Four months into Substack and things are going great

Plus, your questions answered

Happy new year, and welcome back to the real world! I hope you had a great time ringing in the end of 2023 and that your hangover was mild, or at least manageable. 

I’m not normally a big new years’ resolution guy, but in 2024 I’m making an active effort to be more calm. After the past year of war, crisis and the rest of it, I’m frazzled. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to stay motivated, and have broken so much stuff at home, because when I’m overwhelmed, I’m clumsy. So, while I mourn the loss of my measuring jug (RIP), the lid for my rice cooker (gone too soon) and my favorite Our Legacy knit (losing that guy hurts), I’m starting the year with an intention to cultivate a more peaceful mind.

This week’s post is going to be a little different from my usual content — I’m going to be first taking a look back on what I got up to in 2023, and then I’ll be answering questions that some of my paid subscribers sent me over the holiday period (that bit will be behind the paywall).

I’ve been on Substack for four months now, and it’s been such a pleasure to see how willing people are to pay for content that they care about. Being able to support myself entirely from my own writing is the dream here, so thank you so much to everyone who’s started a paid subscription.

As I mentioned in my introduction post, this newsletter is a space for me to go deeper into the issues I care about — sustainability, consumerism and greenwashing in fashion, and what we can about them. These are some of the most pressing and urgent issues facing the industry today, and I’m often amazed at just how little people understand them, despite the endless articles on sustainability and the scary headlines from climate scientists. 

The industry is a complicated, tangled mess, and I find that even sustainability professionals often struggle to make sense of it all. The big focus of my writing is helping people come to terms with fashion in this age of crisis and turmoil, to show them the forest from the trees, so to speak. Whether you’re a fashion professional, student, activist, or just someone who cares about what they wear and the future of the world, then there’s something interesting for you here. If you haven’t already, do consider a paid subscription — that’s the only way to read every one of the articles I publish here, and the only way I can continue writing them, too.

Another beauty of Substack is that the newsletter format gives you space to let words go wherever they want to go. Since I launched in September, I’ve been following all sorts of interesting leads.

I looked into the dynamics behind fashion’s obscene luxury prices and the broken economics of Black Friday. 

I pondered contemporary shopping habits, writing about how we should all consider the power of ”trading up” and how we should be wary of too much branding. 

I got deep into sustainability issues, examining the huge potential of a new renewable energy fund which H&M is a part of, and looking at what Ganni does right. 

I also did my bit to get people hyped up on good things, making the case for new solutions and new perspectives — like The Fashion Act, a piece of legislation I’m campaigning on, which I believe has the potential to create a truly sustainable industry. And as the year drew to a close, I dropped a piece on why we need to get over the fact that fashion kinda sucks right now (we’ve got bigger things to worry about than boring cruise collections). 

Finally, I hit 10,000 sales on my debut book! Apparently that’s a lot (I’m still very new to this publishing stuff). Self-publishing has been such a great decision, and I’m pretty convinced that the freedom to do my book the way I wanted to do it has been a huge factor in its success. This year, it got a shout out from Tyler the Creator (who didn’t tag me, but whatever) and has been sold in some amazing shops, like Voo, Tres Bien, Mast, McNally Jackson, and even my favorite museum on earth, the gorgeous Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. 

My appearance on the Business of Fashion podcast ended up being their second highest performing episode of the year, just behind some guy called Pharrell who works for Louis Vuitton (check out my face next to his on the BoF Instagram, lol). All in all, the book is going great, and before you ask, yes I’m working on a second one.

And now, answering questions from my paid subscribers. First time ever doing this, so thanks to everyone who sent something over! It’s always super interesting to hear what’s on my readers’ minds.