Welcome to Ordinary Delusions

I'm rebranding / pivoting / changing / growing this newsletter

I started this newsletter because I wanted (/needed) a side hustle. I was never great at picking up freelance work, even years after I’d quit my Highsnobiety job, and I was getting tired of periodically freaking out when money wasn’t coming in. Substack was getting a lot of hype at the time — although not as much as it is now — and doing a newsletter seemed like a good way of building a more reliable income stream. And I loved the idea of being able to write more.

I knew nothing about building a newsletter business, and assumed it would work out just fine if I continued the themes and format from my first book. So I started writing opinion pieces with a big focus on sustainability and greenwashing in the fashion industry. I didn’t even give the newsletter a name. It was an experiment — would people pay for my writing, would I like doing it, could it be an actual source of income for me? The answer to all of those was yes, and it wasn’t long before I was able to pay my rent and health insurance with my writing here.

But I started getting tired of making the same points over and over again (reform the fashion industry, buy less and buy better, etc. etc.). I’m a pretty wide reader, and that’s a big reason my book worked so well. I threw a lot of stuff into the mix — insights from therapy, a quote from Karl Marx and a little anecdote about my favorite hardcore band. I am interested in much more than just fashion, and as time goes on and the industry continues to stagnate, it’s getting harder to imagine a future where that’s all I do.

So it’s time for new way of working, with a new direction and a much bigger vision for the future of my work here. I’m rebranding.

From today, this newsletter is called Ordinary Delusions.

It’s about the huge, unspoken paradoxes that lie in the background of life in the 21st century. We all know they’re there, but we rarely talk about them or try to understand them.

—> Modern life feels empty and overwhelming at the same time

—> We know shopping is bad…but we still like it

—> Work sucks but we all want to be someone

—> The future looks so dark but what are we really doing about it

These contradictions will be at the heart of my writing. Ordinary Delusions is a roadmap for how we can flourish in a world where quality of life, prosperity, mental health and hope for a better future are all under threat.

Fashion will still be a big part of my work! It’s impossible to ignore the industry as a force in culture, and like every other corner of society, it’s going through a lot. There’s the growing conflict between Trumpism and more ethical ways of doing business, the collapse of multi-brand retail, insane luxury prices, unbearable pressure on independent brands, low wages and the industry’s continued failure to account for its impact on the planet. And despite it all, there are still so many brands out there making great clothes. I am really excited to continue my work critiquing the industry and seeing how (if?) it breaks out of the bizarre place it’s in.

What makes fashion so interesting to me is that it holds up a mirror: it’s about how we see ourselves and how we spend our money, but it’s also about how our personal lives are shaped by the workings of capitalism. These are themes I will be returning to again and again in my work here.

But it’s important to be transparent with everyone reading this that this space will be changing. I want to make sure you know what’s happening here so that you can still feel like you’re getting value out of my writing, especially if you have a paid subscription.

The story we were told growing up is that the world is on a steady upward trajectory, that slowly but surely, capitalism and technology and democracy will fix all our problems. We will grow up and work the jobs of our dreams, make loads of money and own fabulous property. Our kids’ lives will be even better. Clearly, that’s not what’s happening. Life in the 21st century has so far given us climate meltdown, fascist politics, burnout jobs and unaffordable rent. The dream we were sold does not seem to be coming true, and that’s what the name Ordinary Delusions is about.

The name change is just a facelift — none of my old content is going away. You’ll find me at the same url as before (alecleach.substack.com), and your subscription details won’t change either. What will be changing is the content I write about. A phrase I keep coming back to is thriving in an apocalypse (IDK, it just came into my head one day and now it won’t leave). That’s how I’d sum up what I’m trying to do here.

The next few weeks of content will be completely free. I will be starting with a series of stories on how my own life and career has been disrupted by technology, politics and the economy. After that, I’ll be switching back to a cycle of free and paid content. I’ll be posting once per week, but I am hoping to increase that to twice a week later in the year.

It’s a deeply complicated, confusing and scary time to be a human being. But it’s also a time for new ideas, new ways of moving through the world. This is another theme I will return to often.

I’m a little bit scared, but very excited about taking this new path forward and I hope you’ll join me on it.

Oh and the mascot for this page is this funky lil’ sun I found in a zine I had lying around my apartment. No real reason, I just think he just looks cool.

See you next week, and thanks for sticking around.