Tag: Consumption

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1958 and Skymall Kities

My father loved gadgets. He was always tinkering with something and was always upgrading his electronics to some new specification.

Is it any wonder that I married such a handy husband? Men love futzing around with stuff. Sometimes they have daughters and then you’ve got women like to mess around with projects too.

I am sure we will have endless rounds of nostalgia for the eighties and nineties era gadget, electronics and novelty shops. You could get lots of mileage out of building your own computer.

But even setting up something silly from Skymall or Sharper Image captured some of the joy. The novelty of a new invention was visceral. I wouldn’t say no to a Hammacher Schlemmer renaissance myself.

I didn’t love it when we remade that style of retail into quirk chungus millennial fandom but I didn’t hate getting Star Trek tchotchkes either. And now I dearly love websites that my friends have built like WireCutter.

My husband was humming the tune to a piece of YouTube esoterica that is a deep cut to the original editor of that bastion of shopping guides. Choire Sicha launched the WireCutter but it’s in some ways the least soulful of his franchises. A Mike Albo shopping column already nailed the bit we’ve just been redeeming it since then.

Choire gave us Gawker 2.0 before his his incredible era of independent publishing streak making properties like the Awl and the Hairpin.

In a world with more shops and essayists than good shoppers or readers, Choire found the good ones and shared. And one of his discoveries was Nina Katchadourian’s work.

And so now my husband sings the tune of SkyMall Kitties and he sometimes can’t get it out of his head.

Maybe that is my own submission to the “thing I think about too much” essay franchise. It’s my own personal Negroni season or Supreme’s clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers.

I’m sure we will enter an exciting new era of curating down the perfect piece of cultural detritus with artificial intelligence. But I will always be grateful to electronics dads and savvy buying guides for teaching me to enjoy the joy in making something. Even if it is profoundly uncool. I’m still team Barbara Kruger though. Don’t believe the hypebeasts.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture

Day 1938 and ChatGPT 2.0 Image’s Mood Board Mania

Every time a new AI image generation model comes out, there is a wave of people creating new content riffs inspired by their friends testing out the newest capabilities.

Yesterday OpenAI released ChatGPT Images 2.0 which is tool powered by the gpt-image-2 model designed as a “visual thought partner.

It is pretty fun to play with if you have even the slightest design or visual vocabulary to work with. Or even just a couple cool selfies.

No need to focus on regulatory capture politicking, compute shortages, geopolitical drama or shipping choke points when you can create cute social media content right? Screw a grey zone informational wars (or even a hot kinetic one) girls just want to be remade as a fairy princess science or as Studio Ghibli character.

So what’s the next trend? My feed produced a wave of mood boards with color theory, swatching, fabric pins, makeup stories, hairstyles, other mood board elements that combines everything from descriptive prose to capsule wardrobes. And all this from a a couple of basic uploaded photos and some simple prompts.

I choose the below images and said “do a color analysis of the woman in this picture including best colors, makeup choices, hair choices, style options and create a mood board with outfit inspiration, prints that work, accessories and other details”

From there it spat out a long analysis which I will post below. I then asked that analysis to be mocked up in a mood board based on the look and feel of the images with the descriptions from the analysis. And I’m not going to lie it’s pretty good and clearly ChatGPT can smell the Ann Taylor on me. I mean, umm, it can tell I spent time working for some of best known American heritage retailers.

Now it gets weirder the more you try to edit it. The slow warping of my face from my own to I’m going to say Sheryl Sandberg is a little unsettling. But I do wear a lot of silks and prefer greens and browns though I am often a little black dress defaulter.

Now I just went through an enormous exercise in which I tried to find a television and camera ready foundation where other models were sure I was a soft autumn but a soft summer isn’t all that far off.

And I appreciate the buttering up OpenAI does with their quiet luxury spiel. I’m more of an Italic luxury buyer and a Quince if I’m feeling like a gamble. But somewhere back before all this inflation I for sure was the kind of girl who wore chunky antique vermeil accessories and never turned down a nice olive green.

This is a great set of photos for analysis—different lighting, styling, and contrast levels make it much easier to see your natural coloring clearly.

🎨 Overall Color Season: Soft Summer (leaning Neutral-Cool)

You sit in that refined, muted, slightly cool palette with:

  • Low-to-medium contrast (your features blend rather than sharply contrast)
  • Soft, diffused coloring (nothing overly bright or high-chroma)
  • Neutral-cool undertone (pink in the skin, but not icy)

You can borrow slightly from Soft Autumn (especially olive/green tones), but your best looks are cooler and more muted.

🌈 Best Colors for You

✅ Core Palette (your power zone)

  • Dusty rose, muted mauve
  • Soft plum, blackberry
  • Blue-gray, slate, steel blue
  • Sage, eucalyptus, muted olive
  • Taupe, mushroom, cool beige
  • Soft navy (not inky or harsh)

⚠️ Approach Carefully

  • True black (can feel a bit heavy—your blazer photo shows this slightly)
  • Bright white (too stark—soft ivory is better)
  • Bright jewel tones (too high contrast)

🚫 Avoid

  • Neon anything
  • Super warm oranges/yellows
  • High-contrast combos (black + white, etc.)

💄 Makeup Direction

You look significantly more harmonious in the softer, diffused look (photo 1 and 3 vs the sharper blazer look).

Skin

  • Light to medium coverage with a natural or satin finish
  • Avoid overly matte—your skin looks best with a bit of life

Blush

  • Rose
  • Soft berry
  • Muted pink (what you’re wearing in photo 1 = excellent)

Lips (this is your strongest feature zone)

  • Rose gloss (photo 1 = perfect)
  • Mauve nude
  • Sheer berry stains
  • Avoid: orange-red or overly brown lipsticks

Eyes

  • Taupe, mushroom, soft plum
  • Cool brown instead of warm bronze
  • Soft liner (charcoal > black)
  • Mascara: brown-black ideal

💇‍♀️ Hair Analysis

Your natural coloring works beautifully—this is key.

Best Hair Direction

  • Neutral to cool brown
  • Slight ash or soft cocoa tones
  • Subtle dimension (very blended, not high contrast)

Avoid

  • Golden highlights (too warm)
  • Very dark/black dye (overpowers you)
  • High-contrast balayage

Styling Note

You shine with:

  • Soft movement
  • Natural texture
  • Slightly undone polish

👓 Glasses (important win here)

The black frames:

  • Add structure (good)
  • But slightly overpower your softness

Try:

  • Soft charcoal
  • Translucent gray
  • Muted tortoiseshell (cool-toned)

👗 Style Essence + Mood

You read as:

Soft Minimalist + Intellectual Romantic

(very understated, very intentional, very modern)

Think:

  • Quiet luxury
  • Slightly academic
  • Soft structure, not rigid tailoring

🧥 Outfit Direction

Silhouettes

  • Fluid tailoring
  • Draped fabrics
  • Soft blazers (less sharp shoulders)
  • Relaxed but intentional lines

Fabrics

  • Silk
  • Fine knits
  • Matte satin
  • Soft wool
  • Avoid stiff, shiny synthetics

🧵 Best Neutrals (your wardrobe backbone)

  • Mushroom
  • Cool taupe
  • Soft navy
  • Dusty olive
  • Muted charcoal (instead of black)

🌿 Prints That Work

Because your coloring is soft, your prints should be too:

✅ Ideal

  • Blurred florals
  • Watercolor patterns
  • тонal (low contrast) stripes
  • Soft geometrics

🚫 Avoid

  • High-contrast graphic prints
  • Sharp black/white patterns
  • Loud, busy designs

📌 What Your Photos Show (Specific Feedback)

Photo 1 (window light, glasses)

Best overall look

  • Soft pink lip = perfect
  • Brown shirt = harmonious
  • Natural light = confirms your muted palette

Photo 2 (black blazer)

  • Black is wearing you slightly
  • More contrast than your features naturally support
  • Makeup slightly sharper → less aligned with your softness

Photo 3 (relaxed, green tone)

  • Muted green = excellent
  • Skin looks balanced and even
  • This palette direction is very “you”

🧭 Style Keywords (use these when shopping)

  • Muted
  • Soft
  • Washed
  • Dusty
  • Neutral-cool
  • Blended
  • Understated
Categories
Finance Preparedness

Day 1923 and Petroleum Dependency Consumer Packaged Goods Risk Dashboard

A chunk of preppers and preparedness enthusiasts are just shopaholics. Shopping is common response to anxiety and depression. Doing something that you can control in a world you can’t control has logic to it.

Now experts in disaster response will tell you that preparedness is as much about skills and community as it is about “stuff” but it’s a lot harder to learn a new skill and nurture community than it is to buy something.

So if you aren’t up for getting first responder certified or spending time in your local library I’ve got just the thing to sooth your anxieties about the current situation in the straight of Hormuz.

I vibe coded a dashboard of common household items with petroleum byproducts in them. It analyzes ingredients and wholesale pricing and assigns risk scores so you can make a shopping list of items most impacted by the ongoing supply chain crisis.

A screenshot of the dashboard I vibe coded today to soothe my anxiety about supply chain disruptions and get ahead of pricing hikes and potential shortages

From diapers to sunscreen, you’d be shocked at just how much our basic needs are downstream of petroleum byproducts. Now it’s just a silly little thing I used AI to put together, but petroleum dependency in consumer packaged is high.

From food products and personal care to drugs, you will find we that we rely on petrochemical feedstocks everywhere.

I’ll mess with it as I add in new data sources and get suggestions for categories I’ve missed. But I’d love for you to check it out even if I am not quite done improving upon the basic idea. You might learn something.

For instance, I didn’t know Kroger’s had a public pricing API till today so you live, you learn and then if you have a kid it’s time to buy Luvs. No really diapers are one of the most at risk products for shortages as the impacts of the war ripple out.

Even if the fighting ends today (as I write this a temporary two week cease fire has been agreed to), the damage to processing, production and manufacturing is already enormous.

Say you aren’t worried about price hikes but you are concerned with the environmental impact of your purchasing habits. I included alternatives in the dashboard if you’d like to make a switch.

Time to buy Aquaphor and Vaseline

The data is compiled from DOE, S&P Global, Investing.com, Packaging Insights, VCCI trade reports. A petroleum dependency score is assigned based on estimates of ingredient analysis.

The prices reflect wholesale market trends so you can be prepared to get ahead before retail prices go up. I’ve even included a bit of context on what aspects of the product are petroleum derived ingredients just for fun.

Below is a screenshot for food preservatives. A type of dependency many of us would like less of in our consumption. Maybe the dashboard helps you improve your diet with a little knowledge. Who knows! Isn’t vibe coding fun?

On another note, I remain amazed at what we can do with artificial intelligence and natural language input. This took me very little time thanks to Claude Code, Perplexity Pro and Cloudflare. If you haven’t explored the wide world of vibe coding now is definitely the time.

Categories
Biohacking Emotional Work

Day 1920 and Walking The Dream Roads to Costco

Yesterday I was really struggling with pain. It was all I could do to scribble up an appreciation for my 18th anniversary using WordPress for my writing.

I am doing everything I can to biohack my way around a chronic autoimmune condition that interferes with my quality of life. My love for my life and work is strong.

Sometimes it is strong enough that I willingly try all kinds of therapies from oxygen to hormones. Now I am working through a hormonal treatment recovery (my 2nd attempt) as I believe it is working.

Of course, life happens constantly, which means juggling deep dark horrific pains while the business of war and the business of my own portfolio goes on.

I’ve not had good sleep this week between the excitement of huge wins and the terror of facing down another global crisis brought on my conflict.

You’d think I’d be used to it. Russian invaded Ukraine the week before I left to live in Frankfurt. I was living in Tallinn when 10/7 happened. I was also there when Estonian cables to Finland were cut. One of my best performing companies has had to work around three kinetic wars.

No wonder sleep can be elusive. Yesterday all dream roads carried me to horrors. I woke myself multiple times. You can literally see in my sleep tracking the spiking heart rate and my forced waking.

The positive side to this fitful pained sleep was being up early enough this morning to prepare for a Costco preparedness run and still arrived before their executive member hour was finished.

We rotated our basics like rice and beans. Tinned fish, chicken and other canned and stable shelf proteins are just part of preparing for a nightmare that we hope never comes. Preparedness is a civic obligation. Help yourself to take the strain off the system so we all make it.

It’s possible we are facing an industrial process cascade thanks to the war in Iran and I like us have supplies just in case. We can’t know what comes next but it’s good practice to check expiration dates and make sure you have everything from first aid kit supplies to soap. You’d be surprised at just how much processing fuel fuels the rest of the world’s production.

After all this, I was happy to get stumble into bed and take a long nap. I didn’t even wash the sunscreen off my face. I was running a deficit and wanted to have REM sleep where I wasn’t trapped in horror. Thankfully I got almost two hours of restorative sleep this afternoon and I am ready to go back to bed as soon as I can.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1894 and The Middle Market Sales Reinforcement Dilemma at Sephora

Psychologists can argue until they are blue in the face about the appeal of Veblen Goods or that value can be demonstrated by price point, but veteran retailers know that everyone likes a good deal.

Rich or poor, young or old, oligarch or peasant, the shopkeeper knows the mind of the buyer requires we feel like we are getting more than we paid. This has some downstream consequences.

Retailers try to avoid degrading their price points and brand reputation with tactics like percentage off sales. And they can be clever about it. There are seemingly innumerable shopping holidays now where you can play with merchandising, special collections, loot boxes and creative value presentation.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Single’s Day, Christmas in July, Prime Day, Fukubukuro (福袋) Lucky Bags, and Lunar New Years are just some of “tentpole” shopping holidays around the world that provide merchandising opportunities and encourage taking a look at what is on offer.

Yet somehow the middle market of mass retailing is still struggling with how to manage sales. If you train your customers to expect a deal, and worse if they expect it at a regular time and frequency, what will make them shop in between those opportunities? Mall brands regularly get trapped by sale training behaviors

I’ve been watching Sephora go from a twice a year sale brand to trying their hand at daily drops. It seems as if they are going the Ulta route in the hopes of driving more purchasing at lower price points. Drive repeat purchasing at higher frequency and it might work.

However the average order volume has to be going down. I wonder if they have no choice having re-oriented the brand down market to attract younger buyers during the Sephora Teen pandemic era. But we are no longer in stimulus spend era and I imagine this is alienating to their older upper market customers. I’ll be watching it.

Categories
Aesthetics Startups

Day 1866 and Never Escaping Veblen Goods

I love a good signaling and status competition. There are so many ways to to signal that at the far reaches of taste you will never fear to tread. Just don’t worry about how other people live.

I’ve worked in luxury fashion and venture capital and they run on the same rules. And it’s all snobbery up and down and it is a mixed bag when it comes to what works in reality.

I’ve known sneakerheads who seamlessly transitioned to private equity because they know in some fundamental way that rising price increases demand in strange markets. But the little signals can give away your whole game and you can’t always assume you are speaking their language.

Many an investor and fashionista has made good use of this basic understanding of a Veblen good. The more expensive it gets, the more it stokes demand. Everyone thinks they can become Hermes or Facebook but if you could well you would have.

This can fuck with actual performance as the thing being performed isn’t necessarily the thing that is getting done in reality. You can show your own displeasure with the pricing scheme by not participating. You can short a thing with a little creative and signaling of your own.

Many decided will continue to play along despite not needing to participate in status games. Outsourcing taste is actually something you can pay for and sometimes you should just get a realistic budget.

Often you really can’t afford to play the game and it’s better to cultivate your own taste and satisfactions in life so you are comfortable taking on the risk load of stepping out of unnecessary competition. You play your own game and win on your own terms.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1864 and Retail Therapy in Fashion Exile Land

Maybe it’s because it’s been such a wild week in the financial markets, but I’ve been thinking back to one of my moves to San Francisco just before the Great Recession. It’s a story about buying clothing but I’ll get to that.

I had just come off the high of being the first publisher to break (by live streaming and photography) a new fashion designer who would become one of the biggest names of his generation.

The low hit me as I realized I was unable to afford any of the pieces in his collection. And nor was I able to buy them anyway as the whole collection sold out instantly in New York City. I look back on being backstage at his first (and subsequent) shows with much fondness. Once he threw a full on carnival in a parking lot! Imagine models tossing their size 9.5 Manolo’s on concrete to hop into a bouncy castle.

Those models were his muses and he was known for an off-duty model look. I am about a foot too short, 20-30lbs too fat, and three cup sizes too large to be mistaken for a model so not an ideal customer.

Normally one could politely ask for samples or gifting if one helped break a collection, but this was not a sample collection that would have fit me. I’m a size 7 shoe and those boobs do me no favors for hanger sizes.

Still I wanted one item badly. Even if I couldn’t afford it and I couldn’t find it in stores, I kept an eye out everywhere for it.

The coveted item was a pair of high waisted pleated black wool trousers (lined with an ample cuff) that was the wearable merchandising anchor to a collection that was otherwise a bit tricky for mere mortals to wear.

For the men (and some women) who haven’t given thought to runway models, the metrics are specific. You need to be over 5’ 10”, never over 115lbs and have an A cup to fit a designer runway model call sheet.

These aren’t aesthetic preferences, just that models are a glorified hanger and not a person for purposes of ease of fitting. Yes it’s a bit degrading.

And so I resigned myself to never getting those pants and having only the glory of discovery and first to market coverage. Though the proof on that may be debated.

But then a small miracle happened. As I was relocating to San Francisco (by the buyer of my first startup) I began to get invited to events and parties.

A brand new Barney’s opened up off Union Square in San Francisco. An old girlfriend who had just married and moved to San Francisco told me “you will love the shopping out here as the good stuff never sells out!”

Mind you the collection had sold out in other fashion capitals. I had called around. I asked all the major stockists. It just wasn’t to be had anywhere.

But the new Barney’s was very late in opening and had stock from the previous season saved. I missed the opening party but thought maybe I’ll see something from the newer collection and I’ll splurge.

Well I got even luckier than I imagined. The pants were not only at the new Barney’s but on the sale rack. No one in the market had even liked them.

The salesgirl said weren’t moving as they were too formal and too trend forward for the town. They were having trouble moving most of the pieces from the designer in fact.

There were multiple pairs of the pants in size 38. That is a size 6 in American sizing which is almost always the first to sell out. I purchased it without even thinking. They were 40% off.

I still wear them to this day. And anytime I visit a bigger city or capital with a retailer of high end fashion, or designer goods, I’ll go looking. Sometimes in the strangest places you will find the exact item you wanted marked off in the middle of February.

Categories
Media Reading

Day 1855 and Reading The Certain Uncertainty

My daily routine starts perceptually early when I am in Europe and perceptually late when I am in Montana. The world is currently rotating on the narratives of American Eastern Standard Time and that means I try to rotate with it too.

Alas part of me has always oriented my circadian rhythm around the full noon day sun as I’m I am not an early bird nor a night owl. So European hours work better for me than Mountain West Hours for some types of work.

Most notably the watching of flows of information, particularly from legacy media and its keepers in Washington DC and New York City.

I don’t know where I got the habit, probably from my mother or father, but I always start my day scanning the major newspapers.

There is functionally no local paper to read any longer in most markets but I will take Bloomberg, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, along with NPR before I do anything else. If I’m feeling spicy I might even look through the New York Post.

It’s a habit I was encouraged into as my family was a household that always had a newspaper delivered. Whoever began their day together would share or sections, like a Norman Rockwell painting. I generally remember it being my mother but my father was a great reader as well.

What began with a local Colorado paper turned into many subscriptions. We subscribed to all sorts of magazines and periodicals when times were good and what we could not justify in the household budget, I was encouraged to pick up at the library after school.

Maybe this is why I am such an avid writer, as I am an avid reader. Although I don’t know if either of those habits will have much utility in the future as we transit into visual and oral communication methods. I am still reticent to scroll video platforms.

Now I begin the day not just with a newspaper scan but with every sources of information I can scan from commodity indexes to podcasts and social media.

I like to know where the discourse is being guided as early as I can. Obviously in my professional capacity sometimes I’m months ahead or even years, but I like to be ahead, at least, of the day’s news as well.

Increasingly it is hard to be sure that you are able to paint yourself a picture of what may really be happening as opposed to a picture of what somebody else would like you to think is happening. This was always true but now we are in the fog of war.

Hence my interest in being on European time zones. I can usually get a good grip on what may percolate up being ahead of the London broadsheets. Being just ahead enough of the largest media market (American media is mostly based in Manhattan) can give you a real sense of freedom in these very certain, uncertain times.

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1854 and Will The Real Fake Fendi Please Stand Up?

I don’t know if I should be flattered or irritated but I learned funniest thing this week. Netflix “stole” my Real Fake Fendi story for their hit show Emily in Paris. Let me explain.

Emily in Paris wrote a plot-line into the current 5th season which appears to be riffing on one of my old blogposts “The Real Fake Fendi.” It is a true story & anyone who has known me awhile has heard me tell it.

I wrote about it in ‘21 on this blog five years long before this season premiered. I am on day 1853 day of writing a daily blog and published the story on Day 89 of my writing experiment though the actual experience took place sometime in the late aughts or early teens where I believe I first wrote about it on an old blog I took down.

Emily pitches a campaign to Fendi for a “real fake Fendi” on Emily in Paris

I suspect I would find earlier variants of this tale from my very first (somewhat popular) fashion blog as well. I suppose where fashion is headed is always where fashion has been. Or as they say on the show “it’s super meta and self referential”

The story goes like this. I was once was asked by a tourist for directions to find “a real fake Fendi” when I lived in Manhattan’s Chinatown.

I was honestly stumped by this inquiry. I didn’t answer immediately as my mind raced through the implications of their request. Imagine my mind retrieving.

Was there a fake that had inherent realness that other knockoffs did not possess? Was there a vendor who sold the most authentic mimicry of Fendi which the tourist wished to find? I had no clue how to answer.

Did they mean the realness one sees on the catwalks overseen by RuPaul? But which kind of realness? The creation that evokes the spirit of its inspiration? A realness so over the top and yet absolutely true to its essence?

Or perhaps the blunt direct feedback from being “read” by a drag artist that no construct, no matter how convincing, is the original artifact. Is is serving realness? I honestly didn’t know. I had Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction swirling in my head and still has no answer.

Apparently tourists looking for Canal Street want to buy the most authentic real fake Fendi

I just told the tourist that Canal was one block north and walked away. I don’t know if they ever found what they were looking for and I may have even given them the wrong directions I was so flummoxed.

Now can I really complain about someone taking one of my coinages and injecting it into a Darren Starr show about spunky brunette girl from heartland American who becomes a luxury fashion marketer by being good at social media. You see where I am going with this. That girl is me.

Perhaps my friend and fashion scholar Susan Scafidi of Fordham Law School’s Fashion Law Institute & author of “Who Owns Culture” would know who owns this cultural artifact. I bet I’ve told her this story too.

This life story archetype has been aspirational long before me. Murphy Brown anyone? It has been done in many different formats including Darren Starr’s best known work Sex and The City.

But it is my story too. So is Emily in Paris the real story of Julie in Manhattan? Is Julie in Manhattan the real Emily in Paris? Am I a retro causal multiverse prequel version of Emily?

Who is the real Emily? Am I the real Emily? Who buys a fake version of the real thing? Either way, I think Netflix owes me at a walk on spot. It would be very self referential. Or me-referential

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking Travel

Day 1845 and Lake Effects

I feel a ray of optimism emerging like a bulb who mistimes a false spring in late winter. I am in the dead of winter and I have the first glimmers of light.

“How you do one thing is how you do everything” is an aphorism about character that would take a natural born contrarian to engage.

I made a series of small decisions to keep myself still and make use of resources and skill clusters so I didn’t have to stress myself for a timeline that I didn’t make.

I took a few days to back off into medical tourism and longevity experiments. Nothing fancy or even novel. I wanted good sleep and a classic NAD+, Myers Cocktail, essential trace minerala, glutathione, Alpha-lipoic acid. Just good clean anti-inflammatory fun.

I want the good decisions about sleep habits and nutritional choices (sea bass, shaved vegetable salad, prawns and artichokes), the good exercise decisions (mobility and V02 max if I can’t push muscle too hard without impacting my my nervous system’s vagal tone).

I feel so lucky that this is a choice I can make. I need to be in fighting shape or the compounding choices of my health will have the wrong trend line. I want to see our future.

I am breathing slowly and watching a kind of lake effect whip up the water in the pool outside giving a fluid dynamics show to anyone who loves the movement of water and wind. That makes me want to live in our present.