The Shoppies
Hello. This is a newsletter I have been meaning to start for a long time now. It going to be about shopping, but also not about shopping at all. (Who am I? This is me. I am a writer and a New Yorker and a person who stays up very late at night looking at stuff on the Internet; stuff that tends to be available for purchase).
I mean, do you ever get the "shoppies?" A.k.a. the insatiable, itchy desire for things, but not really to accrue MORE CLUTTER or to support LATE CAPITALISM per se, but because you want to harness a mood, a feeling, an era, a sense of place? Like you are suddenly gripped by the need to be the kind of person who owns patent leather brogues? Like you want to draw towards you the aura of crushed tomatoes and murder and neroli blossoms that emanates from the screen as you watch The Talented Mr. Ripley? Or like when you are reading about a depressed torch singer from the 1930s, and you think, wow I do NOT desire her crippling drinking habit and general sense of existential malaise but I WOULD like to know how to pull off a nonchalant, insolent flower in my hair? Or I dunno, let’s say you are watching The Valley of the Dolls and you think: what I Do Not Want is to begin popping pills as a means to simply get through the day while married to a lothario Manhattan executive who wears casual misogyny like cologne but what I Do Want is to know how to source swingy, kicky polyester floral dresses on Ebay for a song so that I could theoretically tap into a deranged Manhattan high-kicking sixties energy should I so choose? Have you ever thought: what if Zou Bisou Bisou but not absolutely humiliating, and make it fashion?
This newsletter will essentially, be a collection of my moodboards (films! books! the way Nancy Sinatra wore sweaters between 1967-1971!) and how to source little capsule collections inspired by them on a budget (or at least the closest to a budget I can find; I am a writer working on a writer’s salary, after all. I get it! I can’t really do full price. Every now and then I will post a thing that no one could ever afford unless they read Town and Country unironically and don’t realize it’s a cheeky subversive document designed to make everyone want to each the rich, and when I do that, I will clearly state that you should NOT BUY THIS THING.) Also when I put things here, I don’t have to buy them. Thank you for supporting what is essentially an ongoing exorcism.
Anyways, if any of the above made any sense, this experiment might just be for you.
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