Why Do We Brand the Summer?
And yet, lately, it feels like we're living through an era where we don't feel comfortable rewarding the risk it takes to be directional. The gravitational pull of the safe and familiar means it's rarer for brands to stick their necks out and actually lead with a strong vision. Instead, they play it safe. Brands and countless DTC startups are seemi... See more
Eugene Kan • The Interests of the Founder vs. the Audience in Building a Brand
We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves.
Katherine May • Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
It is officially the first day of fall. The leaves may have barely begun to turn, but, as Charlotte Mendelson reminds us, “ ’Tis the season of mist, nature’s Photoshop; trenchcoats; barley; licensed melancholy; munificence; and glorious rot.” It is a time when new growth ceases and gardens begin to wilt and shrivel. “After the
... See moreIt was hard to believe that it was the beginning of July, not the end of summer. I thought: is summer only a state of mind? Is it always only two months long from whenever you start it?
Elaine Dundy • The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics)
And in the humid ever-summer I dare his picturing mind not to go back to the shout of color, to the clean rasp of frosty air, to the smell of pine wood burning and the caressing warmth of kitchens. For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?
John Steinbeck • Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
What we’re dealing with is a full-blown cultural moment. The 20-year nostalgia cycle, climate-change nihilism, information saturation, streaming-era content overload, and our collective Long COVID of the soul have converged in a tidal wave of tackiness. What TikTok teens, white collar workers marooned in home offices, and the gatekept super-rich al... See more