NYT's new fashion newsletter.
"We won’t pander."
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for all of your London recommendations in the comment section of yesterday’s newsletter. I will round them up in tomorrow’s special London edition of Feed Me. If you have any more suggestions, or news items (big or small) that you’d like me to consider including, reply to this email.
Today’s letter includes: a new fashion newsletter from The New York Times, three celebrity toxic workplace stories, your boss might start tracking your mouse movements, and how many Vogue employees use Polymarket?
The New York Times is launching a new fashion newsletter, written by Jacob Gallagher.
The Times has close to 100 newsletters (plus dozens of email notifications for when new games and columns drop) and up until today, the only one about fashion was Open Thread by Vanessa Friedman. This week, a new title appeared on the Times’ newsletter landing page: The Fashions. The paper describes the newsletter as: “A guide to fashion wherever it may appear, from the red carpet to the corner store, and all points in between.”
I think a lot about the way the Times has covered fashion in the past (the Times Machine is one of the best rabbit holes on the internet), moments that lodged in my brain for whatever reason and resurfaced as I considered what a dedicated NYT fashion newsletter might be for.
For example:
Earlier this week, Grace Van Vranken circulated a 183-word entry by Mary-Kate Olsen that The New York Times published in 2007. It was concise, funny and read a lot like… a modern-day fashion newsletter.
In 2000, Cathy Horyn reviewed Sex and the City for The Times. (“It didn’t flip my skirt when people who work for fashion companies told me they had successfully placed products, like handbags, on the show, and hoped to do more in the future.”) I think New York should consider moving her from The Cut to Vulture for a few weeks, because she’s a pretty good TV critic. If only we had some good TV…
And don’t get me started on Bob Morris’s profile of Plum and Lucy Sykes from 1998, in which Sally Singer said, “I look at the Sykes sisters, and I think: O.K., my ancestors were born to work in the fields, and theirs were born to walk into parties.”
In 2025, Business of Fashion reported that both the number of publications and subscriptions in the fashion category doubled YoY. Newsletters like Lauren Sherman’s Line Sheet have turned email into a dominant surface for breaking fashion news, and delivering industry-shifting takes. It is also a category where blending news/analysis/perspective and e-commerce is not just possible, but natural. “Here is what I think about these pants – and here is how you can buy these pants.”
From the media business side, newsletters have also become a great place to turn readers into paying subscribers. Last September, New York Times editorial director for newsletters, Jodi Rudoren, told Press Gazette that their daily morning briefing newsletter “was the single largest catalyst to subscription of dozens that were studied.”
I think this is where a newsletter like The Fashions can satiate audience hunger, while also making the execs happy. Last night, I spoke to Jacob about what his most controversial take on the fashion newsletter landscape is, and what we can expect from this publication.
What is The Fashions?
Jacob Gallagher: The Fashions is, definitionally, a twice-weekly newsletter that we’ve started this week. It was born out of a pop-up newsletter that we did around the fashion weeks a few months ago. Now it’s permanent. But it is, spiritually, our place to write about clothes in a way much closer to how we talk about/argue about/fawn over clothes between us in the office and in our group chats. We just got a little tired of having everything feel so tight, so formalized when we talk about clothes. We wanted to come at it more conversationally, closer to how we think.
How is writing for a newsletter different from writing for NYTimes.com or the paper?
JG: In broad strokes, writing a newsletter is looser than writing for the paper. And you could probably say it has more bite, more of my unfiltered thoughts on something. Closer in tone to how I’m talking to you right now. But I’ve also found that I can be more direct and, therefore, sharper in what I’m trying to say. I’m speaking to an audience that cares a lot about this stuff. I mean, they signed up for a newsletter called The Fashions. They bought a ticket for this ride.
“I don’t know if it’s controversial, but my big take about fashion is that everyone who works in fashion media should be required to work in a retail store at some point.”