on wanting more from fashion influencers
substance, knowledge, expertise
greetings from my luteal phase. today’s post is a pms brain dump.
1.) substack v. tiktok/IG tension is abrewin’…reflecting the divide between attention spans on the two platforms. sometimes when i cross-post substack essays on IG i’ll get comments like “ok tldr?” and it’s like ok that’s the whole POINT of substack! if it’s too long for you to read, that is your problem i fear. as fashion substack in particular becomes more established, i predict we will see people self-select into the camps of pro- or anti- longform writing culture. the link listicles vs. the essays. the other day i saw a tiktok where someone talks about how they don’t like having to “dig through a dissertation for a link” and how they can “barely read a caption let alone a novel on the best white tshirt.” to each their own, but i’ll be over here eating up 2,000 word essays on white tshirts :)
(side note: a study on the effect of substack on someone’s attention span would be really fascinating).
2.) i had the urge to leave my house for a walk and bring as LITTLE as possible, aka my single house key on a radish key fob and it felt really cute and amusing. like i’m a peter rabbit animal leaving her hollow for a side quest. it’s the opposite of ‘what’s in my bag’ mentality.
pls bring these veggie fobs back?! :)
3.) i’ve been thinking a lot about the middle ages and their relevance in current events. (also, go read
’s piece on the apocalypse vibes rn). more to come on this…but top of mind is the rise of astrology-based political prediction content. we clearly have a hunger for prophecies rn, probably to make sense of a senseless world. it feels like we’re in the middle ages, consulting our fortune tellers.4.) if you’re a fashion/culture aesthetics history hoe and don’t already know about CARI, get ready to have your world rocked. i could spend hours digging into the archive of consumer aesthetics from “bubblegum bling” to “dollar store vernacular.” i’ve been reading up on “whimsigoth” and “renaissance revival.” it’s an amazing free resource more people should know about.
5.) this week a reader, Lindsay, posed a thoughtful question in the molehill chat:
i love questions like this that generate different perspectives—thanks to everyone who weighed in. i was mulling on this topic for a few days and kept coming back to these questions:
how do we even begin to define what counts as fashion knowledge?
why does it feel so annoying when an influencer doesn’t “know their stuff”?
why we want more “substance” from fashion influencers?
on the first point, fashion knowledge feels impossible to define. i mean, there’s the realm of clothing construction, the technical aspects of what a garment IS and how it’s made. and as other readers added, there really are infinite ways to understand fashion if we treat it as the story of human experience, presented through clothing. rian phin started a viral conversation around this topic on tiktok last week and i thought it was a great reminder that fashion isn’t numbers and facts, it’s interdisciplinary by nature.
but perhaps there is something especially frustrating about seeing a fashion influencer talk about clothes and not be able to describe the very “basics” of its construction, falling back on bland talking points we’ve all heard a million times like “this top is so flattering.” bernadette captures our collective sentiment:
we are tired of the growing