Barrie Miskin was newly pregnant when she noticed her appearance was changing. Dark patches bloomed on her skin like watercolor ink. A “thicket” of hairs sprouted on her upper lip and chin.

The outside world was changing, too: In her neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, bright lights enveloped objects in a halo, blurring her vision. Co-workers and even her doctors started to seem like “alien proxies” of themselves, Ms. Miskin, 46, said.

“I felt like I was viewing the world through a pane of dirty glass,” she added. Yet Ms. Miskin knew it was all an illusion, so she sought help.

It took more than a year of consulting with mental health specialists before Ms. Miskin finally found an explanation for her symptoms: She was diagnosed with a dissociative condition called depersonalization/derealization disorder, or D.D.D. Before her pregnancy, Ms. Miskin had stopped taking antidepressants. Her new psychiatrist said the symptoms could have been triggered by months of untreated depression that followed.

While Ms. Miskin felt alone in her mystery illness, she wasn’t. Tens of thousands of posts on social media reference depersonalization or derealization, with some likening the condition to “living in a movie or a dream” or “observing the world through a fog.”

People who experience depersonalization can feel as though they are detached from their mind or body. Derealization, on the other hand, refers to feeling detached from the environment, as though the people and things in the world are unreal.

Those who are living with D.D.D. are “painfully aware” that something is amiss, said Elena Bezzubova, a psychoanalyst who specializes in treating the condition. It’s akin to seeing an apple and feeling that it is so strange it doesn’t seem real, even though you know that it is, she added.

The disorder is thought to occur in about 1 to 2 percent of the population, but it’s possible for anyone to experience fleeting symptoms.

Mental health providers have sometimes dismissed D.D.D. as its own diagnosis not only because of a lack of familiarity with the disorder, but also because its symptoms overlap with conditions like depression, anxiety or panic disorder.

As new research has emerged, it has become more widely acknowledged and discussed. The second edition of “Feeling Unreal,” a primer on D.D.D. originally published in 2006, was released in 2023. And Ms. Miskin published a memoir on the subject titled “Hell Gate Bridge” last June. The same month, the novel “Please Stop Trying to Leave Me” came out, featuring a protagonist with D.D.D. The author, Alana Saab, knows the disorder well: She was diagnosed several years ago.

“It’s kind of what I would imagine a drug trip would be,” she said of her experience with the disorder. “But it’s 2 in the afternoon and I’m completely sober.”

The Cambridge Depersonalization Scale is widely considered the most reliable measure of the disorder. Patients are asked to rate how often and how long 29 different experiences occur. Examples include feeling like “a robot,” losing bodily sensations like hunger or thirst and seeing a world that now looks “flat” or “lifeless,” like a picture.

People with D.D.D. may feel disconnected from themselves and their surroundings for months or even years at a time. Less commonly, they may also experience auditory distortions — like muffled or louder sounds.

D.D.D. is often associated with a history of emotional abuse or neglect. The symptoms can be brought on by anxiety, depression, the resurfacing of early trauma, major life stressors, cannabis and hallucinogens like LSD, said Dr. Daphne Simeon, an expert on the disorder and the co-author of “Feeling Unreal.”

In some people, there can be multiple triggers, particularly if there is an underlying propensity to dissociate.

“You can meet a person whose first episode was triggered by panic and then it happened again when they got depressed and then it happened a third time when they had a terrible divorce,” Dr. Simeon said.

Researchers have hypothesized that depersonalization/derealization might be part of the mind’s defense system.

“Your body and your mind are telling you something,” Dr. Simeon added. “You’re having an intolerable experience, essentially, from which you then have to detach.”

Jeffrey Abugel, Dr. Simeon’s co-author on “Feeling Unreal,” dealt with D.D.D. for more than a decade before finally getting a diagnosis. He knows exactly where it stemmed from: “Pot, plain and simple,” he said. The drug pushed him “over the edge,” he added, creating a “massive panic attack.”

Mr. Abugel, who is a health and wellness coach, eventually found help. He now offers private consultations and virtual support groups for people with the disorder.

Ms. Miskin’s symptoms improved with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. She restarted her antidepressant and also began taking lamotrigine, or Lamictal, a medicine best known for treating seizures and bipolar disorder.

Recovery was a painful process.

“You have to relearn how to be in the world,” she said, even though “you just want to lay in bed and pull the covers over your head and never come out.”

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On a chilly day in December, Jacob Gallagher, a men’s fashion reporter for the Styles desk of The New York Times, is wearing a button-up shirt and black slacks, one of about a dozen pairs he owns. The look is put together, but casual.

His love for style, Mr. Gallagher said in an interview that day, began with tailored suits and Italian shoes. His father, a museum exhibition designer, has worn such a uniform “every day to work for decades,” Mr. Gallagher said.

It was that influence, and Mr. Gallagher’s immersion in skateboarding culture and the hardcore punk scene growing up in Maryland — subcultures in which, he said, image and how you carry yourself is very important — that led him to his beat: analyzing fashion as an expression of political, social and cultural identity.

Mr. Gallagher, 33, joined The Times in October, after nearly a decade covering men’s fashion for The Wall Street Journal. In recent months, he has written about the rise of the sinewy male stars that he calls noodle boys, the symbolism of the black sweatshirts and puffer jackets worn by rebels in Syria, and the cloaks on display in the papal drama “Conclave.”

In an interview, he reflected on how men’s wear has evolved, why he believes scrutinizing style matters, and the fashion advice he would give now to his 20-year-old self. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Where do you find your story ideas?

We’ll often look at the news of the day, or what’s occurring in pop culture, and think, “What’s the story off it that we can do that’s style-focused?” I also spend a lot of time talking to retailers, and going to stores to try to figure out what’s selling and what’s not selling.

Had you worked in the fashion industry before you became a journalist?

When I was in college at The New School, I worked at a few mass retailers, and a men’s wear boutique, in New York City. That was a pivotal moment in my life because it instilled in me the importance of understanding how people really shop, the way trends trickle down. I still think about those truisms a lot: If men find the right pair of pants, they will always buy that pair of pants.

Some people think of fashion as fluffy. Why does fashion coverage matter?

Fashion is one of the biggest industries in the world — one of the richest men on earth, Bernard Arnault, runs a luxury conglomerate. After language and beyond how we carry ourselves, what they wear is the first thing people interpret about each other when they interact. There’s so much messaging and self-identity that’s reflected through clothing.

Your beat spans many cultural spheres, including politics, sports and film. Is there one you’re particularly fascinated by?

I love looking at politics, because there’s such a narrow box of what politicians can quote-unquote wear. So any minor change, a different way of appearing, or a different way of dressing, is always going to reverberate and be super interesting to write about.

And I think athletes are the most important people in men’s wear right now. They’re having the most fun, universally, and being the most experimental. You can find every microtrend in existence in tunnel-walk outfits.

They’re definitely taking more risks than I would say most, but certainly not all, actors do. They’re often doing the shopping for themselves, and that is always ripe for coverage. I might be sitting at a show in Paris and thinking, “Oh, that’s wild. Who would ever wear that?” Six months later, it’s on a football or basketball player.

It seems like we’re in something of a golden age for male athlete fashion.

There was a time when people had a very narrow view of what kind of man was into clothes. That, in my experience, has withered.

A lot of people in the fashion industry keep it simple style-wise, like wearing all black. How do you think about dressing?

Certainly I would not wear everything that I cover, nor do I cover everything that I wear. I’m extremely particular about the brands I wear. That’s a form of expression for me. I understand why other fashion reporters sometimes stick to a uniform, but I get a kick out of it.

What fashion advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

Fewer zany pants. I wore patterned pants for too long.

Is there something you wish you would have taken a class on in college?

The ability to comb through documents and legal cases is such an impressive skill. It’s something that I’m still learning. It took me some time to learn how to read an earnings report for a company. That level of investigative work is something I think every reporter is going to have to be skillful at, because our nation is so litigious, and there are fascinating legal wrinkles to almost every story. I definitely speak with more lawyers for reporting purposes than I had ever thought I would.