Making out and eating pizza with J.Crew

It's a good lifestyle to embody this fall.

Today’s letter is free, and brought to you by J.Crew.

Good morning everyone. I am slightly hungover from an unnecessary (but fun!) extra glass of wine last night at Gage & Tollner. Last night, we had a Feed Me book club for paid readers in Brooklyn — thank you everyone who came, and talked about sex, divorce, and dating in New York. I’ve been drinking Magna every time I drink but I ran out…

The best September issue cover belongs to..J.Crew.

J.Crew’s iconic catalog ceased production in 2017, but in a genius marketing move they’ve brought it back. You might be wondering why the brand would spend so much time, money, and production on an analog advertising strategy, but I need to point out a few things. Erika wrote an ode to the characters in the catalog back in May — it blew up on Substack. The @lostjcrew account on Instagram has over 80k followers. The comment section on a recent Sprezza post about J.Crew catalogs is a study in the brand itself — one of them reads:

“Love how almost all of these are outdoors. In the city, at the beach, on a boat; it’s a stark contrast to today. How many brands today are doing their look books / ads against a colored background or a wall with a chair and side table against it? Most of them? I understand that there’s pros to doing it that way but a lot of these older photo books showed you their clothing in action, worn out and about while doing things that pertained to the brands legacy. J Crew was a lifestyle brand and as such the ads reflected that at a time where people weren’t glued to their phones. Look books were reflecting what people did: living life doing things. Today it’s all about a fit pic in a mirror so it’s no surprise we get look books with guys just standing there in a pose; it’s reflective of what people are doing today.”

Brand loyalists in the J.Crew Passport Program will get an issue of the catalog straight to their mailbox, but you can also grab a copy in-store, or request one online. I guess you could also steal your neighbors copy if you see it in your vestibule, but I wouldn’t recommend that on the record (although it’s tempting). 

So now you understand why the medium is important. But let’s get to the message.

The first thing you’ll notice about the J.Crew Fall 2024 cover (the one I received – there are four collectible versions in circulation) is Demi Moore’s long dark hair, surrounding one of the coolest faces in Hollywood. Inside, an interview with the actor reveals that she has been collecting J.Crew pieces for decades, and her collection includes everything from work boots to oversized sweaters. She even discusses the big secret of her industry: they all live in two worlds. The one that plays out on the red carpet, and the one that happens on the grass.

The issue also contains photos that are purely for the campaign – it’s up to the reader to make up their stories. The group of strangers (or have they known each other forever?) who ended up in a beach house together. The couple who can’t keep their hands off each other in Central Park. And one of my favorites, a two-page spread of varying J.Crew tags from 1983 to today. 

The issue also features:

• 5 dogs

• 1 slice of New York pizza

• 2 makeouts

• 10 barn jackets (I got this one)

• 1 boat, 1 truck, and 1 taxi — the proper ratio of transportation in one’s life

This sweater hasn’t come off my shoulders this week, I wore these heels to my meeting with my money guy on Park Avenue last week and walked out of the office learning that subscription businesses file taxes differently, and this is the shirt I’m wearing at the top of the letter.

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Miranda July answered your questions!

Last night, a group of paid Feed Me readers joined me and my friend Krithika in the (beautiful…) garden behind Warby Parker in Boerum Hill to discuss Miranda July’s All Fours. I was going to try to record our conversation, but decided to keep our conversations off-the-record.

Earlier this summer, some of you submitted questions for Miranda that she kindly took the time to answer, so I have those for you today. Cool for those of you who read the book, perhaps interesting for those of you who want to learn more about writing a “book of the summer.”

Thank you everyone who took photos last night -- I was too excited and forgot to.

How has she approached the question of “so…how much of this book is your real experience?” - does it bug her? Does she understand the inclination or resent people for asking? 

A. I knew there would be this question (I would have the same question as a reader) and I thought, Well rather than resent the conflation and work overtime to make an overt distinction between me and the narrator, perhaps I could share a few details of my position with her. Maybe that’s a more fun way to address this problem, to use it as a tool to help tell the fictional story, to add a little energy. I thought of it like I was generously loaning some parts of myself to my narrator and then doing whatever the hell I wanted with her. 

Whenever I’m reading “auto fiction” (currently If You’re A Girl by Ann Rower)  I love thinking This isn’t just some made-up writerly bullshit, this person lived to tell the tale!  I wanted that sense of truth and though I knew it had to be fiction, that’s my bag, I also wanted to communicate to the reader that I wasn’t just safely dreaming up tall tales from my cozy armchair — in my own (more complex, more real-life) way I, too, was in the depths.

Does the personal nature of people’s responses to the book change her own perception of the work? 

A. I do see the book a little differently now but maybe this always happens when the readers finish the book. I guess because it’s only the readers who can place it in now, a shared now — try as you might, you can’t do that as just one person. These responses, these stories of how the book has intersected with the reader’s specific lives, is what I hoped for every day of those four years of writing and living and feeling so alone, but placing all my bets on the hunch that I wasn’t alone.

The motel room setting was SOOO well written and juicy and fun. I loved the details of the tile, the scent, etc etc. what was the inspiration behind having a setting play such a big part in the book? it's almost like another character. and i would genuinely love to know what the most fun part of writing this book was...torment obviously plays a big role in the plot but it seems like a fun book to write (hope this isn't too earnest and dumb, haha)

A. It was fun to decorate the hotel room, to write those scenes. I had never done anything like that in real life and it seemed indulgent, like a pleasure I had given myself  — that was the initial impetus, nothing deeper. It was only much later (yesterday?) that I thought Ohhh….she’s making a home. And maybe it’s a book about making a home, a life for yourself that is so specific that it actually makes no sense to anyone else and doesn’t have to.  If I had known I was doing that at the start I probably wouldn’t have done it, it would have seemed like hard, painful work that I didn’t have a clue about. Sometimes maybe it’s best, in art and writing, to be as dumb as possible, follow the joy, because at the very least that's real. And there, you’ve taken the first step towards the truth. 

Remember the scene when they have a brunch for Caro? That’s the only scene where that small character talks and I remember being so surprised by her voice and the things she said, such that it was very easy to write the narrator being taken by surprise. That was fun to write. The tampon scene was too. I wrote that scene bit by bit over about four days, like building a tower that you hope won’t fall before you’re done. 

I listened to the entire All Fours audiobook in 2 days, was hooked. What was the approach to recording it? On the one hand it’s just a straight reading of the book, but the performance of certain scenes felt so considered, and the vocal changes for the different characters was so fun.

A. A thing I did with All Fours that I had never done before was that for the final three drafts -- the stage where you are just making tiny (but I would say important) changes — I read the whole book aloud. To no one; just alone in my studio, about 50 pages a day. I didn’t give great performances or anything, I just read like this so that I didn’t miss anything. Like if it didn’t roll off the tongue, I paused to study why that was, if it was worth it. 

I remember telling the producer beforehand that “I always read very deadpan, I don’t do voices.” But then about thirty minutes in, I stopped mid-sentence and said from the booth “Hold on — have I been doing voices?? This is a big problem because I can’t keep this up, and how will I come up with new voices for each new character?!” But it was too late now, I didn’t want to have to go back to the start, and also…the voices were just coming. Not like big actor-y characters (I mean, you tell me actually; I'm just going off memory here) but each character’s voice seemed fairly obvious. Maybe from those three times reading it aloud. 

What was pinned to the “garage wall” when you worked on this project? Other than the wedding portrait (I read the New Yorker piece). 

A. I don’t actually have a lot of visual stuff around when I’m writing fiction. The wedding portrait…that’s the cover of an iBook that the journalist spied, but that shelf is a bit of a time capsule. Actually the whole studio is in a way, a place I’ve worked for 20 years but don’t spend a lot of time decorating. But during those four years of writing I had a rolling rack of clothes/costumes that I would sometimes change into when I wanted a writing break. I’d put on an outfit that felt inspirational and then I'd move my body. Sometimes I’d have to watch a dance video first, something on IG — Sharon Eyal, Storyboard P —  to remember what dance was (Oh right, you can move any way, you can find a new way to move) and then I’d put on some music and give it a whirl. I didn’t think that much about the relationship between these breaks and dance in the book, but I guess that’s the closest thing I have to the narrator’s clues pinned to the wall. 

Why include Kris?

 A. I didn’t want the change in the marriage to solve all her problems. At best I think a change in structure like that allows you to see yourself more clearly and what you see is kind of sobering. Not wrong, still interesting and often exciting, but suddenly the scope of the issue changes and the clarity can be a little hellish at first, before the new perspective has been integrated.  That’s real life to me, and I don’t think it ever ends and...it’s a human right! Taking away someone’s right to transform is such a crime.

Also the strangeness of the first new relationship after a very long marriage ends or changes — that’s the sort of thing I would have wanted to read about in my early forties; it was something I couldn’t really conceive of. 

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If we had a water cooler, I’d talk to you about:

• Back in the spring, I got breakfast with

  Melanie Masarin
  and she told me she was developing a new Ghia product. Le Fizz, a bubble orange blossom-meets strawberry bottle, launched today. I texted Melanie about how she imagines people drinking the bottles (which I imagine will end up on many a chic Thanksgiving bar this fall) and she said, “Bringing a bottle of Ghia and including non-alcoholic options is “very mindful” and we’re excited to have a bottle that is ready-to-share, with only good things in it, for the price of bottle of wine. It’s also tannic, tangy, but not bitter, while still having no added sugar - something very important to me - so I think a lot of people who didn’t like the taste of our initial flavor will really enjoy this one! It hits the spot when you’d be craving wine but it’s absolutely not trying to be wine or non-alcoholic wine.” I also heard a rumor that the Ghia team hand-labeled 12,000 bottles to bring this launch to life — not easy launching a business!

• Chloë Sevigny is on the cover of The Cut. Emily Gould interviewed her (“I try to fill my life with other things I can do that help keep those juices flowing and engaged — to satisfy my urges and also just to be busy.”), and Nadia Lee Cohen shot the photos.

  

• Miami’s swanky restaurant and members’ club ($4,300/year), Casa Tua, opened in New York at The Surrey uptown. artnet’s Annie Armstrong interviewed Maya Fuchs-Bortolami who will be helping to curate the art there.

• Haliey Welch, AKA Hawk Tuah Girl, launched a podcast. It’s called Talk Tuah.

• Puck’s Lauren Sherman spoke to Emily Oberg about the Sporty and Rich newsletter I wrote last week and almost gave me a heart attack.

• This album fucks.

• The business of mail-order birth control is booming as abortion restrictions become tighter in the US. “Telehealth service Nurx saw a 1,700% increase in the number of emergency contraception requests, over half of which came from states in the South like Texas, Florida and Tennessee.”

• In the wake of Miami’s crypto boom, Andreessen Horowitz’s Miami office has quietly closed.

• The “founder mode” conversation continues. We’re still chatting about it in the Feed Me chat.

• Later this month, I’m doing a talk with Carlos Quirarte (Pebble Bar, Ray’s) and Erika Ayers Badan (Food52, formerly Barstool) if you want to come — it’s free!

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