New York’s best new dessert requires a hammer.
More props, please. 🔨
Good afternoon, everyone. I am in a sugarplum trance after breaking into meringue-covered Vacherin at Marcel last night. Cool it on the Ubers and save up a few bucks and try it for yourself if you don’t believe me. They provide a small but hefty brass hammer for one lucky person at your table to demolish the dessert with.
Today’s newsletter includes: Rachel Seville Tashjian’s new newsletter, Anthropic is expanding east (to New York) and further east (to London), Glossier is discontinuing products, and Gymkhana expands in the U.S.
Rachel Tashjian new newsletter. Plus some advice for aspiring fashion writers.
On June 13th, 2021, Rachel Seville Tashjian emailed me, “welcome to my LIFE” along with a coveted spot on the recipient list for her invite-only newsletter, Opulent Tips. What unfolded next was an almost-weekly newsletter about style that took place in my inbox – not in the Substack ecosystem, barely on Instagram aside from some screenshots – and it introduced me to a Rachel’s voice, which was a fantastic escape from the stuck-ness of COVID summer. Opulent Tips felt NEW and innovative, and whether they like it or not, every fashion newsletter I’ve read after that would be held to the bar Rachel raised.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to hear this week that Rachel’s launching a new newsletter at her day job, CNN. Big Style is described as a portal (we all need more portals) into a world where clothing meets culture. It launches this week, and I spoke to Rachel about it yesterday.
Rachel, WHY do we need another fashion newsletter?
We never ask these questions about SPORTS or MEDIA! What are we afraid of? Too much beauty and whimsy in the world? Too much information about the tantalizing nature of Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel and where to get affordable vintage Armani?!
HOWEVER: people get most of their fashion news, analysis, and commentary through social media and newsletters today, even if a creator or journalist is linking out or repackaging another reporter’s information on another platform. Those are the key vehicles for information and conversation in this industry right now.
So: We are doing a lot of video at CNN, as people may have seen on our and my social channels. And to build on that, we wanted to create a newsletter that would give us a different kind of relationship with our readers – intimate and a bit more niche (perhaps even discourse-agnostic???) but still authoritative.
How will we get this letter? Will it be on Substack?
The newsletter will be on CNN platforms and in inboxes every Saturday for those who sign up. I am a great admirer (and user!) of Substack, but I don’t think we’re at the place where you have to be on Substack for a newsletter to build community — and we’ll make the case for that here.
I consider you the fashion newsletter OG. Your ability to respond to the city as it’s unfolding around you, and weave in questions from readers (and familiar New York characters) in Opulent Tips is fabulous. How will Big Style be similar or different?
I love the idea of something spirited and chatty, and not-insidery but very curious and not cowed by cool clothes, coming out of a media company that operates at the scale of CNN. (Reporters have MINDS and they have SOULS as well as JUST HEARTS!)
Long time RsAFsTM (Readers And Friends To Me, as I lovingly call Opulent Tips subscribers) will recognize much tonally. But there will be a bit more reportage, if you will – more interviews, more scenes, more of a declarative, features feel.