Introducing First Draft
This newsletter has a name. Plus notes on Roseland furniture, Vestoj Magazine, summer skirts, the Girl On Girl audiobook, a recommended essay, and more.
It only took three years, but I’ve finally given this newsletter a name. I was reluctant to do so, because who wants to formalize the thing that is supposed to feel informal? As a writer who becomes sick with dread before a deadline, I strive maintain the vacation spirit of this specific writing outlet. Writing is way easier to endure when the deliverable is positioned as a casual first draft. Herein lies the oxymoron, a new formality for this informal place: This newsletter is newly named First Draft.
Otherwise… I’m in that phase of moving where I’ve surmounted the wave of nostalgia that comes with leaving a home and arrived at an emotional readiness to get the heck out of dodge. I love this phase. It’s fueled with energy and forward motion and packing tape. Unraveling an apartment, getting rid of relics of past eras, and bidding adieu to one phase in order to usher in the next one is always cleansing. I’ve left Texas, North Carolina, California, and now Charlton Street. New York is home now, but I appreciate those past reps of uprooting. Each was a case study in letting go and evidence of the sheer necessity to keep it moving.
In the throes of packing, list-making is providing direction. Lists including the fun things (curtains to buy, shelves to buy, and more things to buy) and not fun things (the Con Edison number I need to call, the storage unit I need to figure out). In the spirit of lists, I also keep one on my phone of underratedly good things and recommendations, so as not to forget. Here are a few from the past week.
Roseland furniture. After paying a visit to their Salter House pop up last weekend, I pulled the trigger on the bed in cherry for my new spot. There’s a return to championing American craftsmanship happening across fashion and interiors, and I love the way Roseland is embracing that with a furniture company that is described as “a love letter to American land and forests.” Will report back once I receive this piece.
Vestoj Magazine. What a delight. Devoured the new issue in one sitting. There’s an essay from one of my favorite fashion writers, Avery Trufelman of Articles of Interest, on Ivy Dressing. If you listened to her podcast series on this topic, then you know she is the ivy expert. Also found some great essays on their site, like this beautiful essay by Amber Winick on dressing your child. Excited to find a sartorial magazine focused on really good/meaningful writing.
The Staff Picks section at Politics and Prose in DC. If you find yourself in DC, pay a trip to Politics and Prose because no one does book merchandising as well as they do. The Staff Picks section offers a shelf of book recommendations from each employee. It led me to walk out with 4 books yesterday, whereas I usually get overwhelmed and leave empty handed. They also sell Byline’s latest issue, and in their magazine section, they have a card inserted into each indie mag explaining what the magazine is about. A+ bookstore. Maybe my favorite overall.
This white drawstring Gap skirt I wear at least 4x per week. It’s perfect. Light, easy, perfect slip cut, not too wrinkle prone and not too thick either. I think i’m going to buy the red one and maybe even the gingham too. I also wore this Gap drawstring skirt today, below too. I wear an xs.
Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned A Generation Of Women Against Themselves, by Sophie Gilbert.
I’m currently listening to the audiobook and oh my god. Writing this book would be incredibly daunting, and Sophie managed to do it thoroughly and gracefully. The book is chock-full of information and anecdotes that piece together a picture of how we arrived at the marketable, sex-infused woman. I’m at the part where Sophie is explaining how the Spice Girls came to fruition. Here I was thinking this band, my childhood heroes, were a girl-powered girl group. My earliest memory of aspirational womanhood is a preview I saw of Spice World the movie, where the girls are walking out of bathroom stalls, looking in the mirror, putting on lipstick, and wearing tight short dresses. I wanted to be them!!! This was IT!!! Little did my six-year-old mind know, this image of womanhood was manufactured for me by men. Of course it was. It just seemed so… girly. I was fooled. I remember when the Spice Girls were in the news for streaking, and my mother and her bestie sat me down to break it to me that sometimes the Spice Girls aren’t everything a woman should aspire to be. I was distraught. All is to say, Sophie analyzes the appropriation of “Girl Power” and how the Spice Girls’ iteration of the slogan was antithetical to its original purpose. I’m in deep and can’t wait to keep listening.
Final Draft
In each First Draft, there will be a section called Final Draft, where I link to a favorite essay—someone else’s final draft. I’ve wanted to create a place to share favorite essays for awhile or maybe eventually start an essay club. This section is a designated space for that. Here’s the first one.
Joan Didion’s “Take No For An Answer” is an essay on the ability to say no and what it means when one cannot seem to do that. I linked out this piece the other week here, but I needed to say it louder.
Joan was at Vogue from 1956-1964. Her most known essay from that era is On Self Respect, but there are a handful of similar essays from this time that reveal a young Didion working through her ideals, independence in her late twenties. This essay, written in 1961, is notable for how carefully it explains the implications of a mind that cannot reject an invitation, decline a suggestion, or let someone down (even if only hypothetically). Didion explains that when we cannot discriminate between obligations, we become paralyzed and end up failing everyone. Moreover, without being able to say no, we abandon and fail ourselves. She writes that the inability to decide internally what one’s priorities and values are is the root cause of being unable to say no. It means one does not know themselves enough to know what they want to reject:
It is precisely this kind of breakdown of communication with oneself that underlies an incapacity for the straightforward no. It is possible to decide between desires and obligations; it is possible to decide between divergent desires. It is not possible except arbitrarily—to decide between unknown quantities. Quite simply, to make up one's mind requires knowing it.
You might get hit with a paywall on Vogue when trying to read this essay in full, so I’ve included each page below. Enjoy.
