Oh, so you're a stylist? Should we phone Stacy London?
On the landscape of fashion styling and fashion and related writing.
This summer is kicking my butt! I need to spend more time offline to care for pressing family matters, and I have neglected some of my promises. In the fog of life’s difficulties, I have passed the time by saving good things on resale platforms, and I will share them with paying subscribers tomorrow at 9 a.m. PST in the Substack chat, wallahi! I want you to have them. Also, trust and believe I have been documenting my depression summer outfits because drip is forever; depression is temporary.
In the last year, I have observed more fashion and related writing surface and dominate my Substack recommended reads. I have wondered how detrimental over-intellectualization will be for regular consumers, whose sole purpose for dressing up is to participate in a societal contract. Do you need to know anything about Pleats Please to wear Issey Miyake? Do you need to know how to read sheet music to enjoy and identify good music?
In conversations with my editors and friends, I wondered how I had contributed to this valorization and intellectualization with this newsletter, something I never intended. This newsletter intends to remove the anxieties of online shopping — not add further anxieties about whether you know enough about fashion to wear clothes. Some of you have asked me to share books I read about clothes, and I have avoided doing that because I don’t want to add to the problem. I don’t want you to think reading about fashion design translates into curating a functional wardrobe. (Most of my recommended reads on building a functional wardrobe are menswear recommendations. A lot of what I enjoy reading are anthropological approaches to fashion rather than prescriptive writing.)
I reserve my criticisms only for those who claim expertise in fashion but only acquire fashion knowledge for bourgeois ascension. Knowing about fashion does not translate to successfully and thoughtfully advising others on what to wear. My newsletter exists because I have practice selling clothes and dressing other people for various aspects of their lives. I hope readers know I do not expect them to amass the same knowledge as me. It’s a complete waste of time (except insofar as learning about clothes is how you enjoy spending the time between your full-time job, sleeping, and managing two to seven crushes). Even as designers have excluded many from access to well-made clothes, I fervently believe that dressing well is for everyone. But at the same time, you don’t have to love fashion. You don’t have to find it interesting.