Waves – Julie Fredrickson

The beginning of the post Great Recession (or The Global Financial Crisis) recovery was just getting traction in 2014, not so much that everyone you knew felt like their goal in life was to become a product manager at Meta or Google.

And this turning point provided a surprising amount of freedom to try to turn an aesthetic into a business. Previously most were happy with an advertising campaign from a big brand and now every constituent part is its own fully monetized subculture.

Money was being thrown at any authentic form of culture that could be commoditized during turn Zero Percent Interest Rate phenomena years. I didn’t know it then but everything I considered to be the day to day culture of my friends was about to be hovered up first by venture and then by private equity and turned brands.

Coolhunters didn’t sell out they were eaten by the inexorable logic of attention economies. More than one Style Forum guy has gone on to success. One of them even runs national security now. No really.

Just as an aside, Freeman’s is still a thing and the New Musuem is involved. Some fashion substack (that is hired an editor who used to run fashion blogs) alerted me to this fun fact. I genuinely feel for folks in fashion as it feels as if culture has simply devoured itself orosbourus style into a null space.

In a post chronological world at the end of history style has nothing to do but recycle drink ideas and how tight or baggy a pant is will determine your swag within your very specific age bracket and algorithmic context.

I’m very grateful I’m not an Instagram addict (just a Twitter one but hey that’s part of my work right?) as I dread the all encompassing algorithmic cycle. Today’s podcast viral hit with Jeremy Giffon reminds us if it is important it will reach you.

And I agree. Being cool has always meant doing your own thing. And we are all just here to be entertained. From Gladiator to Accellerando, our lightcone demanded to be entertained.

So as I flip through Substacks of Condé Nast defectors I feel like they are stuck in my past. Substack works is mostly packaging takes and have yet to package what a crisp market editor would deliver me once a month from the old guard even if it’s already my summer itinerary.

Honestly the first generation of beauty bloggers giving product reviews. What are we even doing anymore? Ipsy turned a YouTuber into a makeup sampler and Allure turned into self into a sampling service. Albeit the best of the sampling services, but still who are we even meant to trust anymore?

Maybe that is why the only style anyone can ever really have honestly comes from study of themselves and their life. What is empathy of not conform to the rules that help make others feel at ease. Manners are after all, meant for the comfort of others not yourself. I am sure that can make it very tempting indeed to only say nice things. Which should be easy as editor of taste. Only tell us about the good stuff.

Humans crave linear narratives. We do something. It has an effect. We see an improvement. I don’t know where we got this logic of clear cause and effect and simple logic arcs, because it doesn’t seem like it matches reality. Horizontal thinking has a much longer history. In antiquity no one insisted on a 3 act play. We wandered through the Odyssey.

Maybe this is why we impose routines and rhythms on our daily lives. I personally require a lot of external routines to tame my physical body. Most of my days are dedicated to simple repeatable patterns. It gives me strength. Humans look to seasons and the festivals we have labeled on top of changes. We plan our lives according the angle of the sun.

But I’m skeptical that the pattern recognition my mind lays out for me of linearity is real. Life is fully of squiggly lines. Biology resists straight lines like unpredictability is some kind of dogma. We spent all pandemic resisting exponential growth because it just didn’t make sense to our little minds.

I get lost in cause and effect every day. The insistence of my emotions that because I did “good” responsible things (like workout, meditate and therapy) means I should feel good afterwards is part of my linear bias. But it’s not true that because I was good in my activities that I should feel good afterwards. Sometimes I don’t. I can have a perfect day and feel like shit. Because fuck it cause and effect isn’t that clean. And everything is multi-causal anyways.

Life comes in waves. It builds and pulls back and then crests and crashes. I’m sure we can map some of it but I’m getting much more comfortable simply riding the waves of kids as they come in.