Now that this is on substack, I wanted to try something new out. Instead of one long info bomb of an email every few weeks, and for the sake of getting your money’s worth, this will be a more frequent version of the newsletter that’s a little more free form. Still the usual segments, articles, recommendations, etc, but broken up into easier to digest deliveries at a more regular rate. Sort of like mini columns that can add some variety. The stuff I’d tweet out and delete after 10 minutes can now get expanded with more detail and research. As usual, a free preview will be available, but the full things in all their frantic glory will live behind #TheWall. Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet, there’s plenty more on the way.
Table of Contents
Running Set Musical Breakdown
5 Things I Actually Like
On “White Box” Apartments
Running Set Musical Breakdown
Because of how social media works, I realized I never actually talk much about the meanings behind the clothes I make. I figured this would be the perfect place to do that, because a lot of thought goes into them (whether it seems that way or not). Music obviously plays a huge role in my work, and usually acts as a through-line that ties thoughts, emotions, and philosophies together. There’s a certain intangible quality that music has that allows it to act as a gel to connect static ideas. What I’ll be trying to do here is explain those clouds of connections the best I can.
Run NYC longsleeve - Heaven
Primarily visually inspired by vintage NYC marathon tees, it’s my take on the classic “running man” icon that I always love seeing. I like the idea that (beyond bathroom signs) these anthropomorphic symbols act as a blanket mannequin for humanity. It’s an easy visual indicator of you, a person, like our species has its own logo. The front graphic is a love letter to the greatest city in America, and the feeling that running through it gives me. The hulking scale of the architecture contrasting the tiny people that make it up and power it like blood cells, the finish line and greek coffee cup motifs, the infinite cycle that the city can feel like. That same cycle leads to the back graphic. New York, or really any modern city, can always be a catch 22. Everything moves fast and autonomously. 90% of the time, that’s how I like it, I don’t think I could live anywhere else. But sometimes those same attributes can make it feel frigid, uncaring, lurching forward with or without you. You get the sensation that you’re stuck in a loop, just a tiny, insignificant piece of a giant circuit. In the grand scheme, history, legacy of the city, you are simultaneously a part of what makes it, and also mean nothing to it.
One of my favorite bands of all time is Talking Heads, and their album Fear of Music was one of the biggest inspirations for this set. The album contains a dozen different hyper-specific musings on various themes of the modern age, full of paranoid, icy, dystopian lyrics about the respective topics. The track Life During Wartime perfectly captures those violent blinding speeds of contemporary life, comparing it to war through blurry anecdotal shouts of panic. That same feeling of being a part of the motor while also being left behind. These contrasts define modern life. In a 1979 interview with NME just before the album came out, David Byrne seemingly eerily predicted exactly where we find ourselves in 2024, stating, “There will be chronic food shortages and gas shortages and people will live in hovels. Paradoxically, they’ll be surrounded by computers the size of wrist watches. Calculators will be cheap. It’ll be as easy to hook up your computer with a central television bank as it is to get the week’s groceries. I think we’ll be cushioned by amazing technological development and sitting on Salvation Army furniture. Everything else will be crumbling.” This duality is the core of living in a city, living in America, living in the present. Marvels of modern technology provide new ways of life we couldn’t ever conceive previously, but at the same time we feel stuck in place as things degrade or seem to be trapped in limbo. Everything happens at lightning speed, but at the same time, nothing happens.
My favorite song on the album, one of my favorite songs ever made, and the primary inspiration for this shirt is the track Heaven. A tongue in cheek riff on the idea that a perfect place, a true sanctuary, might seem pretty boring to us. It supposes that maybe we can’t even begin to think of nothing as being the ideal. “It’s hard to imagine/That nothing at all/Could be so exciting/Could be so much fun.” It is an almost Buddhist take on the concept of perfection. In our current hectic modern lives full of variables and unexpected changes, a constantly repeating cycle can feel like misery to some people, and bliss to others. This song and its ideas perfectly encapsulate what running, especially in New York, means to me. That duality is again the core of living. A daily routine like running brings structure, something to ground you, while also being the same every single time. On a run, focusing on breathing and pace, it’s hard to overthink about what was keeping you up last night, but it can also feel mindless. It is a big expression of physical effort, with your lungs and blood pumping, but compared to the sprawling machine of a city, it feels like nothing. Everything is happening and yet nothing does. That seemingly endless repeating cycle can feel torturous or rewarding, it’s up to you. A run, New York, life itself is really the place where nothing ever happens. If you let it, it can feel like Heaven.
Recycled poly shorts - Running Up That Hill
If you’ve followed me for longer than a month, you probably know how much I love the essay The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I’ve talked about it and what it means to me plenty of times before (Newsletter 005), so I’ll try to keep it short. At it’s core, it is about claiming your agency over your own fate, your own outlook, and how you live. Much like the song Heaven, it wrestles with the ideal versus our lived experience, comparing and blurring the two. Can we create our own paradise? Within the actual myth itself, there are themes of dealing directly with the divine. At a certain point, taking control of and finding joy in ones own fate requires you to face something above this world. Purpose, meaning, all the things there are no solid answers for must be carved out ourselves from this ethereal higher place and taken into our realm. In short, finding your happiness on the mountain requires A Deal with God.
Now unfortunately made famous by that Netflix show, Kate Bush’s iconic 1985 hit Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) deals directly with these same higher themes. In the song however, the titular deal is a swapping of bodies between two lovers, in order to fully understand each other. She has stated when talking about the song that a deal with God holds a lot more power than one with the devil. It can’t come from greed or hubris, it has to be genuine. Creating one’s own fate or purpose must be the same. The idea that you would know you love someone or something so much that you would deal directly with the highest forms of power imaginable is nothing light. It requires a tremendous amount of commitment and effort, much like finding your personal joy in a routine, like running.
Additionally, Kate Bush as an artist is a big inspiration for my work, primarily the from-home DIY elements of it. Bush was known for crafting meticulously tailored workspaces and synth setups from her bedroom, in order to experiment as much as she wanted without having to pay exorbitant studio fees. This is the attitude I try to instill in all my own work, trying to explore every inch of possibilities with the setup at my disposal. This is the same philosophy that inspired the graphic on these shorts. Whether it is a configuration to make a song, jewelry supplies, or your own purpose in life, you can only work with what you’re given. Trying to do anything else is a futile effort that only brings existential anguish. Once this is accepted, we are free to take control. If we know that after the boulder falls, on the walk back down the mountain, Sisyphus is happy, one must also imagine that once he is aware of this fate, this Deal with God, he wouldn’t just walk the stone back up the hill, he would run.
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5 Things I Actually Like
We’re diving headfirst into the best season of the year, and everything is kicking into high gear. The chilled winds, the hot drinks, the fucking fabrics! Very excited to start putting outfits together that aren’t just based around sweating, here is where my head is at going into the Fall.
nightopenings
Although they haven’t posted in a while, this comprehensive collection of Getty images from 90s movie premieres is such a goldmine of classic style. It’s a good mix of mistakes from the time period and timeless swag. In an era of celebrity where everyone is meticulously styled to deal with the panoptic gaze of social media, it’s nice seeing some surprisingly casual outfits on stars. The clothes look clean, but lived in. You can tell that in some cases, they were looking in their own closet and thought to wear “something nice.” There is a ton of humanity coming from these pictures, nothing feels too posed or stiff in an attempt to artificially create a moment, they just are. Also the mix of movies themselves leads to some great surprise appearances and unexpectedly great outfits. It’s not just blockbusters in there, but forgettable bargain bin fodder, cult classics, and everything in between. I just hope the account gets active again.
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