Ya know that feeling when you use to play eye spy or wheres waldo? Thats how I feel when I read print. I recently went to ISSUE and bought my first magazine in months: Vogue France Collections FW26/27. Also, Nile Coffee just opened and I gotta say, not only is community vibe everything this corner of Dundas needed, but coffee is really good!

As I was flipping through, to start Chloé, Gucci, Jil Sander, Louis Vuitton, Zomer, Courrèges, and Jacquemus were my favorite collections. I was looking at the details: pocket sizes, bag proportions, shoes, hair, and makeup.

The runway signals culture in the parts you have to know how to look for. The intention behind every detail is deliberately subtle.

So it got me thinking: what does the runway mean for CPG in 2027?

For a decade, luxury held a monopoly on status taste, exclusivity, and belonging translated through logos, sneakers, and It bags. The same way there was a time when a Starbucks cup in your hand meant something, and now most of us wouldn’t be caught holding one.

That monopoly is over, and you don’t need a white paper to see it; you just need your feed. Back in 2011, Coveteur built an entire platform on one idea: photograph the inside of a tastemaker’s closet. Fourteen years later, the closet has moved. runs a series on Substack called Into the Fridge. “What’s in my bag” “Things worth the money” is trending on TikTok and Reels. The same impulse Coveteur migrated from the wardrobe to the fridge, the tote, and the receipt.

Ask yourself why. Why do we now want to see inside someone’s fridge, their pantry their beauty counter, their everyday bag as badly as we once wanted to see inside their closet? Because status left the wardrobe. The signal moved to the $20 smoothie people photograph at Erewhon before they drink it, the $8 can of prebiotic soda that replaced the glass of wine, the supplement lineup staged like a fragrance wardrobe. Status didn’t disappear. It colonized the pantry, the fridge, and the sink.

Here’s what fashion still does better than any other industry: it encodes intention on purpose, and it does it first. A pocket size, a shoe with no laces, a bag that suddenly holds your whole life those are decisions made by people whose entire job is reading where culture is heading eighteen months out. Your groceries are downstream of the same instinct. So if you want to know what CPG looks like in 2027, don’t read the CPG headlines. Read the runway’s footnotes.

What the Details Said in the FW26/27 Collections

• Paris: The Process: Rollers left in the hair on purpose. Tinsel-threaded, half-undone up dos. Styling that exposed the labor of getting dressed instead of hiding it. The read isn’t “messy hair” it’s that effortless perfection is dead, and the visible routine is the new flex.

• Milan: The Tired Girl: Greasy roots, foundation stripped back to bare skin. Beauty normalized exhaustion and biological reality over the airbrush a direct middle finger to the pristine “clean girl” era.

• Copenhagen: Utility as Survival: Trousers worn as bustiers. Up-cycled aprons styled as the main event. Clothes doubling as something else entirely. Utility wasn’t a mood-board choice; it was the whole logic, wrapped in Scandinavian restraint. And the shoe told on the whole thing: for SS27, Anne Sofie Madsen sent models out in Nike’s First Sight Shadow a laceless, futuristic slip-on. Not a collab, just an existing general-release sneaker she chose to put on a runway. Read that. A designer with the whole shoe world to pull from picked the one you don’t have to bend down to tie.

Three tells, one direction: exhaustion, exposed process, do-more-with-less. Now watch it walk off the runway and into our actual lives. I could go into a deeper dive of the collections but I am saving that for a bigger report I am working on that will have a paywall, so here is a little sneak peak.

The Boot Trend? Diana did it first.

The boot-over-pants look isn’t new. It’s been 30 years since Princess Diana famously tucked her jeans and sweats into Western boots at the polo club and school drop-offs, cementing an iconic, unbothered aesthetic. When the look popped up again on the Fall 2019 runways—reinterpreted by everyone from Alberta Ferretti to Rachel Comey—and hit the streets on figures like Kendall Jenner, we knew it had returned for good.

Only the difference now is that it’s slouchier, looser, and entirely unbothered. This isn’t Gen-Z performance curation; it’s a millennial rite of passage rounding a new corner. Look at what’s currently in our rotation: the big bags are back. We’re done carrying a micro-mini that holds a single tube of lip gloss. We’re hauling pouches stuffed with everything required to survive a 12-hour day. On our feet? A Tabi flat, a Havana, an Archie, or a tall boot we can blindly throw over our denim.

Because this isn’t just about shoes. It’s about friction for everyday wear. We don’t want laces. We don’t want zippers, clasps, buckles, or straps we have to thread in the dark. We want to step in and go. The everyday is being redesigned around a single question how many seconds does this cost me? and anything that answers “more than zero” is losing. Whatever the season, the shoe that wins is the one you don’t have to negotiate with: in winter, it’s the boot you can slide over your pants; in spring and summer, it’s the slip-on flat and the laceless sneaker.

That’s not a trend that peaks and fades. It’s the new baseline, and the runway just co-signed it. The laces were always the tell; we’ve officially stopped budgeting time to fasten our own clothes.

It’s efficient, sure—we’re always in a rush but the emotional core runs deeper. It’s the feeling of “I care, but I can’t let you see that I care.” That’s our new grunge. Millennials spent a decade optimizing every single thing we touched, and now we’re collectively exhausted. The uniform reflects the burnout: high-low, lived-in, and utterly done with the pressure to look like an airbrushed lifestyle board.

That’s the aesthetic.

Field Report: What’s Actually Inside My New City Bag

If you want to know what modern CPG is up against, look inside a bag.

I recently got a new bag and was forced to downsize my pouches partly to curb my ADHD. To make the point, I dumped out what’s in there today. It’s a full breakdown of how I live, regulate, and consume right now:

• A vintage Avon essential pouch passed down from my mom (it deserves its own deep dive) and her old cigarette case. We’re rejecting sterile new nylon in favor of objects with tactile history and emotional weight.

• A Stimmie toothpick (non-negotiable), a Saje stress-relief nose inhaler, and a lollipop because honestly, I need grounding and dopamine management on the go. (If you’ve gotten this far and you can relate…something new is coming @naturalrascals).

• A Muji pen, wired headphones (yes, on purposethe anti-AirPod forever and always), an Everyday Chemist Lip Grease I’m newly loyal to, and two hand creams: one scented, one unscented, depending on sensory load.

• I didn’t show them but I recently got glasses from Bailey Nelson. Sunscreen, and a Clinique lip stain that lost its cap.

And here’s the part that proves the whole thesis: my pouch is my late mother’s—so that isn’t getting replaced. But two things in that bag I already want to upgrade. The nail file is getting swapped for the Celisse one. The generic bandaid is getting swapped for Benji.

Neither of those is about performance. A bandaid is a bandaid. It’s that even the most disposable, unglamorous object in my bag is now something that feels “too basic”; I need it to feel special, aka cool. That’s the entire game. When the bandaid has a brand you covet, everyday consumption has fully become self-expression.

Every object in that bag is a brand that earned its spot and the two I want to trade up are proof that the bar keeps rising, right down to the blister care.

What we are most familiar with when it comes to CPG is lipstick, perfume, and in recent years, soap. I wrote about this awhile back:

The Party Era, “Functionmaxing,” and the 2 AM Checkout

The party era is back, but the economics of the 90s aren’t. We’re carrying the social residue of wanting to go out while our bank accounts, schedules, and nervous systems run overtime. That friction is where “functionmaxing” is born.

When I built the digital architecture and user flow for Sleep or Die by the logic was simple. Your real word-of-mouth signalers the organic core are on their phones at 2 AM in the dark, one eye open, fried, trying to fix a problem right now.

If a checkout makes them think, zoom, or decode a pretentious brand story on four hours of sleep, you’ve lost them. The UX has to mirror the product: zero friction, maximum velocity, no unnecessary steps. Read the state your buyer is actually in, then build for that state not the version of them on your mood board.

Local Proof Points: From Toronto Studios to the Pouch Economy

• GINNY: The adaptogen functional beverage brand whose visual identity and packaging we designed at Nobody Knows Studio, with US expansion on the horizon often anchoring out of spaces like Uncle Studios on Ossington, co-founded by Allegra Shaw. The ecosystem runs on exactly these physical and digital intersections, where minimalist uniform culture meets real life.

• Hospitality: I am about to start working with a new hospitality group on branding and positioning, where the strategy shifts to psychographics over demographics. The magic isn’t the physical centre, the pop-ups, or the CPG retail shelf it’s targeting the cultural pioneers who treat a hospitality space or an artisanal beverage as an extension of their wardrobe. Deep dive on this coming soon when I can share more of the process.

• Bastét: The same philosophy we applied here. Decades of legacy marketing trained consumers to accept a broken loop in oral care: products that are visually uninspired, lean on a single anchor SKU, and engineer a cycle of recurring issues instead of solving them. Tearing that down means treating a daily essential with the same design rigor and architectural weight as a designer bag.

The 2027 CPG Translation: Winning the Pouch

If our bags are stuffed with necessities, our aesthetic is calculated nonchalance, and we’re shopping with one eye open. How do CPG and beauty brands win a spot in the rotation?

1. The pouch economy demands tactile hardware. When your bag is a catch-all of keys, a backup charger, and a pouch of essentials, your product can’t look fragile. It has to feel like an anchor. Invest in heavyweight packaging brushed aluminum, tactile glass, materials that read as an heirloom when a hand blindly digs into the bottom of a tote.

2. Ditch the “miracle” pitch for the “survival” pitch. Millennials don’t want to be told how to optimize a morning. Pivot to functional realism stress relief, quick-recovery tonics, grab-and-go essentials that validate the mess instead of pretending to fix it.

3. One-and-done over the multi-step regime. The Tabi-and-big-bag era has no room for a 10-step routine. The product that wins the pouch is the multi-hyphenate hero: the one compact format that gets us out the door.

If your 2027 CPG or beauty brand is still marketing on functional benefits and category rules, you’re already invisible. A jar of chili oil, a can of prebiotic soda, a shower gel—they’re judged by the same cultural metrics as a designer item while also competing with heirlooms.

Design for the bag and the counter, not just the box. What people grab every single day is where the brand actually lives.

Everything is a signal. The runway just shows its hand first—if you know where to look.

Thanks for reading!

The note sits in a box next to a Furby, a Michael Kors watch (which I should actually wear), a childhood Snoopy book, and a photo of me at sweet 16 that was screen-printed onto a mouse pad.

I share this photo for context on where my read on Gap comes from. It’s the fact that I’ve kept this PR note for a decade. That’s not sentimentality., That’s brand equity. I’m sitting here typing this, while wearing my Gap VintageSoft Crop Logo Hoodie They got the fabric weight right on this one. Here are all of my current GAP Favourites

About four months ago, I shared on Linkedin that I invested in GAP.

I wrote: I’m officially invested in Gap. This morning I put some $$$ in and I have a feeling we are going to see 1999 numbers very soon. The turnaround we’re witnessing isn’t just about sales. It’s about relevance. Gap has rediscovered the “Modern Antiquity” of its own archive. In 1999, Gap was the cultural default of the “Modern American Uniform.” They’ve stopped chasing fast-fashion trends and started world-building again. When a brand finds the intersection of archive soul and modern demand, the financials follow. The most recent data already shows a 7% growth in comparable sales. The archive is the new alpha. Get your wallets ready.

Let’s look at the numbers, because they tell a better story than you’d think.

The 7% I quoted was the freshest figure I had at the time. But when Gap Inc. reported earnings, the Gap brand itself posted a 10% comparable sales increase marking its tenth consecutive quarter of growth. Not 7. Ten. Old Navy dragged the blended corporate number down, proving why you have to look at the brand line, not just the company line. I nailed the macro trajectory, but I underpriced the raw velocity of the exact brand I backed. Richard Dickson has quietly delivered straight quarters of compounding relevance while most of us were still filing Gap under “mall casualty, RIP.”

Before we get to the GAP Beauty re-launch, just have to point out that I wasn’t the only one feeling the pull. Over the last year, the internet’s best cultural excavators have been trying to pinpoint exactly why this specific era of Gap feels so magnetic right now.

, chronicling the vintage landscape over at Never Worns with pieces like “I Can’t Find That Gap,” and tracing the ghost of holiday campaigns past in Vogue with her deep-dive on the iconic 2000 holiday sweaters, put words to an ambient feeling we’ve all had while scrolling the RealReal, Depop, and FB Marketplace at 2:00 AM. We aren’t just looking for clothes; we’re hunting for a specific frequency of confidence. As Liana maps out, the artifacts of that era, the heavy wools, the clean typography, and the unbothered styling weren’t designed to be micro-trends. They were built to be uniforms.

When you look at my Are.na board right now, a collection of late-90s and early-2000s Gap print ads, you start to see the exact architectural blueprint of what made them work.

There is no desperate shouting. There is no performance anxiety. There’s just a stark, beautiful photograph of a musician or an actor shot by Steven Meisel or David Sims, a bold serif or clean sans-serif typeface, and a two-word instruction: Who You Are. Gap.

That mindset treating the consumer like an adult who wants to dress to feel like themselves rather than an algorithm to be trapped is what the industry abandoned, and it’s what we are all starving to get back.

Archive to the Met Steps

If you want proof that this isn’t just a nostalgia play, look at what happened when Zac Posen stepped in as Creative Director and introduced GapStudio and brought it to the steps of the Met Gala.

When Kendall Jenner stepped out in a sculptural, twisted-cotton Met Gala gown inspired by the Winged Victory of Samothrace, engineered out of a deconstructed white Gap T-shirt layered with liquid jersey, organza, and a custom-molded leather corset, it was a masterclass in what happens when a brand remembers its own baseline. Posen didn’t try to turn Gap into a couture house. He took the ultimate democratic American uniform, the humble white tee and put it through a high-craft lens, proving that the archive can hold its own against centuries of classical art. That is what happens when you treat commercial heritage instead of a costume museum.

After I hit post on my Linkedin post, engagement was kind of crazy (a lil viral moment for me if you will) that genuinely surprised me. The engagement wasn’t “smart take, agree/disagree.” The engagement was testimony.

Tom Hutt (Creative Director across Superdry, The Kooples, Allsaints):

“More power to them. So loving watching this turn around play out. Great creative team and exec leaders that support strategy in there right now. And it’s showing, the power of culture based brand first marketing.”

Yulia Reingold (Content Specialist, E-commerce at Canada Goose):

“I also bought some Gap stock after picking up some very nice 100% linen shirts and 95% cotton double lined tanks this summer at a great price. They’re killing it on fabric composition”

Anna K. (Director):

“Not going to lie, I bought gap jeans for the first time in my life. It’s cool again to wear Gap and they actually have jeans for taller women, even Levis doesn’t.

Luke Kurbalija (Global Senior Lead Brand Design at On AG):

“My go-too when I was around 16yo was the classic GAP trinity: stonewashed jeans, white T and grey zipped hoody. This post reminded me just how chill and effortless it felt…and I ask myself, why did I stop??”

Abigail Tjaden (Illustrator for Brands):

“As a junior in high school in 1999, I can definitely say that having those three letters on the front of your sweatshirt was EVERYTHING... I looked forward to the collection drops each season from GAP.”

Emma Brooks (Brand + Community Builder):

“Recently discovered their Pointelle PJs and I couldn’t be more obsessed. Just ordered my 3rd pair. Feel like they are coming back to life through branding AND product syncing beautifully.”

Kristen Berntsen (Head of Brand Strategy at RX3 Growth Partners):

“archive soul and modern demand”

Do you see what that is? That is not an audience reacting to marketing. That is an audience doing the marketing. Every one of those comments is a person independently recovering a memory and then attaching a current purchase to it. Archive soul meets modern demand, exactly as Kristen said.

The Gap Playbook

If you really look closely to what Gap is doing, there’s an actual operating system here, running right in the open. It looks like this:

One: There’s a critical difference between nostalgia-as-aesthetic and nostalgia-as-strategy. The lazy version slaps a heritage logo on the current product and calls it a “throwback drop.” The Gap version goes back to what the archive meant: the uniform, the ease, the democratic idea that a great white tee and a grey hoodie were available to everyone and rebuilds the product to actually deliver on it. That’s why the comments were about fabric composition. You cannot fake your way to a customer voluntarily praising your cotton weight. The archive gave them the story; the product had to earn the receipt.

Two: Cast for cultural fluency, not just reach. The recent campaign run Katseye, Tyla, the Young Miko “Sweats Like This” launch, and now Hailey Bieber’s denim capsule is not a celebrity-endorsement spend. It’s a series of bets on people who are fluent in the dialect of the platforms where culture actually gets decided. The Katseye ad went genuinely viral. That’s not what happens when you buy a face. That’s what happens when the casting is the content.

Three: The Gap world, every one of those campaigns is designed to be inhabited, not just watched. “Wear What You Feel.” “Do You Gap.” These are open-ended prompts, not closed slogans. They hand the customer a role. And the customer i.e my entire comment section enthusiastically takes it, because being invited to co-author a brand you already have muscle memory for is a genuinely good feeling.

and Four, and this is the one nobody’s naming sales are the lagging indicator, culture is the leading one. As Mark Breitbard, President and Chief executive of the Gap global brand, noted in reporting by Daniela Morosini for The Business of Fashion, culture is explicitly treated as the primary metric: “Culture dialogue is a success marker here. Are we in the conversation? Who are the people talking about us?”

Read that again as an operator. He is telling you that the company is optimizing for presence in the conversation as a primary metric and treating revenue as the thing that shows up afterward. That is the inversion. Most brands chase the sale and hope for relevance. Gap decided to manufacture relevance and trust that the sale would follow. Ten consecutive quarters of Gap-brand comp growth suggest the trust was well placed.

On July 30th, Gap re-entered beauty. And the way they did it is the entire playbook, compressed into a single product line, which is why I couldn’t let it pass without writing this.

Shop Discovery Set & my favourite scent OM

They didn’t launch a beauty brand. They rebooted four fragrances from 1994 Dream, Grass, Heaven, and Om the exact scents from the 90s, added one new scent (Harmony, apricot and amber), priced the whole thing at an accessible $52 for 50mL, and put it on their website, in their 500-plus stores, and critically on TikTok Shop. The campaign is called “Wear What You Feel,” it stars Victoria Pedretti, and the in-store displays come with QR codes that unlock a curated playlist for each fragrance.

Marketers, I need you to notice how precisely this maps to the playbook.

They didn’t just dust off the archive. As Deb Redmond, head of beauty at Gap Inc., explained to The Business of Fashion: “We didn’t want to just dust something off from the archive and put it back on the shelves.” The original scents were eau de toilette; the reboots are eau de parfum stronger, longer-lasting, reformulated by real perfumers (Honorine Blanc and Nicole Mancini, in partnership with DSM-Firmenich) to be layered. That’s mine-the-archive-don’t-costume-it, applied to scent. The story is 1994. The product is built for 2026.

They’re seeding fashion and beauty creators and building “more playful, irreverent” content for TikTok, because Fabiola Torres, global chief marketing officer at Gap, understands the platforms have their own dialects. As Torres highlighted regarding the media landscape in The Business of Fashion: “It’s very, very competitive.” That’s cast-for-fluency.

The QR-code playlists, the “Wear What You Feel” prompt, the layering mechanic that turns buying perfume into building your own signature that’s world-build-and-let-them-furnish-it. They’re not selling you a scent. They’re selling you a role in a scent.

And the tell the quote that confirms this is the same operating system and not a coincidence is Breitbard framing the launch not around a static revenue target but around cultural presence, noting to The Business of Fashion: “We’re taking our best guess at knowing where the strength of our heritage is, and then also knowing how to reimagine [it].” For a perfume launch, they are running the business on the exact same leading indicator they used for the apparel turnaround.

Can we please bring back this mindset?

At Nobody Knows Studio, we build brand ecosystems from web design and identity to packaging. When I work with clients, I always ask: Psychologically, what brand from a completely different category do you want to sit next to?

But let’s go deeper. Where is the cultural gravity? Where is that unbothered, editorial confidence—the kind that trusts a single photograph and a declarative statement to do the heavy lifting? For one of my clients, Bastét—where we’ve been intentional about anchoring our visual identity in classic, enduring codes rather than fast-cycle noise this philosophy is the entire north star. When we posted for Pride month, it wasn’t about chasing a fleeting engagement spike; it was about staking a claim on a mood and an aesthetic point of view that stays true to the brand’s world.

Gap just proved something that the entire CPG and beauty industry has been too short-sighted to see: a genuine archive or a distinct point of view is a category-agnostic asset. The 1999 hoodie, the Winged Victory Met gown, and the 1994 perfume work because they aren’t shouting at you, they’re inviting you into a world that already has an established pulse.

Beauty brands need to stop chasing micro-trends and start building brand worlds that stay and grow with you through decades. I can’t recommend enough to start creating your own cultural memory and start realizing that people don’t fall in love with a serum because of a percentage point on the label; they buy it because of how you showed them how they will feel about who they are when they use it.

Anyways, hope this brings you closer to GAP and inspires you to go down a deep rabbit hole on their brand.

Full disclosure, this post isn’t sponsored (I WISH) and I have to mention that I hold a position in Gap. This is not investment advice, it’s a brand read that happens to have my own money attached to it. Do your own homework. I’m a creative director, not your financial advisor.

If you’re new here (there are now officially over 2100+ of you, Hi!), for the last year I’ve been working with Alexandra Baker to build the world of Bastét. A whole reference field, a tone, a way the thing makes you feel good about what you put in your mouth.

Before we get into it, I wanted to share that the site is currently live shh…, and you have an exclusive discount code. Use INTERNET for 10% off your first order. (expires tomorrow at 9AM EST. www.bastetritual.com

Okay, so a year later and we launch in an hour….when me and Ally met we started talking and it was clear pretty fast that we shared a particular kind of brain: the kind that catalogues reference obsessively, that notices the ink density on a package or the pacing of an editorial spread and files it away without deciding why yet.

From day one we were aligned less on what we wanted to make than on everything we refused to be. Clinical. Condescending. Another sterile tube shouting its ingredients at you. Knowing what you refuse is what keeps a brand out of the beige middle where most products quietly die.

The thing people get wrong: this isn’t a toothpaste brand.

Bastét sells toothpaste, French Mint is our first product but the brand is an oral care system. We recognized from the start that the mouth isn’t an island; it’s the entry point to your entire internal ecosystem. Most of the industry treats oral care as a cosmetic fix, a way to scrub away “imperfections” to meet a standard. We wanted to build for the biome, understanding that oral health is inextricably linked to your systemic well-being.

That biological shift changed everything about how we designed the brand.

Because we aren’t just selling a tube of paste; we’re holding space for the four minutes a day you spend in front of the mirror. We know this room is where modern beauty culture does its most quiet, persistent damage, that space where you’re taught that you’re always one more product away from being “perfect.”

We didn’t want to add to that noise. We wanted to build an antidote.

By grounding the brand in the reality of your systemic health, we stripped away the clinical, condescending tone of the pharmacy aisle. We didn’t build around the paste; we built around the mirror. The product is the biological doorway; the brand is the room you walk into a place to move from maintenance to ritual, and from confrontation to self-care.

Building the world of Bastét

When Ally and I started on the creative direction, I knew the reference had to lead not the product, not the packaging, the feeling we were building toward. The pool I pulled from looks nothing like oral care.

Marina Abramović a grooming ritual made confrontational, the emotional weight underneath a repetitive act of care. Donald Wexler’s desert modernism and brutalist concrete the bathroom as architecture, as intention, not as pharmacy. Cold stainless and chrome, tubes crushed like sculpture. Bodies shot honestly x-rays, shadows, mouths and teeth up close and unretouched next to a single clean tooth rendered like an artifact. Performance art, mid-century architecture, pathology, the body. Applied to oral care.

None of it says “toothpaste.” All of it says this is what it feels like to inhabit your body honestly. That’s the lens that turned the whole brief; it let us frame Bastét as a world you step into rather than a product you use.

This is the part of how I work at Nobody Knows Studio that I think about most. I build brand worlds around a principle I call Modern Antiquity the tension between something ancient and something hyper-now. Every brand world I’m drawn to lives in that gap: old enough to feel inevitable, like it has always existed, but built so precisely for this exact moment that it could only exist now. It’s less an aesthetic than a way of seeing you find the timeless thing the category forgot, then drag it into the present until it feels urgent again.

With Bastét, that meant treating the bathroom not as a pharmacy but as architecture, and the daily routine not as maintenance but as ritual. Because at its core, Bastét began with one goal: a better relationship with yourself. It starts small four minutes a day, just for you.

The product that carries all of it is a Bastét French Mint Toothpaste

A few days ago, while we had a moment in between launch prep, I sat down with Alexandra to just reflect on the brand she had envisioned and what it is today.

The single most important design decision in the identity?

Ally: “Emphasizing the mouth as not a lone part of your body, but a part of a larger more meaningful system. Embracing minimalism without losing the warmth of history. Everyone in our space goes too clinical. We insisted on texture, the grit in the imagery, the ink density on the packaging. We wanted it to feel tactile even through a screen.”

Most brands here lead with ‘clean’ marketing over actual engineering. How is the product different?

Ally: “It’s an obsession with efficacy meeting sensory pleasure. We spent months with chemists making sure the ingredients are more than just ‘non-toxic’ that’s the bare minimum. We focused on the viscosity of the paste, the exact level of abrasion, and the finish after you brush. As rigorous as a pharmaceutical product, but with the sensory profile of a luxury ritual.”

You’re launching with toothpaste, but you call Bastét an oral care brand. Where does it go from here?

Ally: “Toothpaste is the doorway, not the destination. The mouth is the gateway to the most precious and essential systems. It is the first line of defence for your entire body. Your oral biome is an essential part of your immune system. The world we’ve built considers this and builds on it. It is about your relationship with yourself in the mirror, and there are a lot of moments in that routine we want to touch. For now it gets to stop being a precious object we keep perfecting and start being a living brand: it meets real people, real routines, and it grows from there. The world behind the tube is much bigger than one tube.”

As a thank you for following the build, you get the first wave. 10% off your first order with code INTERNET, live for the next 24 hours.

Explore Bastét → bastetritual.com · Follow the ritual on Instagram

— Katrina

Quick note: if I’ve bolded something, that’s your sign to go down the rabbit hole.

Imagine a creative brief in 2026 came with one hard rule: no reference.

No moodboards. No screenshots. No inspo folders. Just you, a blank screen, and whatever’s already in your head.

I tried it. And what I discovered wasn’t creative freedom it was a full nervous system audit. Because the moment I closed every tab and sat with nothing, my body started pulling. Not my brain my body. A colour temperature I couldn’t name. A silhouette I couldn’t source. A feeling I’d absorbed from something I watched at 2am in 2014 that I never consciously filed but apparently never lost. My nervous system had been cataloguing reference for decades without asking my permission. Every album cover you loved as a teenager. Every Tumblr-era image burned into your retinas. Every café shot saved “for later,” every meme, campaign, runway show, book cover, half-remembered film scene.

I have severe ADHD. My computer is my internal landscape. I’ve tried more than once to design something “from scratch,” only to realize halfway through I was recreating an old board from memory down to the colour temperature. That wasn’t a lack of originality. That was unacknowledged reference. My body knew the brief before my brain did.

We don’t live without reference. We live inside it.

Every platform has optimized for the save. We have built entire creative industries on top of the collected save moodboards, decks of “visual territories,” folders of screenshots called “Good Fonts 2024.” And somewhere in that process, we started mistaking the act of saving for the act of thinking.

Here’s what’s actually happening when you save something: your nervous system fired before your brain caught up. The dopamine hit of recognition that’s it, that’s the feeling lands in your body a full half-second before you can articulate why. You’re not making a creative decision. You’re having a physiological response. The save is just you trying to hold onto a feeling before it disappears.

Which means your moodboard isn’t a point of view. It’s a record of your nervous system’s reactions to a scroll. I’ve sat in enough creative reviews to know what hoarding looks like dressed up as research: forty-seven references with no argument connecting them. A brand positioning that contains every good word and commits to nothing. A board that says “elevated but also raw, luxurious but also approachable, minimal but also rich.”

That’s not a point of view. That’s a panic response and it looks exactly like what happens when you let your nervous system curate without your brain showing up to edit. The save tells you what caught your eye in a half-second of scrolling. Curation tells you why and more importantly, what you’re building toward. The gap between those two things is where most creative work quietly falls apart.

This is why the best reference isn’t always what excites you immediately. It’s what keeps returning. What you find yourself thinking about three days later. What makes you slightly uncomfortable because you don’t fully understand why you’re drawn to it yet. That discomfort is your nervous system telling you there’s something unresolved something worth sitting with rather than just filing.

Think about Annie Ernaux in Exteriors treating supermarket aisles and RER rides as material to catalogue until they become a living index of a life. Or the way The Face and i-D built entire youth cultures out of street portraits and half-documented nights out. Or how a single Raf Simons show, a Martine Rose presentation, or a Boiler Room thumbnail can silently shift what “underground” looks and sounds like for an entire year.

None of that happened because someone saved a screenshot. It happened because someone sat with a feeling long enough to understand what it meant.

Reference works like that slow, accumulative, atmospheric. It lives in the body before it ever makes it onto a board. It quietly decides which bodies feel “default,” which aesthetics feel “professional,” which rituals stand in for “aspirational life.” It shapes the creative brief before the brief is even written.

You don’t choose whether reference is there. You only choose whether you see it

Case Study 01: Bastét and the Reference That Changes Everything

When I started building the creative direction with Alexandra for Bastét, I knew immediately that the reference had to lead. Not the product. Not the packaging. The feeling we were building toward.

Bastét is used twice a day in the bathroom. The mirror. The routines where so much of modern beauty culture quietly does its damage the space where “perfection” is always just one more product away.

So instead of leading with polish, we chose to lead with perspective.

The reference pool I built doesn’t look anything like oral care. Marina Abramović’s Art Must Be Beautiful (1975) a familiar grooming ritual made confrontational, exposing the emotional weight behind repetitive acts of care. Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002) intimate, bodily, shot like memory itself, where the bathroom isn’t a place of polish but of raw presence. On The Art of Teeth at Barts Pathology Museum science and imagination colliding around the most personal part of the body, where memory and loss live inside something as small as a tooth. Donald Wexler’s Dinah Shore Estate, Palm Springs, 1964 the bathroom as architecture, as intention, as a space designed to make you feel something before the day begins.

None of these say “oral care.” All of them say this is what it feels like to inhabit your body honestly. That lens changed the brief entirely. It gave us permission to frame Bastét not as a product you use, but as a world you inhabit. A space where daily rituals aren’t about chasing perfection they’re about presence, intention, and a more honest relationship with yourself.

One reference pool. Performance art, arthouse cinema, pathology, and mid-century architecture. Applied to toothpaste. That’s what curation looks like when it’s working not a mood board full of “clean girl aesthetic” screenshots, but a constellation of specific ideas that reframe everything they touch.

Because Bastét isn’t just something you use. It’s something you feel. Twice a day. Every day. @bastetritual

Case Study 02: Gap and the Archive as Alpha

I have a feeling we’re about to see 1999 numbers. And I mean that literally.

I’m officially invested in Gap.

Yesterday morning, I put some $$$ in and I have a feeling we are going to see 1999 numbers very soon. The turnaround we’re witnessing isn't just about sales. It’s about relevance. Looking at the recent Fall/Winter campaigns and the "Sweats Like This" launch with Young Miko, Gap has rediscovered the "Modern Antiquity" of its own archive.

In 1999, Gap was the cultural default the "Modern American Uniform." By blurring the lines between mass-market utility and luxury-tier storytelling (that Met Gala denim gown was a massive signal), they are capturing a cross-generational audience in a way we haven’t seen in 25 years. They’ve stopped chasing fast-fashion trends and started world-building again. When a brand finds the intersection of archive soul and modern demand, the financials follow. The most recent data already shows a 7% growth in comparable sales. The exact same momentum they had during the 1999 peak. I’m telling ya, the archive is the new alpha. Get your wallets ready.

(Disclosure: not financial advice.)

When a brand’s reference field gets too small, they fall into what I call Aesthetic Incest recycling the same five boards as their competitors. This isn’t just a creative failure. It’s a market failure. You cannot command a premium price if you look exactly like the algorithm’s default settings.

The brands that feel flat right now expensive but hollow have mastered the save and skipped the argument. Beautiful imagery. Considered palette. Correct typography. No position underneath any of it. No cultural lineage. No point of view that would survive contact with anything outside their own reference bubble.

I call this Aesthetic Fluency Without Aesthetic Conviction. The creative equivalent of speaking a language perfectly without having anything to say.

The fantasy of “no reference” comes from fear of influence and shame about dependence. But we are porous by design. We learn to see by copying. We learn to make by imitating, then misremembering, then mutating. Living with too little reference is the real nightmare.

What To Actually Do About It

Real curation is an act of elimination. It’s not about what you love it’s about what you can defend. What connects. What builds toward something instead of just existing beside everything else.

So: notice the reference you’ve already absorbed. Expand your perimeter. Go deep on the lineage of your ideas. Get off your computer. Pull in something that “doesn’t belong” a Rei Kawakubo silhouette from 1982, a Xerox PARC interface prototype, a zine from a 90s rave culture collective.

And if you don’t know where to start, ’s Popular newsletter just put out 64 places to find image reference that isn’t your typical digital archives, museum collections, subculture ephemera, propaganda posters, matchbox labels. It’s the most useful resource I’ve seen in months. Go read it.

And for everything in your board right now ask not what do I like about this but what is this evidence of? A proportion you keep returning to. A typographic logic that keeps showing up. A subculture moment that shifted everything downstream without getting credit for it. If you can’t answer that in a sentence, it’s a save, not a reference. File it or lose it.

The goal isn’t a smaller board. The goal is a board with a spine something someone else could look at and immediately know what you’re building, and why, and what comes next.

That’s the difference between an internet researcher and an internet user.

Sheeeshhh this was a long one. See you next week.

By the way, I’ve found Sublime.app incredibly helpful for organizing thoughts. As someone with ADHD, it’s been a genuine life changer.

This letter looks closely at how attention functions in digital environments — how it shapes perception, taste, and the internal architecture of research. Rather than treating attention as a psychological trait, we’re approaching it as a system: something structured, conditioned, and instrumental in how culture now forms.

Consider this a small syllabus for what follows:

Everything in this letter builds toward a single premise:
our attention what we notice, return to, and differentiate has become the most consequential cultural act we perform.

Sophie Calle and the Architecture of Attention

(Post-Internet → Meaning through Continuous Engagement)

I’ve been thinking about Sophie Calle this week not for the provocative narratives often attached to her work, but for the structure of her attention. In Suite Vénitienne, she follows a man through Venice, documenting his movements through photographs and notes. The significance isn’t in the pursuit, but in the method:

• observing without expectation

• tracking without conclusion

• collecting without resolving

• building meaning through fragments

This mirrors how we navigate digital environments today: following threads, saving screenshots, gathering references, assembling constellations of meaning from incomplete information.

Gene McHugh writes in Post-Internet that contemporary meaning isn’t produced through singular frameworks but through continuous engagement the repeated attempt to locate coherence in an ever-shifting informational landscape. Calle feels like the pre-digital prototype of this research logic.

Attention as Perception

(Gibson → Differentiation, Affordances, and the Work of “Seeing”)

To understand why attention matters, I turned to James J. Gibson’s The Perception of the Visual World. Gibson argues that perception is not passive; it is differentiated.

We don’t learn to perceive—we learn to discriminate.

This becomes crucial in digital environments where exposure is constant. Attention is the mechanism that decides:

• what becomes reference

• what becomes noise

• what becomes pattern

• what becomes irrelevant

Gibson’s idea of affordances is equally relevant. The world presents itself in terms of what it invites us to do: paths afford movement, edges afford boundaries, objects afford grasping.

Digital platforms are entirely affordance-driven:

• feeds afford scrolling

• grids afford collecting

• emptiness affords archiving

• timestamps afford revisitation

• metrics afford comparison

Attention is not neutral. It is engineered by the environments we inhabit.

Technology Isn’t Neutral

(Philosophy of Technology → Concepts as Tools, Context as Meaning)

In A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, the authors argue that seeing technology as “applied science” is no longer enough. That model assumes neutrality but today’s digital systems are anything but neutral.

Technology today:

• reorganizes cognition

• shifts ethics

• reframes perception

• shapes cultural logic

• determines what becomes visible

John Dewey’s instrumentalism deepens this: concepts themselves are tools. We shape ideas, but ideas also shape us, because as Dewey argued concepts emerge from the environments we live in and act back upon them.

He saw ideas as instruments that reorganize how we think, perceive, and behave, which is why his work is often used to explain how technology and attention aren’t just “things we use,” but systems that transform how culture and meaning are produced. Meaning emerges through use, not abstraction. And onlinewhere context is fluid and endlessly shifting attention becomes the stabilizing mechanism, the tool that creates momentary coherence.

Designing for Disconnection

Parallel to these thoughts, Nobody Knows Studio is working on a brand identity project oriented toward the opposite idea: designing for accessible disconnection, intentional pause, and more present living. The goal is to help people unplug for up to five hours a day and measure that time with the same clarity we apply to steps or sleep.

Working on this surfaced a personal tension for me.

I like the internet—the small parallel world I’ve built alongside my actual life. But what I don’t like is the isolation embedded in that behaviour. I’m constantly “researching,” which is inherently solitary. In a way, that’s why I started Internet Researcher: to turn private attention into something shareable, to make an identity out of a process that usually stays hidden.

(Also our dad hats are now on Metalabel and Nobody Knows Studio

Online Behaviour Is Cultural Behaviour

(Library Ideas → Research as Shared Infrastructure)

Our digital habits form patterns:

• what we save

• what we revisit

• what we return to after months

• what we archive privately

• what repeats

This is why I return to Are.na so often: no algorithm, no metrics, no performance layer. I’d also recommend reading A Handbook of Library Ideas, which frames research as a shared infrastructure a system for organizing communal meaning, not just private accumulation.

Your saved images become your internal library.
Your library becomes your language.

I’ve created a small visual archive for this letter: Attention is Currency — it’s still a working archive, but it extends everything here.

How Taste Forms Online

INPUT → EXPOSURE
         |
         v
 ATTENTION (What we notice)
         |
         v
 SELECTION (What we save)
         |
         v
REVISITATION (What returns)
         |
         v
PATTERN RECOGNITION (Emerging themes)
         |
         v
     TASTE (Internal architecture)

Just wanted to say thank you for all of the love on the last letter. Friendly reminder that today is the last day for the giveaway, so go figure out what that is.

For anyone who reads this. Thank you.
-Katrina

Read more

Over the past few months, Alexandra and I have been working together to shape not just a brand but a world. One where science, beauty, and ritual redefine what oral care can mean.

Bastét isn’t just developing products in the traditional sense. The ambition is to treat oral care as a cultural practice, a ritual that blends science, design, and daily life. To get there, brand-building has been approached as cultural research, looking at how ideas from art, design, and lifestyle can stretch categories and reshape expectations. My time in Copenhagen became a key part of this work.

Lessons from Copenhagen

The first lesson was how work–life balance is embedded in the culture. I spent both a weekend and a few weekdays there, and every evening the canals were filled with people connecting. Phones were rare. Instead, I noticed groups of friends reading together or sharing a bottle of wine. Leisure wasn’t indulgence; it was an integral part of health. That rhythm aligns with what Bastét wants to embody: care as something built into the cadence of everyday life.

The second was the pride in detail. In homes, cafés, and even public spaces, every surface and object felt intentional. The smallest details carried dignity. For Bastét, this was a clear signal: oral care tools shouldn’t feel disposable or clinical. They should stand proudly on the counter, designed with the same attention as furniture or lighting.

Being in Copenhagen wasn’t only about observing balance and design pride. It was about exploring how ideas from art and design can stretch categories and reshape expectations. In building Bastét, the work isn’t just about studying oral care. It’s about studying how different disciplines reframe what it means to care, to reflect, and to live with intention.

Food as Ritual

If you’re subscribed to , you know that food is a big part of Bastét’s culture. Founder Alexandra Baker even hosts “Food Meetings” at her home once a month. So, naturally, one of my first stops in Copenhagen was the NOMA pop-up.

NOMA isn’t just about dining. It is about reimagining the act of eating as ritual, design, and community. That philosophy resonates deeply with Bastét. Just as NOMA elevates ingredients into an experience that honors detail and connection, Bastét aims to transform oral care into a practice that feels intentional, aesthetic, and part of life’s rhythm.

And just as NOMA treats every ingredient with reverence, we approach our formulas the same way—choosing, crafting, and refining them with the same care. Because ultimately, what goes into our products is as essential to who we are as the rituals they inspire.

Travel Tip: Bike to the NOMA pop-up, then head to the Contemporary Museum for the James Turrell exhibit. Afterward, grab something at the market or head straight to La Banchina, and bring a bathing suit.) - Here is a link to everywhere I stopped - CPH MAP

Signals from Art and Design

Two exhibitions especially shaped my thinking.

At Copenhagen Contemporary, After Care by Rhoda Ting and Mikkel Bojesen introduced soft robots that breathe, age, and respond. They don’t ask for control, they ask for care. Technology often promises mastery and efficiency, but here it invites tenderness. That inversion is influencing how Bastét thinks about design. Oral care has long been framed as discipline: brush, floss, repeat, or else. But what if the experience invited ritual and intimacy instead of compliance?

At the Designmuseum, Bottled Pondering by Aepenton displayed hundreds of glass vials, each inscribed with themes of well-being—stress, intimacy, disconnection. These vessels gave form to the intangible, inviting reflection on how subtle states shape our lives. The idea resonates with oral care: it is never just about the mouth. It influences energy, confidence, intimacy, digestion, immunity. One thing our founder Alexandra Baker often notes is that the oral biome is the body’s first line of defence. Like the vials, Bastét’s products are functional while also pointing to these wider connections reminding us that care in one area ripples through the whole system.

Danish Design as a North Star

The first product for Bastét is the toothpaste, which is launching very soon. It represents the coming together of formula and design: effective, elevated, and aligned with the vision for a new kind of oral care.

But what’s next? One topic that always comes up during our food meetings is the tools we are going to be designing, a lot of inspiration from Design Museum. It was also interesting to observe what people were capturing; these were the four areas that were constantly being photographed.

The Danish Modern exhibit at the Designmuseum was a study in clarity. Where After Care and Bottled Pondering invited drift, Danish Modern held steady. Hans Wegner’s chairs, Børge Mogensen’s shelving, Arne Jacobsen’s cutlery, nothing ornamental, yet nothing wasted. Each designer chose materials for integrity, resolving form into function with precision. Beauty was not an afterthought but the outcome of use and craftsmanship. It was design as a strategy: practical, disciplined, and exacting.

The Danish Modern exhibit at the Designmuseum was a study in clarity. Where After Care and Bottled Pondering invited drift, Danish Modern held steady. Hans Wegner’s chairs, Børge Mogensen’s shelving, Arne Jacobsen’s cutlery. Nothing ornamental, nothing wasted. Materials chosen with integrity. Forms resolved into function. Beauty emerges from precision and use. It was designed as strategy, as craftsmanship, as discipline.

That same philosophy guides how Bastét looks beyond toothpaste. Oral care tools have too often been treated as disposable or hidden away. We see an opportunity to shift that narrative. To bring the clarity and dignity of Danish Modern into oral care. Objects sculptural yet practical. Designed not to be hidden, but to live in the open every day.

Launching with Intention

The world we are building follows three pillars. Protection. Pleasure. Health. If it does not meet all three, it does not make the cut. These are the measures that ground our work, and the principles that turn daily routines into something more.

The toothpaste marks the beginning. The objects that follow will carry these pillars forward. Designed with care. Made to last. Meant to live in the open.
We are so excited for the world to join the experience.

Subscribe to The Ritual Chronicles for early access to Bastét's first product.

The Ritual Chronicles

By Alexandra Baker

For partnerships or retail opportunities please email us at bastetrituals@gmail.com

- Ally & Katrina

Our first full rebrand project, GINNY , was featured on Dieline (!!), which still feels surreal to say. If you haven’t been following my socials (rude), GINNY is a new drink company coming out of Toronto. The tagline we coined "REFRESH YOUR SPIRIT NATURAL…

Read more

After closing Necessary, I realized I had the eye. But I didn’t yet have the portfolio to prove I could lead on…

Read more

Brand Trends & Product Drops

• There’s a new oral care brand launching soon called Bastét. The founder, Alexandra Baker—formerly of SSENSE and Holt Renfrew—isn’t just formulating a products we’re going to love, she’s designing ones we’ll actually want to keep on our vanity. Oh, and she just launched her Substack (The Ritual Chronicles). I’d keep an eye on this one…

• I discovered Mienne last night, and honestly—it’s kind of everything I needed. I just got my first SugarWax Brazilian yesterday, so the timing couldn’t be better. The creative direction? The product lineup? Julia Fox, Lourdes “Lola” Leon, and Parris Goebel? Even the website—I’m obsessed.

• I’ve been using sheet detergent for years, so when I came across MuseWash , I got excited. Half the reason I stick with sheet detergent is because: 1) it fits easily in my grocery stroller, 2) it doesn’t make a mess, and 3) it feels like a small way to cut down on waste. What really stood out to me about MuseWash was the packaging—and the fact that one sheet gets the job done. Right now, I’m using 2–3 strips per load, which ends up costing around $1.05 per wash.

• I don’t know how I JUST discovered this brand called SABIA. I have been on the hunt for some new pieces (I am moving) and now all I can think about is their Elevate Couch, The Bacana Armchair and their new sleeper chair…I mean I could sit here for hours reading Substacks.

• It’s that time of year again—flowers are everywhere on your feed. Whether it’s a brand hosting a floral design event or retailers refreshing their windows, spring is definitely in the air. But is it just me, or are we also seeing some of the most unique vases right now? I, for one, need the Folder Vase by Tage Andersen If anyone from the team is reading this... I really see a collaboration opportunity here…

I’m really loving this shift where brands are starting to build thoughtful, useful products outside their core category—things that actually enhance the experience of using their main product. It feels intentional, and honestly, it’s smart.

I saw @Maddydenley post the Isamaya x Conserving Beauty collab TikTok last night. How did I miss this one?

Okay yes, I know brands have been doing this for years—it’s not exactly groundbreaking. But lately? I’ve been seeing more and more drops where I find myself going, “Wait… this is kind of random? But also… not?”

And I’m loving it.

There’s something about these slightly left-field, lifestyle-adjacent product moves that feel less like merch and more like a wink. Like the brand is saying, “You get it, right?” And I do.

✨Random thoughts✨

• Open call for Pitches for the Are.na Annual Vol. 7 is now open

• If anyone finds 3 Willy Guhl candlesticks please DM me.

• I am also really into these patchwork curtains

• It’s purging season, people are either downsizing or upsizing. Why should you care? Because this is the time you’ll find amazing home decor while thrifting, I’d also keep your eye out for picture frames.

• Are community clubs becoming “too cool”?

• There will be a MTL guide coming soon (thinking early June), there are so many new restaurants that I still need to try

• Better Half Podcast airs EP.1 today and I am kind of excited.

• I need an alarm clock and I am torn on which one - any suggestions?

• Finding a handwritten font for clients right now….

• I recently start ARMRA—it’s my first week. I’ll keep ya updated if I notice anything in a month.

• I finally got the OURA ring, and I take it off when I am drinking because I am just not there yet…

Have a great weekend!

Want to be featured on our weekly Screenshots & Saves? Email us nobodyknowsstudio@gmail.com or send me a DM at @justkeepcreeping

This week, I finally took a moment to catch up on some of my favourite letters. One that really stayed with me was The Emotional Blind Spots of Brand Social by It hit hard and honestly made me think.

For the first time in my career, I’m not working on a Mother’s Day campaign.

Four years ago, on May 25th, I lost my mom to cancer. I’ve mentioned it briefly in past letters, but as you can imagine, May is not my favourite month. And yet this year, something feels different. I’m okay. Not “fine” in the dismissive, autopilot way genuinely okay. And I think that deserves to be named. Maybe even celebrated.

So I’m turning that feeling into a creative practice.

I actually did something similar the year she passed. In 2021, I launched Nobody Knows Wellness Club merch based on a photo of we took on a trip to Jamaica. I made a hat through Printful and donated the proceeds to a women’s foundation. I raised just over $700 CAD.

This time, I want to go deeper. I want to create something that channels the full essence of who she was a brand that honours the sensory, slightly chaotic, deeply loving world she built around her:

So here it is:
A brand I would build for you, Mom.

The Origin Story:

My mom was complicated. She was deeply spiritual, loved her tarot cards, and carried a silver cigarette case that made her look effortlessly chic. Every flyer or piece of mail had her scribbled writing on it. She kept trinkets in little sachets around the house. And after years of manic behavior, when she finally got help, she fell in love with watercolor painting.

That’s where the idea for bath tea came from—because the only time I ever saw her truly choose herself was when she ran a bath. She kept an Epsom salt holder by the side of the tub, filled the bathroom with incense, and always had music playing. Usually Whitney Houston. It was her ritual.

I wanted to build a brand that captured that exact feeling: quiet, beautiful, healing, and personal. Bath tea felt like the most honest place to begin.

Because water holds memory.
And scent brings it back.
And some moments deserve to steep.

Brand Identity:

For the brand identity, I wanted to keep everything clean, soft, and intentional. The logo is based on the way my mom wrote her E’s in letters you can actually spot it on the inspiration board if you zoom in. There was always something gentle yet distinct about her handwriting, and I wanted that same feeling carried into the brand.

The typography is simple by design uncomplicated, quiet, with just enough personality. Because at its core, Estate is about creating space.

The colour palette, if I am being honest doesn’t hold too much meaning other than including her favourite colour purple.

Product Development:

The first batch is called “Queen of Night.” It’s an ode to who my mom, deep down, believed she was regal, elegant, and deserving of care. And yet, one of her most human contradictions was how often she put others first, rarely saving that care for herself.

Our reusable satchel is a small tribute to that grace: crafted from a blend of lace and linen, like something you’d find tucked in the back of a drawer she saved for special things. The stash jar? Vintage metal. Unadorned, practical, quietly beautiful. Just like her.

For a limited edition, I’d recreate a piece inspired by the Vintage L.E. Smith Black Amethyst Glass Hobnail Flower Frog Vase—the same one she used to store her Epsom salts. You’ll find it in the inspiration deck.

*Please note these are just mockups—just an idea of how I imagine the product line rolling out. If anyone knows the artist behind the water colour print, please comment or DM me.

Ouff. If you’ve made it this far in the letter—thank you.
I spent the weekend working on this, and yes, there were many tears. But it was my little way of healing during this time and making space for my mom. If you feel inspired to create something of your own, all I ask is: if you make something from this, name a SKU after her. Jenny or Jennifer. That would mean the world.

If you’re in the thick of grief, I hope this inspires you to lean into your own way of healing. Maybe it’s spending a day doing their favourite things.

One last timbit (yes, I spelled that correctly—I’m Canadian):
For anyone I’ve met who’s lost someone, there’s a piece of “advice” I always share.
Try honouring them monthly, on their day of passing—whether it’s writing them a letter to catch them up on your life, doing something they loved, or simply giving yourself a grace day to grieve. It’s what’s helped me. And it kinda works.

Grief doesn’t go away. But it does shift.
And sometimes, if we let it, it becomes our anchor to something else.

Also side note: Please don’t be a weirdo and steal this idea because it is something I am in the midst of figuring out if I am going to build one day. Thank you <3

We’re all craving warm brown velvet, steel objects, and dim lighting. Suddenly, we care about the right cutlery—ceramic bowls, heavy glassware, the perfect butter knife.

Whether you realize it or not, you’re living in Terence Conran’s world.

I first discovered Terence Conran in 2015, just after moving to Montreal. That year, I found The Essential House Book, The Kitchen Book, an issue of Marfa Journal, and bought my first Apartamento magazine. I spent that weekend flipping through pages, Googling names, and imagining how I’d curate my own space. I remember thinking, I will have a teak table by 30.

Conran made me see my environment differently—where I eat, where I get coffee, how I design my home. His influence shaped how I even spend my money. I'd rather invest in my surroundings than in clothing.

We no longer just live in designed spaces; we move through designed experiences. And Conran made that shift happen.

From Textile Student to Cultural Architect

Born in 1931 in Esher, Surrey, Terence Conran studied textile design at London’s Central School of Art (now Central Saint Martins). His early career focused on fabrics and furniture, but his true breakthrough came in 1964 when he opened a small store in London that would change how people furnished their homes.

That shop was Habitat. Before IKEA democratized modern homeware, Conran was already making functional design desirable. Habitat wasn’t just a store; it was a movement. It introduced modernist aesthetics, functional design, and an entirely new way of furnishing a home—one that prioritized accessibility without sacrificing taste. He wasn’t just selling furniture; he was curating a lifestyle, showing people that good design wasn’t just for the elite but could be woven into everyday life.

In 1989, he founded the Design Museum in London—the world's first museum dedicated entirely to design. This wasn’t just an institution; it was a statement that design shapes how we live, work, and interact with the world. His legacy is still felt in how we think about interiors, branding, and the intersection of form and function.

Conran wasn’t just an entrepreneur; he was a tastemaker, shaping the visual language of modern living before most people even realized they cared about it. His influence extended far beyond homeware—he was quietly altering how we engage with space itself.

The Art of Curation Before It Was Cool

Conran was shaping spaces with intention long before we were "curating" our Facebook Marketplace finds. Habitat wasn’t just about selling chairs and lamps; it was about storytelling through objects: Scandinavian glassware, French cookware, Japanese ceramics—all seamlessly brought together to make modern living feel cohesive and attainable.

You can buy the entire collection here

If you’re looking for Conran pieces today, check 1stDibs, Chairish, and keep an eye out while thrifting or browsing Facebook Marketplace.

• Solid English 20th Century Maple Table by Sir Terence Conran

• Space age chandelier by Terence Conran, for Erco, 1970s

• Sculptural Black Leather Swivel Lounge Chair by Terence Conran Glove Chair Space

The Power of Quiet Influence

This was early quiet luxury. No logos, no obvious flexes—just the right details, the ones that signaled taste without needing to announce themselves. It was the kind of luxury that whispered rather than shouted, rooted in material integrity, form, and function.

Today, we see this same philosophy in brands like The Row, where the weight of a cashmere coat matters more than a visible label, or in the restrained elegance of Andrée Putman’s interiors, which prioritize proportion, light, and timelessness over trend. Like Conran, they understood that luxury isn’t just about price—it’s about the way an object or space makes you feel.

This was early quiet luxury. No logos, no obvious flexes—just the right details, the ones that signaled taste without needing to announce themselves.

Designing Experiences: Dining, Space & Psychology

Conran understood something that seems obvious now but was revolutionary at the time: design doesn’t stop at furniture. It extends to how we eat, how we gather, and how we experience a space. His restaurant empire—including Bibendum, Quaglino’s, Bluebird, and The Boundary—blurred the lines between dining and design, making the entire experience cohesive.

We see the same philosophy in some of our favorite restaurants today—think about the coffee shop by day, wine bar by night concept.

The Psychology of Space

If you’ve ever stepped into a space and immediately felt at ease, you’ve encountered the invisible hand of great design—something Conran spent decades mastering. He knew that design isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about creating environments that shape how we move, interact, and feel.

• Designing for Flow: Open-plan living that invites conversation? Restaurants where you never feel hurried? Retail spaces that gently guide you through curated moments rather than bombarding you with endless aisles? That’s the Conran effect—design that feels intuitive, where movement through a space feels natural rather than forced.

• Material & Texture Psychology: Wood, linen, metal, and stone—Conran’s signature blend of textures embraced warmth without excess, favoring a lived-in minimalism over sterile modernism. His spaces weren’t just visually harmonious; they felt good to be in, balancing structure with softness.

• Lighting as Emotional Architecture: From the intimate glow of restaurant lighting to the softly diffused warmth of home lamps, Conran understood that lighting isn’t just functional—it’s emotional. He pioneered lighting as a tool to shape mood, ensuring that a space could feel cozy, dynamic, or expansive with just the right balance of brightness and shadow.

Walk into The Conran Shop in Marylebone, scroll through Pinterest, browse indie homeware brands, concept stores, retail experiences—Conran’s fingerprints are everywhere.

The best design disappears into how we live. And that’s the ultimate sign of Conran’s legacy: he made good taste feel inevitable.

Where We See His Influence Today:

• Workspace & Wellness spaces like Spencer’s Spa, WSA and Hume

• Boutique hotels that feel like apartments you wish you lived in – like the Ash Hotel

• Concept stores where objects feel like they belong to the same world – we still see this in retail at stores like Quarters (NYC), Dover Street Market, SSENSE (Montreal), Aimé Leon Dore (New York)

• Restaurants where the design is as curated as the menu – we see this today in restaurants like Linny’s (Toronto), Bowie (Toronto), Two Bridges (NYC)

Conran changed how we think about design. What’s the last space you walked into that felt truly well-designed?

I realized I never properly introduced Inter-Work—let’s fix that. I’m Katrina, a creative consultant from Toronto, currently based in Montreal. This is where I share everything I’m working on—or as I call it, my Inter-Work.

Think of it as a peek inside my brain: creative projects, trend reports, random finds, and personal reflections, all in one place

How I Got Here

I’ve always been a deep diver. Give me a name, a reference, a throwaway detail in an editorial, and I’ll be up late researching until I’ve mapped the entire world around it.

Before Instagram, before Substack, before Google made things easy, it was a notebook and a library card.

As a kid—pre-iPhone—I carried a mini notebook, wandering through boutiques way out of my budget, flipping clothes inside out to check the labels before even looking at the garments. I’d write down designers’ names, take them to my local library (Barbra Frum, Bathurst & Lawrence), and learn everything I could.

Being neurodivergent, I need something tactile—magazines, books, editorial layouts. When I started collecting them, I always had that same notebook beside me. I’d read the articles, then write down the art directors, writers, and photographers. Now, I just stalk them on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack. (That’s where my IG handle, @Justkeepcreeping, comes from.)

That same curiosity is what drives Inter-Work.

What to Expect from Inter-Work

Since launching this Substack in December, I’ve been figuring out the best way to organize it. I personally love writing three letters a week—now it’s just about making sure they feel relevant to you. Here’s how things will be broken down:

Screenshots & Saves → A mix of things you’ve screenshotted or saved—cultural signals, product drops, and design moments worth paying attention to. (Redesigning the layout for next week!)

Just Keep Creeping → Launching tomorrow! This series is all about deep dives—tracking references, mapping influences, and unpacking the people, brands, and ideas that shape how we consume, design, and live.

Work Flow → A mix of personal reflections, behind-the-scenes of my creative projects, and strategic insights on branding, design, and marketing. Less about trends, more about how culture moves and why it matters. (Y’all really loved The Story of Necessary, so expect more of this.)

**Periodically I’ll add in some sort of guide when it seems relevant

Tomorrow, I’m kicking off Just Keep Creeping with a deep dive into Terence Conran—a name you might not know but a world you’re already living in. And on Friday, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite books for ADHD readers—ones that have helped me embrace my deep-dive tendencies.

This space is still evolving, but I like where it’s going.

When I’m not on Substack, I’m building an online community called Nobody Knows Wellness Club on Instagram—come join us!

See you in your inbox! Want to connect? Find me on Instagram, Linkedin, or email me at nobodyknowsstudio@gmail.com. You can also check out my portfolio.

This week on Screenshots & Saves I’ll be diving into some new launches, and forecasting based on the chatter I am seeing online in the past few days. Enjoy!

Just a heads-up—nothing here is sponsored! If you’d like to support Inter-Work, becoming a paid subscriber helps keep it going and ensures future posts stay accessible. Your support truly means the world—thank you! And if you're a brand interested in sponsoring a post, feel free to reach out at nobodyknowsstudio.com

Brand Trends & Product Drops

It’s that time of year again—when most of my online shopping revolves around finding cute Spring/Summer outfits for walking Fiona. Here are the two brands currently on my radar:

• I got email last week about from the Literary Sport that they dropped SS25. My favourite pieces from LS are the Kitty Shorts, Charlotte Pants, and the Jane Quarter Zip. SS25 is now live.

  

• Seniq has me really debating my relationship with colour with their SS25 drop

• The creators of Inkbox are unveiling a new brand, Olauto—a fine fragrance designed for your car. They’ve also shared a survey on LinkedIn to gather consumer insights. Check it out

• I also recently discovered a designer on TikTok, Kismet, and I NEED this lamp. He’s doing another drop on March 15—Sign up to get the details.

• I still really want a bag from le-febour.com hopefully, they restock soon.

• Bonito’s opened in Toronto last week, and I can’t wait to check it out when I’m back in the city this week!

  

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New Tech Ring

I spent the weekend researching tech rings because, like half the world, we’re all suddenly obsessed with our sleep—or, in my case, dealing with a bit of health anxiety. Naturally, that led to the inevitable question: which color would I choose?

Then it hit me—why hasn’t either Ultrahuman or Oura done a collaboration with a fashion brand yet? Imagine if your tech ring looked like a vintage Chanel piece—specifically one of these.

Anyway, I’m still debating between the Ultrahuman and the Oura ring. I’ll keep you posted! (Update: Check our comments one of our readers shared their referral link for an Oura discount)

✨Random thoughts✨

• THANK YOU! to everyone who read the Toronto Guide—I’ll be doing one for Montreal, Seattle, and NYC in the upcoming months!

• I’m potentially looking for someone to sublet my apartment in Montreal this summer…

• I really need more graphic tees like this—I got this one about four years ago and haven’t found anything similar. I need that soft, worn-in boyfriend tee feel. Essentially, I want Junk Food Tees with screenshots.

• I am shocked no one has done a “report” on Bill Cunningham—especially with all the NYC fashionistas on here.

• Speaking of NYC… Elle was savage this weekend posting that video of Kate Moss.

• should drop a cuff link collab

• I will be wearing dresses over jeans all spring.

• Zero Bond is opening in Vegas at my favorite hotel, The Wynn. Applications are now open.

• We know snail mail is making a comeback… does this mean I’m going to start getting invitations for everything? If so, can one side please be something I can frame or keep? 🙂

• I’m restarting Melissa Wood Health—it’s always been my go-to for online workouts.

• I’ll be renting most of my “lewks” for my Ibiza trip this summer.

• Influencer Bran shared that he made over $768,000 last year on TikTok… damn.

• On that note, I really enjoyed the letter about how to write an influencer brief

*Promise I won’t mess around with the letters this week

Wednesday Letter: I share who we have all been influenced by…

Friday: ADHD friendly reads

Want to be featured on our weekly Screenshots & Saves? Email us nobodyknowsstudio@gmail.com or send me a DM at @justkeepcreeping

One thing I did was repurpose rocks throughout the entire store. I found them during a Saturday morning stroll at Leslie Spit—a strange, man-made peninsula in Toronto where construction debris meets nature. If you’ve been, you know exactly what I mean: chunks of concrete smoothed into river stones, bricks worn down to pebbles. Forgotten rubble that, with enough time, started to look like sculpture.

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But I wasn’t just collecting them—I was curating them. They were stacked all around the shop as jewelry displays, turned into incense holders. I would stack them and light incense cones, dropping them into the crevices. At one point, I was even selling them—literal debris turned design objects. People bought them for toothbrush holders, soap dishes, joint storage, etc.

Unfortunately, I didn’t sell enough to keep my shop, but I did almost make rent one month with them. The Story of Necessary

I know I am not the first person to “market” rocks but I definitely repositioned them, and I won’t be the last. But here’s what’s interesting: fast forward to now, and suddenly, rocks are everywhere. You’ll see them in luxury retail spaces, contemporary shops, and design studios. There are even resin replicas being sold as “perfectly imperfect” decor pieces.

How does something as ordinary as a rock become desirable? The answer: the food chain of cool. Let’s break it down.

The Cult of Curation

We know that trends start in small, hyper-specific pockets of culture—subcultures, curators, creative directors, artists, etc. essentially someone or niche group who sees value in something before the rest of the world.

The rock thing? For me, it wasn’t about sustainability, raw materials, or some deep philosophical rejection of modernity. It was about making “having nothing” look intentional.

This was broke minimalism—a rejection of over-designed spaces in favor of something raw, textured, and unpolished. But more than that, it was an unconscious return to childhood.

I grew up in a household that struggled financially—single mom, co-op housing. However, for some reason, I went to school and was placed in programs with kids from two-parent, six-figure-income households. So, I had to learn to see the value in everything. I became fluent in two different aesthetics. One was effortless curation; the other was forced creativity—taking whatever I had and making it feel considered.

I still do this in my home today. Notice the rocks? Other than my couch, bed, and essential appliances, everything in my space was sourced somehow. I even found that stack of Monocle magazines on a sidewalk once. When I’m back in Montreal, I’ll do a deep dive into my space.

Maybe you can’t relate to my childhood, but think about it: as kids, we all collected things—rocks, shells, stickers, leaves—whatever felt special in the moment. We assigned meaning to objects. They felt rare, personal, tied to an experience. There was no marketing, no carefully crafted messaging designed to resonate with us.

Somewhere along the way, we lost that instinct. Now, companies spend millions trying to recreate those same feelings—packaging nostalgia and selling it back to us.

Right now, we’re seeing a return to primitive collecting—the desire to own things that feel real, tactile, and unprocessed. The resurgence of handmade ceramics, raw-edged textiles, “thrifted” objects, and, yes, even rocks isn’t just about aesthetics. You can see it happening on this platform too—people dedicating hours to creating “curated” letters for niche communities. It’s all an attempt to reconnect with something that feels human in a world that increasingly doesn’t.

The Niche Adoption Phase

When I closed my shop in February 2021, it became a running joke among my friends that I should have started a brand with the rocks. Soon after, I started seeing them pop up everywhere on my IG stories from people I follow in Toronto. I think word got out about where to find these rocks.

This is when tastemakers and subcultures start paying attention.

Before oat milk was in every coffee shop, it was a niche Scandinavian grocery find. Before Aesop was an IYKYK status symbol, it was a quiet obsession in design spaces. Before rocks ended up in curated retail spaces, they were just… rocks.

At first, it’s exclusive by accident. It’s hard to find, and that scarcity makes it desirable. Then, social media steps in.

The algorithm rewards novelty. It doesn’t care if something has a rich cultural backstory or was originally rooted in niche communities. It only cares about what stops people from scrolling.

The Branding of the Unbranded

Here’s where it gets interesting. When something niche gains traction, brands start assigning meaning to it. It stops being just a thing and starts being a symbol.

A rock isn’t just a rock anymore. It’s a product now. It goes from "found" to intentionally placed. The price tag changes. The language around it changes. It’s now a “design object,” a “meditative sculpture,” an “organic artifact”.

In May 2021, F.Miller x Jam launched a collection:

In September 2021, Maiden.Name (Great shop btw) in NYC launched a collection by Shane Gabier which are being sold for $220 USD (they are still available)

Photos from Maiden Name Wesbite

This is how branding works. It sells you the meaning, not the thing itself.

Which is why an empty Aesop bottle is selling for $20 on FB Marketplace. (Read Taste of Currency)

(Side note: I mention in the above letter Aesop should partner with a ceramist to make a soap vessel—I think Shane Gabier would be perfect.

Mass Adoption & The Tipping Point

This is when:

We begin to see retailers start selling “curated” rocks—think UO, Target, etc. Then come the knockoffs, in this case, cheap resin casts of natural forms. This once-found object, which became a design piece in curated spaces, turns into a generic trend.

This is not inherently bad, but it marks the beginning of the end for early adopters. Once something becomes too widely available, it loses its cultural currency.

We’ve now hit peak saturation.

The Death (or Rebirth) of a Trend

Two things can happen next:

1. The trend fully dies. It moves from aspirational to cringe. (Think: chevron prints, "Live Laugh Love" signs.)

2. The trend reinvents itself. A new niche group reclaims it, repositions it, or alters it in some way to make it fresh again.

Oh, the food chain of cool… the cycle repeats itself endlessly, and we’re all complicit. We’re all constantly chasing that next "thing" or reinventing something in our own way—whether we realize it or not.

I share my trend predictions, random thoughts, and brand drops every Monday in my Screenshot & Saves series.

Remember, at the end of the day, we’re not just collecting objects—we’re collecting meaning. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m sourcing.

Curious—what’s the strangest thing you’ve seen become a trend? Or what’s something you still collect, even if it’s “uncool” now?

Leave a comment

Next week’s letter:

Mondays: Continuing the series of Screenshots & Saves

Wednesday: I’ve identified who we are all influenced by…can’t wait to share

Friday: ADHD-Friendly Reads—What Makes Them Work?

Want to be featured on our weekly Screenshots & Saves? Email us nobodyknowsstudio@gmail.com or send me a DM at @justkeepcreeping

Read more

Exciting news: I’ve made a commitment. Screenshots & Saves is now your Monday morning coffee read—product drops, random thoughts, and a mini trend report all in one.

Just a heads-up—nothing here is sponsored! If you’d like to support Inter-Work, becoming a paid subscriber helps keep it going and ensures future posts stay accessible. Your support truly means the world—thank you! And if you're a brand interested in sponsoring a post, feel free to reach out at nobodyknowsstudio.com

Brand Trends & Product Drops

• NOON was at the Goop offices last week. I’d grab the Discovery Kit now before it sells out. I’m almost finished mine, and Focus is my favourite..

• We are going to see a rise in self love products this year. VAZZI™ really gets it—a natural lubricant brand out of Montreal. The fact that they launched a jump rope? Genius. Keeping your stamina up, in and out of bed.

• Tanchen just dropped a bottle opener keychain and I am obsessed with this mint green one.

• Everyone’s talking about sleep—now, take yours anywhere. The ZZZN SLEEP APPAREL SYSTEM is your portable sanctuary for rest and recovery. Would you buy one?

• One of my favorite jewelry brands Cuchara recently closed their retail doors and opened up an appointment only showroom. Here is a sneak peak! Edi recently shared some of her latest designs with me—if you're looking for the perfect rings to stack with your OURA ring, this is exactly where you should be looking.

• I really like the Diesel show [watch show here]. I think we are going to see graffiti everywhere..anyone remember 5POINTZ? Look it up.

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Sephora should be rethinking Gen Z’s beauty experience.

If California Assembly member Alex Lee successfully passes a bill restricting minors from buying anti-aging skincare, beauty brands shouldn’t see it as a setback—they should see it as an opportunity. If I were Sephora, I’d double down and meet this consumer where they actually are.

Enter: The Youth Beauty Café—a curated space where skincare and beauty essentials are made for young skin, paired with aesthetic lattes and wellness drinks (think matcha and collagen-free elixirs). Add a homework and creativity corner—a cozy nook for studying, sketching, or brainstorming—and suddenly, this isn’t just a retail space.

It’s a Gen Z (and Gen Alpha) clubhouse. It’s not just beauty—it’s culture.

Sephora, Glossier, even indie brands—who’s going to be the first to make this happen?

✨Random thoughts✨

• Lives are back!

• You’ve probably seen the viral video of Rachel from Buddies Coffee Shop calling on her community for support. Consider this your reminder to show up for local businesses

• We’re going to see clocks in homes again.

• Finance bros have been spotted in Arc'teryx beanies…

• I finished the first season of running point this weekend 10/10

• Tate McRae SNL performance was A1 — watch here

• Egg cups will be everywhere in “morning routines.” If I were a ceramicist, I’d lean into this. Rachel Saunders x Saie Beauty collab, anyone?

• For my dream birthday, I’d love to host a charity trunk show featuring my favorite brands at WSA.

• I really can’t see another high-def shelf photo.

• Last week, I predicted butter knives, tea, soup, and caviar spoons would be trending. Over the weekend, @theperfectnothingcatalog dropped a Soup Spoon collection.

• Kim Kardashian has never looked better. Her recent post in 1992 Chanel—WOW.

• Ms. Whitman… 8.5M views in 5 days? It’s catchy, and I replay it often, ngl.

• FiverrGO...? Yeah, no thanks. Why would I hand over my creative mind and IP..but does have me thinking about Ai

• Bare nails = recession.

• Why do I feel like Bala x Substack are going to collab on an exercise ball for posture?

  ---

Wednesday Letter: Toronto Guide

Friday: I’ll be diving into design. Here’s a sneak peek—stay tuned.

Want to be featured on our weekly Screenshots & Saves? Email us nobodyknowsstudio@gmail.com or send me a DM at @justkeepcreeping

Just a heads-up—nothing here is sponsored! If you’d like to support Inter-Work, becoming a paid subscriber helps keep it going and ensures future posts stay accessible. Your support truly means the world—thank you! And if you're a brand interested in sponsoring a post, feel free to reach out at nobodyknowsstudio.com

Brand & Product Drops

• Rose Los Angles just dropped their first drink. Personally, I can’t handle THC, but if they made a CBD version, I’d definitely try it.. Grab your 4 pack.

• I became OBSESSED with Elena Owens copywriting this week! If you don’t know who she is well get familiar because she is making baby brands cool.

• Hailey Bieber just announced a partnership with Fila - its cute but honestly I prefer the tracksuit combo Taila Byre is dropping for SS25.

• Sisters & Seekers hosted a speed-dating hiring event. Would you go on a date to get hired? They used this to find candidates for a Content Production Assistant role, and I think it's genius. Even if you didn’t get the job, you’d probably meet people you vibe with. Also, A1 marketing campaign.

• Spencer’s is opening another NYC location? Where do you think it’ll be? Also, they’re hiring. I’ve already applied, but best of luck to anyone else. Open roles: VP Operations, Senior Designer, Marketing Manager, and more. Email Taylor Wasi (taylor@spencer-system.com) your CV.

• I’ve been talking about Puma nostalgia a lot in Substack chat about these PUMA’s that made me feel like I was in middle school. Anyways, LIVESTOCK is dropping a similar silhouette and I am very excited.

• F.Miller launched a new product! Shop Now

  

A Sign From my Mom

Yesterday, on my way to Shop.Porter, a great spot in Seattle btw! I needed a space to finish my portfolio site. I saw something that immediately triggered my mom’s voice in my head. For those who haven’t read Story of Necessary, my mom had Stage 4 Lung Cancer, and I found out two weeks after opening my store. She passed away on May 25, 2021. When I see little signs of her, I feel like I’m on the right path. Stay positive, homies. I know life can be shitty.

GIVEAWAY!!

If you’re currently looking for a job (same), I’m doing a giveaway on Monday, March 3rd over at @nobodyknowswellnessclub.

I have free subscriptions to by (just became a paid sub). She shares some amazing job opportunities on Thursdays.

How to enter?
Since it’s the end of February and we’re all in a funk, I just want to see you hit 10K steps at least once next week. DM @nobodyknowswellnessclub a screenshot once completed. Two winners will be picked on Friday, March 7th.

✨Random thoughts✨

• We are going to see a surge of fortune tellers coming from brands. I’d love to see one from Gohar World.

• More branded Mascots - Taylor Frankel was looking for someone to be one for Nudestix on her IG story the other day

• I want to get mail again. At least once a month I want to receive a lil something something, a postcard would be cute, stickers. We know subscriptions are back — I hope to see this rolled out in Q2 from brands.

• My dream job atm? Host events (low budget) for brands. Thinking a NKWC picnic event with Pyrex?

• Who is going to design THE soap vessel this year?

• Does anyone know when Ash Hotels is going to restock some of their souvenirs? I really wanted the French Pastry Jars and the Steel House Trivet

• I am not going to the nail salon as often.

• Has anyone tried Hanni?

• is hosting an event in LA and you should go. You’ll probably make a friend. Grab a ticket

• Butter knives, tea, soup and caviar spoons are going to be the *must have* in home decor

  ---

P.S. THANK YOu to 630+ Subs

I started this at the end of Dec 2024 while I was on the road (I’ve been escaping MTL winters for the second year now). Anyways, very excited to get home to my lil library and share more about my creative studio aka MY HOME <3

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I was scrolling Instagram last night when I saw Drew, the founder of Margin, share a Facebook Marketplace listing: an empty Aesop bottle. The price? $20.

At first, I laughed because honestly, I got it. I’ve definitely kept an empty Aesop bottle and refilled it with whatever soap I could find until I could afford the real thing. My first Aesop experience wasn’t even something I bought. I was subletting an apartment from someone who worked at Aesop’s HQ, and the place was fully stocked. Every product, perfectly lined up. It felt like a glimpse into a lifestyle I wanted but hadn’t yet earned.

But what really caught my attention wasn’t just the listing itself—it was the fact that Drew posted it. The brand he built, is all about efficiency, minimalism, and high-performance essentials. Their entire ethos revolves around function over excess, stripping away the unnecessary to create biotech-driven skincare that condenses multi-step routines into clinically backed essentials.

And yet, here was an empty bottle a product with no function left being sold purely for what it represented.

It’s almost poetic. The irony? Even when the product is gone, the branding remains valuable.

Because in today’s world of curated aesthetics and subtle status symbols, it’s not about the soap.

It’s about the bottle.

Taste as Currency

Aesop’s design is instantly recognizable brown apothecary-style bottles, minimalist fonts, monochromatic labels. It doesn’t scream luxury; it whispers it. And even when empty, the bottle still holds power. It’s not just packaging it’s decor. And decor, in today’s landscape, is a form of social signalling.

I’ve seen these bottles everywhere perched on the sinks of boutique hotels, in the bathrooms of friends who get it. You know the ones: the Byredo candle, the Le Labo fragrance, the Binu Binu incense, the Flamingo Estate coffee table book. There’s a specific language of taste at play, and Aesop is fluent in it.

Even their boutiques feel like design statements. Whenever I travel and want to get a sense of a “trendy” area, I literally pull up Google Maps and search for Aesop—because I know where there’s an Aesop, there’s usually a whole ecosystem of taste around it.

Because modern luxury isn’t about obvious wealth anymore. It’s about discretion the if you know, you know signals. It’s about what you collect, display, and post. And in this new economy, taste is currency.

Which is why people will pay $20 for an empty Aesop bottle. Because it’s not about what’s inside.

It’s about what owning it says about you.

The Untapped Potential of Aesop’s Empty Bottles

If an empty bottle holds this much staying power, why hasn’t Aesop leaned into it more?

Imagine a limited drop of permanent, refillable vessels designed in collaboration with an industrial designer or ceramicist. Four core pieces: a hand wash, body cleanser, lotion, and shampoo. Something you want to keep forever. A bottle that ages beautifully, where refilling is the ritual.

Luxury today isn’t just about owning something it’s about participating in a ritual. Aesop already sells the experience of washing your hands as a moment of pause, a small indulgence in an otherwise chaotic day. Imagine if that ritual extended to the bottle itself something designed to age beautifully, evolving alongside its owner. A statement piece, but also a practice in longevity. Like an aged copper vessel of some sort?

From a brand perspective, it would make sense. From a business one, even more. Less waste, more intentionality, an even deeper immersion into the Aesop universe. Instead, we’re all out here refilling plastic bottles, stretching their lifespan well beyond what the brand ever intended.

It’s why I appreciate how Margin is already executing this ethos. Their cleanser isn’t just well-formulated it’s designed to be refilled. The packaging is built to last, reinforcing the idea that good design isn’t disposable. It’s a small shift, but one that signals a larger change in consumer expectations—where the vessel is just as considered as what’s inside.

Branding Beyond the Product

We live in a design-obsessed culture where even an empty object can hold meaning. Aesop figured that out early. They don’t just sell soap they sell taste, status, and a lifestyle.

Scarcity creates value. The Aesop bottle, once emptied, becomes even rarer—not just a product, but a relic of taste. It’s the same psychology that makes limited-edition drops so appealing: we don’t just buy things, we collect them. And collections, no matter how mundane, tell a story about who we are.

It’s something I thought about while building the brand identity for Natural Rascals. I didn’t want to create just another bug spray I wanted to create something that belonged. Something people would leave out on their countertops, not shove into a drawer. That’s why I chose an amber bottle, subtly nodding to the aesthetics of Aesop, Le Labo, and the objects people already cherish. Because the best-designed products aren’t just used they’re displayed.

Because in a world where branding can transcend utility, aesthetics can outweigh function, and even emptiness can carry worth what’s another bottle on the shelf?

If we’re willing to pay for the illusion of taste, then maybe the real product isn’t what’s inside the bottle.

Maybe we’re the product.

Let’s stay connected EVERYWHERE :)

Instagram | Portfolio | hello@nobodyknowsstudio.com

These winter storms in Toronto have me feeling in limbo—which feels fitting. I would say October and February are my transformative months—February is always a weird headspace between seasonal depression and the anxiety of what the rest of the year entails. It's also a notoriously slow month work-wise, which is just great for my anxious mind. I can't wait for Q2.

It’s that strange in-between where everything could change, or nothing could. A month where you either decide to push forward into the year with intention or let the anxiety of Q1 take control. And lately, instead of forcing myself to "figure it all out," I’ve been thinking about Andy Goldsworthy.

Goldsworthy is an artist who doesn’t fight against nature—he collaborates with it. He builds delicate ice arches that melt with the rising sun, arranges leaves in intricate patterns only for the wind to scatter them, and balances stones into gravity-defying formations that will eventually collapse with the tide. His work isn’t about permanence or control; it’s about being present, about accepting that everything is always in motion.

And maybe that’s why he feels like the perfect artist for February. (Maybe I'll start doing an artist feature every month?) This month isn’t about clear resolutions or tangible progress—it’s about sitting in the uncertainty, embracing the fact that we don’t always have answers yet.

What if, instead of resisting that, we leaned into it? What if we stopped seeing February as something to endure and instead treated it as a time to embrace that pause.

So here’s my challenge for you and for myself: step outside and create something small and impermanent. Stack icicles into a tiny sculpture. Arrange twigs into an oddly satisfying pattern. Or don’t make anything at all—just go for a walk, breathe in the cold air, and find your inner Andy.

No pressure, no expectations—just an experiment in being present. In remembering that change is always happening, whether we see it or not.

If you do, tag me @nobodyknowswellnessclub on IG. I’d love to see what you create, even if it’s just a footprint in the snow.

Let’s embrace the season instead of fighting it.

Check out Andy Goldsworthy Documentary

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