15 Comments

my heart is bursting. gonna be re-reading this multiple times like a total creep and having ZERO SHAME ABOUT IT

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admire and appreciate you so much!! 🍒

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thank you so much for having me!!!!! EVERYONE PUBLISH YOUR DRAFTS

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thank you for being soooo generous with your thoughts 😇

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I love Emily acknowledging the transformation of her writing on substack! It’s so scary to realise that you’ve pigeonholed yourself (because all the online advice I’ve seen about growing an audience on ANY website tells you to build a “niche”) and then publish something way different than what you normally write.

I’m curious to learn more about fashion theory — are there any particular writers or books that y’all recommend to dive into?

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I know Pierre Bordieu is a key reference in that space...my personal favorite is Minh Ha Pham! Contemporary, not-dry writing style for an academic, brings in race theory!

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saving this and will most certainly return to it often. i just published my first piece on here and hearing "write for yourself and don't worry about an 'audience'" from writers i admire is so freeing! thank you all for being so generous with your thoughts <3

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I LOVED this piece. I don't think people are interested enough in what goes through the mind of fashion writers. Or rather it feels they think our mind is just feel with clothes and fashion clichés. I think things on that side might change with Substack though because it gives the freedom to writers to wander around genre. Not being tied to a publication to me is also a good thing.

I LOVE when you said you wrote for yourself. This echoes what I say about it in my next Sunday's post. I feel like once you write for your readers, the relationship becomes transactional rather than conversational. And this the reason why e-commerce editorials thrived until a certain point. Only Ssense felt different because their editorial was more about writing even if they didn't carry the brand.

Again, I really enjoyed reading this piece.

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Thank you Emmanuelle! You rock

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This was an incredible read and insanely inspiring!!! In a rut myself and feel like this was my knight in shining armor - thank you for sharing and being brutally honest about the struggle that can exist in this very free and creative space <3 Carving the words 'write for yourself' into my brain!

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This was super inspiring!!! And it's true that something we do take ourselves too seriously and forget the joy in sharing 🌷

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I loved this! And really reallyyy needed to hear it too. My draft-folder is fullll because I always write and then censor myself thinking «nobody wants to read this». But that doesn’t matter, because I liked writing it! 🤯

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oh geez i am new new new and this is hitting like a sunday sermon tysm

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Thank you for writing this!! 🖤

I started Letters back in November (crazy to think it's been eight months already!) and my audience is petite but I'm so proud of what I've written. It's become like a fashion writing diary. I do think it's really important to ignore expectations and those nagging feelings about what you "should" be writing - I've found some of my best pieces have been ones I thought no-one would care about at all, and almost didn't write for that reason.

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Thank you for writing this post! I read it twice from word to word 🫶🏼

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