Letter of Rec #069: What goes into making a style newsletter?
And the best of what’s out rn, featuring a tablecloth top, slashed woven pants and a tie-dye “summer coat”
How’s it going this week? Happy Passover if you celebrate and God speed if you have kids and are, like me, moonlighting as the premiere entertainment lever for them until school resumes on MAY THIRD.
The thing about returning to the role of exclusive caretaker/entertainer/social comrade for my kids is that I always dread it when I’m anticipating it, but like 48 hours into our groove I almost always think to myself: this is more fulfilling, even enjoyable, than anything else I do in my life, ever.
I think I have a hard time with transitions — like there is what feels like a violent sensation that consumes me when I am confronted by a routine disruption. To go from spending my days doing independent work, to spending my days in a more externalized state of play. The reverse happens too. Until my kids turned like 4.5 and our weekend time together was so all-consuming that from Friday afternoon until late Sunday night nothing else existed, the wave of vulnerability, which at the time felt more like a punch at my confidence, would knock me out so hard the night before the work week would start and they went back to school.
I always felt like I was free-falling in those moments: how do I train my mind out of play? The same way I’d wonder on Friday afternoons, how do I get off this discipline mill? Maybe it's the flopping between serious and playful that has felt so harsh and sudden. Like one can’t exist within the other or even near it.
By Tuesday afternoon, I was always fine. Better, it seemed, than I'd been the week before.
I think the thing about getting older and accruing experience and the primary value of the latter is that as you live more life and do more stuff, you build all this new context, storing all these memories that you can refer to when situations that look like the prior ones repeat themselves.
It’s a real gift to be able to access these stored memories, to use them to remind yourself when you’re feeling like the ground beneath you is shaking that though you haven’t been here before, you’ve been somewhere similar. And you also know how you went through.
There’s a real sense of relief that starts to settle when you can remind yourself that about getting through. It makes all of it seem more like play.
There is some good stuff out there right now
Jamie Haller clothes have officially launched (you loved these pants, which are now nearly sold out)
Breads Bakery’s roasted eggplant and tomato salad/dip/nutrient-rich condiment is an easy party trick for between a bed of lettuce (mustard frills!) and labne
These boots are $108 and appear to be unworn
This Miu Miu dress is $76 and feels very current
To celebrate its ten year anniversary, the consignment store and site, Resee launched a sale yesterday with 15 fancy names (including Catherine Deneuve, Cindy Sherman and Oprah) who are auctioning off items from their closets. Every day between yesterday and May 2nd, two 24-hour sales will occur simultaneously (save for on the last day when there is just one (and the garment is an Alaia leopard print coat from ‘91). Net proceeds from all the sales will go towards Women for Women International. Some highlights include: a 1970s Saint Laurent coat, said Alaia coat (Kim Kardashian’s), and I have my eye on a Loewe fringe blazer from Spring 2018 (c/o Saskia de Brauw)
Today’s sale items belong to Cate Blanchett and Emma Chamberlain
This dress from Pucci. No notes except that I want to wear all summer with an unbuttoned cotton shirt styled over and driving loafers (trying to shake these, but can’t unsee them. See also).
This skirt from Alfie will make for one good way to feel like a Prada girl come Fall 24
These pants from Nikki Chasin are a good way to try The Row’s pass at JNCOs but lite.
Luuda makes the sunshine equivalent of clothes. Look at these pants and this trench coat.
And have you heard of the brand Skarule? Such a thoughtful display of clothes with a mind their own.
Victoria Beckham x Mango is pretty good:
Nailing good summer clothes is easier than winter: they’re lighter, less expensive, often more forgiving and joyful. Helps too that most of us find ourselves in better spirits — more confident and eager to express something.
What goes into making a style newsletter
Making a style newsletter like the one that ran on Wednesday is usually divided into 3-4 parts.
First is the outfit configuration — and these posts in particular (which are basically like lookbooks that either focus on millions of ways to wear a single product or reflect a broader meditation on a “vibe” of the season) are usually motivated by a spell of inspiration (basically another word for motivation when it comes to creative work, no?) like an outfit I put on to wear out that clicks in or an idea that encourages me enough to want to shoot it.
The basis of what makes me want to share something is precisely that: the act of sharing. I can always tell when I’m motivated by an inclination to show vs. one to share. When it is one to share, I usually feel a sense of expansion and removal from the (creative) product itself. When it’s one to show, I lose a bit of confidence, or don’t feel entirely sturdy in the product.
So I start typing out all the outfit ideas, which usually accumulate over the course of a couple weeks.
Shooting the looks. Once I have a handful looks down that pass the are-you-expanded-or-wobbly test, I start doing that. In this process of taking the looks off paper and bringing them into real life, they tend to change. Or become multiple looks. It is not uncommon that I’ll start out in a pair of pants styled with a top and jacket, which becomes the same jacket styled with the same top but a totally different bottom. Then new ideas usually come in. Same bottom, different top. Same top, different bottom. I usually shoot in batches — 5 looks here, 10 there, over the course of some days.
When I’m doing a trend piece (Another kind of style story — “How to wear X,” “Is X the new Y?”), I write the post first then configure the outfits.
In a way, I think this makes the visuals that accompany the story more precise because they’re configured with a tangible goal in mind.
When it’s one of the dressing meditations, the writing comes after the looks (and is, I think, why these lookbooks can often feel a little unhinged).
Market work. After that, I credit the looks, and then I start the market work. I often solicit the help of an affiliate/merchandizing specialist I used to work with at a network who has gone freelance (hi Charlie!) to help with this step. This is one of the most time consuming (but also satisfying) parts of making the newsletter. Satisfying because it is such a rich process of discovery that really does serve as the newsletter’s market research. New ideas come into the fore when I’m doing it. I start to take note of burgeoning trends (in the last couple of go’s it was a combo of: crochet, car shoes, and capris).
I recognize nuances in consumer behavior (“x product in y color sold out almost everywhere I searched for it, while z color is still widely avail”) that sometimes become broader stories. Most straightforwardly, I get fired up by different things I find.
Like this skirt, which I came across while looking for this one. Or this green mini dress, on sale from Ciao Lucia. Both were born out of my desire to see what could be comparative to a crochet micro mini. This one from Diotima stopped me in my tracks but in the end, I bought the Majorelle one — it reminded me of an old Jil Sander skirt I looked for second-hand but never found, only better because of its elastic waist band. So it’ll be easy to wear all summer with a pointelle tank, loafers and this growing stomach.
This part of the process takes on average 3-5 hours.
The actual wearing outfits part is
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