Change always hits in waves. Never just one thing. Good and bad. Now is one of those times in life where I feel the ground moving beneath me, everything happening at once, where I have no choice but to hold on, surrender, and let it bring me wherever I’m supposed to be.

Writing again is my way of trying to bring back agency. Proof to myself that I can exist and create despite the noise going on around me. And in part, I think I need to write about some of the things distracting me.

So, let’s start.

I have a boyfriend now.

Seeing that word feels so alien. Like waking up one day, and being surprised to see a dark mole appear on your chest. Visible and undeniable. As though you hadn’t spent weeks joyfully lounging in the sun, and expected anything to happen as a consequence.

wow. I just compared my relationship to an uninvited mole. Sounds awful, doesn’t it?

But it’s nothing to do with him. He’s not cancerous. The man is an angel. I adore him. We’re genuinely, and to use the internet word of the moment, disgustingly, well suited to each other. Which is, unfortunately, part of the problem.

I’m me, but now this person, this boyfriend has somehow pushed their way into an existence that I have worked so hard to create. It’s fabulous and it’s mine. Full of friends, hobbies, and far flung dreams. Bountiful things that make life joyful on their own terms. And now I have to dutifully carve out space for him. A man.

The more I think, the more I realize there’s two types of people. Those who see singleness as a problem to be solved, and those who don’t.

A while back, I was running late to a group dinner in the Upper East Side. A white table-cloth Italian with seating that stretched wall to wall. Fated to arrive sweaty and flustered, I slipped gratefully into the only open seat available.

It’s only after that I heard someone, upon hearing my lateness, took it upon themselves to eject everyone from their seats and perform a well-intentioned act of musical chairs. Maneuvering just shy of a dozen individuals. All so that I — the single girl in the group — would arrive and be sat next to the only other single man. A single man who I had repeatedly told the other couples I loved, but did not see romantically. AT ALL.

Evidently, my presence, in all it’s singleness, was a loose thread on the white tablecloth that needed tidying.

But before I was a loose thread on a tablecloth, I was a perpetual monogamist. I spent the majority of my twenties as the kind of girl (and we’ve all known them) fixed in a cycle of entering and breaking free of relationships that lasted way longer than they should have.

Each time my world came crashing around me, I would lick my wounds and slowly be introduced to a brighter version of myself. I would get hotter (blonder), more interesting, more fun… until another guy would come along and I’d fall into a relationship that dimmed that spark.

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On my phone there’s a list of all of the stupid shit I put up with in relationships. Stuff I laugh at now because I would run a mile if someone tried anything like it. Relics of former loves that are reminders of what I chose over investing in myself.

Like the time I spent my birthday with a boyfriend who famously took his flatmate’s sunglasses, wrapped them up, and gave them to me as a gift.

Or the one who told me he didn’t want me to go on a girls trip to Ibiza. I dutifully obliged, swapping the vacation for a couples vineyard retreat in Bordeaux. A trip I never went on because he dumped me with no reason a week prior. But did find it within himself to notify me he still intended to go on said holiday. Sante!

Looking back, my singleness was never the problem. Me in a relationship was.

I would be hooked on whatever guy I was with. Dining on a picnic of easy dopamine. Each message, each interaction, each dreaded pause in communication injected a spike of adrenaline, until my inner world became plump with the thought of him. Whoever ‘him’ was at the time.

The relationship was the only thing I cared about. There was no room for anything else.

Ultimately, I accepted whatever form of love orbited me, because I didn’t believe I deserved to be selective. Being chosen quietened the doubts I had about myself.

My latest bout of being single has lasted shy of 3 years. A period of time that I associate less so as the absence of a man and more the presence of myself.

Something switched when I moved to New York. Swept up in the pace of a new city, I let my heartbreak calcify without noticing. New York is a place built for hedonism, and a powerful place to be a single woman. Densely packed, no place for a wallflower, yet anonymous enough to let you constantly expand. My smart, brilliant friendships came from exactly this: relationships built on grand plans, not relationship status.

Because New York rewards the traits singleness builds. Ambition, independence, a full social life. Friendships grew stronger and more aligned because I had more to give. My spark for writing came back. I actually invested in myself. I took solo trips and deepened my taste in music, art, fashion. I was outgoing and confident in a way I wasn’t when hiding behind a relationship. I was so single, so happy, so unbothered by the thought of coupledom.

But this experience isn’t just limited to New York. I think often about how when ‘is having a boyfriend embarrassing now’ was published, it validated so much of what we were feeling. It went viral because it hit a cultural nerve.

The girls are happy alone, and (dare I say it) even pity those in relationships. Actively choosing to be single is a bet on yourself. It’s a bet on your life outside of a man. A bet on your friendships and your own ability to curate a life you love.

It’s no wonder that singledom has felt like a club. My friends and I card carrying members: fluent in the smugness of answering to no one, of having built an identity that doesn’t need to be validated by a relationship.

Which is why telling those friends about my new relationship felt less like sharing good news, and more like sitting in a confession booth.

I was two martinis deep and crouched in the back room of The Nines when I told my closest friend. Meeting her eyes while 80s classics blasted in the background, and responding to ‘how’s it going with him?’ with guilty admission it was official.

Bless for me, babe, for I have coupled.

We both knew nothing should change materially. The only real difference was that when I told men in bars I had a boyfriend, I’d be telling the truth.

And yet.

We knew our strong, beautiful friendship was threatened by the tells we’d witnessed in other women a hundred times before. The friends we’d watch slide into boyfriend brain: an illness symptomatic of baby voice, unprompted updates on a partner’s golf trip, and pepperings of the ‘royal we’ into conversation like an obsessed teen.

At worst, we’d lost friends to relationships entirely. Stung by the years that passed as a vibrant friend dilutes in front of you, their aura dimmed and trajectory softened by a relationship they’d made their nucleus. The words ‘leave him’ poised, but unable to ever leave your lips.

Which is maybe why the shift feels so triggering now. I’ve spent almost three years building a self I actually like, and this man, inconveniently, wonderfully, is the first real threat to it. My old relationships sit there as evidence of what’s on the table to lose. And because I’m so in love with my life, so attached to the person I’ve become, the stakes have never been higher.

It’s naive to think that getting into a relationship doesn’t require sacrifice. I know that. I still long for that missed trip to Ibiza, but my time has granted me perspective to know something good when it comes. And welcoming something good, inevitably, means making room.

But making room isn’t the same as moving out. So maybe what it comes down to is boundaries and trusting myself. Holding on to what matters, even if it is five nights of partying on a Spanish island with your friends. Remembering that a relationship does not mean dissolving your individuality in exchange for being chosen.

The happiest women I know are those whose least interesting thing about them is their boyfriend. I intend to be one of them too.

We have an olive oil problem.

Take a trip to the deli or snack section of your local Wholefoods, and you’ll see a strange phenomenon.

Towering aisles of cartoonish fonts. The same indistinguishable illustrations in Gen-z hues, gazing back at you from near-identical labels of hummus, soda, protein bars, and whatever other latest CPG darling has hit the shelves. Each one touting promises of artisanal flavors and harm-free ingredients, with cartoon images and hand-drawn logos that allude toward a small founder story lightyears away from their VC-backed juggernaut reality.

Maryah from ASSEMBLY calls this the yassification of branding. A new generation of brands tapping into a childlike sensibility, dumbing down the process of choice so that we can instantly reach for whatever seems most aligned. The hack is simple: borrow the aesthetics of a considered small brand, paste them over a scale operation, and let the consumer's hunger for authenticity do the rest.

Sure, I'll pick the olive oil with the friendly Comic Sans label. It feels warm, considered, and like someone's Italian Nonna had a hand in it somewhere. She didn't. But when there's little else to choose from, who's to tell.

And the same is happening on our feeds. Over the past decade, we’ve seen algorithms with a laser focus on rewarding sameness dominate. Consumer brands have fallen in line, and in doing so, slowly optimized themselves into indistinction. A few thumb-scrolls and you'll find the same content formats, the same trending audio, the same forty influencers unboxing forty identical PR packages they'll never actually use.

And, to state the obvious, AI has catapulted the problem, with over 40% of digital video ads aexpected to be AI-generated this year. Literally anything is possible when you can shortcut your way to a brand ecosystem and content factory in minutes. You want the aesthetic of a Seoul streetwear brand complete with a vintage car photoshoot? Or a heritage countryside label filmed in 35mm? The imagery, copy and persona is yours. It’s never been easier for brands to keep up with the Joneses.

As I wrote in my last Substack, the thing with shortcuts is that they deliver a perfectly packaged result but in exchange, remove the experience of becoming. Jumping on the bandwagon of whatever branding is trending has created a wave of imitators swapping genuine character for surface-level signaling. They may appear original but the substance behind them tells a different story.

The branding is a costume. And like any costume, it works until everyone is wearing the same one. Which is, more or less, where we are. Because what's being produced is aesthetics, not taste. They are, crucially, not the same thing.

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In his memoir, Let My People Go Surfing, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard cites the architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller: “When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” Chouinard built Patagonia the same way. Not by designing a brand identity, but by focusing only the people and problems he actually cared about. Everything else, including cult status, was consequential.

Pre-algorithm, finding a brand you loved was ‘if you know, you know’. But now if you know, so does everybody else. Brands started telling everybody, loudly, on every platform, all at once. And the moment they did, resonance was traded for reach. Brands have careened into a circus of their own making. Each participating in some sort of warped talent show, trying to demonstrate they can juggle more than the next thumb swipe.

And the problem with competing for thumb swipes is that an audience with no emotional connection is one bad experience, one better-priced alternative, one shinier 3 second hook away from leaving. In other words, a brand built on trending graphics and algorithm optimization is permanently one platform shift away from starting over. Because when the trend moves on, there is nothing underneath to hold onto.

Take Glossier – the it girl brand of the 2010s but now a cautionary tale. With its distinct look and feel, it was a first mover in the DTC beauty space and people were nothing short of evangelical about it. What struck was that as more and more beauty brands moved in with the same colour palette, minimalist tubes, and ‘your skin but better’ positioning, Glossier quickly became forgotten. Rather than moving, evolving, deepening its relationship with existing customers, it found itself competing on appearances alone. The thing that made them cool was the thing everyone copied.

Because cult status requires something deeper than aesthetics. It requires a genuine, accumulated point of view that precedes the trend cycle and outlasts it. It requires taste.

What makes this more than a little ironic is that the loudest voices championing taste right now are the AI companies themselves. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman recently took to X to declare taste a new core skill. Here in NY, Anthropic even took over the Airmail newsstand in the West Village — the publisher run by Graydon Carter, legendary former editor of Vanity Fair — to open an anti-slop coffee shop offering free espresso to anyone who queued long enough. And then there's Palantir. A company best known for selling surveillance technology to the US military, who released a chore coat to seemingly signal their love for craft (I wish I was joking).

The New Yorker's Kyle Chayka calls this tastewashing, giving anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism. It's a fair criticism. But as much as I never thought I'd say this, the AI bros kind of have a point. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham was exactly right when he joined the chorus of founders to state "when anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make." Because costume without character is the single biggest risk facing brands right now. In a world where anyone can get the look, what distinguishes you is everything underneath it.

So if taste is consumer culture’s new frontier, what does it take to create it successfully?

1. Lose the crowd, keep the cult.

Emma Grede is the British entrepreneur and mastermind behind much of the Kardashian brand empire. Recently, she has been carefully making her way into the spotlight within her own right, assembling her very own personal media brand.

The great thing about Emma, is that when she is interviewed she is wholeheartedly unfiltered, giving an honest take of what her life actually looks like. So when she was on the press tour of her new book, and she casually mentioned only spending three hours a day with her kids, the internet inevitably went into uproar.

However, while the TikTok-police sirens blared, branding her a terrible mum, she did something totally unexpected. Instead of over-explaining or backtracking, she doubled down.

In doing so, she showed exactly who she’s building for. Emma’s brand is for ambitious women who want it all but know they can’t have all of it at once. By doubling down she didn’t just hold her ground, she loudly affirmed her value to the the audience who actually matters to her. Every woman who felt seen by her admission, felt even more seen when she refused to apologise for it. The rest know where the exit sign is.

The audience you’re willing to lose is the price of an audience that actually cares.

2. Break the fourth wall.

In a world where anyone can fake the basics, the art of storytelling becomes the last thing that can’t be replicated. The brands breaking through right now aren’t just showing you a polished product. They’re breaking the fourth wall, and introducing you to the story, the struggles, and people behind it.

I have been obsessed with following the founders of Hot Girl Pickles. A Gen-z pickle brand that has stepped way beyond fun packaging to actually build a relationship with their audience before their product had even hit factory floors.

By inviting viewers into their world as aspiring category disruptors, all filmed from the floor of their living rooms, they created an audience invested in an underdog story. Impressively garnering so much interest that they secured $3m in investment, and made it as one of the most talked about brands in the Coachella gifting suite this year. Not bad for a pickle.

@goodgirlsnacksbreaking down the meaning behind our packaging and branding for all hot girl pickles flavors 🥒 what do you think? #packagingdesign #branding #brandidentity #brandingandmarketing

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3. Real community, not community theatre.

I’ve lost count the amount of times I have seen a popular TikTok, and clicked on the comments to see a totally unrelated brand making an attempt at contributing a banterous comment. I’m never for beating anyone with the cringe stick, but in this instance, it’s justified.

Having an actual vibe and contributing to conversation needs to go way beyond this.

LA based jewelry brand, Heaven Mayhem is a great example. They could have easily gone the mass influencer route. Distributing the jewelry widely, chasing reach. Instead they’re genuinely selective about how and who they engage with. They invite existing customers to brainstorm new product ideas. They bring their core creator partners and real community (read: actual customers) to the same events, deliberately breaking down the hierarchy that says creators get all the good stuff and everyone else gets nothing.

Saie Beauty recently launched a culture and arts program, giving their core community the opportunity to meet IRL at venues centred around art, music, and ideas. While the events are small in capacity (and sell out), their promotion across multiple channels signals something to their following: Saie is far more than the average beauty brand, offering a cultural kinship more compelling than any targeted ad.

If you want to go deeper on what makes a great community strategy, Heaven Mayhem’s founder Pia Mance recently did a great episode on Hot Smart Rich.

4. The collaboration as taste signal.

There's an age-old piece of advice that goes ‘show me your friends and I'll show you who you are’. It applies to brands too. Who you choose to partner with, collaborate with, and share a room with is a statement. A ‘tastement’ if you will.

The key to finding a great partner is not selling out for the biggest reach but for the most valuable fit. I noticed this when I went to AM Radio’s second-ever day party in NY. A small venue and crowd by the grand-scheme of things, but interestingly, household name, Soundcloud was a partner. By appearing at something lesser-known like AM Radio, Soundcloud signaled their desire to show up for small music communities, whilst also allowing AM Radio to be elevated as a tastemaker in supporting up and coming artists. Super smart.

Another I recently saw and loved was the The Fishwife x Fly By Jing partnership. Both female-founded brands have broken the mould for their respective categories, and the combo makes perfect sense. Cult-status tinned fish meets cult-status chilli oil. Two highly desirable pantry staples that combined, become a dinner party must-have for any foodie in the know.

Like anyone introducing you to their friendship group, the right collaboration doesn't feel transactional. It feels like an authentic introduction the audience didn’t know they had been waiting for.

5. World building through tasteful video.

The question is no longer whether you produce video, but whether your video actually makes someone feel something. The best brand videos right now don’t feel like ads. Instead they’re a cultural statement so immersive that the viewer doesn’t quite clock it’s a campaign until it’s over.

We’ve seen a wave of luxury brands understand this instinctively. From Burberry’s gorgeous ‘In Love’ series, to Gucci’s Spike Jonze short film, and most recently Balenciaga’s ‘New York Minute’ with Sarah Pidgeon.

And it’s not just big names. I recently stumbled across a reel from a small Nepalese brand on Instagram that stopped me completely. The audio was a line from the 2011 romcom No Strings Attached, “Fine, I’ll go on a date with you. But no flowers.” Whimsical visuals, a familiar voice, and a new interpretation of a line I already loved. I was locked in until the end, where the brand placement appeared almost as an afterthought.

@tsarmoireNo strings attached. T's Armoire edition ❤️ hopeless romantics, this one's yours.... #nostringsattached #foryoupage

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Renter-friendly credit card, Bilt has also been an unlikely trendsetter. Through launching a social media series ‘Roomies’, they followed the trials and tribulations of a 25-year-old renting in NYC, amassing hundreds of thousands of fans binge watching the two minute episodes before they even knew what Bilt was. When they eventually clocked that Bilt was actually a product, and could help them pay rent, it didn't feel like a sell. Instead, it was a natural next step.

The brands doing video content well right now understand that the goal isn’t views. It’s the feeling the viewer carries with them after the video ends. An intentionality in storytelling that no AI prompt can replicate.

The great thing is that these lessons aren’t reserved for mega-brands with huge teams or budgets. They apply to anyone building something with a genuine point of view.

It’s also something I am considering when it comes to Unbothered. While I’m not a consumer brand, I’m thinking a ton about intentionality, and see Substack as a room full of people I am curating. Like any good party, who you invite and thoughtful details contribute to the overall vibe.

And I’d rather people come away saying that they’d found their people, than saying it was the busiest party to ever exist.

Intentionality, it turns out, is all taste ever is.

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Content that inspired me in writing this post, and I hope you might find interesting:

My Previous Substack: You’re Sad Because You Don’t Have Taste

Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed With Taste

Why Does Everything Look Infantililized?

Let My People Go Surfing

Rise of the Chief Taste Officer

Palantir made a chore coat

Community is done and Manufactured

A girl stumbles across her apartment. Wardrobe full, yet nothing quite right to wear. The remains of last summers clean girl powder blue Alo set and Ugg slippers clutter the floor. Stressed, and late for brunch, she opts for her most recent purchase that makes her feel good — a black polo neck tank, midi skirt and tortoise headband; Revolve’s Caroline Bessette collection.

She arrives to coffee with friends, each in their unwritten uniform of the season and burst into chatter talk about the latest viral TV show — someone’s mother is dating a a 27 year old — “have you seen it?” her friend asks. “Yes! well… I’ve watched the clips on Tiktok”. As coffee cups drain, talk turns to something deeper. A friend in the group shares she’s on GLP-1 — it’s been only a few weeks but the results are already visible.

Let’s pause — because I am not coming for this girl.

In fact, I know her. Because I am her. Albeit in slightly different form. I may not be buying the clean girl, but I am scouring the internet for whatever the algorithm pushes towards me next — Puma ballet flats, Paloma Wool tanks and Still Here jeans. All added to cart, thanks to an influencer linking her ShopMy. Each one accompanying a sea of tabs that make my life more efficient — food deliveries instead of cooking the full meal, chatbots that pre-write my emails, podcast clips posted on TikTok that suffice for the whole episode.

I’m taking shortcut after shortcut, unable to slow down because the next perfectly optimizable thing is laid before me. I’m unstoppable. Efficient. Nothing is out of bounds.

It’s clear that something is shifting — for all of us — and we feel it even if we can’t name what’s happening beneath the surface. Options that were once reserved for seasonal fashion trends have now expanded beyond the material — style, knowledge, health are available in minutes. In todays world, there’s a shortcut for anything you can dream of —it’s never been easier to appear hotter, smarter, or healthier. Our wardrobes were just the beginning.

Kyla Scanlon calls this the Ozempic economy — but this extends far further than weight loss:

And in theory — it’s brilliant. Life is fast, full and frictionless. I’m so productive. There’s so many results. I’ve done so much. And yet, somehow, things feel… diluted.

Every shortcut is a lost experience

What I’m verbalizing isn’t judgement but more so observing the dilution as symptoms of the world we’re in. It’s the realization of having a full life, yet recognizing that the contents, despite all its volume, has lost its potency. For the first time, having a life and feeling a life can look very different.

It’s not lost on me that in an effort to appear current, and to signal that we’ve leveled up, we’ve made ourselves indistinguishable. We may look and sound the same but we're increasingly disconnected — from each other, and more importantly, from ourselves.

I’ve lost count of the situations where I’ve zoned out. Staring at the contents of my wardrobe, frustrated that I don’t have an outfit that perfectly matches the vibe of the function. A rail of options accumulated on the basis of what looked right at the time. Each piece a trend that temporarily covered the discomfort of not knowing my own style. Each a shortcut that acts as a costume instead of actually inhabiting the character — who is, ironically, myself.

And it extends further — like the times I’ve heard something bubbling in the zeitgeist, and instead of combing multiple articles or books for points of view, I’ve fed it into AI. The latest model throwing back neat bullet points — each sanitized and perfectly portioned for my ten minute subway ride. Convenient because I’m able to regurgitate whatever was served at dinner. I can tick another productivity box. But in doing so, the soul, voice, and necessary friction that comes with forming my own opinion has been lost.

It’s funny, because as a kid I would pour over history books — fiction that dropped me into cities a hundred thousand miles and a hundred years away. That’s how I learnt about the world — through feeling. I’d spend hours turning pages, inhabiting someone else’s life so completely that their grief or joy or hunger left a mark on me. The time spent with books didn’t just inform me, they shaped me. They gave me references, empathy, and a way of seeing that would slowly accumulate into something I could call my own.

This year I’ve read one book.

What I’m getting at is that each shortcut, though convenient in the moment and arriving perfectly formed, has no roots attached. There’s nothing to hold on to — nothing beyond the result.

Because when you skip the process — you miss the self-knowledge the process was building. The stories that create anchors and tell us who we are — what we like and don’t like — each intwining with our self narrative. It’s the slow accumulation of experience and learnings over years that gradually build to act as an internal compass. A base for intuition. A knowing that belongs entirely to you. Without it, we’re left with the unsettling feeling of not knowing what to choose if nobody was watching and nothing was suggested. And like anything, I can’t help but feel this compounds to have a deeper effect. Everything, technically fine, until a specific kind of loneliness sets in.

So, perhaps the struggle was never the obstacle. It was the whole point.

So how do we unfuck ourselves?

When I think about the opposite of everything I've just described — it's taste.

Not in the sense of aesthetics — though people often misunderstand it in this way. But taste — real taste — is the act of cultivating something over time. It’s is a non-linear pursuit, built brick by brick, with no signposting or promise of results. The thing is — you can’t ‘win’ at taste. And you certainly can’t purchase it. It’s earned — painfully, joyfully. Taste is an eternal process, there’s no result.

There's a reason they say ‘there's sweetness in the slow’.

When I think about the people in my life with great taste, it's not the ones who have or do the most. It's the friend who recounts books like they're old friends, spine-cracked copies lined up in her living room like a record of who she's been. Or it's my friend's younger sister, who has worn the same palette of bohemian whites paired with dirty brown boots for as long as I've known her — her style was never in style, which is exactly why I always thought she was so cool. While I’ve never remembered the outfit of someone who has been perfectly on trend.

It can also the boyfriend's dad telling you about everything about every jazz musician who ever lived — picking facts out of his brain like pulling out draws stored in an archive. Writing this essay, I even thought of a guy I rented a factory conversion apartment from, who insisted in I kept his taxidermy out in the living room because he’d collected it since a teen — I still have nightmares about their beady eyes, but that guy had taste.

What these people have in common isn't money or access. It's that they kept going back to the thing. Their taste is autobiographical. It can’t be performed. There's a specific kind of aura that comes off a person like that. You can feel it immediately.

And when I think about the things I’m most proud of, it’s not my ability to tick the list of whatever’s in vogue, or speed up the process to getting whatever result I want. Actually, it the things I’ve built over years. It’s my playlists, or my bookshelf with stories that I can recommend as soon as I get to know a person. It’s the collection of ceramics I’ve been building — mismatched shapes slowly growing as I purchase something in every country I go to. It’s the jackets that suit my body and feel like me — so I’ve held on to them for years. Lately it’s been this — pouring over an essay for hours, knowing that I’ve intuitively listened to what I actually wanted to write. Precious things that only I can understand.

All of this is taste.

And none of it came quickly. Each one required a certain loyalty. Work, even. I realise now that growing taste is uncomfortable, which is exactly why the shortcut is so seductive. It means sludging through articles that lead nowhere, in the hope that you might pick up something that makes you feel seen. It’s picking up a recipe and failing, in the hope that you can nail it and share it with friends. It’s spending hours training for a half marathon, only to run it and realise you never want to open Strava again. It’s expressing yourself through clothes, willing to turn up at the function at odds with what other’s a wearing but knowing you’ve picked something that perfectly reflects who you are.

It also requires boredom — real, uninterrupted boredom. Though it’s intimidating — how can you even know what you like, when a pseudo answer exists between the tabs in your laptop. It’s the discomfort of not knowing yet and the willingness to sit with the question before reaching for someone else’s answer — which is precisely what the shortcut economy is selling you an escape from. But boredom and discomfort is where you find out what you actually reach for when nothing is being served to you. It’s where preference forms.

Holly, from Good Surroundings writes:

I’ve spent years learning my taste.

Peeling back layers of influence.

Learning to tune into the gentle nudges underneath all the noise.

And I still ask myself often:

Is this really me? Do I love this? Or do I just think I’m supposed to?

The self questioning is real, because there’s also vulnerability in taste. Having real taste is actually exposing — because it’s yours. A trend is a costume, it has no ego. But saying ‘this is what I actually love’ opens you up to judgment in a way that borrowing an aesthetic or skipping the process of trying doesn’t. The shortcut economy is also an avoidance of that vulnerability.

It may sound far fetched, but I can’t help but feel that the act of building taste gives you grit and a deeper sense of self that helps you weather life’s storms. The deeper your roots go — the harder it is to knock you over. In today’s shortcut economy, taste is the long way round — and the only thing that will anchor you. It does so much more emotionally than what appears on the surface.

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NB: There’s so much more to say here. Next I'm writing about taste in the wild — how it's reshaping our feeds, and what it means for the brands getting it very right and very wrong. If you enjoyed this, feel free to subscribe so you don't miss it.

I also really liked these takes, which helped to inspire and inform this piece:

• The Shortcut Economy: Why We’ve Stopped Learning the Hard Things (Fintech)

• The Ozempicization of the Economy (Kyla Scanlon)

• The Art of Personal Taste (Good Surroundings)

• Are You Developing Taste or Performing It? (The Language of Fashion)

• You Don’t Want Carolyn Bessette’s Style, You Want Her Taste (Frugal Chic)

• WTF is Taste and Why is it the New Intelligence? (The Cheque Book)
  
  
  

‘She said you were a party girl’.

It was late summer and I was perched in the outdoor seating area of a local wine bar. It was the kind of mid-week plan that felt easy: an agency partner was in town and we were finally catching up. He’d been to dinner the previous night with a mutual industry contact, and dropped what he had heard casually, as if it were a fun fact. I immediately laughed and brushed it off; “I just love a dance!”.

But those words clung to me in the following days. ‘Party girl’ had left its mark.

As the label marinated, I began to clock the image those two words conjured: a girl almost ten years my junior, lost to a dance floor. Or worse, folded into the dark corner of a bar toilet. Untethered. Messy. Alone. Certainly not a persona someone with a serious career, or considered life should be carrying.

The reality is that the party girl is seen as a rite of passage for your early twenties. For many, she is a season for experimentation. Drugs, alcohol, sex. It’s an era of taking things a touch too far. Of discovering your limits, often by going beyond them.

There is an assumption that somewhere past the age of 25 — probably around the time you start optimizing your sleep score — this era ends. The party girl is a costume designed to be worn, and almost as quickly, left behind.

Maybe it was ego but as time passed, I found myself retracing my steps. Racking my brain for where the stereotype must have came from: what could I have done to give that impression? After all, I was far from the lost, reckless character I had just been associated with.

Soon, I realized my error.

In a casual weekend recap chat with the mutual a few weeks back, I had briefly recounted a DJ set at Brooklyn Mirage. A sprawling venue infamous for intense crowds and Electronic sets until the early hours. By casually sharing my weekend plans, and one offhand detail, I’d unknowingly cemented a label. I was a party girl.

And just like that, the brand I'd carefully built at work. Capable, trustworthy, a little type A - felt instantly undermined. It was unfair. And on closer inspection, demeaning.

What gets me is how specific the stigma is. Electronic music carries a weight that isn’t lent to any other music genre. Nobody calls you a party girl for seeing Sabrina Carpenter at Madison Square Garden, or a weekend seeing Turnstile at a rock festival. There's no raised eyebrows for the indie concert, the jazz bar, the country show.

But mention a DJ set, warehouse, or frankly, any dark room with a sound system and suddenly it says something about you. The fact that listening to any genre of music could be an indicator of lifestyle just seems a little crazy to me.

It's also worth noting that this label is not lent to any other gender. The men in that same room, staying until the same hour — nobody is calling them party boys. Nobody is questioning their reliability or wellbeing.

While this may all seem obvious, I can’t help but feel the sterotype has never been louder. If anything, it's been repackaged and handed back to us. Take brand Brat for example. Between the acid green, Von Dutch, and Boiler Room of it all, Charli XCX has marketed a blueprint that doubled down on the archetype. Messy, avoidant, unapologetically chaotic. And while there's something genuinely liberating in that reclamation, it’s also calcified the cliché. The party girl is reckless, lost to the night, and exactly as advertised.

But it’s not all so one dimensional. Lucy Guo - who until very recently held the title of youngest self made billionaire — is a self proclaimed raver, and unapologetic about it. Her refusal to align to a neatly defined stereotype, has genuinely broken down barriers. She advocates the idea that you can build something extraordinary and dance until the early hours. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

And while I'm not about to use partying as fuel to start a billion dollar AI company, her openness gave me permission to stop feeling guilty about how much partying has continued to serve me.

My own introduction to electronic music came unexpectedly. In Spring 2022, amid the thick of a break up and a looming move to NYC, my mind was spilling over. Desperate to burn off the feeling of anxiety, I took up running as an outlet.

Before long, I was spending week after week doing laps of Hampstead Heath, clocking as many miles as I did hours listening to music. Back when it still felt like the Spotify algorithm understood you, one DJ would domino into the next, and I learnt how meditative the BPM could be. I was quickly introduced to names like Black Coffee, Overmono, and Peggy Gou. Each one even better than the last.

That summer, I fell in love with seeing those artists IRL. Rare London days where the weather crept above 25 degrees were spent dancing at open-air festivals in Finsbury park. Crammed between hundreds of others unable to hear the person next to me, I somehow felt more connected than I had in months.

There was something special about it. Partying — raving — whatever you want to call it, gave me permission to strip everything back and just be in my body, at a time when I felt like I was going to combust.

And it’s something I still turn to. Regularly. I am the embodiment of the meme of the girl in the middle of the dance floor ‘how no-one can tell I’m not doing ok’. Moving my body is a way of regulating my nervous system. A grounding force for when everything else gets rocky. A convenient sensory overload that transports me. It’s another tool, a hobby even, that creates balance in my life and accompanies working out, as well as therapy.

And yet, for all the talk of partying as something that makes you disappear into yourself. My experience has also led me to the opposite.

It’s common to say that the relationships we make through partying are hollow. Passing conversations complimenting makeup in bathrooms or short exchanges in the middle of the dance floor.

But my reality has been entirely different. Some of my closest friendships were born on a dance floor. My first connections in New York made dancing on a table, drunken chatter that somehow alchemised into a shared obsession with music, and an invite to a set the following week. Two years later, these are the same people who took me in when my boiler broke in the dead of winter, and who sit on my emergency contact list.

Unlike friendships engineered through the proximity school or work, these connections have felt chosen. And contrary to the cliché of the drug-fueled downward spiral of party-friends, many of them have become a part of the community I'd always hoped for. The kind of people who push you to do better, who are building and betting on things themselves, while raising the bar for everyone around them.

And it extends beyond friendship.

While the rhetoric wrapped in misogyny online is to ‘not date a party girl’. Tiktoks warning of a childish lifestyle, and at worst, slut shaming. I’ve actually met some of my most meaningful romantic relationships through partying. And it makes a certain kind of sense. If it’s 1am and you're both still out at a niche gig, you've already learned something about each other that no Hinge profile could tell you.

I can’t help but feel that partying can be a shorthand for bonding, romantic or not, much bigger than a mutual love for music. The people tend to be kindred spirits: adventurous, free-spirited, and relentlessly optimistic about life. Each a connection made in the dark that has held up in the daylight.

When I think back to that wine bar, and the sting of having to laugh it off. I keep coming back to how quickly it became something I felt I had to defend. Another label used to diminish, to define, and to subtly police women’s pleasure.

The truth is that partying can be part of a very good life. A valid coping mechanism, a social glue, and even tool to keep us productive.

Ultimately, we’re all deserving of a life that makes us feel free and seen. And if I want to shake ass until the wee hours in a basement, field, or rooftop then I will.

After all, I am a party girl.

A small confession: I’ve somehow managed to make the journey from NY to Miami six times in the two years I’ve been in the US. A problem? Maybe. But one that hopefully lends me some credentials to guide your next trip.

Beyond the obvious — the weather, a maximalist dress code that feels like cosplay to the average New Yorker, and the feeling that life is just slightly better here — Miami has a way of surprising me every time. There's a version of this city for everyone, and it's impossible to do the same trip twice.

What does make the agenda every time, however, is a concept Miami has perfected — The ‘Clubstaurant’. Genius restaurants that morph into a club as soon as the clock strikes midnight — meaning no queues, no venue hopping, and a direct line to bed after dancing until the wee hours. A blessing for your 30s, and frankly, the kind of urban planning I can get on board with.

But Miami isn’t just a party destination. The city has a whole other dimension that doesn’t get nearly enough credit. A serious design scene anchored by Wynwood and the PAMM Museum, a vibrant cultural calendar, and a music community that goes way beyond Space and LIV (though those are worth checking out if you’re brave enough).

If you’re aesthetically inclined and seeking optimum vibes for your next trip — you’re in the right place.

This guide runs on BASE — your home for an extended weekend.

• Bed: Design led accommodation to rest your head

• Agenda: Cultural events, music venues, art, shopping and beyond

• Sip: The best drinking holes to sip and yap

• Eat: Unmissable eateries for morning, noon, and night

BED: Design-led accommodation to rest your head

Boutique hotels are usually my go-to, but Miami actually has an insane selection of bigger name properties worth your attention. Great crowds, impeccable design at jaw-dropping scale, and most importantly — a pool to lounge around, versus picking out sand from the beach.

If it’s your first time visiting, I recommend staying in Miami Beach. It’s the best area to get a feel of the OG art deco influence, and is where most of the properties with wow factor are based.

• The 1 Hotel, Miami Beach ($$$): There's nothing I don't love about the 1 Hotel. Considered interiors, a packed rooftop pool and bar, and a trademark scent that will have you scouring the gift shop on the way out. I've met genuinely great people both times I've been — the crowd is chatty and relaxed in a way that feels rare for a hotel this boujee.

• Faena Residences, Miami Beach ($$$): Staying or visiting the Faena is a lesson in Maximalism. Leopard print, deep crimson interiors, and Damien Hirst’s iconic golden mammoth skeleton are a backdrop to an endless parade of supercars out front. It's a lot. Worth visiting even if you're not staying, though I'd go for dinner over the bar.

• The Arlo, Wynwood ($$): I stayed here on a whim in December when my flight got cancelled and was so impressed. The hotel is decently priced but still feels like an elevated experience. There’s a sizable pool on the roof, decent food, and the staff are super kind. Defo recommend if you’re traveling as a small group.

• The Elser, Downtown ($$): If you’re on a budget and looking for convenience, The Elser is a great shout. The rooms are well designed and spacious — some with kitchenettes — a blessing if you’re someone who likes having a slow morning and making breakfast or lunch in-room!
  

AGENDA - Cultural events, music venues, art, shopping, and beyond

Cultural Events: The city is fun year round, but I recommend anchoring your trip during one of the bigger calendar moments:

• Design Week (Early December)

• Music Week (Late March)

• The Miami Open (also Mid-Late March)

Music Venues: Miami has an incredible music scene. If you’re intimidated by the big names like SPACE and E11VEN (and the idea of a 4am start time), I recommend checking out something like the below:

• Zey Zey: This community-first venue in Little Haiti feels like a house party / pool house / garden combo. There’s a ton of events happening throughout the year, including day parties like Cafe Grooves and AM Radio, as well as bigger names. Has an unpretentious mid 20s - mid 30s crowd that are all into the music — a good one to check out if you’re wanting to meet people!

• Dante’s Hifi: I usually lean more EDM in my music taste but I stumbled across a Latin night at Dantes last visit and was totally transported. Latin night runs every other Sunday of the month, but the venue also has a huge lineup across the board, with past artists like Kaytranada joining for intimate vinyl-led sessions.

Workouts: I tend to stick to what I know for workouts by visiting NY staples. Barrys have a few venues across the city, and for the pilates obsessives, I’ve enjoyed SolidCore and Jetset.

Art: The art in Miami is great year round. Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is an institution — the huge space has a strong Latin American and Caribbean focus. A smaller gallery but equally unmissable is Nina Johnson. It’s a boutique space that feels like you’re stepping into someone’s home vs a traditional ‘white cube’ gallery. Art Week in early December is also a biggy — my tip is go as early in the week as possible, before the crowds get into town. Carpenters Workshop opens during Art/Design Week and is a really cool space at the intersection of art and design.

SIP: The best bars to sip and yap

Nobody comes to Miami to stay in, and the great thing is that the city does most of the work for you — the people watching alone can justify the flight. These are the venues on my list that stand out.

• Sugar Rooftop bar is a win if you’re looking for an elevated sunset drink. People get dressed up and the vibe is super friendly. If you arrive late, there is also a sister club next door called ‘The Tea Room’ which is also fun.

• Amazonico: I originally turned my nose up to this because I heard horror stories from the one in London but it is actually such a vibe. We went as a trio and met some really fun people. Crowd is late 20s and up.

• The Living Room Cipriani: Cipriani's first Miami outpost is a chiller answer to the late-night bars that the city is known for. A great place to lounge for a pre-dinner drink in the early evening.

• Honorary mention for the abundance of fail-proof hotel bars: The roof at the 1 Hotel, The Edition, and Goodtime Hotel from Pharrell which is also, unironically, a good time

EAT: Unmissable eateries for morning, noon, and night

Restaurants, in no particular order:

• Casa Neos: Probably #1 on my list of favourite clubstaurants. Located right on the waterfront (yes, people actually dock their boat and enter), the space has multiple floors including a beach club, restaurant, and lounge/club. The venue has a great soundsystem and a slightly more grown up crowd - early 30s and up.

• Mila: Another clubstaurant and an institution in the miami night scene. Famous for being the highest grossing restaurant in the US, it has slick interior design and a maze-like layout that makes you feel like you’re in a very chic rabbit warren. I will warn you — this is the type of place where the portions are TINY. You are eating vibes for dinner (so keep this in mind before you head over).

• Omakai: This affordable handroll restaurant has multiple locations across the city. We paid roughly $35 for a set of 8 and I come here every time I’m in town. It’s a nice restbite from the more sceney/dressy places, and the perfect place to turn up with no reservation and jeans.

• Mandolin: One of Miami’s most coveted tables, Mandolin is one of the best outdoor dining seats in the city. Best booked for a weekend lunch, between the grilled octopus and the whitewash walls, you’ll feel like you’ve been transported to a coastal tavern in Santorini.

• Brunch…

  • Avo, Miami Beach (the best pressed juices)

  • Libertino Cafe, Wynwood

  • Zak the Baker, Wynwood

  • Caracas Bakery, Miami Beach

If you’ve made it this far, have the best time on your trip! Think I’ve missed something? Would love to hear your recs below!

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“You’re being selfish.”

A year ago this would have been a label I worried about most. 7 letters uttered across a table or text, that could be spun into a full-on character indictment. A neon warning sign placed upon the recipient’s head — Watch out. She’s difficult. Untrustworthy. A bad friend.

As the word rang in my mind every time I chose myself, I began to question its origins and how it ever became so loaded.

The reality is that we live in a world where language shapes our moral compass. Our daily lives are filled by words with inherited meanings, each coding our judgment before we ever think to examine them.

And with that, I can’t help but feel that we’ve collectively interpreted the word ‘selfish’ unfairly.

Take a look at the definition:

It doesn’t sound so bad to me?

Hear me out —

The most radical improvement in my adult life hasn’t come from being more generous, agreeable, or accommodating. It’s come from being concerned with my own profit and pleasure.

From being selfish.

The time and energy budget

Perhaps the best realisation I’ve had is that in life, we’re given a finite amount of time, energy, and capacity to think and feel.

At 31, my days are a relentless list of non-negotiables. I’m a Corporate girlie (god I hate that phrase) who is trying to keep it together — so things like maintaining health, appearance, and finances drain irreplaceable hours each day.

Once the necessary spending is done, I’m left with a marginal amount of my capacity to recharge and give away. Disposable energy if you will.

It took turning 30 — and a major life change in the form of a breakup — to realise that I had wasted my 20s investing my free energy into things that were slowly accumulating, and moving me further away from the life I always said I wanted.

By accommodating everything and everyone that asked of me, I had unknowingly created a system that was depreciating. I was exhausted.

When I started looking at my energy and time like a budget, and decided that my goal was to have ROI — to make myself grow and feel good — life soon started to become very different.

I stopped spending time with the people who drained me and said no to plans that felt extractive — things like the friend who always had something negative to say or dinners with an acquaintance I felt obliged to do purely because they asked.

Not because they were a bad person, but because the time felt like the social equivalent of drinking a flat Diet Coke — good once upon a time, but as life moved on, the carbon bubbles lost their spark and left me with the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners.

As soon as I aligned each decision to having ROI, I was able to prioritise my limited amount of time doing the things that nourished me. Every ‘no’ created space for the things I actually wanted to do.

My disposable time went towards conversations with friends who cared about big ideas. Hours spent creating and learning. Toward protecting my energy — even if that meant choosing an evening alone so I could arrive in the right room the next day energised and generous, not worn out.

As I became selfish, I became intentional. I chose only the things that felt aligned and expansive, and my value grew. I was happier, more energised, and — ironically — a better friend.

The selfless trap

Now let’s reverse things.

As women, we are raised on the notion that we need to be the ultimate villager — giving to our community and above all, to be selfless.

From girlhood, we’re taught to make decisions for the benefit of the group — the partner, the friend, the colleague. To be a “good” woman is to smooth life’s edges and, above all, to be the peacekeeper.

And as we grow, that line between femininity and self-sacrifice slowly blurs until we assume they’re inseparable — without ever really noticing what that belief is costing us.

Because chronic selflessness has a price.

In my 20s, I gave my time, energy, and flexibility freely to everyone. I cringe now at how I would contort myself to make the desires of whoever was in my orbit work.

Whether it was the partner who told me my dreams of moving to NYC weren’t worth discussion, and that we should follow his plans instead, or the years quietly spent doing the work of someone two levels above me without recognition…

I just kept being selfless because I thought that’s what a good person did.

Those years felt like a silent haze. I was a greyer version of myself — present, but never in full capacity. My dreams were crystal clear but I hadn’t moved towards them. For the best part of a decade, my life was full — just not of anything I had chosen. I was lonely and lost, but above all, I was selfless.

We’re told that the risk of being selfish is being alone, disliked, and discarded. But what if it’s the reverse?

Isn’t being selfless the thing we should actually fear? because the real risk is what we invest in repeatedly compounds? It’s the years of years of slow, polite self-erasure, building quietly until you look up and wonder where you went.

Being selfish makes you a better version of yourself

Here's the reframe I wish someone had offered me sooner.

selfish = self full

Because selfish doesn’t mean cold or shallow. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people closest to me. I do. Deeply. But only because these are the connections I truly value. I choose them consciously — not from obligation.

If I try to serve everything that’s asked of me, the people I actually love will get a burnt-out, washed-up version of me — a version whose cup isn’t full, desperately trying to muster the last dregs to share.

Being selfish enables me to become the most potent version of myself. So that when I do choose to pour into another, it’s rich and nourishing. The conversation shines brighter because I am able to turn up in fullest version of myself. I’m a better friend/partner/daughter when I’m selfish.

I wonder how many of my relationships would have naturally ended if one of us had stopped people-pleasing and refrained from morphing ourselves into something more digestible for the other person. Or the years of friendships that were merely tolerated — surface-level communities held together by habit or politeness, at the expense of deeper connections forming.

It might sound radical, but if we were all a bit more concerned about personal profit — I think we might all just be that much happier.