“I still only wear Gap clothing to this day”
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This Week
💦 God Hates Vapes
💦 return the cloven hooves, Josh
💦 a silver pot of asparagus like a hovering UFO
Events
Guess who’s back and better than ever? !! We hope you are rested, recharged, and ready for a season packed full of new exhibitions, new fairs, and old faces (unless your friends are collectors). We sure can’t wait! This week is chock a-block with amazing shows. Catch us bopping around central for Arcadia Missa and Cedric Bardawil, down in Deptford for Xxijra Hii, and out east for Modern Art! cya xxx
🧊 5 Sept | 6-8pm | Phoebe Collings-James: bun babylon; a heretics anthology, Arcadia Missa [Bond Street]
🧊 5 Sept | 6-8pm | People (group show), Modern Art [Old Street]
🧊 6 Sept | 5:30-8:30pm | PICPUS issue 31 launch, Tenderbooks [Covent Garden]
🧊 7 Sept | 7pm | Lauren Auder, Courtyard Theatre [Old Street] £13.75, tickets here
🧊 7 Sept | 6-8pm | Tenant of Culture: Ladder, Soft Opening [Bethnal Green]
🧊 7 Sep | 6-8pm | Hannah Tilson: Soft Cut, Cedric Bardawil [Tottenham Court Road]
🧊 7 Sep | 7pm | Charlie Porter in conversation with Olivia Laing, Daunt Books [Marylebone] tickets here
🧊 8 Sep | 6-9pm | Aaron Ford and Robert Megannity: Perfect Passive, Xxijra Hii [Deptford]
🧊 8 Sep | 6:30-8:30pm | Ranjani Shettar: Cloud songs on the horizon, Barbican Conservatory [Barbican]
🧊 8 Sep | 12-9pm | Amilia Graham and Thomas Watson: Custom Suite, AMP Gallery [Queen’s Road Peckham]
🧊 8 Sep | 6pm | Book launch: That Fire Over There by Prem Sahib | Phillida Reid [Tottenham Court Road]
Exhibition of the Week
Judith Dean: New Builds / Bilds (The Image in Perspective), South Parade, now closed, info here
We first became aware of Judith Dean when she was included by curator Daisy Sanchez in an online group exhibition named The Void at White Columns in New York. The show was aptly titled: Dean’s paintings possess an unnerving quality of movement, of falling, of ricocheting between tableaux with no clear route forward – an accelerating void-like gravity where phenomena from different dimensions seem to be flashing past, alongside one another. An emergency exit sign next to the HMS Greenfly, dominated by a silver pot of asparagus like a hovering UFO, for instance. Or an ethereal, orange-ceilinged and purple-carpeted room with a German Shepherd overlooking the floor which is either fridge or window, for instance. Distinctive for the trapeze-like shapes situated within them, the paintings occupy a strange and unique place. Although informed by internet-found imagery, the tactile, watery application of paint defies the machinated digital realm in favour of something much more expressionist and deconstructionist – almost Lynchian. Surprisingly, given their technical dexterity, the short press release reveals that in all her works, she uses ‘her non-writing hand to overcome the control exerted by the conscious mind,’ and on learning this, we can’t help but give it a left-hand go ourselves; more soon xo
Hot Links
🚬 “God Hates Vapes” - We’re sorry to say it, but despite the risks to your health smoking is cool again, or rather, always was. We prefer to stick to the same trusty brands we’ve been puffing on since we were 16, but in comes Hestia, a US based company who give packs of their cigs to influencers, quickly catapulting them to cult status among New York media types, and we might be swayed.
🐺 Arnault, “the wolf in cashmere” - We’ve heard a lot recently about how fashion and art are more interlinked than ever – but, Frieze ask, who is really calling the shots? Arnault, Prada and Pinault all hold some of the largest privately owned collections in the world. While the hoarding of wealth is nothing new, the concentration of cultural capital in the hands of a few major conglomerates is arguably changing the face of patronage, and consumption… worrying x
⚙️ “effortlessly gorped-up and hardbody” - In this substack, Blackbird Spyplane lament the disappearance of small trucks from the American Market, arguing that US car companies are doing their best to maximise profit, meaning bigger, meaner sets of wheels. Decrying ‘McMansion-style pathologies about the relationship between one’s status and the size of one’s possessions’, BBSP concludes by praising the Taliban’s choice in whip.
🌭 “I've got 40 Mr Beast chocolate bars in the back of my van,” John says, “I'm gonna try to eat them tomorrow.” - spittle fave writer Eloise Hendy reports on a hot dog eating contest in a vivid piece for Vice. We were fascinated to hear about ‘Megabyte Ronnie’ who can ‘eat 68 hard boiled eggs in eight mins, half a gallon of chilli in one minute 34 seconds, and 12 pounds of strawberry shortcake in ten minutes.’ more of these, please x
🎵 “My blood is Gap Blue” - On his blog, Gap Playlists, Michael Bise chronicles all of the clothing company’s in-store playlists from 1992 - 2006. Incredible. Bise, who worked at a Gap store in Dallas, asserts the playlists exposed him to ‘a wide array of music such as House, Techno, Alternative Rock, Modern and Classic R&B, Acid Jazz, and so much more’, and we’re ready to feel nine years old again.
⚠️ “pondering traditional shoemakers’ place in the age of sneakers” - In breaking Substack news, spittle fave Alec Leach has just launched his very own!! We loved his book, The World is on Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes, and are very excited to read more: read and subscribe here.
Add-to-cart
Up next in bonkers things you can actually buy at auction is Princess Diana’s iconic Sheep Jumper which is hitting the block at Sotheby’s. A piece of fashion history *almost* as famous as the iconic revenge dress worn to the Serpentine’s summer bash, this knit has got your back like no other - perfect for whiling away radiator-less days in the studio in the depths of winter... Like Di, we also think of ourselves as black sheep, so will certainly be making a bid. But if you’d like to ‘get the look for less’, iconic rip off versions are available from Warm and Wonderful, here.
Parting Shot - Beware, the Tabi Thief
In the weirdest Tinder-swindle we’ve heard in, like, forever, New Yorker @nextlevellexus found herself on the morning after a Tinder date with a guy named Josh (why are they always called Josh?!), with a Tabi shaped hole in her closet. Yes that’s right, not only did Josh leave without saying goodbye, he stole her Tabis. And that’s not the worst of it, apparently he’d wiped all record of himself from her phone, including unmatching with her on Tinder (you’ve got to give it to the guy, he is thorough).
As only a heart broken (about the Tabis) young NYC hot girl can, @nextlevellexus took to TikTok to launch an impeccable witch hunt and smear campaign, while also sharing a sober warning about the perils of dating a Josh with her fellow Fashion Girlies. A hero for our times. Until, in what can only be described as a Shakespearean turn of events, internet sleuths unearthed the true tragedy of this story; Josh had stolen the tabis as a present for his girlfriend. The unsuspecting (innocent until proven guilty) girl was caught tabi footed on instagram. Not only a thief, Josh is an infidel! But perhaps we can take a different view of Josh, as Elliot Hoste writes in this raucous piece for Dazed, ‘before we tar and feather him’: he’s a romantic, willing to give everything - his body, his dignity - to get his girl the tabis of her dreams. Thankfully (after some heavy internet shaming) Josh returned the cloven hooves - and after a quick sage-burn they were ready to clip-clop around the mean streets of New York. Stay safe out there, fashionistas!