A Chaotic Newsletter & Summer Wear

Next to zero editing here

I owe you a newsletter and the following are notes I’ve been taking for the last month. It’s barely edited and the through line is… loose. Also, my suggestions on what to wear when it’s hot. If the opposite of polished is tarnished then we can consider this newsletter a sterling candlestick that’s been sitting in an attic for two generations.

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I’ve been thinking about the history and why of consumerism and am working on a theory that the war (the first one) propelled us into this frothing state of more is more. Then I googled it and I was right!!! We had the opportunity, as a political/economic system, after WWI to experience a steady-state economy (as in, we work a humanely fair amount, everyone makes enough money and still has free time to do whatever their dream of not-work is) and the capitalists were like, “No. Make them make more stuff and want more stuff so our consumer appetites are insatiable.” Sigh.

Here, read this: a brief history of consumer culture: “It was an idea also put forward by the new “consumption economists” such as Hazel Kyrk and Theresa McMahon, and eagerly embraced by many business leaders. New needs would be created, with advertising brought into play to “augment and accelerate” the process. People would be encouraged to give up thrift and husbandry, to value goods over free time. Kyrk argued for ever-increasing aspirations: “a high standard of living must be dynamic, a progressive standard,” where envy of those just above oneself in the social order incited consumption and fueled economic growth.”

There’s a reason “thrift” is just now shedding its negative connotation status. When I started working in resale (2018) I was still meeting people that never wore secondhand. Once, I had a conversation with a self-admitted shopaholic (she had piles of Shein packages in her apartment that sat unopened for months because she was addicted to the thrill of shopping, not the actual procuring of clothing. It was fascinating!) where she told me she couldn’t buy vintage because of its smell. She’s not entirely wrong but dry cleaning and laundry do work. A prime example of blindly following societally enforced desires for aspirational accruement. I think about her all the time.