Tag: Taste

Categories
Aesthetics Culture

Day 1925 and The Road to Nora Ephron

Yesterday both my husband and I were quite sick. We had very different symptoms but my worst one was a fever which added additional pain to the usual autoimmune nonsense. Naturally I subjected myself to more pain by spending the day on the internet. There is a lot going on and my brain was foggy in the wilds of the open internet.

Thankfully my fixation on consumer packaged goods’ price risk coincide with the arrival of a fresh round of skincare as well as a number of grim stories on the K shaped economy. Southeast Asian is rationing fuel while in Harper’s Bazaar wanted me to know that K-Beauty was coming for my neck. .

I don’t write headlines but I thought it was a bit on the nose to suggest fashion magazines are vampires. I clicked though.

It turns out there is a lot you can do for your neck but be warned the skin is thinner so promote collagen growth and be aware fewer sebaceous glands means it is dryer and more prone to irritation when exposed to actives like retinol. Useful information reinforcing my recent experiment with using Medicube’s PDRN Pink Niacinamide Milky Toner on my neck.

The beloved director of romantic comedies Nora Ephron m released a book in 2006 about the trials of womanhood. One essay was dedicated to how her neck was giving away her age. At the time I don’t even know one could be anxious about one’s neck but I filed it away as a to do in the endless list of feminine expectations.

“Short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck. The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.” – Nora Ephron’s “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being A Woman

I Feel Bad About My Neck illustrates book cover

Now maybe back in 2006 there wasn’t as much you could do about your neck when you’d smoked, tanned, and I will presume maybe occasionally enjoyed m drinking or other substances. But her Boomer fears encoding their neurosis into my generation was not in vein. I did none of those things.

Now that my fever has broken, I’ve been able to enjoy simple pleasures like the arrival of a box of skincare for myself (and also Alex because obviously I help him out) and ponder that I can feel anxiety about risk in the petroleum derivative markets like consumer packaged goods and also I can worry if my neck isn’t aging well.

I imagine I won’t get to enjoy that luxury forever. We have it very good in America with access to the best French pharmacies and South Korea plastic surgery clinics have have produced. I slathered on a milk toner and then topped it with hyaluronic acid water cream and a few drops of a Matrixyl peptide to boost collagen and elastin production.

The Internet as we know it is under new pressures from artificial intelligence as automation washes across digital spaces once populated by humans. The pressures in the market for technology private debt as it reconciles old Internet companies with cash flow against changing terrain.

It’s not just creative destruction in software businesses. Storied luxury families like the owners of Puig and Estee Lauder are discussing a merger. Price inputs are a killer when share prices are under pressure. Thats more of a geopolitical risk worsened by consumer struggles. The top 20% of the market does 80% of the spending is the new horror metrics.

So much for the lipstick indicator eh? Maybe I’ll look back and be glad I stocked up on serums, creams, drops, peptides and other petrochemical packed Swiss and Seoul laboratory style miracles. There is always shea butter and beeswax.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1910 and Eyes at the Waldorf

I don’t wear makeup everyday. When the pandemic hit and life moved online, one could easily slap on a video filter and avoid the additional labor required to look professional as a woman.

I went from a life where wearing a full face of makeup was the professional default expectation to one where there was no expectations at all. People don’t like a world without rules.

That vacuum of expectations has been filled with even more intense appearance expectations. Now that “in real life” experiences have become luxuries, many social interactions have developed new norms in which cosmetics are part and parcel of expected manners and basic decorum.

Not all scenes have incorporated makeup. Technology is still relatively laid back about visible makeup but many have gone the opposite direction. Washington D.C. is a scene where professional expectations demand polish.

Maybe some of this is the Boomer expectations of television ready appearances or maybe it’s the constant Zoomer video recordings but this town likes a full face. A beat mug with a limp wrist as they say.

That means your face’s skin has multiple different layers from contour to powder, your eyes require eyeliner, eyeshadow and mascara and your lips are lined and colored.

I’ve enjoyed doing a “natural” look this week which despite its misleading name is still quite a few steps. The basics aren’t that hard though. Light brings a feature forward. Shadows move a feature back. Everything else is details.

I brought cosmetics for a few friends and one girlfriend who mentioned the cosmetic expectations asked me for some basic advice on eye makeup as she’s found it a nuisance and quite a bit of work.

I grabbed a few eyeshadow sticks and we popped into the bathroom of the Waldorf which was the home base hotel of the conference I’d been attending.

I will use brushes and powder eyeshadow palettes when I need a very specific look, but if I just need to be “done up” I like the ease of an eyeshadow stick. You smudge some depth into your crease and some light on the inner edge and you are good to go.

Two or three colors gets the job done. I use a gel twist up eyeliner just on upper line. I prefer lengthening mascara or tubing varieties as volume mascaras tend to drop fiber.

Demonstrating this process got us a small audience. The bathroom attendant was curious about the ease and speed at which this was possible. Nothing brings women together quite like the rituals and secrets of aesthetics. All eyes on my eyes and all hearts open to finding a new way to feel comfortable. That’s beauty to me.

Categories
Aesthetics Startups Travel

Day 1905 and Run of Show

I have very particular traveling habits. I like things to be packed in cubes, labeled with contents and in a cascade of backpack, carry on and checked bags should something go awry.

As I’m heading to our nation’s capital soon I am taking extra care with my “run of show“ as I’ll have more varieties of events to account for over my stay. I expect humidity and rain so that should be fun for hair and makeup. All men need to worry about is sunscreen and maybe a bit of hair gel.

Now my travel wardrobe must account for visits to historical sites, nice dinners, late night parties, internet friend meetups (see you at the Polymarket’s Monitoring the Situation bar?) and a conference that is somewhere between startup event and defense contractor conference.

If you are a woman, you are probably nodding your head and thinking well that’s at least 4 different pairs of shoes and two purses. Then there is evening wear, day blazers and skirt suits, sweaters and other mix and match separates, and heaven forbid I find time to exercise so sweats and all the undergarments.

All that packing must work with the additional run rate risks of TSA slow downs (can Congress pass a budget) while presumably needing additional care and attention to security. Given we are embroiled in a war with Israel in Iran it’s hard to count on smooth sailing. So I pack as if I will encounter unexpected difficulties. Hopefully none more irksome than long lines.

As a woman who mostly spends her time in Montana or otherwise in the middle of nowhere, you can imagine that my makeup these days has a bit more in common with tinted sunscreen than it does with a smoky eye with a cut crease let alone a full powdered contoured beat fit for television. However I’ve heard polished full makeup is the preferred look on the hill including eye makeup basics.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to rely on my skills without additional practice, but I won’t lie I did a couple dry runs on new palettes I’d picked up and a few new colors. Very little new made the cut. When traveling, rely on what is reliable.

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 Culture

Day 1881 and Attemplate

I’ve wandered far from the traditional life paths that might have recognizable to past generations of my kin.

It scares me. Any time I contemplate the change I have already experienced, I imagine how much more change I can expect to see.

How are we supposed to raise children, mentor young leaders or align artificial intelligence with the good, the true and the beautiful when we adult humans have experienced life so far from past ideals?

So I’ve been toying with a portmanteau blending attempt and template to express the idea of “an experimental framework” or “proto-template for living, learning, or skill-building.” I need templates to help me attempt to adapt while retaining my humanity.

We will all be re-skilling, re-learning, and re-engaging with our values and as I try to structure templates that help me walk a life and prototype styles that might work for myself and others.

I hoped to communicate both clarity and flexibility with the choice. We are building good ways of being in a world of rapid change. Templates must change and we must always be attempting to learn and adapt.

I liked that attemplate sounds like a natural word you felt like you may have already encountered. It does a nice job of mirroring the thoughtfulness of contemplate. A template for a new era which will be attempt to build, even if the foundations we thought were firm in the past give way to much broader ways of being.

I played with “attempate” which sounds procedural (almost bureaucratic) as if one would take a sheet of paper with an assigned attempate to fill out and live. Why yes, I took the project management attempate sheet to see if I had natural aptitude for detail work.

“Temptlate” sounded engineered. Maybe it would be suitable name for an internal tool or concept document. We will add that to the family Temptlate and see who bites on it for Saturday plans. It’s cute, playful and almost experimental, but not entirely as serious as the scaffolding one hopes to build upstairs n.

Maybe I’m the only one who feels like I lost decade between Trump Derangement Era through Pandemic Biden Gramsci End of March Institutional Capture.

What I thought was true slammed into things I wished were not. And then we fought years of anarcho-tyranny as the state refused to budge even if you attempted to follow its templates.

So here I am trying to find new ways of being for myself, for the future, and for my present. Maybe it’s entirely selfish. Templates for how to live are the anchors from which we used to build religion and power.

We’ve stripped much of the meat from life and turned past ideals into brands and merchandised them into outfits and starter packs. But it’s worth an attempt don’t you think?

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
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
Travel

Day 1847 and Cardio versus Packing versus Ski Bunnies

I’ll be on the road for a portion of tomorrow. Other members of my traveling party have already pulled ahead to parts unknown, as shifting obligations and vehicle needs turned schedules this way and that. Nomads as we adapt to a new world.

Europe is in a tense state and the weather hasn’t helped much. As I’m writing, Davos is awaiting Trump speech in the Swiss mountain town.

I finished a workout in the hotel gym but my room wasn’t quite ready for me, so I went down to the lounge to take in the BBC having had my fill of Bloomberg commentary while in the gym.

Management must keep up with their bosses

You can probably spot the hotel brand and imagine easily my experience intaking the World Economic Forum by proxy as I attempt to manage my life and health in the unspooling of the order of things.

I packed up a slightly unusual range of things for my transit tomorrow, as I had been going by car but will hop a low cost carrier to recenter. Somehow this has my large luggage separated from me. I’m carrying a very fine leather duffle I recently acquired as a gift for my husband.

Will this work for my carry on and personal item?

I have gone from doing a bit of cardio bunny as I work to improve my V02 max to a pack rabbit, as I moved around this and that to be sure my cascade of items and medications were within reach and packed appropriately. And would make weight but I’ll get to it.

I’ll not end my travels as a snow bunny in Davos though I have seen rather a lot of snow in Southern Europe as far south as Greece.

Why are bunnies on my mind? Well I have to keep in mind some odd weights for the low cost carrier I’ll be using for a short hop. Just look at this guide to baggage.

3kg is a silly amount of weight for a bag. That’s the weight of a house pet like a bunmy

3kg (3 kilograms) is equivalent to approximately 6.6 pounds. While this weight is roughly the size of a medium-to-large house rabbit rather than a “small” one, it is a common weight for many everyday household items like a large bag of flour or three liters of milk. Via Perplexity and Weight of Stuff

For whatever odd reason, the carrier listed your personal item or under seat bag as needing to weigh 3kg. This is about the weight of a house rabbit.

Which is honestly not a lot. I doubt any purse I’ve ever carried is under 3kg when you account for laptop, shoes, cosmetics, wallet and other sundries. But we shall see if my backpack can do it. Nothing but pajamas and medications ought to keep it light.

Categories
Chronic Disease Chronicle Emotional Work

Day 1825 and Thoughts On Five Years of Writing Every Single Day

Much as it amazes me, I have written a public post every single day without fail for five straight years. I’ve not missed a single day.

I’ve written so many posts and essays, it honestly astonishes me. I didn’t expect to have this kind of longevity when I began but the world changed a lot in this past half decade. I am a woman of habits & routines, this blog helps me manage the chaos and instability that surrounds us. And hopefully I’ve become a better thinker (and writer) for this habit.

If you’d like to look back with me, I have a round up of 2021‘s best posts from fashion theory to the emotions of startup exits. They feel like a lifetime ago.

In my round up of favorites from 2022 aka year 2 of the experiment, we moved to Montana, bought our first house, had silly viral hits, & I became a certified wilderness first responder.

In my third year of posts from 2023, things remained intense. I accelerated into chaotic optimism, helped other millennial women understand fucked up fertility, and experimented with living outside America part time to improve my visibility on global issues.

And in fourth year of writing, my round up of my best posts of 2024 really showed a world sped up even further. My essays ranged widely with emotional work, crab bucket zero sum-ism & young men, Vernor Vinge’s legacy becoming our actual reality and the bizarre experience of digital memetics becoming constant real world issue.

So now it’s time to think about year five of the experiment. 2025 was a hard year for me even as it contained incredible wins. Going into it, I wondered how could year five top the past four years chronicled here? It both does and it doesn’t. Life, and the time we spend living it down, isn’t getting any easier. Life is barely human at all anymore. I feel the struggle in myself as I am still very much human.

It’s easy to feel as if I’ve not accomplished as much as my own written records show I did. If you ever feel like you get less done than you’d like, I encourage you to keep a log or journal as it helps show how much can do and how much does get done. Plus if you publish it online you’ll contribute to a wider humanistic understanding as our digital life becomes more mechanistic.

Another facet of this writing experiment has been fighting a chronic disease in my personal life that has no cure. Managing disabilities during with the pandemic years as it overlaid civilization shaking political and technological changes has been hard. I want to work and live as if I am healthy and it isn’t likely to ever be true. I work smarter because I can’t work harder.

I don’t always write about my investments in these posts, but I see how my thesis of chaos has forced us all into requiring more decentralization, compute and power. My once weird ideas are now common knowledge. Now everyone agrees with me.

The end of the neoliberal consensus and the beginning of the artificial intelligence buildout would have been hard on anyone. I’m proud that I was able to turn this change to my advantage.

I realize I’ve written quite a bit about the experience of these years where I wrote daily without showing off the last year of posts.

Since I’ve got one more day before 2025 officially ends, perhaps I’ll put the round up of posts tomorrow as I’ve given an overview of the experience of half a decade of daily essays today. What’s one more day among thousands right?