4chan chic, how to do what you love, pinterest is it, new york city's uniform..
why doesn't it feel more like the holidays?
Ok it’s been 9 days since my last note so time to get my shit together! Lots has happened and it appears the northern hemisphere is fully forgoing the holiday season (i am up to my eyeballs in work?), how is everyone else feeling??
Here are some interesting things i have seen; as always please reply if you agree, disagree, want to fight, hold hands etc etc
Hmm: Luka Sabbat’s new ‘creative company’
I’m a little late on this (on account of not rly being interested in dude so not clicking the link at first). BUT Luka Sabbat launched his new company, Marking Distance, sometime in November i think; he describes it as “encompass[ing] photography, art, fashion, music and more. Marking originally started as public instagram where anonymous images were uploaded "marking the distance" between different countries and locations. The platform was used to showcase photography, art, furniture, music and apparel.”
It got my attention due to the site’s aesthetic which is like a very basic 4chan riff. He basically ported the project from a very 2010’s feeling IG brand into something else entirely, off The Grid. It’s a cool way to merchandise the product and visuals- we’ve all seen the bedroom brands w/ lil sites that have a very angelfire, geocities aesthetic (e.g) but this is like the next evolution (regression?) on that path. Watch a bunch of others follow suit.
How to do what you love, by paul graham
This is a banger of an essay from 2006 that I revisit every now and then. Paul Graham founded Ycombinator. The essay was resurfaced to me recently from some students on tiktok who must have been assigned it in class; most pertinently, they were talking about “the prestige trap”. The theory that Paul Graham outlines is ultimately that ‘prestigious’ work sucks-
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.
here’s one of the tiktoks i saw that talks a bit about this:
anyway, pls read the essay if you are at a transitional phase in your career, or just someone who regularly interrogates the role of their work in their life. There’s so many good nuggets in there, really actionable advice like always choosing the less prestigious of two opportunities, or this one;
Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? [..]
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.”
A bunch of good stats for ur decks right here
Coefficient Capital have released a very robust trends report. To me the most interesting part was within the survey on GLP-1 (ozempy et al) users (from about slide 21), examining the second-order effects of adoption of these drugs into other consumer goods. So interesting. Also a bit of a mic drop stat around the fact that the majority of people would rather be 25% healthier than have 25% more money. In America? thats kinda wild/unexpected.
Does your social team have a pinterest lead/strategy?
Pinterest is having a moment! Last year / earlier this year I noticed a LOT of the younger folk i was talking to via various work projects were extolling the virtues of pinterest: they almost don’t even view it as social media but just a creative space. Great Wired piece that validates this;
In 2023, Pinterest had a moment—and that’s thanks to Gen Z-ers. They make up more than 40 percent of its active monthly users and are now the platform’s fastest growing demographic, outpacing the millennials who first discovered and popularized the platform with mood boards and wedding planning pins.
Pinterest hit 482 million MAU’s in Q3- I dont know, I know TikTok is a beast blah blah blah but it’s also unbelievably hard to cut through on, and TikTok Shop feels like the wild west - whereas Pinterest offers a pretty interesting, malleable canvas for brands, people, anyone to express and create a different type of visual narrative that can still directly convert. I’m also told they pay their creators a lot more than other platforms do.
This is such a sick idea: Atelier Tech Fleece
Nike did an activation in a suit store in nyc for their iconic tech fleece franchise; which is undeniably the ACTUAL business/life/leisure suit of NYC (“New York City’s Uniform”) and so many downtowns world wide. This is my fav thing they’ve done locally in so long, if anyone knows whose idea this was/who worked on it please lmk I would love to give them their flowers.
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Complete w/ the garment bag + receipt! come on now!
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I think it works bc Nike is losing its hold on NYC; but this taps into a real insight around tech fleece and how beloved it is and has been. It’s just a bit of fun intended to drive energy around something that could easily be taken for granted.
Personal Style Is Getting Buried By The Algorithm, Context Is Key
I read this article last week and it articulated something my friends and I have been talking about for a while:
“If you’re going to this algorithmically generated place to look for fashion, you aren’t interacting with ideas manifested in images, as fashion has always been,” she says. “You’re interacting with data manifesting as commodities — so you think about yourself in Pinterest terms and SEO keywords.”
The article also talks about how the context of items and trends has been completely stripped and offers some advice - “Watch old movies, read a magazine. Instead of looking to individuals [on Instagram], look at things within their context, where they’re formed.” I think this is a topic that is bubbling in peoples subconscious/the zeitgeist right now.
In Joe Freshgoods’ short film for his latest drop, “1998”- A Message To Young Me a line jumped out at me - “your whole childhood one big moodboard”. #context
Elsewhere on IG tremaine emory asked highsnobiety to not ‘dimes square y2k’ his output. HILARIOUS and true (Whatever your feelings about him may be)
There’s clearly always a tension when you remove things from their context but the way cultural ephemera is distributed en masse via IG/tiktok, stripped entirely of their meaning, and flattened for global consumption is ...different. Not sure what happens from here. Probably a shitload of gatekeeping.
A Creator Campus is coming to a few big cities
With creators-in-residence Colin + Samir and supported by Whalar. The cost seems super reasonable compared to college ($5,750 per year, with subsidized options available). This is probably something that an existing educational institution should’ve done considering YouTube Creator has been ranking as a dream job for most kids for years now, but alas? It seems like a no-brainer from a business standpoint; people want quick training and access to tools to experiment with, before they invest in significant overhead for their own personal use. It also offers the network that a traditional college experience in USA probably provides (i wouldn’t know!!!) with a sharper vocational focus than a humanities degree.
👟👠👞🥾 Footwear + “streetwear” nerd zone 👟👠👞🥾
Triple 5 Soul ‘heritage’ section on their website is a treasure trove
wdyt of the gallery dept asics? for some reason i love a fake paint-spattered margiela jean or like, these…
but i feel weird abt these
I think ive been sleeping on Gant. This varsity is beautiful.
Street Night Live gift guide has some heaters
Clarks woke up from being asleep at the wheel for several years: lots of cool collabs, also love that they finally acknowledged their equity in Jamaica more widely. Anyway maybe they had some leadership changes or something ? It feels fresh.
Last and likely least
I was on a podcast last weekend! This one is purely for strategy nerds, most likely australian ones, or people who are weirdos and wondering if they will like life on the client side (lolll). Listen if you havent already! I think some of you found me via this ep, if so, welcome <3
Til next time- when hopefully things will feel more festive x
P.s if you like this newsletter please fwd it along to someone else who u think may enjoy it also! It genuinely makes my day every time someone new subscribes. <3