Maybe we don’t need star designers

+ big shifts in the media landscape, excellent substacks

by Toa Heftiba

It’s been a little of a year since I started this newsletter. Honestly, this whole write newsletters and ask people to pay for them business is so new that I didn’t know what to expect. But after a year examining fashion’s many, many problems and how they connect with the broader world we live in, I’m very happy to say that Substack is now paying my rent and health insurance. This is good!

And as I wrote a month-ish ago, I’m thinking bigger about what this space could be. Widening the scope to talk about all the other issues and ideas I have floating around in the back of my mind. The awesome thing about fashion, and the reason it’s kept me interested for so long, is that it touches on so many aspects of modern life. Fashion is about clothes, yes, but it also asks very big questions about what it means to be human. Who do we want to be? How do we spend our money? How do we live our lives? And how are those things influenced by the world we live in? 

The Bigger Picture is a semi-regular series looking at these questions, but from a wider perspective — it’s about the world we live in, not just fashion. 

This week, we’ve got: 

— Nick Cave and “spiritual renovation” 

— How the famous designer industrial complex is bad for fashion

— Big shifts in the media landscape

— Important perspectives on the super storms battering the East Coast 

— Shout outs to other writers doing important work

They say that amateurs crave affirmation, but professionals crave criticism, and that’s exactly the case for me. If this piece is or isn’t hitting for whatever reason, let me know — you can reply to this email or leave a comment on the desktop version.

Let’s get into it.