Refinery29 is relaunching.
News I didn't expect to read today.
Hello everyone.
Today’s letter is about: the cost of being a wedding guest, Conde Nast’s pivot into the vintage furniture game, the new Death Stranding 2 soundtrack, Vogue is reportedly looking for a new leader, Refinery29 found a new leader, and what I’m texting
about today.📱 Have a good tip? Text the anonymous Feed Me Hotline : (646) 494-3916 📱
It’s become increasingly stressful to be a wedding guest. I’ve gone to weddings with abstract dress codes. I’ve gone to weddings where brides have attached decks of outfit direction. The RealReal has a tab on their site called Best Dressed Guest. Almost every large fashion retailer has a tab for wedding guests. On Tuesday night it was almost 100 degrees, so I did the only rational thing: watched videos from strangers’ weddings on TikTok. Some of the guests used the formal occasions as content opportunities, and some even had more engagement on their posts than the brides.
In a story that New York Magazine published this morning, one wedding guest said, “I wore the same two dresses to nine weddings, and if anyone noticed, they never said anything.” The story also suggests skipping Friday night occasions at weddings, and sharing hotel rooms with friends in order to cut costs as a guest.
Here are a few specific changes in the Wedding Guest Industrial Complex that I’ve been noticing:
Weddings are increasingly becoming content opportunities (for each other’s videos, for Vogue, and everything in-between) and brides want their guests to dress according to their Pinterest boards. Social media fuels an increased level of stress for attendees.
Rent the Runway and Nuuly aren’t cutting it. Although my local UPS store is filled with return bags from these two rental sites, I think people aren’t as happy with the services as they once were (The Cut wrote about this a few months ago).
I haven’t fully baked out this third point, but I think people are widening the definition of who makes the cut for the invite list. This results in everyone getting invited to more and more weddings. I wasn’t sure about this point, but then a few minutes ago, someone wrote the following in the Feed Me chat: “I don’t know how people do it, I have friends who consistently have been invited and go to 6-10 weddings a year the past few years. Which I think is sometimes fueled by this tit for tat mentality of “if I go to theirs then they will come to mine” - often wrapped up in the gift aspect of it too. It irks me so much.” This idea is a key point to this conversation — it’s literally the definition of a gift culture. It’s not an unpleasant obligation, but it is a “social ties”/traditional obligation. And gifts (or invitations in this case) induce debt to give future gifts.
If this is a conversation that interests you, come hang in the chat.
Architectural Digest is getting into the vintage furniture game. Considering the hours my friends spend on Facebook Marketplace and 1st Dibs. I’m guessing AD set up affiliate partnerships with the retailers they’re working with (Chairish, Etsy, 1st Dibs) which would be wise because these are big ticket items. I wonder what the affiliate bounty is for a $20k vintage couch. Considering so many newsletters on Substack have success with eBay and The RealReal roundups, I’m curious if any other larger publications will play around with the same format — the danger with one-of-a-kind vintage items is obviously that the story could end up being all dead links in a matter of hours. New York Magazine’s
is joining Substack, and I know they use eBay links.