No-name models, sexy fashion people and saying goodbye to The Everleigh
“The new fashion woman has good sex”, so says Leandra Medine
Howdy!
I’m so delighted to be back in your inbox for a second time this week. Given my delay last week in getting my letter to you, I thought it would only be appropriate to give you two letters this week from the Office.
Huge thank you to all of you who connected with me following my first audio letter! I loved receiving your DMs saying that you enjoyed listening. I can absolutely provide more from where that came from. Perhaps, I might make it into a regular thing… A pseudo-podcast if you will… available only to you - the gorgeous humans -who subscribe to my letter. Let’s see…
This week was a gorgeous week for me. Namely, because the weather in London has been absolutely stunning. Think blue skies, 10oC plus, and no rain – day after day! I don’t know how we got so lucky to experience these gorgeous springtime temperatures in March no less. I know it won’t last long, so I’m making the most of it while I can.
Okay. Let’s get right into the good stuff.
Agenda for today’s letter:
Are we returning to the era of the no-name model?
So, apparently “the new fashion woman has good sex"
Saying goodbye to Melbourne cocktail royalty, The Everleigh
Are we returning to the era of the no-name model?
Oh, imagine a time when a social following isn’t a pre-requisite to success
An email in my inbox piqued my interest this week. British fashion mag i-D (now famously owned by Karlie Kloss) sent an email titled: “Bet you can’t guess who our cover star is?”
Instantly, I was intrigued. Opening it, I was met with a very cool image of a very cool model. The email copy was as follows:
“i-D’s Issue 374 started with a simple idea: Find an unknown young person somewhere in America, put her on the cover of our magazine, and see what happens.”
The i-D team have done just this. Enlisting the very famous casting director Jennifer Venditti (of Euphoria-notoriety), the very cool cover I was looking at featured ‘unknown young person’ Enza. She’s a high school senior, a trans rights activist, and works “the local movie theatre”.
I find this concept refreshing. A signal back to a simpler time – when access and opportunity wasn’t dependent on the amount of followers you have, the quality of your personal brand, or your digital footprint.
This used to happen all the time. Lest we forget the Girlfriend and Dolly model search days of the early aughts.
Even outside our Australia-bubble, an unknown model on the cover of a glossy mag was a frequent occurrence. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s when Anna Wintour came into power and revolutionised the industry with it.
Anna famously was the one who put celebrities on the cover of magazines. Who brought about this new era - where fashion and celebrity are so inherently intertwined. She made fashion entertainment and entertainment fashion. We’re still seeing the impact.
Often, I lament about the current state of most professional industries. Whether it be in business, fashion, publishing, or marketing – it can often feel like a social following is a prerequisite to opportunity and success.
It can be laborious. To feel like the quality or calibre of work is irrelevant. To feel like one’s personal brand and social following takes precedence.
I often sigh to myself when I see another reality star get a book deal. Or another influencer secure a big podcasting or media engagement. When did these industries become so vanity-metric focused?
It’s why the no-name model experiment by i-D feels so fresh and exciting. Will other publications proceed? Will other industries? Does it signify a broader trend? Or is it just a flash-in-the-pan moment, never to be seen again?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
So, apparently “the new fashion woman has good sex”
So says Leandra Medine Cohen this week
This week, Leandra Medine Cohen (of Man Repeller fame) hypothesised in a newsletter her thoughts on where she thinks style is heading. She believes we’re in a new era of feminine dressing. One that signals that “the new fashion woman has good sex”.
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