The USA deflects criticism with reminders of its size and political diversity every time an election result is discussed. Australia successfully feeds the world its laidback, unbothered self-prescription following every xenophobic rally and political outburst. The UK rushes to refute every well-earned stereotype, except those reserved for immigrants.

To be proud of one’s country in the West is patriotism; to be proud of one’s country in the East is nationalism.

Predominantly white countries are allowed to have multifaceted identities and routine image crises, while in Asian countries especially, the worst national paradigms remain scapegoats for Western racism. There’s no room for multiplicity, and every dimension of a country is conflated into an opportunity for stigma.

For years, I’ve watched faces subtly contort after learning that our pieces are produced in China.

It’s usually a mix of masked suspicion and puzzled hesitance as they process the information, coupled with a head tilt in the worst cases or a benign nod at best. If they’re on the other side of 60, they often just scoff.

China isn’t a monolith, yet the diversity of cultures, ideas and skills amongst 1.4 billion people is frequently boiled down to a single label. ‘Made in China’ has become less of a birth certificate and more a suggestion of poor quality, an assumption of subpar work, lacking care and even something nefarious.

Societal laziness and bigotry means every Chinese suburb, person, faith, language and political view are emulsified into one that we can conveniently denigrate.

After entering the global economy in the late 70s, China’s industrialisation was rapid. In the 90s, it established itself as a hub for cheaply-made goods, starting with low-end products and offering alternatives to every day items manufactured at a fraction of the cost.

The country’s Western reputation at the time was a perfect storm of US hegemony and cultural influence over Australia, as well as a post-Cold War skepticism of communism. General ideological eyebrow raises were the springboard for cynicism; as China’s export list grew and the world was exposed to a country in its industrial infancy, it became synonymous with poor quality.

In the 90s, China joined the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, before entering the World Trade Organisation in 2001. Such measures legitimised the country as an economic force from a Eurocentric perspective, recognised by global standards as a key player in the manufacturing game. Entering the international trade network allowed the country to overtake Japan as the predominant exporter of light goods, which then led to China dethroning the US as the world’s industrial powerhouse in 2010.

This was no accident, as three decades of globalisation and technological advancements brought sophisticated production, business hours, liveable wages, employment benefits and even luxury recognition.

In 2011, Miuccia Prada praised the wonders of the Chinese industry to the Wall Street Journal, saying, “Sooner or later, it will happen to everyone because [Chinese manufacturing] is so good”.

Now, the same way a price tag is not proportionate to the value of an item, the place of production is not indicative of its quality. Responsible manufacturing and China are not mutually exclusive.

Enduring bigoted attitudes are only endorsed by global governments, as they impose excessive tariffs and denigrate Chinese-made products in order to promote local manufacturing. The rise of anti-Asian hate and Orientalism following the covid pandemic has only further enshrined this social perception, dehumanising an entire country and allowing this particular font of racism to thrive.

It’s a common misconception that is nothing but stigma with relentless staying power, fuelled by the racism that underscores many of our interactions with the world. The act of discounting decades of know-how and expertise comes naturally to the West, but any region with the specialised skills, resources and ability to produce at different scales and price points is welcome and integral to the global economy.

For as long as Australia doesn’t prioritise its local industry and lags on on-shore production incentives, regions like China will continue to develop skills and technology at a greater rate. While other countries have seen an exponential increase in industrial skills, Australia has seen a steady decline of the same. Declining local skillshare means manufacturing capabilities are limited and only growing moreso. For as long as there are a mere few replacing former generations of craftspeople and artisans, the local industry will continue to dwindle.

There’s also the economic sense where a lower cost of living means production costs can be lower than they would be on-shore. The cost of living in Australia is approximately 140% higher than that in China, making any local operational hub more expensive to engage. Labour is consequently more expensive to match the higher living wage, meaning any product is significantly more costly for the average consumer.

When the place of origin becomes a marketing strategy, it’s clear where our biases lie.

A ‘Made in Italy’ label signifies luxury, wealth and quality, all contributors to value. We’ll pay more knowing that a garment was made in Europe, despite investigations uncovering entire regions of factories, some servicing the world’s biggest names in luxury, enabling sweatshop conditions, safety violations and wages well below what is legal or ethical.

It’s the same reason a label reading ‘designed in Australia’ is still a selling point, despite that same garment being made in China, and despite Australia being home to a cohort of the world’s largest fast fashion businesses. We excuse the latter, because even though Australia is the backdrop of some of the most consumerist retailers, it is also home to some of the most considered labels and ethical studios. The worst players ride on the coattails of the best in some countries, but the vice versa is true for Chinese manufacturing.

Sustainability discourse isn’t exempt from this conversation, as it automatically pushes against Chinese production and again conflates quality with location. We tend to forget that shopping ethically is about assessing an individual brand and extracting the most value from a garment before its end-of-life stage.

The other end of the sustainability argument is only bolstered by our reflexive, casual racism. For as long as we churn through fast fashion, we prefer the people who made it to be nameless, faceless, and far away. Fast fashion businesses profit from these systems, which could be curtailed by more transparency across the entire industry. If Western brands, where these instances of racism originate and proliferate, owned their manufacturing location and made public real information about the hands, faces and hearts who create each piece, the stigma might start to wilt.

Within our own brand, we work with a family owned and operated studio in Guangzhou. The team is helmed by Daisy, a mother with an environmental engineering degree and benevolent passion for slow-paced, well-made style.

Specialist machinery, finishings and trims are few and far between Australia, meaning the quality and details of our pieces would suffer if created locally. Creativity is also limited when each facet of a garment is so much more costly and hard to source. When they can be sourced conveniently, they're shipped from various other countries and the carbon footprint of a single garment quickly multiplies. By keeping our manufacturing with Daisy, the world is our oyster and the know-how is guaranteed.

Faces might fall, but they shouldn’t. It’s a damningly white view to understand Western-made fashion as inherently ethical and Chinese-made fashion as definitively bad. To cower from that fact only adds to the stigma.

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• bread + butter = the filthiest lovers, nothing is off limits

• chrome + primary colours = very solidly obsessed with each other but quiet about it

• scrawl + a post it note = the kind of couple you wish you were part of, for only five minutes at a time

• olives + toothpicks = they sit on the same side of the restaurant booth when they go out to eat (in a sweet way)

• spotlights + sequins = similar in the ways you want to be similar, different in the ways you want to be different

• velvet curtains + dust = inseparable, the embodiment of yearning, longing, lusting

• pearls + cashmere = private until they’ve each had two glasses of nondescript wine

• neon signs + rain = romantically restorative to be around, unexpectedly so

• sunshine + the shade of a tree = two huge personalities beneath a collectively peaceful exterior

• salt + watermelon = the couple you always invite to a dinner party, not because they’re your closest friends but because they know how to work the room

• stainless steel + timber = homoerotic, very long-term, extremely stable

• olive oil + balsamic vinegar = politically aligned, someone is settling but the chemistry is great

• newspapers + cigarettes = they’ll tell you communication is key but they give each other the silent treatment every other day

• paper coffee cups + red lipstick = boring separately but fun together, a bit performative

• fresh produce + wicker basket = the couple that makes you feel grown up to be around, both equally whimsical

• silver rings + chipped nail polish = effortlessly hot, neither has an inside voice but it’s quite glamorous

• lemon + fish = old souls without being smug about it, just intensely self-aware

• glass + condensation = personally oppositional, almost too sensible but still unpredictable

• leather + lace = the same personality with different accents, very dreamy

• brick walls + climbing plants = one is emotionally avoidant, the other can romanticise anything

• mini skirts + oversized tops = physically disparate yet somehow photographically complementary

• floral textiles + home decor = the most loyal, would die for each other

• faux fur + champagne = fun at parties, a little concerning beyond, impossible to ignore

The current pedestalling of 2016 feels culturally jarring, not because it’s nostalgic, but because it taps into a dream state we’ve long since visited.

Its flatlays and oversaturated filters were the height of aspiration culture, where the grass was always greener and you couldn’t yet buy it that way. Thinness, wealth and whiteness were immortalised in the Victoria’s Secret, cut creases and Jay Alvarrez of it all, and it was all unquestionably out of reach for a vanilla wage earner.

Aesthetic presentation was the most gripping cultural phenomenon, and appearance was seemingly the only signifier of social status. Social media well and truly became the place to be: home to the famous highlight reel, with Lightroom presets, faux morning routines and early digital nomads paving the way for the modern influencer as a legitimate concept.

Our own lives hadn’t been contentified on such a scale yet, so we understood this way of living as something we could strive for. We genuinely believed that it could be just so for ourselves, one day.

The fantasy was narrow yet infinite, but was there an upside to the longing? Were aesthetic constraints the things that drove us to make, be and create?

As it does, the pendulum swung and we substituted the glitz and Clarendon filter for beige linens and photo dumps.

In the five years that followed, everything we could’ve wanted became readily available to us in product form. We could buy symbols of the lives we once dreamed about, in dupes and on demand. We could perform the lives we’d watched, and any social nod of approval made it worthwhile.

It was at this stage when capsule wardrobes took hold and ‘elevated basics’ became the SEO term of the century. We were primed to embrace quiet luxury, where the costume of money meant a thorough flattening of visual ideas.

With that, we began to lose the ability to yearn for greener grass. Whether it was even an ability is arguable, but it does feel as though those muscles have atrophied, that we can’t do it properly anymore.

Was 2016’s shiny, taut brand of aspiration an engine or a speed bump for the culture? Was there merit to our need for good, better, best, and the inability to buy it pre-made?

This particular swing of the pendulum was prompted by relatability, a necessary dissent to the physically and politically slender yet widely-prescribed beauty ideals born out of aesthetic obsession. If you could see yourself in a piece of art, celebrity or social movement, they were a success. If you couldn’t, they weren’t worth your megabytes.

It wasn’t a resistance to inauthenticity per se, but we still needed girl boss feminism to come and go, we needed the Lizzo-ness of 2019 to recalibrate our mindsets and magazine headlines, and we needed a pandemic to expose the wealth disparity to an extent that couldn’t be visually encapsulated by a day on a plate.

Relatability was a welcome and excessively candid counteroffer to the early days of Instagram, but its inevitable commodification gave rise to aspiration sans fantasy.

The industries that benefit from aesthetic aspiration, being fashion, interiors, the things we look at, all lost their sparkle in the name of sameness and predictable cashflow. What took hold was an aspiration to own rather than an aspiration to be, setting us up to devour fast fashion, dupe culture and their inter-industry peers.

When there’s a complete lack of flirting, no will-they-won’t-they between what we want and what we can attain, it’s all become a bit dull. We’ve lost the limitations that make us creative.

As it does, the pendulum swung and we reverted to our pre-Lemonade ways as the clean girl, tall poppy syndrome and Ozempic took hold. The grass is suddenly extra green and extra purchasable, yet still with the social stratification we’ve always known, and still without fantasy.

Individualism found its seat and diet culture arrived as body positivity left the party, as did any kind of sociocultural trust in experts. Fashion trends have become defunct as nothing can properly trend in a wasteland of trends, which has allowed fast fashion to stay happily and destructively seated at the head of the table.

We’ve taken aspiration to a level where we mimic rather than model, taking all of a stimulus rather than inspiration from the same.

Can we lock back into the fantasy of it all? Ever again?

If there’s one defining spirit of the 2020s, it’s emaciated adults in first world countries.

Pointed collarbones, gaunt smiles, hollow clavicles and shapeless torsos are the look de jour, enabled by peptides, unregulated GLP-1 usage and poorly-wielded influence.

The internet provides the perfect journal to document the thinning of society, from the twinkle in a cosmetic giant’s eye to the way each red carpet now presents the latest skeletal figures to us, vaguely resembling the people we once recognised on our screens and in our own bodies.

A decade on from the All About That Bass era, no celebrity seems unscathed by this teeny tiny image of beauty. Ergo, none of us are, either.

From the top down, we have been able to chronologise the thin to thinner pipeline the way we chronologise political downfalls. We have an extensive and 24/7 archive of the ready-made thinness that currently sweeps our feeds and our impressionable, dysmorphic views.

At every metaphorical shelf of this suffocating library, there are purchasable fixes to non-issues. We know that when you create a problem, you can sell the solution, but when physical nips and tucks become so accessible that they can be experimental, we’ve reached a new low.

Body positivity in its earliest iteration didn’t have the black market access that we do now. On the flipside, body neutrality will never exist for as long as profit can be made from the way we look at our mirrors.

So, when we look good, we feel good, but to look ‘good’, we must feel clinically unhealthy at the hands of unmedical intervention. Neutrality at any stage of the above would be nice, albeit impossible.

The broader agenda might be the figurative shrinking of women, where to be frail is to be conformant; to be weak is to be soft and pliant to the ways of patriarchy. We’re told that no woman is more woman the one who obeys, never mind the lack of curves, cushioning and visible organs that truly symptomise a woman.

The ability to be confrontational, to fight and be fought are afforded by a base level of functioning. When women are weak, they are meek, too emotionally spent to change the course of oppression. When the goal is to be patriarchally sanctioned as a woman, we have lost.

The more obvious agenda is the worldwide palate for children. Hairless skin and countable ribs are signs of youth, a brittle social income. It’s only with age that we understand the girlishness of a ribcage is less a shield against social ostracism and more a reminder of rampant paedophilia.

This is no indictment on those who feel the pressure, for to live in a fatphobic society in a fat body is not for the weak. The pressure is profitable; the pressure is pervasive.

But when the strongest resistance is simply existing, where’s the turning point?

1. Opening credits and a good film title screen. Think Catch Me If You Can, Barbarella, even Are We Done Yet.
   ‘Skip intro’ has killed the theme song, too.
   HBO is pulling its weight with the detail of Severance, White Lotus and Succession. Other studios and other series, not so much.

2. Art galleries. Art sales in general are dropping at least 12% year-on-year. Public galleries are seeing 30% less attendees through their doors than pre-2020.
   Are we losing the art of browsing and moseying through frames?

3. Album sequencing. Musicians and artists organise albums as you should listen, following a musical narrative.
   Digital albums are pick-and-mix stations with a little too much of the former, and without a cassette to rewind, a vinyl player to watch or a disc to turn, the sequential story loses first.

4. Series. TV shows with a week between episodes, magazines with a month between issues, newspapers with days between each investigative chapter, even photos waiting to be developed.
   An intentional, pre-written delay is nothing in the face of on demand content.

5. Headlines. Headlines used to be a signpost, an assumption that you will read the article below.
   Now, they’re expected to detail an entire story in a quick one-two. They’re an assumption that you won’t read the article below.

6. Book blurbs. See above. An intro to a novel reads as an infomercial more than it does a plot, because at least you made it past the cover.

7. Footnotes and meaningful backlinks. Written content is the most whittled victim of efficiency, as it’s chewed and regurgitated by summaries and quickly consumed briefs.
   Where a footnote adds humour, sources, personality and anecdotes, anything that might disrupt the flow of a reader will fall at the feet of a modern attention span.

8. Boredom. The ability to switch off. An urge to sit with your thoughts, cloud watch, listen to the wind. Peace and quiet with no mental hum of connectivity.

The internet died in 2025, and its obituary is written in comment sections everywhere.

The comment function revolutionised how we interact with online content and each other, providing a forum for thoughts that would once exist only within our immediate circles. We could suddenly send letters to the editor about every single idea that crossed our timelines, emboldened and only occasionally filtered.

Articles, posts, images and concepts since became mere springboards for discussion, primed for further parley moreso than they’re primed for publication.

Hence, the comment section has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, taking itself down with each new lukewarm take.

A rogue skit video isn’t without a for-and-against debate in the comments. For every minute of a film, there are ten minutes of critical content. No carousel is complete without a tidbit in the comments, often advertising more likes than the original post.

And we lap it all up, mostly out of habit, letting the words of strangers warp our instinctive reactions. What we think becomes what we thought, and what we know becomes secondary to the influences at large.

We can’t absorb a single standalone idea without unsolicited deconstructions, reconstructions and interrogations on the side. Our ability to digest anything of our own accord, merit and pace seems utterly distended.

In a standard morning scroll, an article of fact is a target for opinion, morphing into a discursive petri dish where anything to the contrary finds home at the top of a messy chain of reactions.

Throwing thoughts at each other sounds collaborative, but when no commenter truly listens to another, it’s as individual and surface-skimming as it gets.

What if we were forced to brood about those thoughts instead?

If to react is to detract, to sit is to understand. Less to and fro in 2026, please.

But still leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Where did all the feeling go?

Despite hyperconnectivity, 2025 has been coloured by detachment. A culture of reactivity, the ‘let them theory’, a loneliness epidemic, and outsourcing every analysis and calculation to AI has left us high and dry on the humanness front.

We’ve turned inwards to the point where loving thy neighbour seems like a radical concept.

Emotional emphasis on anything feels out of bounds.

Is it individualism, loneliness, apathy or all of the above?

In a Jungian sense, “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself”.

One could say the same about individualism, even apathy. The inability to hear, speak and receive ideas about other people hardens all the good parts of being a collective.

If the price of community is inconvenience, the price of connection is softness. A point of tenderness that lets others beneath the surface.

It’s a controversial concept in a time when ‘soft’ has become a derogatory word in social discourse, haphazardly hung on the first sentence that attempts to disrupt an old way of thinking. It’s a weapon used to beat down anything mildly progressive, because why can’t we just ignore the needs of others? Why should I care if the current way of thinking doesn’t harm my favourite person: me?

Sensitivity is the answer to all of these questions, crucially missing and absently felt.

In 2025, the greatest displays of humanity were born out of softness, not technology. The worst examples of humanity conveyed a lack of the same.

Between Doechii’s Grammy acceptance speech, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Rob Reiner’s legacy, Connor Ives’ Protect The Dolls movement, and Lily Allen’s West End Girl, it’s still cool to care. There are more people facilitating feeling than there aren’t, provided you lean in and look around.

Because being soft is not a crime.

As predictable as our exhaustions are long, November brings a flurry of questions about the sale period.

We’ve never participated in Black Friday, yet every year we feel the pulls and tugs toward the percentage signs.

And every year, we resist.

What started as a day of temporary discounts has become a day of temporary greed with far-from-temporary impacts.

It’s stretched from one day to thirty, with pre-Black Friday discounts bleeding into Cyber Monday (genuinely, what does that mean?) and any post-hoc, festive chaos.

The crux of Black Friday is consumption. Its purpose is to encourage shopping at a pace set by impulsivity. It’s supposed to be fast, unthinking, overwhelming, exhausting and excessive.

It’s supposed to feel like it’s all too much, and the cure can be added to cart.

This is all totally antithetical to our MO as a brand that moves very slowly, where we’re always trying to balance the environmental cost of what we do with the joy of fashion. It’s in our best interests to sit out, and it’s also in our customers’ best interests to keep things as manageable and small as we can.

We’ve spent years trying to find a pace more conducive to comfort, creativity and conscience.

When we preach low impact and low waste principles to reduce our footprint, it doesn’t make sense to contribute to an event that exists to encourage unchecked shopping.

To cave to the tension of the industry would be to become pinned beneath to the pillars of consumption, none of which tend to resonate with us.

This isn’t necessarily a boycott or protest - it’s business as usual over here, pursuing the same ethos that we do every day.

But is that pursuit a privilege? Is acting according to ideology a pipe dream?

With credit, thanks and love to the current rowdy landscape, I reserve a level of sympathy for brands on the smaller side just wanting to be heard. Participating in one of the most fruitful sale periods of the year has become less of a choice with each passing November, and participating is almost a survival tool for some.

With that in mind, the problem was never small, careful-footed brands or customers needing affordable clothing; it was always the big retailers making a dime off real people’s afflictions.

Its these fast fashion corporates that have trained us to devalue the craft of making clothing to the point where we expect every style to be available at every price point at every whim.

We then expect a cheap garment to be discounted further, forgetting that each individual piece we buy is the result of careful work by skilled hands, taking time and artisanship honed over years of experience.

The old quality over quantity adage has nothing on late stage capitalism.

The idea of owning only what we need has nothing on Black Friday.

Even if we wanted to, we don’t have the stock or the margins to discount our catalogue.

Most of our pieces are made using deadstock fabrics, which means there’s already a physical limit on how much we can make. We then have self-imposed quantities as to how much of each category and style we create, and we’re only interested in designing genuine, quality staples that can we worn and loved indefinitely.

As part of the fun, we’re usually playing with different textiles, trims, bells and whistles, which can vary drastically in price. If we were to price everything by an objective formula, our pieces would be far too expensive for our customers to justify.

If we’re going to balance considered design and ethical manufacturing while also maintaining a reasonable price point, there just isn’t room to discount for a sales event that doesn’t make sense to us to begin with.

Resistant and abstaining or persistent and participating: whichever camp you fall into, shop carefully, wear well, love hopelessly.

Come shopping with Daphne Berry, podcaster, ___ and music advocate.

What's in your headphones? Are they corded or wireless?
I’m listening a lot at the moment to Tyler the Creator - Don’t Touch The Glass. Wireless, I listen to too much music while I am doing lots of chores and I don’t like to have my phone on me all the time. Corded looks cooler though.

Do you use a trolley, basket, bag or just carry everything?
I am very guilty of going into the store for one thing, coming out with 10 things all bundled up in my arms and dropping avos everywhere. I carry everything.

Do you use a list? Is it digital, physical, mental or none of the above?
When I am really busy I write myself a to do list the night before I go to sleep for the next day. I get really distracted and this does help a lot when I know I have a million things I need to do but can’t remember what they are.

Pet peeves in public?
Slow walkers

Do you love or hate the cold section?
I HATE the cold section. Even in the middle of summer I take a jumper with me to go grocery shopping. I don’t like the cold.

Are you stealing a grape?
A grape, an apple, $22 cheese. You pay for things?
But yes I steal a grape… yummy.

What are your most-purchased items?
Far and above is the Meredith Dairy goats cheese. My fridge will always be stocked with that stuff, what is with that cheese? It’s so good.

Which aisle are we avoiding?
I really don’t like the aisle with all the cleaning products. It’s always at the back of the store and I have to go so far in to get anything.

What's one of your early grocery memories?
Mum used to push me in the trolley and buy me a slice of devon (which now I find so gross) but when I was a kid I loved that processed meat so much. I would bite eyes and smile into the circle. Do you know what I mean?

Are you tempted by the snacks on the counter?
Not really to be honest. I saw a TikTok the other day of this guy who woke up hungover in his house and he was talking about how bad it is when you’re hungover and you live in an ingredient household. I really related to that. We need to get better at our snack game in my house.

Which handbag are we using?
I have a bag I'm using a lot at the moment that I got at SoFamiliar in Newtown. But its thrifted so I don’t know the brand.

What shoes are we wearing?
Reeboks

You run into a long-lost friend, are you stopping to chat or hiding in the shelves?Depends how uncomfortable I would feel in the chat. If I didn’t have anything to say to them I would probably hide. I hate uncomfortable silences.

Receipt or no receipt?
No receipt

@daphneberry_

Come shopping with Michelle Banares, creative producer, sartorial storyteller and a forever favourite of ours.

What's in your headphones? Are they corded or wireless?
Currently, JB’s new album. I go between listening to Yukon or Things You Do (both so Mk.Gee coded). No corded headphones over here, attached to my Sonos Ace.

Do you use a trolley, basket, bag or just carry everything?
I chuck everything into a cute basket or tote!

What day/time is it?
Almost 12pm on a random Thursday. I’m actually in my car about to head into my local grocer (can confirm I’m Leaf Grocer obsessed).

Do you use a list? Is it digital, physical, mental or none of the above?
Do we still hand write our grocery lists, I do!

Pet peeves in public?
Slow walkers and people who are rude to waiters, always.

Do you love or hate the cold section?
Love it but hate the cold haha

Are you stealing a grape?
Nope, I’ve always had a fear of getting in trouble!

What are your most-purchased items?
150 grams of mortadella and Daffinois cheese.

Which aisle are we avoiding?
The Freezer section. Brrrr!

What's one of your early grocery memories?
Hoping into the grocery trolley! I loved it.

Are you tempted by the snacks on the counter?
Always. I’m easily swayed, sue me.

Which handbag are we using?
Sometimes my St Agni Mini Bon Bon bag or sometimes raw dogging it (but holding my sunnies and keys).

What shoes are we wearing?
Havis or my Essen Foundation Flats (obsessed with them sm).

You run into a long-lost friend, are you stopping to chat or hiding in the shelves?
Love a good yarn. I’m chatting but I’ll probably forget what I’m in the aisle for after.

Receipt or no receipt?
RECEIPT. Duh!

@michellebanares

Nary a morning goes by without a little existentialism in this office.

Today, what started as an assessment of the industry and where we’re headed ended in a conversation about whether or not we are becoming collectively uncaring.

Not just uncaring, but indifferent.

The culmination of the internet, semi-successful globalisation and 24/7 social connectivity has left us with limited emotional budget. We spend our time scrolling habitually, skimming the surface of multitudes, exhausting our mental space into oblivion.

Melting into this amorphous topography is AI and it’s ever-imposing presence, something that has shifted quickly from bemusing to bewildering. Every time we have to ask “is this AI?”, an angel loses its wings and the entire internet and everything we see online becomes a little more meaningless.

Without meaning, the constantly expanding breadth of the internet has destabilised our ability to care. When we’re not thinking about anything for longer than a second, we certainly can’t expect to contextualise those events within an emotional reality.

We’re left without connection, an idea that has been boiled down to a few daily minutes of expressionless exchanges, and then a long haul of unilateral conversations, an oxymoron of the purest kind. Genuine social interaction would imply some level of back-and-forth, a little tête-à-tête. When we’re scrolling, we’re being spoken at, not to. We’re being engaged as a click, not engaged as a social entity.

Hand-in-hand with our digital habits is the worldwide decline in analytical reasoning and inference skills. When media literacy wanes, so too does our will to engage with content in any material way.

We’re no longer digesting content, instead just getting a taste and spitting it out. It doesn’t matter if information is immediately palatable or not, if digging below the surface requires more thoughtful effort, count us out.

To not care is a privilege, and to care is a skill. Most of us are left in the in-between, in indifference - a crime that usually goes unpunished when the world as a collective has so many fleeting thoughts.

Is the most active rebellion to ponder? To linger on an image? To delve beyond a headline? To dissect a back catalogue?

The way we engage with anything is a choice.

A little passion, zest, zeal could save us.

@apresstudio_

apresstudio.com.au

Come shopping with Celeste Mountjoy, our favourite artist, author, filthyratbag, thinker of thoughts, illustrator of visions.

Which city are we in?

We are all over the shop. I’ve spent the last 2 years trying to outrun the cold and so I have been living in different places for around 3 months at a time. I just got back home a few days ago and am enjoying being haunted by the ghosts of my past in my childhood suburb. I like Melbourne in the Spring and Summer a lot!

I love how much I get to travel for work, but I am also someone who is kind of sensitive to my surroundings, and have to spend quite a lot of time adjusting to new shopping dynamics everywhere I go.

They each come with their own culture and unique set of rules, but I shouldn’t let this become a global grocery store pageant…All grocery stores are flawed and overwhelming in their own beautiful unique ways.

I think if it were a pageant though, New York is my favourite place to go grocery shopping. I can live easily out of a Bodega. I do not cook. Bodegas are diverse, and plentiful. The shop keepers generally don’t care who you are or how long you want to stare at the shelves for. I enjoy the layout, the bodega cats, the miscellaneous store inventory. Why are you selling all this female Viagra at the cash til? Can I have a bit?

Now I am back shopping in Melbourne, the city I learned to shop in! Notoriously shit lighting, occasionally some good songs peppered with annoying voice overs, a pretty good bakery section. Let’s head down to Woolworths bub.

What’s in your headphones? Are they corded or wireless?
I go between my airpods and trusty wires…It depends on how much self respect/brain capacity I am rocking at that moment in time. I am on my third pair of airpods, and if I lose these ones, it’s game over for me. I shouldn’t be allowed to have them in the first place, too many moving parts.

I listen to the same songs again and again. Lately it’s just one live performance of lana del rey again and again. It’s my cocomelon. A lot of Fiona Apple this year too, I’ve been in the trenches.

Do you use a trolley, basket, bag or just carry everything?

Again really dependent on my brain capacity and self respect levels. Sometimes I go into the shops and I am just starving and delirious and maybe a bit stoned and so I end up going in acapella and filling my arms up with all this stuff that falls around, and then other times I’ll actually have some dignity and I’ll get a basket!

What day/time is it?

This is of nobody’s concern! You will never see me at the shops. I own 4 wigs and various sunglasses that I wear on a rotation to go grocery shopping in Melbourne when I’m going through periods of social burn out, just to avoid the possibility of bumping into any ex hinge date or high school friend I need to make small talk with in the cheese section… And if you do see me, sans wig, don’t talk to me in the cheese section!! Talk to me outside the front of the shops where there isn’t overexposed lighting and Michael Buble playing (kind of love it)

Do you use a list? Is it digital, physical, mental or none of the above?

I try to do a little list, and I have a core of necessities but life throws curve balls at you occasionally and you go in blind. Genuinely terrifying. What the fuck do I need and more importantly who am I?? Somebody send for help. Think I need to buy some lemon juice?

Pet peeves in public?

There was a park next to the apartment I was living in this year in Paris, and there’s a walking/running/bike path. It has only struck me during my walks at this park how many of the male runners spent all of their time groaning and stretching completely shirtless and sweating like they were giving birth. Such a performance. It had never struck me how comfortable you must be to take up so much space. Time to start doing more loud grunting in public. Maybe even without my wig.

Do you love or hate the cold section?

Hate hate hate. Why are we here? Take me home right now I’m so cold. Can handle it better if I am wearing a wig because my head is warmer.

Are you stealing a grape?

Yes and sometimes even a date. And one time I stole some eyedrops from a bodega and then realised it was wrong to steal from small businesses and took it back and paid right away only for them to shut down like a week later! Can you imagine if I had business ending blood on my hands? It taught me a valuable lesson. Beware of where you steal your grapes basically. You don’t want bodega blood on your hands ever.

What are your most-purchased items?

Listerine Mouth Wash, Greek Yoghurt, Cigarettes, array of beverages, Chocolate covered licorice bullets. If I want to feel normal, cereal and milk. I love Cereal.

Which aisle are we avoiding?
Pet food aisle. Makes me gag. Feels like I’ve walked into the bone factory.

What’s one of your early grocery memories?
I used to get lost on purpose at the grocery shop when I was a kid so that the attendants would call my name over the intercom speaker to get my mum to come collect me. Happened multiple times. How much does that make you not want to have kids?

Are you tempted by the snacks on the counter?
Don’t even talk to me about the snacks at the counter, I need some mints and I need some little pocket treats.

Which handbag are we using?
I’ve got a little grandma trolley I wheel around with me when I’m going on serious missions. Otherwise I need something minimal like a bumbag, otherwise I lose everything and my mind.

What shoes are we wearing?
I have been wearing slides I accidentally stole from a Korean Spa in LA last year religiously. I swear it wasn’t intentional, and I’ve taken good care of them.

You run into a long-lost friend, are you stopping to chat or hiding in the shelves? Refer to above, sorry friends.

Receipt or no receipt?
No more moving parts! How do I always have so much paper? Get me out of here right now!!

@filthyratbag

What’s in a stain, anyway?

One of the surprising byproducts of industry is perfectionism.

We want everything we own to be shiny and new at all times, lacking in any trait or quirk that might suggest it’s been owned by us.

When that’s not achieved, we can replace anything at the drop of a hat, for next to nothing. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s foolproof.

Except when this cycle repeats for every item of clothing we own and for every wardrobe on the planet, the cultural shift towards perfectionism is yet another silent investor in the waste crisis.

On an attitudinal level, we’ve become fearful of fading denim, creases in our leather bags, stains on our tees, mismatched buttons, frayed hems - physical expressions of the love we have for our clothing.

It’s as though somewhere along the way, signs of wear became less sartorially virtuous than a rotation of newness.

Instead of reminding us that owning anything comes with a duty of care, this fear manifests in the tempering belief that everything is replaceable. We’re taught that consumption should be routine, where we can switch out what’s old and what’s new before due course.

But the love of a white button up can survive a giddy wine night. The joy of baggy jeans doesn’t have to end under a stiletto. The delight of cashmere can bounce back from an accidental dryer encounter.

Every tear, tuck and tincture of wear is just added seasoning. In a samey world, it’s added character.

Rituals are perhaps the most unnoticed, quiet networks of order.

They frame the way we carry ourselves throughout the day, expressed in routines and ways of being, regardless of any hard plans. They’re the moving parts that structure our time; the invariability and reliance upon which separate them from mere habits.

They’re arguably the most visceral painting of who we are, however subconscious they may be.

There’s always been multiple dimensions to this kind of programming, where a ritual can be shared amongst others or set by just one person. They might be faith-based or ceremonious, but can just as quickly be created to scratch an itch or serve individual needs and wants. Rituals might be learned or inherited, silent or shared, by circumstance or enforcement. In all examples and all contexts, they are answers to social and survival questions. They help us get by.

In another vein, rituals are almost an act of rebellion. Not to be confused with autopilot, the little systems we create for ourselves attract rhyme and order. Reason isn’t needed, there doesn’t need to be a formula or algorithm behind every act we perform. There just needs to be some kind of resulting comfort and the absence of harm.

As a fashion brand moving far slower than our industry, our relationship with rituals is constant and composite. On one hand, our creative processes and operations are unwavering in principle. On the other, there are public rituals and pressures that we would rather evade. By resisting the pull of popular practices and what’s expected of us, we’re also breaking rituals.

This revelation brought with it the understanding that rituals are built in hindsight, lead by reflection. To exist, they depend on a result. A daily meditation might be a catalyst for peace or productivity, a repeated song an emotional prompt, a commute a time for either phone calls or introspection. Each regularity is a means to an end, an action for a consequence.

Each month, we hear from interesting people with rich lives and a wealth of thoughts. Hearing about their self-imposed rituals is a little insight into those worlds, where order is entirely subjective. You’ve read a few just here, but enjoy the rest via Après Diaries.

A laundry list of laundry dos and don’ts. Pin this up beside your machine, in your mind, wherever you want to take the guesswork out of keeping your wardrobe clean and lasting.

DO

• Ignore the care label.
  Sometimes!
  
  It’s easy and cheeky for brands to offload care liability by making their care labels too strict, but the cotton tee, spandex tank, Oxford shirt and linen shorts combo doesn’t need to be dry cleaned.

  Generally speaking, a cold, gentle wash works wonders for everyday outfits. Hand wash your fancies, woollies and lacies, and throw the rest in the machine. Dry immediately, and follow the rest of this advice to know when to follow the label and when to give it the flick.

• Separate your colours.

  I know.
  
  You’ve heard it before, but even the dullest colours can leak dye during the washing process. The slightest tinge of blue can ruin so much as a white sock, and pairing black fabrics is hard enough without one fading into greyness, which is why we want to keep fresh whites fresh and white, and dyed clothes bright.

  Dye leaching occurs when the fibres loosen during a wash and dye particles leak out and into the water, finding home on whatever fabric they can. This is accelerated by heat or dye that hasn’t been treated correctly (usually on cheaply-made pieces). Crocking happens when physical friction causes dye to transfer, a risk that’s eliminated by keeping like with like.

• Mend, fix, alter and repair.
  Get a little savvy.
  
  It’s too easy to neglect garments with the tiniest fault, demoting them to the back of our wardrobe, the donation bag, then the back of our car. What if that small hole could be darned? The button could be replaced? The seam could be let out? The hem could be shortened? The elastic could be replaced?
  
  Follow us on TikTok for more mending tricks and relearn to relove your clothes.

• Use cold water.
  Most of the time.

  Cold water is the single most effective, gentle laundry tool in your arsenal. Warm temperatures cause fabric fibres to separate, which is effective at removing dirt but also leaves them prone to warping, shrinking or dye bleeding. Cold water keeps those structures as solid as possible, letting the detergent work its magic.

  Warm water can also have the opposite effect on protein-based stains, including blood, sweat and food, as they can become baked into the fabric. Cold water and a little dish soap works for sweat, or hydrogen peroxide for whites will be your best friends.

  For underwear and household items like bed linen and towels, warm water is great for working out the grit and grime. For clothing, stick to a cool wash for a cool finish.

• Air dry.

  If you can. (Ts & Ps to those in cold, rainy climates.)

  A properly ventilated drying rack is far kinder than an electric dryer, in this world and every other.

  Aside from the energy usage that would make a depression-era child’s eyes water, the intensely concentrated heat emitted during a drying cycle will cause fabric fibres to weaken. Weak fibres means tearing, stretching, pilling, and all that jazz.

  Give your spin cycle a workout to get as much water out of your washing as you can, and then hang or lay clothing in a well-ventilated space. In a dire situation, an indoor fan and cracked window will do the trick. Worst case, roll the dryer on the lowest possible heat, keeping similar textures and weights together.

DON’T

• Wash your jeans.

  You heard me.

  Denim is the hardiest textile to work with, but it’s also prone to softening and lightening with each wash. To keep them as steady and stable as we can, avoid the washing machine.

  To freshen things up and kill bacteria, either follow the old wives’ tale of placing them in the freezer overnight or hang them inside out in the sun for a couple of hours. Give them a minute to recalibrate their thermostat before wearing, and away you go.

  If your jeans are truly soiled, turn them inside out and wash on a cold, gentle cycle and immediately hang to air dry. Re-block them while wet so that they don’t lose shape, spot treat where you can, and trust the process, always.

• Use fabric softener.

  The thing I despise most in the world.
  

  Its oily compounds cling to textiles fibres, leaving a filmy residue on the surface and reducing breathability. Your clothes might feel softer, but they are also less absorbent and significantly more likely to irritate your skin. They also reduce fire retardancy in children’s clothes, towels and activewear, and it doesn’t stop there.

  Beyond the washing machine, the chemicals found in fabric softeners, including silicones, petrochemicals. antimicrobials and phthalates, pollute waterways, disrupt photosynthesis and contribute to ‘dead zones’ in nature, where life cannot be sustained naturally.
  
  Stick to a gentle detergent that doesn’t contain any conditioners, and rinse thoroughly to protect your precious, precious fibres.

• Overload your machine.
  Or throw your weight around.

  The heavier a load, the more friction you create between clothes. When heavier textiles like denim (although, see above), cargo, cord or drill are saturated and tossed with lighter textiles, the latter can get caught in the fray.

  If you’re in a rush, use a mesh bag to separate the lightweights from the heavyweights.

• Ignore moths or moisture.

  The worst of the worst.
  
  Any sign of moisture can cause mould and mildew, two agents that can be fatal to your favourite wearables. Fibres can warp and rot, metal hardware can rust, and fabric can get irreparably musty. Wardrobe dehumidifiers are always a good idea, avoid plastic storage solutions, and for anything stored in fabric garment bags, let them see the light of day every so often. Air them out, let them breathe.

  
  As for moths, it’s the larvae we want to watch for. They prefer to eat protein-based fibres such as wool, cashmere, silk and fur, particularly if there’s traces of body oil and sweat to draw them in. Keep dirty laundry away from clean, and check your seams and pockets for tiny eggs and larvae.
  
  Use lavender sachets, cedar balls or bay leaves in fabric pouches to keep moths at bay. If you’re the thrifty kind, freeze any silk or woollen pieces that you buy before introducing them to your wardrobe to kill any eggs or larvae that might have hitched a ride into your home.

• Spray perfume directly onto fabric.
  A recipe for gradual, painful disaster.
  
  Most perfumes contain either alcohol or essential oils, both of which can cause discolouration, drying and staining on even the most hardy textiles.
  
  Stick to spraying fragrance directly onto your pulse points, and don’t forget the back of your knees.
  

This piece is just the first chapter of our Art of Care series. Subscribe for sage-ish advice, mending know-how, industry guidance, cultural expositions and a good dose of brand BTS.

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Come shopping with Elsa Mullins, content curator and queen of our hearts.

What's in your headphones? Are they corded or wireless?
I’ve had the same pair of Marshall’s wireless headphones for five years now and they’re my ride or dies, and I’d be lying if I said I ever listened to anything other than my favourite pop princess Sabrina Carpenter <3

Do you use a trolley, basket, bag or just carry everything?
I’m a large tote (or two) girl but am definitely in the market for a cute trolley (and open to suggestions!)

What day/time is it?
Potench controversial but I hit the grocery store everyday - usually after I’ve wrapped up work about 6pm. I just get what I need for the next 24 hours then rinse and repeat.

Do you use a list? Is it digital, physical, mental or none of the above?
My notes app is probably 90% grocery lists (the little checkable bubble dot points are the best for this!)

Pet peeves in public?
People with NO spatial awareness - why are we standing SMACK BANG in the middle of the aisles, doll!

Do you love or hate the cold section?
Ew, hate. I scurry into the freezer section to grab my frozen chilli wontons and that’s it.

Are you stealing a grape?
Obvi. Me 🤝 grape tax.

What are your most-purchased items?

1. Minor Figures Everyday Oat Milk

2. Family pack peanut M&Ms

3. 1L Tart Cherry juice

Which aisle are we avoiding?
Not an aisle, but that little section of the fridge with the vacuum packed pre-made meals. Those things freak me out.

What's one of your early grocery memories?
Perched barefoot inside the trolley and eating all the blueberries while my mum wasn’t looking. Safe to say when she scanned an empty punnet at the end of the shop, she wasn’t uber impressed.

Are you tempted by the snacks on the counter?
Oh, I’m a sucker for the strawberry Hubba Bubba tape rolls - I grab them at the checkout so I always have one in my handbag!

Which handbag are we using?
Usually whatever one I was using that day, which tends to be quite impractical. Although there is something about having a vintage Chanel slung on my shoulder while I browse the plant milks that seems very modern-Carrie-Bradshaw to me.

What shoes are we wearing?
Dad sneakers ALWAYS. New Balance, Asics, Salomons that dream of the mountains and instead see the sticky floors of the Coles health food aisle.

You run into a long-lost friend, are you stopping to chat or hiding in the shelves?
Oh, always stopping to chat. There’s something comfortingly intimate about a yarn amongst the produce.

Receipt or no receipt?
I once cried over a TikTok of a girl saying her Dad - who owns a receipt paper distribution company - is slowly going out of business due to the declining use of receipts. So now I always get one, for him <3

@etherealelsa

In celebration of her 80th lap, Dame Helen Mirren spoke to The Times about the patronising ways we speak about the elderly.

“If my husband and I are holding hands, someone might say, ‘Oh, look. How sweet.’ It’s like, excuse my language, ‘F*** off.’ There’s something very condescending about some people’s attitudes…”

Speaking to People Magazine, she had similar qualms about our anti-age blinkers.

“Younger people cannot comprehend the fact that the older generation had sex, had fun, danced, were obsessed with their hair and their weight,” She said. ”We’ve done that. We’ve been there.”

Just a few short years were more effective at retiring her from sex symbol status than when she explicitly rejected the title. Neither the ‘sexy’ nor ‘sweet’ titles were bestowed without pretence, but is the difference just a few extra years on the body clock?

Is sex the thing that drives ageism, our fear of ageing, and a general disdain of the elderly?

Is the difference that sex sells, until it doesn’t?

Even in a post-Y2K, post-tabloid, postmodern landscape, we still worship all the things that make a person seem young. The second someone loses their waif figure, skin elasticity, docility and virgin hair colour (traits that are only attractive by patriarchal standards), we relegate them to the non-sexy basket.

For some, this happens in youth. For others, we pedestal their looks until they’ve reached an unspoken expiry date.

Susan Sontag said it best when she wrote, “Beauty, women's business in this society, is the theatre of their enslavement. Only one standard of female beauty is sanctioned: the girl. The great advantage men have is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man.”

For women, we’ve positioned ageing as a battle to be fought, but never won.

We have forever conflated age with attractiveness, and sexuality with age. None of this is a new discovery, but it’s become piercingly obvious as a former generation of sex symbols either enter the battle or are disqualified entirely.

There’s no better story to chart the marketable nature of sex like that of Pamela Anderson. There are few people less publicly afflicted by a collective Madonna-Whore complex, which is only more apparent as her age becomes a defining feature again, at just 56 years old.

The most repetitive headlines currently circulating centre her decision to abstain from wearing makeup to formal events. What feels like a brazen move against patriarchy is, in turn, a brazen move against being sexualised. Again, one action was more swift at demoting her from her status as a sex symbol than any plea she made for the same.

The cases of Helen Mirren and Pamela Anderson make it clear that you can’t opt out of being sexualised, but you can certainly age out of sexuality. Either way, you can’t make that decision for yourself.

It’s as though age is the greatest weapon in fighting western beauty standards, but it’s a double-edged sword that cannot be wielded by the woman herself. In the specific performance we demand of girls young and old, we aren’t free to describe ourselves, let alone imagine ourselves outside of the aesthetic parameters we exist within. We are confined, ordained to match a set of specs that appeal only to traditional ideals.

With that, the pursuit of youth cannot be one of self-optimisation. It’s always been surveilled, image-based and fresh-faced.

The idea that sex sells is age exclusive, reserved for the youngest, freshest faces that fit our narrow ideals. It’s an idea that appeases the little Don Draper on our shoulder, while the expiry date is hidden in the fineprint.

If Helen Mirren and Pamela Anderson couldn’t outwit the system, where does that leave us? Is there an antidote or shall we all continue our march away from desirability?

It seems we will continue to condescend maturity for as long as we sexualise the inverse. This isn’t to say there are no beautiful older women, or sexual older women, or sex icons older than retirement. It’s to say the opposite.

If you’re asking what the point of this article is, I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps it’s a call to action to consider old women hot. Perhaps it’s a war cry against the way we vilify the ageing process. Perhaps this is just the start of a conversation about the ways we preserve and chase youth as the ideal. Perhaps, all of the above.

If ageing in women is a process of becoming obscene sexually, there’s room for improvement. There’s space for women to be revered into age, rather than becoming repulsive at the worst case scenario, or ‘sweet’ if you’re Helen Mirren.

Come shopping with Meg Wilcher, Founder & Creative Director of Après Studio.

What's in your headphones?
pop the glock - uffie

Are they corded or wireless?
noise cancelling big boiz

Do you use a trolley, basket, bag or just carry everything?
a crossbody bag

What day/time is it?
wednesday, 3.04PM

Do you use a list?
always

Is it digital, physical, mental or none of the above?
digital

Pet peeves in public?
people stopping in the middle of a thoroughfare, really obnoxiously loud phone calls on speaker phone

Do you love or hate the cold section?
love it

Are you stealing a grape?
never, I have the conscience of a Christian-raised eldest daughter

What are your most-purchased items?
coffee, chocolate, red wine and shoes

Which aisle are we avoiding?
all of them!
I only enjoy grocery shopping in a different country, otherwise I buy online and from my local farmers

Are you tempted by the snacks on the counter?
all I can think about is toddler tantrums and the breath of hungry strangers marinating it

Which handbag are we using?
currently this one from topologie because I’m travelling and being practical

What shoes are we wearing?
mostly these open YY ballets and montbells

You run into a long-lost friend, are we stopping to chat or hiding in the shelves?
hiding unless I’m ovulating

Receipt or no receipt?
digital

Why/why not?
receipt paper gives you cancer

@megwilcher

Intimacy is a new currency in a way that makes unmaking friends and uninfluencing people the more appealing option.

Not a day goes by where I don’t feel inexhaustibly double-minded about the internet. It equally nurtures and harms our collective curiosity and understanding of the world on the most granular level, and each virtual force for good is made murky by a gluttonous opposition.

Within the walls of our own brand, we are forever grappling with the paradox of being known. We want a community, but the second something is widely sought after, it goes from being a cult idea to a craze. We want our pieces to perform well in the market, but we don’t want hype. We want to be seen, but also hidden from view.

A digital presence is a double-edged sword: on one hand, our audience is amorphous and adaptable, growing and changing with us. On the other hand, the lack of control that brings is disarming. Every time our work is sent into the virality vortex to be imitated and replicated, the Kool Aid becomes diluted, the reins slip from our hands a little more.

We know that cool things don’t stop being cool because more people think they’re cool.

But it feels as though being able to divest from popularity is the privilege that popularity used to be.

As a style enters the mass market, it becomes copied, replicated and knocked off incessantly. Well-meaning consumers emotionally detach from the popular item, we lose the novelty of smallness, and collections are turned into costumes where they represent too much, yet too little at the same time.

Beyond the urgent, chaotic presence of such norms, there’s a shameful element where we directly influence the alarming cycle of waste. By creating a coveted item of clothing, we open the door for fast fashion businesses to sell the same piece, typically made using polyester and other virgin textiles. Not only are garment manufacturers paid less to make our pieces in a different look, font and fabric, the garments themselves will lose quality significantly faster while never breaking down. They will always exist in some form, for the rest of time.

In an attempt to avoid that shame (suffered only by the original designer, never by the perpetrators themselves), we want to be known just enough, not too much. We want to exist without the looming fear that others are causing harm vicariously through us.

As a brand, we have self-imposed limits on the number of pieces we can produce. It’s the simplest thing we can do to manage our footprint, to keep things tight, novel and free from intemperance, without devolving into an exclusionary, sanctimonious or over-intellectualised idea of fashion.

In less words: with every limitation comes joy knowing that every piece we make is going to a loving home. Every order feels infinitely bigger than just a number knowing that there’s a person on the other end with a real connection to their wardrobe.

Still, such a goal feels contrary to everything we’ve been taught since our formative years in the workforce. The rise of e-commerce stripped all limits from the business of make-and-sell, and here we are reconstructing those walls to have a little fun again.

This is all an attempt to harness a kind of esoteric selfhood that can’t be bought, a level of authenticity that’s hard to find despite having access to every iota of information at our fingertips.

Even amongst the infinity of the world wide web, popularity isn’t the luxury or nirvana it’s made out to be. Its staining power is now similar to that of tabloid fame, where your every action is monitored and every movement becomes handcuffed to ideas firmly outside of our best interests.

In the name of anti-shame, anti-handcuffs, anti-sameness, we’re becoming more and more anti-popularity. We’re so happy you’re here.

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