, and policy-level pressure that actually changes the math. Reduce waste where you can, keep learning and donate to mutual aid during extreme weather, hot or cold. You don’t have to be cheerful to be hopeful. Hope can be disciplined. Hope can look like preparation, solidarity, and the insistence that the future is still worth fighting for.

  • Yuki is wearing a full look by Collina Strada
  • Gem is wearing a bodysuit from stylists archive and various vintage stones sourced from flea markets
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"...the point isn’t to wait until the crisis is aesthetically convenient. The point is to stay awake when it’s easy to look away. To talk about heat before it’s at the door. "

A visual beauty story about hair in heat can seem a bit absurd? But it can possibly do something powerful: it can help tell the truth without being doom. It can show bodies and faces living inside the climate era: still expressive, still soft, still sharp, still here. Because the point isn’t to pretend everything is fine. The point is to refuse the lie that nothing can be done any more. In a warming world, maybe beauty isn’t escapism. Maybe it’s a rehearsal: for resilience, for care, for adaptation that doesn’t erase joy. If your hair has changed, take it as information - not an insult. Your body is responding to a planet that’s changing. That means you’re paying attention.

@HELENA_GONI