Feed Me the Opulent Tips

Very few things are cool. Lorde's return is an exception.

Hello, Feed Me Readers, and this is the Jiminy Glick to Emily’s Martin Short: Rachel Tashjian. I’m the fashion critic at The Washington Post, where I write profiles of fashion people and explain the news and, of course, pen criticism. Since 2020, I’ve been writing a fashion and shopping newsletter called Opulent Tips that I send out via my gmail. You have to chase me down on email or DM me to get on the list. It has (accidentally, I assure you) become a whole thing.

I’ve spent this week with fascinating writers: a reading (also discussed by fellow Feed Me stand-in

Natasha Stagg

) featuring Judith Thurman, Rhonda Garelick and a new writer I’m over the moon about, Enzo Escober. The next evening, my very chic and witty friend Caryn Zucker had me for dinner along with Amy Chua,

Tina Brown

, Marie Brenner, Arianna Huffington and a few others. That dinner – unfortunately for you, and delightfully for me – was off the record.

But let’s get on the record – literally – and talk about Lorde’s album rollout. I like Lorde because she’s a pop auteur; she has good taste in literature and artists (my friend Sam McKinniss painted the “Melodrama” cover, and this was back before Sam was in J.Crew ads and getting his house photographed for Vogue). She’s introspective but not a narcissist – the quality of many great female poets (though of course, as a perennial taker of selfies, I’ll defend narcissism til the bitter end).

Charli XCX reinvented the pop star promo last summer. She turned marketing – forever the bane of the record business and something that, in her surprise album drops and aversion to traditional interviews, Beyoncé had appeared to kill stone dead – into a sort of performance art, not fussing about her cover design and releasing remixes over and over, which seemed to laugh in the face of all the contemporary (consultant?) wisdom that the only way to earn attention is through direct, concise, one-time messaging. Charli asserted that sloppy, quick and arrogant could feel epic.

Now it seems Charli has handed the “Brat” baton over to Lorde. Or she’s taken it up. (Or both.) Lorde did a classic Instagram wipe earlier this month but then began a sensual crusade of totally intimate, almost primal single teasing: a messy clip of her walking and listening to the new song (called “What Was That”); a call-out in her newsletter for us to text her, which (if you went through a slightly complicated signup process) was followed by a stream of voice memos (“Oh my god, I’m so glad I finally have your number,” she exclaimed in the first one). Earlier this week, she did a surprise … concert? Dance party? Hosted at Washington Square Park – the anti-Times Square, practically tourist-free, where dudes play chess and even the dogs are a bit cynical, and which is probably the one place where Larry Clark filmed skateboarders and skateboarders still hang out. The cops shut the party down, but Lorde eventually appeared, and the accompanying video for the song, which finally dropped last night, ends with footage of her dancing and lip syncing at the event

Lorde - What Was That

She’s also made some changes to her creative team: She’s now working with Terrence O’Connor, the visionary who helped make “Brat” such a marketing success (I believe the Brat wall was his idea). She’s got Taylor McNeill – the cucumber cool genius who put Kendrick in that Martine Rose jacket and little Celine bootcut jeans for the Super Bowl, and did Chalamet’s Bob Dylan cosplay – styling her. Photographer Talia Chetrit, who is making those sublime and nasty images for Phoebe Philo, made her drenched-face single art.

“It’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written, ever produced,” Lorde said in a post-shower voice note she sent out last night. “The video is so sick. It’s just different this time. You’ll see. I love you so much.”

The mood is nostalgic – maybe for Covid-era partying? Much of which happened in Washington Square Park – and the line “I remember saying that this is the best cigarette of my life” is a classic.

So is it Lorde Summer – intimate, casual and elegantly DIY after 2024’s “Brat”-big and epic? (We don’t know the album title yet, but will AOC and Bernie, on their Fighting Oligarchy tour, proclaim that they’re having “a WWT summer”?)

I think it’s cool (and I think very few things are cool) and I love the song.

But what do you think? And where does Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour fit into this?

If you were at my dining room table tonight for a dinner party, we’d be eating my husband’s rabbit pot pie and I’d ask you about:

• Anyone else feeling cautiously optimistic about this year’s Met Gala? I received the catalogue this weekend and it’s absolutely dazzling. Photographer Tyler Mitchell’s images are so beautiful they moved me to tears. And there’s terrific subsidiary programming: a pre-party hosted by Doechii, Tyler and Law Roach; a concert at the Guggenheim put together by Grace Wales Bonner; and an after-party courtesy of Will Welch and Andre 3000. I can tell you from working at both the most fashion-y of fashion publications and a daily newspaper based in a city that often describes itself as anti-fashion that the Met Gala is generally how the larger public forms its ideals of celebrity beauty and glamour. (And I think celebrities look very bad these days.) Jeremy O. Harris, Ayo Edebiri and Dandy Wellington in perfect suits? Could be a gamechanger.

• Two of the most turbo shoppers I know, Harper’s Bazaar digital director Lynette Nylander and i-D’s global editorial director Steff Yotka, are telling me this summer is all about “sheer underpinnings: big loose things not in a Billie Eilish way or a nap dress way. BIG SILKY FLOWY MINIMALIST ARMANI LAYERS TRANSPARENCY,” Steff wrote, and Lynette added: “Sheeeer yes. Desert vintage has a [Comme des Garcons] lumps and bumps jacket that’s black and sheer that is really refreshing”

• But we’re not to Memorial Day yet. So: This morning I texted the god of fashion Instagram, Ralph Rucci, for a favorite chic spring memory to share with you all as seasonal inspiration, and he hasn’t texted me back yet. If I had to guess, he’s probably having a seance with Halston under a mink blanket in his gorgeous apartment and won’t look at his phone until noon, but I’ll let you know on Instagram stories if I hear back.

• My fashion writing appears among some of the best feature writing on politics and the arts in America. Here’s Kara Vogt (the reporter who got the Jill Biden sit down) on the Easter Egg Roll, Helena Andrews-Dyer with the ultimate Ryan Coogler interview, Maura Judkis on the phone with the woman behind Trump’s executive order to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and Jesús Rodríguez with the only thing you need to read about the Fight Oligarchy tour. No one makes me laugh more than Shane O’Neill, who writes our Style Memo newsletter. Subscribe!

• And don’t forget to preorder my colleague Robin Givhan’s book on Virgil Abloh. I read it last month and thought, This is so good that I wonder if all other fashion writers just give up? (And she’s not even technically covering fashion anymore!)

• Why are so many celebrities (Katy Perry, Lizzo, Taylor Swift) stuck in a 2017 concept of feminism?

• When will someone profile Scott Galloway? Cable news loves to have him opine with a left-y spin on curing male loneliness;

  Taylor Lorenz
  says he’s a misogynist. What’s up with that?

• Does the left need its own

  The Free Press
  ? Who would run it?

• Was Lucas Zwirner really Harold Bloom’s favorite student?

• When did the deep plane facelift become the facelift?

• There are two kinds of New Yorkers, whether they’ve been to these places or not: Hillstone New Yorkers, and Le Veau d’Or New Yorkers. (And if you think you’re “both” – aww, so cute – you’re just Hillstone)

• Speaking of restaurants and identity politics: No one seems to have sent a food critic to Butterworth’s – yet!

• Contemporary Paris culture/aesthetics are actually really corny. Discuss.