On Highbrow Tastes (& Other 2024 Highlights)
An end of year culture roundup, things I find 'common', and everything I accidentally bought in the Net A Porter sale.
Greetings Spendthrifts,
No paywall on this month’s newsletter (‘tis the season etc etc) - consider it my Christmas present to you! On which note, if you’re currently flailing around in a last minute panic looking for Christmas gifts, have a peek at last month’s issue of Add To Wishlist for a few tried-and-tested present ideas:
Otherwise, I hope you’re winding down for the holidays! I certainly am - the siren call of my OOO beckons, and this newsletter is one of the last things I plan to do before putting mine on for the rest of 2024. This year has both flown by and felt super long - I look back at places I went or things I did in February or March, or even May, and think… was that really this year?
Something I’ve felt very keenly since entering my thirties is how time seems to have taken on an almost elastic quality. I’m familiar with the school of thought that as you get older, each calendar year constitutes a smaller fraction of your life, and therefore a year feels shorter than it did in your youth, but I also find I seem to be retaining fewer specific memories than I did in my twenties. I seem to remember so much less than I used to be able to - I’m constantly surprised at how often someone will describe an event or memory to me that I know technically I was present for but seem to have retained no corporeal memory of, or how vaguely I remember the details of books I read only a few years ago. Having for most of my life prided myself on never forgetting a name or face, more and more frequently these days I find myself introducing myself to someone only to be told that we’ve actually met before. My totally unscientific theory is that our brains - or certainly mine - reaches something like full capacity in our early thirties, and in order for new things to make their way in (as they must - the inexorable march of time etc etc), some of the older stuff has to fall out.
My failing memory aside, this month’s newsletter is something of a grab bag of everything that’s on my mind at the moment: plenty of fashion, of course, as well as quite a few culture recommendations; plus a reader survey (!) to help me get a better idea of who’s reading this newsletter and what to focus it on in 2025 - more on that below. But first:
THINGS OTEGHA UWAGBA FINDS COMMON
Not long after I sent out last month’s newsletter, in which I extolled the joys of Nicky Haslam’s ‘common list’, my friend
(who writes a very fun and interesting newsletter about fashion, culture, and the Internet: Offbrand) sent me the text above, my immediate response to which was my god why has no-one ever asked me this before. So ensued a very enjoyable half hour or so in which we swapped our own suggestions, some* of which I’m now pleased to unveil here for your amusement (and potential derision):Moët champagne
Soho Farmhouse
House of Hackney
Hay (specifically saying “oh it’s from Hay”)
Salt pigs
Tablescaping (please can we just go back to calling it ‘setting the table’)
No bookings restaurants (grow up!)
Gardening
Log burning stoves (too Industrial Revolution)
Patterned tights
*Please note these are simply MY suggestions, Emma’s will (for now) remain safely in the recesses of our Whatsapp chat.
**I have of course had to leave out a few suggestions for the sake of er, preserving relationships shall we say.
What are your thoughts - do you agree? Disagree? Feel free to sound off in the comments - I’m curious to hear other people’s suggestions (and potentially add them to my own list..).
READER SURVEY
It’s safe to say I’ve been a rather reluctant Substack convert. I’ve never been an early adopter of these sorts of platforms anyway, so I resisted it for years (for reasons I outlined in my very first dispatch of this newsletter). I value being properly edited, and frankly I’m a bit of an old-fashioned media snob: I like seeing my work in print, and the cachet of writing for prestige publications, not to mention the wider readership you automatically get. I really had (have?) little desire to run my own self-operated ‘publication’.
That said, a few conversations I’ve had recently about my growing disillusionment with the experience of freelance journalism in the UK have made me start to consider housing more of my writing here. Yes, I know - I’ve finally cottoned on to how other writers have been using Substack for oh, maybe 5+ years now. I did say I’ve never been an early adopter.
For now I’m thinking of adding the occasional think-y-commentary-opinion-y piece into the mix - y’know, thoughts and observations, that kind of thing. It’ll be in addition to, rather than instead of, the fashion stuff - but I’m still weighing it up! And before I go gallivanting down an avenue that deviates from the initial promise of this newsletter, I thought I’d gauge your appetite for said avenue - hence this reader survey.
There are over 14,000 (!) of you subscribed to this newsletter, but I only have a hazy idea of who you actually are, how you discovered my work, why you subscribe to this newsletter, and so on… Literally who ARE you people? Am I correct in assuming many of you came to this Substack because you’re a fan of my journalism/books? Because you were previously subscribed to my culture-focused newsletter of yore, The Roundup? Are you here solely for the clothes? Curious minds would like to know!
It’s a super-short survey - just five tick-box questions (six if you care to leave a comment) and should only take 30 seconds, so please do give it a click.
THE SHOPPIES
I really was not planning on indulging in the Net A Porter Black Friday sale - I can’t think of any items that my wardrobe is desperately missing at the moment (though I’m sure that’ll change soon enough, as it always does). So I was fairly unmoved when a friend texted me a screenshot of that juicy ‘50% off’ homepage a few weeks ago. But then, on a whim, I decided to look for this (nearly sold out but available in a size S here, and an X Small/Medium here) slinky blue Conner Ives shell dress, which I’ve had my eye on since I saw it on the runway earlier this year.
Alas, it is WAY out of my budget, but that Google search also turned up a pair of black jersey Connor Ives trousers with the same shell/waist sash detail that had caught my eye, priced much more affordably in the NAP sale.
At this point I entered what can only be described as a fugue state, and when I came to I found that I’d bought not only the aforementioned trousers (which I know were a good buy because I wore them out to dinner the very same day they arrived), but also the gathered asymmetric cashmere top by The Row I’m wearing in the photo below…
…which I first borrowed for an event last summer and utterly fell in love with, before remembering that my pockets are not full-price-The-Row deep. I was surprised to see it in the NAP sale a full 18 months later (and in my size too!) - it felt like a sign from the universe, one that I had no choice but to heed. No link because I got the last one I’m afraid.
I was also seduced by this grey Acne Studios blazer - plus I’ve actually had ‘grey blazer’ on my wishlist for a while now, so this felt a bit more justifiable - only to find it was sold out in my size. I ordered the closest available size just to see if I could make it work, but it was a pinch too tight when buttoned up, so I returned it. They’ve still got it in a UK4 and UK6 if that’s you, and I can vouch for the quality and construction - I very nearly didn’t send it back.
[EDIT: I literally woke up this morning and sleepily scrolled through my NAP wishlist - priorities - and WEEKS after the blazer was showing as ‘sold out’ in my size, it had come BACK IN STOCK. Patience is a virtue my friends - never settle for something that doesn’t fit 100%. The blazer is currently en route].
I’m not allowed to do any more shopping for a while now as I’ve had quite a lavish month, but if I could, here’s what else I’d be buying from the Net A Porter sale:
These gold Amina Muaddi sandals (50% off); this sheer tulle Christopher Esber top (40% off); this Alighieri hair tie (40% off); and these beige Jil Sander sandals (50% off), which I already own in white so am including solely for you guys [interestingly their ‘sale’ price is basically what I paid for them 3 years ago at ‘full price’. Luxury good price inflation is completely out of control!]
Other recent wardrobe additions:
Turns out when I really like something I take a selfie of it in my bathroom mirror? Here are my favourite new bits.
This 1970s-esque Mother Denim cardigan which I’ve worn basically every single day since I got it last week.
This cream NA-KD jumper (from their collaboration with Camille Charriere) with a very chic shoulder overlap detail punches WAY above its £55 price point IMO.
And this slinky little Paris Georgia top from their Resort ‘25 collection is not for the faint of heart but - fortune favours the bold. I actually took part in a fun campaign to celebrate the launch of their ‘Career Girl’ t-shirt collab with artist Todd Sweeney last month, so I’m wearing rather a lot of (#kindly #gifted) Paris Georgia at the moment:
Expect to see me in their zebra slip skirt (NB: size up) and black bodice top soon.
Other things I’m into this month:
This silver folded pearl ring from jewellery brand Ryenn’s Eyes new collab with artist Quentin Jones, and this recycled plastic tote bag from Japanese brand Puebco.
Five of my favourite outfit posts I’ve saved on Instagram this year:
Greta Lee in Hoda Kova:
Magasin’s
in a Comme Si shirt (although it’s the grey Maria McManus shorts that really make the outfit for me):
This beautiful Sandra Cronan creation:
This Victoria Beckham look:
And this outfit c/o Barbara Martelo:
Some good perfumes:
I recently switched to a new scent, something I only do every few years - I’m not really into chopping and changing perfumes, and tend to just wear the same one constantly until I feel like it’s time for a change. In recent years that’s been Maya Njie’s Tobak; this one by Etat Libre D’Orange (which truthfully I didn’t wear for long, though I’m still glad I own it), and more recently Costa Brazil’s Aroma, which I’ve been a devotee of since it launched 3 years ago. Sadly it’s no longer available in the UK, so I’m saving the little I have left of my remaining bottle for special occasions.
But no matter! Because over the summer I had my head turned by French perfumer Matiere Premiere, and have now adopted Parisian Musc as my go-to scent (their Crystal Saffron is also very good, though not as much as a ‘daily use’ scent). They’re stocked in the basement in Liberty’s if you fancy a trial spritz before you commit.
INTERIORS INTERLUDE
I adore this freaky lopsided melted glass jug/vase I got from Completed Works (I went for acid green for full freakiness but it’s also available in a more neutral clear, as well as magenta). I’m trying to figure out what sort of flowers or foliage to fill it with - I want to capitalise on its slightly off-kilter vibe, maybe go a bit ikebana y’know?
Anyway. I really like Completed Work’s glassware range in general - it feels really original, and different from most of the other homeware on the market right now.
I recently subscribed to interior design maestro
’s new Substack. Wearstler’s services (and general aesthetic) are far beyond anything I will ever be able to afford in this lifetime or the next, but I love looking at pictures of her completed projects all the same. Her new newsletter covers architecture, design, fashion and her various influences, and is a more affordable (free, actually) way of accessing the mind of one of the world’s leading interior designers.You’re probably already familiar with East London Cloth (I consider them singlehandedly responsible for reviving the cafe curtain trend in the UK these past few years), but you might not be as familiar with CC Moulton, their recently launched sister brand specialising in premium fabrics and furniture:
Think sumptuous mid-century/1970s Italianate fabrics - it’s all rich taffetas, moire silks and ornate tassels. I intend to make use of this woven ikat fabric just as soon as I work out exactly where best to incorporate it into my flat.
THE ROUNDUP
READING
I soaked up every single word of this excellent New York Times profile of ballet dancer and artist Mikhail Baryshnikov, in which journalist Jason Diamond poses (and answers) the question: ‘Is Mikhail Baryshnikov the Last of the Highbrow Superstars?’
Aside from being brilliantly written, it gave me some much-needed context for the extent of Baryshnikov’s fame, and the scope of his legacy. Sure I was aware that he’d been something of a stunt casting as Aleksandr Petrovsky/The Russian in Sex And The City - albeit a very competent one - but until I read this article I hadn’t truly grasped the extent of his pre-SATC fame, nor the acclaim he’d garnered for his work. As Diamond writes, “At its peak, his fame was comparable to a pop star’s at the dawn of the music-video era. I was a child in the 1980s, I told him, and I could remember hearing about him before I become aware of, say, Madonna or Prince.” I sure as shit didn’t know that.
I find his single-minded focus on making art for art’s sake (as opposed to for money, fame or simply to sell things) deeply inspirational, as well as a little envy-inspiring - the article deftly examines the (near) impossibility of following the same route in today’s cultural and economic climate, and left me feeling a little nostalgic for a cultural landscape that I was born several decades too late to experience.
I’ve included a couple of my favourite quotes from the article below (though I implore you to read it in full!):
Today, to have achieved this level of fame by dancing in a revival of “Apollo,” or in a ballet Jerome Robbins created specifically for you to Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, seems unlikely at best. But Baryshnikov arrived at a very specific time — between the period when people like Leonard Bernstein or Maria Callas could be household names and novelists were regular guests on the country’s biggest talk shows and the era when the nation became obsessed with very new kinds of celebrity. Baryshnikov is a highbrow superstar, and possibly one of the last we will ever see.
(this bit made me laugh):
When I asked if he paid any attention to social media platforms like TikTok — where young people post and analyze clips from his best-known dance performances, explaining his technique and his accomplishments — he gave me a look that defied the idea that there are no stupid questions.
Like Baryshnikov, [musician Laurie Anderson] is the rare artist who has experienced transcending the avant-garde to seize mainstream attention — something she finds difficult to imagine happening to many people these days. “There are a hundred times more artists now,” she says. “Everybody is screaming for attention, it’s incredibly corporate and it’s really speedy.”
Another excellent read that’s been on my mind lately is the New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka on The Banality of Online Recommendation Culture. Oh the irony of sharing an essay that effectively argues against the existence of newsletters such as this one! I assure you it isn’t lost on me. But it’s a perceptive and thought-provoking read, with lots of good insights - I particularly liked his theory that ‘taste’ is “the new dominant commodity”. A few other quotes that jumped out at me include:
By sharing your taste online, you can develop cultural capital. As Bainbridge put it, “Making the right recommendation comes with clout.”
…the recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations…
E-mail newsletters encourage a kind of benign narcissism: in the quest to fill readers’ inboxes, authors resort to sharing the latest books they’ve read, albums they’ve listened to, and podcasts whose opinions they’ve adopted.”
Did it poke at some of the uncomfortable questions I often ask myself about the value of Substack as an exercise? Why yes. Do I plan to stop sharing my recommendations and thoughts with you guys? For now… no.
I also really enjoyed fashion critic Rosalind Jana’s ‘year in fashion’ article for Art Review, and her thoughts on why the fashion industry just feels a bit all over the place lately:
“Labels are not the tastemakers they once were. In fact, taste is now acquired from so many sources that the only way to keep up is to position oneself not just as a purveyor of clothes or cosmetics but as a mascot of deeper cultural richness. The scale of fashion’s cultural engagement right now reads like a frantic land grab; an attempt to both justify and protect various brands’ continued existence by infiltrating more areas of life, extending the reach one Miu Miu bookmark at a time.”
Book-wise, a lot of the reading I’m doing at the moment is for research purposes so I won’t bore you with those, but for “pleasure”, I’m currently reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, which was recommended to me recently.
I’d never heard of it before (which is my bad - it was a #1 NYT bestseller AND won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2019), and I initially didn’t think it would be for me. The blurb describes it as “a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world” which sounds grand and all, but isn’t a subject I’d have been drawn to if left to my own devices. And yet! I’m finding it very compelling so far (I’m a third of the way through - it’s a bit of a doorstopper at 600 pages), and eager to see where it takes me. I’ll report back in a future newsletter.
Otherwise, I’ve resolved to spend the next few months clearing the absolute STACK of books currently living on my bedside tables before I allow a single new book to darken my doorstep. I bought so many books this autumn, and have a terrible habit of dropping whatever I’m reading to start reading the latest arrival, putting the unfinished book on my bedside “for later”. There are currently around 7 or 8 such books languishing in my bedroom, through no fault of their own, and my first 2025 resolution is to finish them all. I shall report back on the best of the bunch in due course (current residents include Free Love by Tessa Hadley, The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, and Capital by John Lancaster - they’re mostly backlist, with the exception of an advance copy of Ordinary Love by Marie Rutoski, a big hype-y literary novel out next summer that I’ve been assured I’ll love).
My pal Claire - owner of East London’s famous Violet Cakes bakery - has just opened a new cafe inside the Alaïa London flagship store of all places (!), which I’m very excited to go check out ASAP. Not just because it looks fuuucking cool (you know I love a stainless steel kitchen), but because it’s part of a new space that also contains a “library-like” bookstore curated by Claire de Rouen Books, a decades-old haven of rare art, photography and fashion books. Read all about it on Wallpaper.
LISTENING
JMSN - this album came out last year, but I only discovered it a few weeks ago. I’ve had it on heavy rotation ever since.
Mustafa - a singer who featured heavily in my Spotify Wrapped this year, I first discovered his folk-ish music after a chance meeting at a friend’s dinner party earlier this year. I’ve been enthralled ever since.
Duval Timothy - a composer and producer for the likes of Kendrick Lamar, this artist was also a major player on my Spotify Wrapped this year, probably because whenever I sit down to write I immediately put on his music and just listen to it over and over again… I genuinely think I’ve developed some kind of Pavlovian response to it now. It’s the perfect soundtrack for writing to (or for doing any work that requires deep focus) as I can’t listen to music with actual lyrics when I’m trying to concentrate - but even then, I still want something sonically interesting to listen to, as opposed to some anodyne ‘lo-fi studio beats’ background music. Duval Timothy’s work fits the bill perfectly.
WATCHING
Conclave (out now)
Haven’t seen this yet, but I’ve been on board ever since I saw a tweet describing it as ‘like if Real Housewives was set in the Vatican’, which made me laugh a lot. A nice gossip-y but still prestige film, featuring mega talents like Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes being slyly competitive… what’s not to like?? I’m planning a solo cinema date this week the second my OOO goes on.
Babygirl (out Jan 10)
I’ve watched this trailer more times than I care to admit in a public forum. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
That’s all for today folks - see you in the New Year. Don’t forget to fill out the reader survey!
When I click on the survey link, it takes me to your substack homepage - if you're able to relink here I'm happy to fill it out!