At the end of October, I hit the pause button on this newsletter, for a few reasons. The first was that I needed time and headspace to work on my next book, and the second was that I needed time and headspace to plan a bigger and more ambitious future for my work here. That was almost three months ago, and now that 2025 is well and truly underway it feels like the right time to send out a quick update on where I’m at.
Me and my girlfriend are spending the month in London. We had the opportunity to stay here rent-free for a while, and I’ve been in Berlin for over ten years now, and sometimes I miss the UK and all its bullshit (and there is so much bullshit here). You really feel like you’re in the center of the universe here, for better and for worse. The consumerism is both inescapable and tedious (almost everything here is a shop, and almost all of them are a Sainsbury’s Local), the city is enormous and epic and diverse and filled with amazing food. You can really feel how neoliberalism weighs on the British psyche — everyone is preoccupied, squeezing in a run on their lunchbreaks, staring into their phones on the street and taking work calls on the bus. I love it here, but my heart knows it belongs in Berlin.
Now, an update on the second book. I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m working on a follow-up to The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes, but I haven’t said much more than that. With wildfires swallowing Los Angeles, this feels like the right moment to say that it will be about the climate emergency, and how we can come to terms with our own role in it.
I was originally going to write something about greenwashing, but the big bad thing that happened in America last November changed all that — I don’t think the world’s biggest polluters are going to even pretend they give a shit during a second Trump administration.
The LA fires, and the 40 trillion gallons of water that Hurricane Helene dumped on the east coast before it, are a sign that the climate emergency has truly landed in the rich world, after years of death and destruction in the Global South. The next few years are going to bring climate into much sharper focus. It’s not this scary thing happening in the future anymore. It’s in the here and now. This raises some big, important questions about who we think we are, and who we want to be. Is this really our fault? Can we do anything about it, when one person’s actions are so small? These are difficult things to wrestle with and they will be at the heart of my writing.
Clearly, this is a little different to what I usually write about here, which brings me to my next point: where this newsletter is headed. I’ve mentioned this here and there as well, but in the future this space will be expanding to include more than just fashion and sustainability. Honestly, my connections to the industry have slowly weakened since I left my Highsnobiety job — it’s been a long time since I was a regular at Paris, and there was never much of an industry in Berlin to begin with. I read, think and talk about much more than fashion, and any writer will tell you that their work is strongest when it’s most clearly reflecting their own passions.
Fashion will still be at the heart of what I’m writing. The turmoil gripping the industry won’t be solved any time soon (Y/Project shutting down sucks), and neither will its enormous impact on the planet. I am still part of the coalition of people and orgs aligning around The Fashion Act, and we are back this year trying to get this groundbreaking piece of legislation passed in the New York State Assembly. If you want to be a part of that fight, find out more here or just drop a comment down below.
But I will be bringing other things into this space as well. I’ve already dipped my toes into new ideas here and there — like last year’s pieces on neoliberalism and toxic positivity. A common theme throughout my work — both my book and the words I write here — is how we can make sense of the many awful and intersecting crises unfolding around us, how they shape the way we live, and what we can do to thrive in the midst of so much turmoil. I feel like this space will be so much stronger if I expand my vision for what my writing is about — and honestly, I need to be writing about more than just fashion.
So in 2025 you can expect my coverage of the New Clothes Industrial Complex to continue, but the bigger themes behind my work will only get bigger.
I’ll be spending the next month on my book, and I will be back writing weekly here from the middle of February.
Thanks for sticking around <3
Alec
Looking forward to reading what comes next for you both in your book and on Substack.
looking forward! 🫶🏻