Don’t ask me how I got onto this topic, but this week I found myself looking at dorm rooms from the 1900s, and it seems like felt college pennants were the it thing to have. They were even reportedly the best-selling novelty item in the country in 1910. Students traded them, picked them up on trips and at football games, and plastered their rooms with them. Pennants were the Ragtime NeeDohs, if you will.

Part of the pennant boom was that college itself was becoming glamorous, college football was becoming a national obsession, and schools were becoming American brands, complete with colors, fonts and logos.

These dorm rooms are so, so, so cool. The maximalism is almost absurd. They truly look like they were assembled for a J. Press shoot, but even a creative director couldn’t go this crazy, it would look…fake?

What I love is that these walls function like scrapbooks: where you’d been, what you followed, who you knew, what you admired, what you belonged to or wanted to belong to. These rooms were essentially 3-D Instagram grids.

So I guess we’ve been creating “personal brands” forever, or at least a century. The difference is that constructing one used to take years. The pennants, photographs, trophies and snowshoes were accumulated through places you went, people you knew and things you actually did. These items feel earned. The images and objects on the walls were the result of a life actually lived. Even the aspirational stuff required some work, some boredom, some risk.

Today, an identity can be assembled almost instantaneously. The images that signal who you are require very little actual life. And that’s the part that makes me wonder what it does to a whole cohort of people when they don’t actually have to be the people they project to be.

It feels a little eerie, but of course, there’s a wrinkle in the nostalgia. We worry endlessly that social media is ruining our ability to form our own tastes and that its algorithms are turning us all into the same person. But look at enough dorm rooms from the 1900s and 1910s and…they look prettttttty alike. Maybe we’ll all be just fine after all.

While staying with friends in Meschers, France, one summer, Ellsworth Kelly became fascinated by a flight of stairs and the shadows cast across it by the railing. He photographed and sketched the stairs repeatedly throughout his stay, watching the shadows change as the sun moved. Those observations became the basis of his La Combe series, an important early body of work. Kelly looked at the same thing over and over and over again until it became remarkable.

I’ve been thinking about how repetition works similarly on memory.

Some of my strongest memories are completely banal. I can still see my mom driving stick shift from the back seat of a red station wagon. I remember the horns that opened Meet the Press every Sunday morning with Tim Russert on our kitchen TV. The sound of our home phone ringing. None of these moments were important enough or beautiful enough to document, but they survived because they happened in front of me over and over again.

Photo albums and Instagram grids organize our lives around the exceptional, but repetition may actually be memory’s greatest ally.

As we gear up for Back-to-School Nights and summer’s end, there’s that familiar question: “How was your summer? What’d you do? Where’d ya go?” We instinctively answer with the punctuation marks: the big trip, the farm dinner, the fishing excursion. Novelty is more interesting to talk about than ritual. But when I think back on my own summers, I remember riding my bike, swimming laps, eating tomatoes like steaks, the whoosh of screen doors. Things that happened so often they became a texture I can’t forget.

So before summer slips away, I want to remember a few of my favorite, least photographable things I’ve loved repeating this summer.

Watching ‘90s and 00’s movies

My niece wanted to dig into ’90s and Y2K movies this summer, so while I was in Chicago, we watched one every night for a week. Everyone else went to bed, we cracked open the ice cream, and pressed play. It became so great not because any one night was particularly special, but because we did it seven nights in a row. She ranked them in this order:

1. Cruel Intentions (1999)
2. Empire Records (1995)
3. Dazed and Confused (1993, set in 1976)
4. Reality Bites (1994)
5. Clueless (1995)
6. Wet Hot American Summer (2001, set in 1981)
7. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Taking Daily Neighborhood Walks

There’s nothing better than taking a walk. Alone. With your spouse. With the kids. With a friend. With your mom. With a podcast. Especially at dusk when you have nowhere to be. Especially with your spouse when you’re fighting and neither of you can remember what you’re fighting about. You will never regret a walk. I’m convinced most of the day’s problems can be solved, or at least made smaller, by a 30-minute walk.

Dressing Like James Taylor in the late 70s

My current style icon is JT. Wearing all white every time I go out has made my summer life so easy. If you’ve seen me in the same white outfit all summer, it’s because I can’t stop.

Playing Hearts

As parents, we blew it on enforcing summer reading this year, but we did teach both kids how to play Hearts, and that feels like something. Now the boys look forward to a few rounds every night before bed.

Scrabbling Against Friends

I’ve been playing Crossplay on my phone almost every night this summer against the same person and, sorry, screen time police, but I like it!

Watching Baseball at Home

If there’s one thing that happens over and over and over again, it’s baseball. We know so much about every Dodger now that watching them feels a little like watching a sitcom: sometimes very very boring and sad, other times exhilarating. Either way, it gives us something to root for in an overwhelming news cycle.

Roasting a Chicken Every Single Sunday

My friend Justine has roasted a chicken every Sunday for the last eight years or so. This Sunday, we crashed their family dinner, and it was perfect. The ritual is genius not only because roast chicken is delicious and nourishing, but because she’s done it so many times that she’s mastered it completely. She doesn’t have to think about how to make it, what she needs, or, most importantly, what to have for dinner. It’s simply become part of the automatic rhythm of their family. I would love to be a person who roasts a chicken every Sunday.

I have almost no pictures of any of these things listed. And maybe that’s the point. I don’t know what my kids will remember about this summer, but I have a feeling it won’t be the things we paid the most for, traveled the farthest to see, or put on Instagram. Maybe it’ll be playing Hearts and eating roast chicken at our friends’ house after a Dodger game.

Sounds kind of great.

I’m in the middle of writing a trend piece about the Grateful Dead for Air Mail. The deeper I get into the reporting, the more convinced I become that the Dead created one of the most complete American subcultures of our time. I’m excited to share it once it’s published, but first, a tangent.

I’ve never considered myself a Deadhead. I’ve never seen the Grateful Dead or any of its post-Garcia incarnations live. I own exactly one Grateful Dead T-shirt, and I feel kind of like a poseur every time I wear it.

Still, I came to love the band as a freshman in high school. It was 1997, arguably one of the lowest points in the Grateful Dead's popularity. The band had stopped touring. Jerry Garcia had been dead for two years. They were, quite honestly, kind of uncool. Indie rock was ascendant, sleek mod influences were everywhere, and the culture seemed to be hurtling toward the futuristic promise of Y2K. Yet in certain corners of America, teenagers were still happily clinging to the soundtrack and ideals of the late 1960s.

As improbable as it sounds, East Coast prep schools and colleges became an unlikely incubator for Deadheads in the 1980s and '90s (see: Tucker Carlson). I've tried to understand why, but I haven't found an answer that fully satisfies me. Dead scholars readily acknowledge that it was real, yet no one seems to agree on why a band synonymous with Northern California counterculture became so deeply embedded in the most traditional East Coast schools. Maybe the reason is that simple: every rigid institution needs a pressure valve, and the Grateful Dead offered one.

There were, admittedly, some unfortunate byproducts of this subculture. Most notably, and hopefully never to be repeated:

🚨 White people with dreadlocks. 🚨

Once we get past that, though, the 90s preppie/hippie blend is pretty fascinating. Chinos belted with Dancing Bears belts. Outward Bound energy mixed with school dress codes. Lacoste polos worn over cutoff jeans. Blue blazers and Birkenstocks.

Chloë Sevigny, Executive Producer of the Deadhead documentary Summer Tour (released just last week) said recently, "The Dead was Normcore before Normcore was a thing."

Whatever you want to call this style, Bob Weir is its undisputed Godfather, and its greatest practitioner.

My first year of boarding school, I lived across the hall from a junior, or Vth Former in boarding school parlance, who was a devoted Deadhead.

Every inch of her room was covered in Indian block print tapestries. She owned dozens of bootleg Dead tapes (tapes!), and had glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to nearly every available surface. She had so much stuff. I remember that somewhere between “Hi, what’s your name?” and “Where are you from?” she asked, “Do you like the Dead?”

That first semester, we stumbled into an improbable scheduling miracle: every Thursday, we both had four consecutive free periods. A block of unstructured time that long was almost unheard of.

We’d camp out in her dorm room, put on the Dead, and order sandwiches from the local sub shop. Even now, those songs transport me back to lying on her floor, flipping through the face book—the actual printed booklet—and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Those four months remain the deepest I've ever ventured into the Grateful Dead. Long enough to understand the pull, and just long enough to realize that for true Deadheads, there is no bottom. There’s the iconography, the language, the shows, knowing the band on a first-name-basis—it’s a whole world and I was just a tourist unwilling to fully commit.

The Late ’90s Deadhead Uniform

On that note, there’s a whole new mainstream universe of Grateful Dead clothing and accessories on the market now (I’ll get to that more in the Air Mail piece), but as I remember it, in my tiny corner of the world, on my timeline, these were the objects that marked you as a Deadhead, or Dead-adjacent (Phish, Dispatch, et al), or maybe these are just items from a time and a place.

Sorry in advance if this list triggers anyone.

Dancing Bears Mountain Belt

Vasque Sundowner Hiking Boots

This brand and these iconic boots were discontinued in 2024. I deliberately scratched mine with steel wool to make them look broken in. I think enough time has passed to finally admit that.

Nalgene Water Bottles

We were raised on BPAs (finally removed in 2008), baby. Bonus points if you had a combo of band and/or Outward Bound stickers.

Carhartt Double Duck Work Pants

These work pants were a gold standard.

North Face Backpack

This ubiquitous backpack wasn't complete without a carabiner clipped to nothing at all.

Beaded Necklace

The hemp chokers too 🫣.

Birkenstock Bostons

Launched in 1976, and they’ve never really faded.

Block Print Tapestry

Authentically sourced from the Urban Outfitters on Newberry Street, then sprayed with fire retardant. Matching dresses and tank tops were a must.

Patagonia Retro X Fleece

The defining detail on these was 3-5 cigarette burns for authenticity.

I got weirdly obsessed with this photo because it captures a feeling I’ve been trying to articulate about midsummer. It’s not the sunburned Scottish rockers I’m focused on, it’s the tempered glass patio table. Or rather, what the table represents.

What I love about this table is that it is full of tea cups, beer bottles, wine glasses, sunglasses, a camera, cigarettes, honey, you name it. You can tell these guys have been sitting here through multiple meals over multiple days. In fact they were in the middle of recording the album Brothers in Arms at George Martin’s AIR Studios in the B.V.I.s. The album went platinum, won Grammys, became the third best-selling album in the UK, and was the first album to succeed in the CD market.

Was the table the secret sauce? Nobody can prove it wasn’t.

Some of my best summer nights were spent gathered around one of these translucent tables with a texture that mimics a gentle brook or a fountain soda glass full of pebble ice. We'd huddle around it all night long, then wake up and go right back to the same spot to rehash the night over a room-temperature Diet Coke found in the pocket of a hoodie. At some point, that table became synonymous with time feeling infinite.

I know this is absurdly specific, but I’m deeply nostalgic for the texture of a Brown Jordan tempered glass table.

If you think the chairs are much more interesting than the tables, I agree. But the almost forgettable tempered glass tables were so placid that you didn’t realize how much work they were doing to hold the whole scene together. They reigned from the 1960s through the 1990s, but have largely been replaced by teak, aluminum, stone, and other more durable, easier-to-clean materials. You can source vintage Brown Jordan sets all over the internet, but I don’t actually want to own one, not even a little. I just want to sit around one at someone else’s house and rehash the hilarity of the night before. These tables helped define an era and a summer feeling, and I never thought they were remotely important until I realized they were So Far Away.

Extra Credit

Cuban artist Diango Hernández coined the term Olaísmo, derived from the Spanish word ola, meaning "wave." The term symbolizes fluidity, movement, and the transient nature of ideas, cultures, and political systems. To me, this series of paintings feels like looking through a tempered glass table. described his painting as "a memory from a past life that slipped away."

My 15-year-old niece told me last week that ankle socks are back in style. I processed this information with disbelief, laughter, and then with a wash of relief. It made me realize: I’ve made it. I actually don’t give a shit about sock lengths anymore, and therefore: I have fully reached middle age. So sick.

Of course this move makes perfect sense. There were only a trillion articles over the last few years declaring the end of ankle socks as the most flagrant indicator of millennial cringe. These articles, mostly written by aging millennials trying to prove they still had a working knowledge of youth culture, created the perfect cover for Gen Z to brilliantly distance themselves…in the last place anyone would suspect, ankle socks. It’s funny.

Why sock lengths have become an identifying factor of how dialed in you are is kind of fascinating. The older you get though, the more you realize the trend cycle is less a straight line and more of a washing machine. Everything eventually comes back around for another wear, only now, it feels referential and exhausting.

Sock trends have gone nuts over the past few years, from calf-length crews to Princess Di scrunchy socks and apparently, we’re back to ankle-length again. With this kind of volatility, it’s hard to believe that any sock could hold its own for very long and become a true emblem of an era, but socks used to get a pretty long run. Bobby socks ruled the ’40s and ’50s, tube socks dominated the ’70s and ’80s, white crew socks subtely defined the ’90s, and ankle socks and no-shows carried us through the ’00s and ’10s. Is it possible the 20’s may never get a defining sock of their own?

Since there’s still time, I’d love for the next wave to consider bringing back the tube sock as their official representative. I’m talking about the high-rise, almost-to-the-kneecap kind of tube sock that is absurdly massive, kind of vulgar, and very loud. Has any sock ever covered more ground?

The Nelson Knitting Company of Rockford, Illinois, invented tube socks in 1967. They never secured a patent, so knockoffs appeared almost immediately, which helped make them a ubiquitous American icon.

A look back at some epic tube sock looks:

To my niece Abby: If you are reading this, I think you and your friends should give tube socks a shot.

As we are just days away from celebrating the nation’s semiquincentennial, I’ve been thinking about what makes American culture distinctly American. What I’ve realized from this thought exercise is that, yes, Americans love F-150s, Bruce Springstein, The Cowboys, malls, and cheeseburgers. But beneath all the…let’s call it…rugged individualism, we’re actually a culturally-fussy, high-maintenance group of people. We like our drinks ice cold, our homes aggressively air-conditioned, and our beds made in a particular way.

Here are six subtle ways that may identify you as an American:

🛏️ Flat Sheets

Making your bed with a flat sheet is considered a very American thing to do. Across much of Europe, the top sheet is skipped entirely in favor of a duvet with a washable cover. Good Housekeeping recently explained in its survey of the great top-sheet debate, Europeans generally consider flat sheets to be overly-complicated.

🍴Switching Fork Hands

In the traditional American style, you cut your food with the knife in your right hand and the fork in your left, then set the knife down and switch the fork to your right hand to eat. Across much of Europe, diners skip the extra choreography: the fork stays in the left hand, the knife in the right, for the entire meal.

The Emily Post Institute calls these two different ways of using silverware the “American” and “Continental” styles, noting that the American method involves transferring the fork to the right hand after cutting which is also known as “zigzag” dining. Post says both are correct but slightly favors the Continental style for simplicity.

🧊 Ice in Every Drink

Americans like their drinks cold. Visitors from Europe routinely remark on the sheer amount of ice Americans use, where beverages are often served lightly chilled or with no ice at all.

As The New York Times once observed in an article about America’s enduring love affair with ice, “Americans expect ice in nearly every drink,” a preference that has become one of the country’s most recognizable everyday habits.

❄️ Air Conditioning

Americans use more A.C. than any other country. I was shocked to find out that nearly 90% of American homes have it. In many parts of Europe, by comparison, air conditioning is still the exception rather than the rule.

Guilty.

👞 Wearing Shoes Indoors

Whether you take your shoes off at the front door is one of the world’s great cultural divides. In much of Asia and parts of Europe, wearing outdoor shoes inside someone’s home is unthinkable. Americans, however, are far more likely to leave them on. The Washington Post has described the shoes-on versus shoes-off debate as one of those surprisingly contentious habits that immediately reveals where and how you grew up.

This is the one exception to my theory that Americans are culturally fussy. Apparently removing our shoes at the front door is where we draw the line? Or is it the shoe-wearer that just doesn’t want to be inconvenienced? I’m confused.

💵 Tipping

Americans have apparently decided that tips can be solicited almost anywhere post-Covid. Even when you’re serving yourself frozen yogurt, adding your own toppings, placing your creation on the scale, and paying with your phone, the iPad still spins around and asks for 20 percent. Gratuities have long been embedded in American service culture, but in recent years “tip creep” has expanded expectations well beyond restaurants, turning a simple transaction into a small moral dilemma.

In so many cases, I’m begging: Just charge more and free us from making one more decision, and doing math, every time we buy something.

OK that’s it for now. Happy Fourth!

As of Sunday, summer is officially here: symbolically, meteorologically, emotionally, astrologically, and, for some (me), shambolically.

The start of summer can feel a little manic. If you have kids, it becomes a patchwork of camps, activities, family gatherings, travel plans, and the nagging sense that you’re supposed to be having the Best Summer Everrrrrr.

In an effort to de-stress and actually enjoy the season, here are five very simple ways to lean into summer.

Eat Tomatoes

I eat a tomato pretty much every morning in the summer. I love summer tomatoes. A perfect summer tomato with salt and pepper is divine. A good summer tomato is always additive. I would marry a summer tomato if I could. You will not regret entering into a monogamous relationship with a nightshade. It is the healthiest relationship I know.

Play Wiffle Ball

Simple, easy, cheap, and one of the things my kids look forward to most all summer: a kids-vs.-adults Fourth of July Wiffle Ball game that somehow manages to involve at least a dozen cousins and assorted friends.

The sport was invented in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1953 by David N. Mullany, and the company remains family-run more than 70 years later. Today, it’s operated by the founder’s grandsons, and every WIFFLE ball and bat is still manufactured in Connecticut, and will set you back just nine dollars.

Retain your Shades

I call these Croakies, although I think that’s technically an Oakley thing, and other people call them sunglass retainers or lens leashes? A nice, thin sunglasses retainer for summer? Sure. How practical. How sensible.

But, can you make it a double, à la David Lee Roth circa 1986? Yeow 🤘🤘🤘!

Read a Book in a Hammock

Gotta find out where I can attach a hammock in my backyard, pronto.

Get a Watch Tan

People are ditching their Oura Rings, WHOOPs, and Apple Watches because they're tired of quantifying every aspect of their lives. One of my favorite headlines on the trend was The Wall Street Journal's "The Tyranny of the Oura Ring."

Wouldn't it be fun to spend the summer wearing a sport watch instead? Something a little dorky, a little nostalgic. Something waterproof that signals no status, tracks no sleep and offers no insights. A watch that can get covered in sunscreen, dunked in a pool, and emerge none the worse for wear.

Last night a friend put on a playlist she assembled herself. It was eclectic and jumped across genres in a way a Spotify algorithm never could. I’m talking Meredith Brooks, Pulp, The Cure, Mariah Carey and Blur. It truly sparked joy. People kept stopping mid-conversation to say how much they loved the song that just came on.

It struck me that the entire paradigm of cool is changing. For years, or at least for my entire life, status was tied to effortlessness. The highest compliments were “she doesn’t even try” or “he just threw that together.” Nobody wanted to think or know that someone put in actual work to achieve coolness.

But now we're so hungry for human authenticity that showing your effort has become the flex. The smoothed-out version of what computer code thinks our taste should be only makes us all more alike. Have you seen the way teenage girls dress? They all wear tank tops with low-cut sweat pants. Nobody is trying to look remotely interesting, they all just want to look the same. If sameness will define the taste of the next generation, buckle up for boredom. I’m somewhat confident the teens will figure it out for themselves, but I’m also a little terrified they will turn into bots. We’ll see!

In the mean time, here are some ways I’m trying really hard to be cool this summer:

Making my own playlists.

There’s definitely a time for letting the algorithm sonically guide you, but we can’t forget what songs are meaningful in our lives, and liking what we actually like, defining what our personal tastes are, and to be unafraid of sharing that…to be known…as a human person.

Writing my own writing.

People are getting really sick of reading obvious outputs of Large Language Models like ChatGPT, or even hearing people talk about using AI.

Yes, AI can produce competent writing instantly, but competence is cheap now. Voice, judgment, and taking a risk is where there’s value. At a certain point last year I found myself using ChatGPT to help me send basic emails and realized my brain was starting to atrophy really quickly.

Someone much smarter than me put it really succinctly when she said: Use AI as a forklift (things we would never be able to do ourselves) not as a weight lift, reps we need to do ourselves to build strength and muscle.

Building real muscles.

With the proliferation of GLP-1s and peptides, thinness has never been more attainable. That disrupts the value of thinness in a way that I think will make strength and muscle more aspirational than simply being skinny.

Side note: A trainer at my gym recently told me that a Goop chopped salad contains 910 calories, roughly the same as a Quarter Pounder with fries. It was a useful reminder that wellness signaling and actual fitness are not always the same thing. Strength training, on the other hand, is refreshingly straightforward: you either picked up the weight or you didn't.

Shopping offline.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to stop ordering grocery delivery because it’s always a little wrong and you inevitably forget something and it’s often more annoying than just going and getting it done. I’ve stuck to that. But the other day I walked into an actual clothing store and realized I hadn’t shopped in one for a long time.

Online shopping is easy. Social media serves up things it thinks I should buy, I click a button, and a few days later a box arrives at my door. I can try everything on in the privacy of my own bedroom and never face the mild humiliation of emerging from a dressing room while strangers assess the fit. But those strangers also tend to shower you with compliments in the hope that you'll buy something, and that's a service the internet has yet to replicate.

At the new women’s Wittmore (if that’s what it’s called?), an independent L.A. retailer, I had a lovely chat with the salesperson, found a few things I never would have clicked on online, and everyone won, but especially me because I feel like I got something kind of special.

OK that’s it for now.

In 1990, Wieden+Kennedy, the Portland-based agency behind Nike's famous "Just Do It." slogan, created a series of six ads for Vogue aimed at women. Each one centered on a burden we would now call the female mental load and offered a simple cure: get outside and exercise. This was 36 years ago, before conversations about invisible labor, before the internet, and long before #girlbosses and influencers. Yet the ads feel as if they could have run yesterday.

Not one phrase felt comically out of style or obsolete (OK maybe control-top pantyhose and also what the hell is an encounter group?). If anything, we’ve only added to these lists with supplements, peptides, social media, Aura rings, crystals, Spanx, laser treatments, generalized anxiety, food allergies, red light masks and EMDR.

These ads are also a reminder that we tend to look back on the past with nostalgia and assume it always used to be happier and simpler, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the stresses of being alive in the modern world have always been difficult, and there will always be some company or influencer trying to take your money in the name of making you healthier, better-looking, or more optimized.

As corny and gullible as this may sound, I think Nike could run these ads again today and the message would remain just as powerful in its simplicity: when the world feels like too much, move your body. There’s definitely worse messaging out there coming from big corporations.

OK, I’m getting up from my desk and going for a walk now.

P.S. These ads really have me jonesing for a pair of Air Max 90s.

OK, so fair warning: This is a consumer-heavy, culture-less newsletter coming at you. It’s stuff to buy for summer. There is no cohesive slant, just straight-to-the-vein shopping + a white tee guide at the bottom for those of you who asked!

🌞 SUN

Topo Hoodie UPF Hoodie

Recently in a group text thread a debate got HOT on the toxicity of sunscreen, and what the hell we should all do about it. What we all agreed on was that UPF clothing has gotten a lot better looking. This hoodie is a no-brainer for mid-day hikes, baseball games, being in a pool with children, and amusement park outings.

Freaks of Nature Sunscreen

Kelly Slater founded Freaks of Nature as a non-nano mineral sunscreen that doesn’t smear or leave a white sheen on your skin. Powered by air and non-chemical, it may be one of the best ways to spray SPF.

Patagonia Sun Gloves

If you haven’t heard someone say, “hands are the new face,” congratulations. But with face procedures climbing, hands have apparently become the next (the last?) vestige that tells your true age (haha). I’ve seen people fishing the Snake River in these and also driving on the 101.

J. Press 3-Bar Hat

🍅 DINE

Speckle Enamel Platter

La Veste Tablecloth

Berry Bowl

Poppy Plates and Bowls

🩳 WEAR

Ozma 1930s Silk Bandana

Around your neck, as a belt, tied around your head, these silk bandanas are the perfect summer accessory.

Left on Friday Gingham Shorts

Winona Irene Herring Barrette

Woven Belt

Straw Boater Hat

Yellow Rat Swim Trunks

Venetian Slippers

🎾 FUN

Beach Mattress

Protest Jigsaw Puzzle

Spence Racket Tote

Nomenclature Playing Cards

🛩️ GO

Cotopaxi Travel Cubes

These are the best, and are also so handy for kids to pack a change of clothes for them on a playdate or before a sports practice. It doesn’t matter what brand, but these Cotopaxi ones are fun.

Steele Canvas Duffles

There are certain places where wheeled luggage feels super out of place or even awkward, like, going on a one night trip, or into a National Park and you just need a duffel.

Atlantic Coastal Supplies Tote

White T-Shirt Contest

Following the Jeans and White T-Shirt Theory post a few weeks ago, I got requests for a t-shirt round-up. I’ve since polled my best friends and worst enemies and have come up with a solid list of seven. Everyone wants different things in a white tee: One must consider thickness, fit, material and crop. But these are the seven that overlapped the most. Not listed, but of interest to me, is this also this new Bon Shoppe tee ($64) that looks good.

Hanes

Esquire called this the best shirt of all time in 2023.

Jungmaven

Imogene + Willie

Perfect White Tee

The Great

Left on Friday

Everybody World

Do you ever get into a funk where you’re standing in your closet and not a single garment looks like non-garbage? Piles start accumulating around you. The Uber is arriving in 10 minutes. Someone already texted, “OMW!” Your husband is circling.

This stress-fueled panic used to happen to me pretty regularly until a few years ago, when my friend Max gave me a very simple solve: “Jeans and a white T-shirt when all else fails.”

What he meant, or at least what I inferred, is that in moments of stress and pressure, you need to default to simplicty. My fear has always been that simplicity equals blandness, but increasingly I find the opposite to be true. I’d almost always rather have perfectly executed cacio e pepe or a pristine piece of sashimi without frills than something so overwrought it becomes confusing.

The same goes for style. Looking at a photo of someone and not being able to immediately identify the decade is, to me, the goal. If you think about it, some of the most iconic style figures, both men and women, were deeply committed to this concept of reliable basics. Jane Birkin, Steve McQueen, Kate Moss, James Dean, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy—they weren’t reinventing the wheel. They were just showing us how good jeans and a T-shirt can look with confidence.

This mantra has saved me many times. (If you’ve ever seen me out in jeans and a white T-shirt, just know I was on the brink of a mini-psychotic break in my closet hours earlier.)

Lately, with a few trips on the horizon, I wondered, how I could possibly apply this easy no-brainer factory settings mind-set to one of my least favorite things to do: ☠️ packing a carry-on bag ☠️.

Enter the Sudoku Method of Packing.

The Sudoku Method for Packing

I read about this a few weeks ago and tried it today. It took less than five minutes to create six outfits with just nine items. A genuine miracle?

Here’s how it works: Start with three pairs of pants in a diagonal line.

Add three shirts. Then add three sweaters and/or jackets so each row and column had one of each category (pants, shirt, outer layer).

The beauty of this method is that it eliminates the fantasy-self packing that tends to derail a trip before it even starts and leaves you with only functional combinations that work together. A daytime grid like this and a second evening grid feels bulletproof to me, but just don’t forget the jeans and a white T-shirt in case you encounter any confounding jams on the road.

GODSPEED.

I’m sure you’ve all heard someone described as East Coast–y. While I can’t easily define it beyond being vaguely preppy, I know you have to own at least three L.L. Bean totes to qualify. What I’ve never heard, though, is anyone being accused of being West Coast–y. I wonder if that’s because West Coast style is less distinctive—or just harder to articulate.

I thought about what makes something East versus West and realized our coasts have a pretty healthy rivalry in almost every aspect imaginable.

Our coastal iconographies have been slowly shaped over centuries by major forces—the weather, industry hubs, immigration, agriculture, and hometown heroes—but lately this texture that clarifies our coastal identities is starting to blur. We consume more of the same media, eat at the same restaurants, shop at the same places, and follow the same trends. Even accents are disappearing. In other words, if you can get an Erewhon smoothie in New York and a legitimately good bagel in L.A., then…what makes a place, itself?

While these differences are still legible, I thought it would be a fun exercise to take a closer look at what makes the coasts distinguishable (or not). What follows is my incomplete, intentionally subjective, randomly historical, visual field guide to decoding the coastal divide in all the most important categories 😉.

Hopefully, above all else, this helps you answer the perennial personality question: Are you a Tupac or a Biggie?

Canvas Tote

West: Pacific Tote Co. / East: L.L.Bean

Licorice

West: Red Vines / East: Twizzlers

Prep Staples

West: Buck Mason / East: J. Press

Regional Paranoia App

West: Watch Duty / East: The Tick App

Ceramicist

West: Heath Ceramics / East: Simon Pearce

Slightly Unhinged Team Owner

West: Jerry Buss / East: George Steinbrenner

Flea Market

West: Rose Bowl Flea / East: Brimfield Antiques Market

Signature Produce

West: Avocado / East: Blueberry

Literary Deities

West: Joan Didion / East: Fran Leibowitz

Soup that Contains Clams

West: Cioppino /East: Clam chowder

Kind of Creepy Historical Archetype

West: Missionary / East: Puritan

Mayonnaise

West: Best Foods / East: Hellmann’s

SNL Sketch

West: “The Californians” / East: “Coffee Talk”

Artist Named Ed Who Painted Gas Stations

West: Ed Ruscha / East: Ed Hopper

Unprompted Virtue Statements

West: “She’s a rescue.” / East: “I don’t own a TV.”

Iconic Hotel Entrance

West: The Beverly Hills Hotel / East: The Carlyle

Ensemble Cast in a 1990’s Movie

West: The Big Lebowski / East: Metropolitan

Ambitious School Lunch Items

West: Farmer’s Market Musubi / East: Homemade Roxbury Russett Apple Juice

High School Dropout

West: Jeff Spicoli / East: Holden Caulfield

Private Elementary School Flex

West: Haim just headlined your fundraiser / East: There’s a Cy Twombly behind the receptionist

Water Sport Tournament

West: US Open of Surfing / East: Head of the Charles

Your Type-A Older Brother’s Employer

West: Google / East: J.P. Morgan Chase

Irrational Transit Fear

West: Hearing voices inside a WayMo / East: Getting trapped in a subway car with an acoustic guitarist

Insufferable Millennial Couple

West: Harry and Megan / East: Jared and Ivanka

Tennis Status Symbol

West: Playing in a UV-protectant burqa (post-bleph) / East: Selfie with a Honey Deuce

Progressive Mayoral Candidates with Canvas Fonts

West: Nithya Raman / East: Zohran Mandami

Flower

West: Poppy / East: Hydrangea

Tourist Trap with Elmo

West: Hollywood Walk of Fame / East: Times Square

Nancy Meyers Dream House

West: L.A. house in The Holiday / East: Hampton’s house in Something’s Gotta Give

Famous Person Associated with Pools

West: David Hockney / East: Kelly Klein

Throw your favorite East Coast / West Coast analogs in the comments ⤵️!

I’ve noticed that in small talk, almost everyone has one question that makes them squirm.

They’re usually just well-intended polite prompts, but sometimes these questions feel like they require answers that are weirdly complex, and suddenly you’re stumbling or feeling like you’re in a job interview.

For my husband, it’s: Where did you grow up? He grew up in four different cities, which quickly turns into a whole thing about his dad’s career as a department store executive—which is not what was asked, and although harmless, it’s just usually not what he wants to get into at that moment.

You see this dynamic everywhere where a simple answer can trigger discomfort, light panic, or even competitive feelings:

• Do you have kids?

• What do you do?

• How’s the project you started a year ago and didn’t follow-through on?

• Are you married?

• How did you meet?

• Why aren’t you drinking?

• How are you?

My personal trapdoor is: Do you work?

It’s a deceptively loaded one. I’ve watched friends—especially mothers—wrestle with it in real time or even pretend they didn’t hear the question. When you can’t neatly package your work situation (or it’s in flux) or part-time, or whatever, the answer can feel like a referendum on your identity.

I get it. When I get asked this question, I tend to spiral into a non-linear conversational sinkhole that charts the many times publishing has been disrupted, from iPads to Instagram to AI—before landing on an attempt to explain Substack.

Yikes. This is a great way to alienate people!

I realized I kept getting caught off guard by this same question, and that the solution wasn’t to love myself more or be more nuanced. The solution is brevity.

A few months ago, I was on a tennis court with Ilene Rosenzweig—a former New York Times Sunday Styles editor turned TV writer, and a deeply strategic tennis player, which feels related. She asked me what my newsletter was about. I blanked and said, “I really need to work on my elevator pitch on this.”

She responded, nonchalantly, “You know I made up that phrase.”

After skeptically Googling this in the bathroom during a set break I learned she did in fact make up that phrase.1 In the ’90s, she was dating Michael Caruso, then a senior editor at Vanity Fair under Tina Brown. Tina was famously busy and hard to pin down, so the only reliable way to pitch her was to catch her in the elevator. You had four floors—about 20 seconds—to make your case that your story idea was hot.

A few weeks later, I heard Ilene describe my newsletter to someone else:

🛗 “It’s a personal take on cultural trends—part service, part social commentary. She looks at why things are stylish, absurd, and worth noticing.”

Annoyingly perfect.

I called her later and asked her to repeat this so I could write it down. I played with it a little more, I whittled it down to its most simple truth, as if to prep for a chance opportunity of standing next to Tina Brown in the Condé Nast elevator circa 1991.

That felt…so freeing. I wanted more. I created my elevator pitch for answering the question Do you work? next.

🛗 I’ve worked in media for 20 years, mostly as a lifestyle journalist. I currently write a newsletter about culture.

The first time I said it this way, I felt a lightness I hadn’t felt in social conversation in years. I even felt a flicker of actual excitement about what I said. Okayyyy, so this works!?

I promise—there is a way to elevator pitch the questions that trip you up. Ask a friend for help. Ask ChatGPT (which I’m generally not a huge fan of, but in this case is extraordinarily helpful).

Write it, memorize it, and step off the elevator—ding, you’ve arrived.

I just finished Lindy West’s marriage memoir Adult Braces, which reads like the Ella Emhoff–coded step-sister to Belle Burden’s Strangers. (In this metaphor, Belle Burden is Barbara Bush—either one.) It’s not for everyone, but I loved this line:

It makes perfect sense, pleasure is heightened by pain.

Summer in Chicago is more fun than summer in Los Angeles, because that summer has been earned. Walking into an air-conditioned building feels euphoric only when you’ve been outside in sticky heat. Cold plunging works best near a sauna. The Sex Pistols are cool because of The Carpenters. You get the point.

I think this is why billionaires get weird. If every chair is comfortable, every problem solved instantly, every inconvenience removed—eventually you have to manufacture contrast by launching yourself into space.

Contrast isn’t just pleasure, it’s meaning. Things feel good only because, at some point, they didn’t. It’s also how we decide what’s beautiful.

Beauty relies on difference: what’s hot is defined by what’s not. Which is why I keep coming back to something I posted yesterday on the Substack Notes app:

Because if we all start to look the same, we flatten the very contrast that defines beauty in the first place. And once that contrast dulls, the target just moves again. The standard will get more extreme. The arms race will escalate. We will start launching ourselves into dermatological outer space (maybe we already have).

I’m not saying don’t do it, and I’m not even saying I’m not going to do it, I just find myself zooming out and wondering where this goes.

At the start of the pandemic, I had a 7-month-old and a 3-year-old. It was honestly pretty great to spend so much of their early lives together, day in and day out, them blissfully unaware of anything beyond the walls of our home. It was also a living nightmare, which I don’t need to write in expository fashion, we were all there. The best of times, the worst of times, etc., etc.

One habit I picked up during that era was a nightly bath after the kids went to bed. It became something I genuinely looked forward to as a moment for meditation, a small act of self-care, and a chance to unplug from the crazy all in one go. I rarely skip this ritual now, and when I do, I aggressively miss the way it closes out the day.

9 Good Reasons to Take Baths:

1. You deserve pleasure.
2. It’s actually not that scary to be alone with your thoughts.
3. You can not use your phone effectively with wet hands.
4. Warm water on your skin is good for your nervous system.
5. Raising your body temp and letting it drop mimics sleep patterns, which helps you fall asleep faster.
6. Muscles like it.
7. Calluses hate it.
8. Getting into bed clean, is there any other way?
9. Oprah and Winston Churchill agree it is a miracle for the body and mind.

5 Products I use on Repeat:

Everyday Oil

Two tablespoons of Everyday Oil poured into running water creates a subtle aromatherapy and keeps skin from drying out. I love both Warm Feelings and Mainstay and have been a subscriber for six years.

Bath Salts

1 cup per bath. There are endless options, but I usually reach for Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), which are known as a muscle relaxant. It’s unclear how much magnesium is actually absorbed through the skin, but people swear it helps with sleep. Anecdotally, I agree. I typically buy big bags from SaltWorks at the grocery store, but occasionally spring for something sexier, like Onsen Saru. I don’t do CBD salts, but this place feels vibey if you’re into that. People are also very fond of Dead Sea Warehouse salts.

Bath Mat

I probably feel too strongly about these Sasawashi bath mats, but what can I say, I’m in love with a bath mat. These beauties are thin yet thin, antimicrobial (the Sasawashi fabric prevents odors and mildew growth), plus the woven texture gently exfoliates your feet. And! Somehow they never feel wet, no idea how that’s possible.

Raw Silk Robe or Throw

This Gone robe or throw towel (from the brand formerly known as Upstate) is another pandemic purchase I don’t regret. The robe hangs by the bath and is perfect to throw on if I need to answer the door in a pinch. Raw silk feels like the perfect buffer between you and the world.

Bath Towels

After a chaotic day, stripes bring an orderly energy to a space meant for winding down. These hit the right balance: absorbent, soft, but not overly plush or sheddy. Piglet in Bed is a win.

As we gear up for the Love Story finale tomorrow, I went down a rabbit hole of photos from Kelly Klein’s 1992 launch party for Pools—her first of many coffee table books. This is the party in the premiere episode where JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette first met.

Klein hosted parties that autumn in New York at the New York Athletic Club and in L.A. at the The Beverly Hills Hotel—a moment in time when people went out simply to have fun and the photographer had finite rolls of film, usually taking one or two shots before moving on.

The guest list was a textured mix of photographers, actors, socialites, magazine editors, music producers, fashion designers, and models. New York was shot in black and white, L.A. in color, which is exactly right.

Would you rather be at the New York party or L.A. party?

This once sentence tells me that you are decisive, resourceful, low maintenance (but maybe a little bit of a control freak), and value your time. Sure there will always be situations when you need to check—try going to a cold climate with very small children or going anywhere with babies, but the efficiency of carrying it all with you, is so very hot to me.

🫦 “I have a pen you can use.”

I’m sorry, what? You have a pen that you carry around? Marry me.

🫦 “I’m a bee.”

You may have seen this friend matrix on Instagram by comedian Pete Ballmer. The concept is that each friend group has people that fall under these four distinct quadrants, and it’s the bees that keep the group together. They’re organized, energized, and make it all happen—most importantly though, they are initiators and, well, that’s sexy.

🫦 “I read/listened/looked into to that thing you were talking about.”

You followed-up on our conversation? Okay…🔥.

🫦 “I’m into low-context communication.”

Hear me out on this one.

There are two kinds of communicators in the world: people who say exactly what they mean (literally!), and people who assume you’ll pick up on cues and subtleties. This is the basic idea behind low-context vs. high-context communication, a framework that helps explain why some interactions feel refreshingly clear if maybe offensively so, and others feel like you’re deciphering subtext with a secret decoder ring. You may be reading more and more about this concept because because the Gen Z cohort is famously accused of favoring low-context communication.

Low-context communication is explicit. When someone says “I can’t make it tonight” that’s the whole message. There’s no subtext, no hidden agenda, no expectation that you’ll read between the lines. Cultures that are famously noted as low context are Germans, men, and people with excellent abilities to set boundaries.

High-context communication, on the other hand, relies much more heavily on shared understanding, tone, timing, and what isn’t said. The words are only part of the message; the rest lives in relationships and a format that was agreed upon but never discussed. In high-context worlds, context is the message. I grew up in the Midwest, where if you said to a guest “stay as long as you want” that may in fact mean you want someone to get out of your house immediately or in the South “bless your heart” could be a preamble to annihilation. Other cultures that are famously noted as low context are the Japanese, Middle Eastern, WASPs and Southerners.

I don’t really want to read in between the lines anymore, mama’s tired, thank you!

🫦 “I re-oiled the cutting board.”

This is very specific, but really doing anything that takes some care and labor to preserve something worth preserving is a major turn on. Did you re-wax your jacket? Decalcify the coffee maker? Maintain your leather car interior? Wash your jeans in an elaborate 6-step method? 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Pre-equinox March is an interesting time. Technically it’s still winter, but no one wants to talk about that. We’re inching closer to that first 70-degree day when we reemerge with a renewed appetite for color. While that’s not exactly my reality in Los Angeles (the weather here has been as advertised), I remember the intensity of feeling that first warm patch of air, and the optimism that comes with it.

💚 Get Into Artichoke Szn

Artichoke season is officially here. “For all the bother, it’s the peeling away we savored, the slow striptease toward a tender heart,” as poet Richard Foerster perfectly puts it.

👉 Order a case from Pezzini Farms

Pezzini Farms out of Castroville, California (a small town that supplies roughly 75% of the country’s artichokes) has been family owned for 80 years. If your local grocers aren’t humming with artichokes yet, Pezzini is taking orders and will start shipping their green globe varieties on March 17 ($28 for a box of 5).

👉 Get Thyself to a Hillstone

🪽Watch Man on the Run

This new doc about Paul’s early solo career is for the real McCartney heads and has plenty of betrayal plot lines. If you’re not a huge fan, but you are very curious about how extreme a married couple’s matching mullets could get in the 1970s, you will also love this. Available on Prime Video.

👖 Get Into Some Off-White

Bright white denim feels too soon, but maybe ecru is just right. There’s so many great ecru jeans out there, but the Levi’s 501 90s Jeans ($110) do not disappoint.

🍑🌸 Bring on the Blossoms

Peach blossoms are among the first signs of spring and the fleeting moment to snag peach blossom branches is basically now. Last week, our local farmer’s market was selling huge branches for $7 a bunch.

💿 Listen to Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups

Somehow this song is 20 years old, but it feels like yesterday that these guys were playing regularly at the Silver Lake Lounge. This song sounds so much like the 90s to me (even though it’s 2006) but it also sounds so much like the edge of Spring—agitated and impatient and loud.

🔪 Double-Cross Your Best Friend

Just an Ides of March joke. But seriously, If you really want to lean into mid-March, I think Strangers by Belle Burden is basically the Et tu, Brute? of marriage memoirs. He abruptly left her in the early days of the pandemic, but she went on to write a Modern Love essay and then national bestseller about it, so I guess there are two Brutus-es here? We’ll see if Gwyneth (who is rumored as eager to play Belle in the movie) makes the whole thing better or worse.

Nobody would accuse me of being a hoarder, but this pair of Adidas Stan Smiths has traveled with me to every closet I’ve had for the past three decades.

I acquired these shoes in 8th grade after spotting them on a 7th-grader named Maude. Nobody was wearing Stan Smiths in our elementary school. It’s hard to remember sometimes how geographically limiting the pre-Internet world was when you craved an item. I can tell you where Stan Smiths were not being sold in 1996: our local sporting goods store, Kiddle’s, which was the only shoe retailer within my rollerblading radius.

Maude and I didn’t really know each other, but I definitely told her how cool her shoes were, multiple times. She may have sensed my desperation because a few months later, I opened my orange locker and her Stan Smiths were sitting on top of my textbooks. She miraculously and nonchalantly just…gave them to me. When I asked her about it, she shrugged and said she didn’t really wear them anymore.

Maude Bunn, if you are out there, thank you again. I still have your shoes. They’re in good shape—slightly squeaky, but holding strong.

A few weeks ago, my husband was saying that luxury sneakers have become standard at his corporate office, and he was thinking about getting a pair. He handed me his phone with a pair pulled up and asked what I thought. My reaction may have been outsized, but I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around paying four, five, or six times the price for what is essentially a designer’s take on a Stan Smith. Brands like Isabel Marant (who was accused of infringement), Common Projects, and Golden Goose have all made higher-end versions, and I understand the appeal of that sense of refinement, but for me, the charm of the basic original is that it’s already so clean and classic. I don’t personally feel the need to upgrade it to what essentially feels like a $500+ knock-off. And if you really want to spend money on Stan Smiths, believe me, you can.

People who stan for Stans know: they go with everything. It’s a perfect shoe, one that has moved seamlessly through tennis, skate culture, prep culture, hip-hop and fashion—and now, thanks to at least one guy, a corporate office. They’ve been name-dropped in Jay-Z lyrics. They’ve been worn by men and women, young and old, David Bowie, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, President Obama, and toddlers.

Stan the Man

The shoe’s namesake was a Pasadena kid who got his start hitting tennis balls against his garage door. From there, he graduated to the public courts and, at 15, was scouted by a junior tennis association that supported talented players who needed financial help to pursue the pros.

He practiced at Pasadena High School, where students were recruited to serve as ball boys and girls for the 1963 Davis Cup at the L.A. Tennis Club—courts that soon became his daily after-school training ground. He was passed over for the ball boy role because he was considered too clumsy, a rejection that crushed him. Still, he attended the matches and, for the first time, laid eyes on Arthur Ashe.

Seeing Ashe play was transformative. It lit a fire in Smith—not just to go pro, but to be great. In 1965, he won the national junior title and went on to play at USC.

By 1968, Smith was selected for the U.S. Davis Cup team—the same team as Ashe. Team USA ended its long drought and reclaimed the Cup, and Smith quickly became one of the biggest names in tennis. He went on to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Open and was ranked world No. 1.

In 1972, at the height of that success, the shoe was born. Adidas wanted to break into more of the US market, and Smith was the guy that year. From there, the sneaker’s career took on a life of its own, even as Smith’s playing days were slowed by injury and gradually faded.

Stan Smith is, importantly, a genuinely decent person, a civil rights advocate, beloved by his family, and a stellar teammate. He didn’t become the Michael Jordan of tennis, but that feels beside the point. Across the sport and in fashion, people talk less about his record and more about his character, about how he is a generous, humble, and grounded human being—and who doesn’t want to wear that?

More than half a century later, there are easily a thousand versions of the Stan Smith—collabs, new colorways, limited drops. They get hot, they get cold, they get hot again, but they will always be simple, effortless, quiet, and ideally full of scuffs.

Nostalgia for ’90s style feels like it’s at an all-time high. There’s plenty to love, like JFK Jr. & CBK’s green Saab and the heyday of print magazines, but there are also visuals flooding in that feel like a migraine. Somewhere on that ’90s spectrum is a single shape that helped define the graphic design of the era: the oval. I have no idea why ovals were so strangely dominant in late ’90s branding, but one theory is that the shape was a softer response to the rigid grids and boxes of ’80s corporate logos. Or, maybe it just happened organically and then it was copied over and over. Either way, they’re back as the ’90s resurgence expands and deepens.

I guess life is just a (flattened) circle.

A Visual Oval Origin Story (1996-1999):

And…We’re Back. Ovals Circa 2026 🙃: