How not to hate people with bad style
From a part-time critic
Hiiii and thank you to everyone who’s subscribed to American Style in these first two weeks! You made it one of the fastest-growing publications in the Fashion & Beauty category (lucky number 18, baby).
Thanks especially if you’ve shared something from the newsletter, left a note or sent me a message (or paid me any sum). It’s been really cool to see that so many of you feel the same way I do — that we simply must get to the bottom of what’s going on in our hearts and our wardrobes. I first had an early idea for American Style a year ago and have been muttering to myself and those around me about it ever since, certain that it had to come to be. I had a feeling you’d like it, but you never know until you know.
Today I’m launching the State of the Union, a column that I promise will be as casual and elegant as a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in the ‘70s. That is, it will offer an informal, ultra-modern report on outfits that made me think, my opinions on particularly stylish or frumpy news items, what’s on my mind and what’s in my bag (physically, spiritually) and of course, a temporarily definitive perspective on the mysterious forces shaping the logic of style in This. Very. Moment.
Before we get into it, I am officially opening reader submissions to American Style. If you see an outfit that makes you think (anything at all), take a picture, send it to me and I will include it in the next State of the Union (@bizsherbert on Instagram or bizsherbert@substack.com). Feel free to include a few words too.
Without further ado, introducing…
This week, the State of the Union is —
Pro: love, Justin Bieber’s DVD-seller drip, ‘not a girl, not yet a woman’ accessories
Anti: costume drama cops, scary Twitter threads, girl restaurants (I take that back.)
I sense that something is going to give in fashion soon, possibly this summer. Yes, people are tired of trends, but that doesn’t mean they’re going anywhere. We tried that already, with quiet luxury and self-aware Brandy Melville — taking away as much as we could to try to find ourselves in absence, in codes of taste defined by people who have too much money or are too normal to think about these things. Did we find ourselves? You tell me!
When the news broke that Demna was appointed creative director of Gucci, my friend Mikey, a Los Angeles native with a big cross tattooed on the back of his skull, posted something to the effect of “Bad day for people who had sincerity on their ‘in’ list for 2025.” This is true, but I’ve been thinking about potential outcomes of this much-awaited return to a sincere appreciation of style, of life.
First of all, I’m not really sure it’s possible. It’s a bit like painting in the style of the Old Masters after Jeff Koons made his balloon dogs. You can totally do it, but the meaning of those paintings will always be inflected by Jeff Koons and his balloon dogs.
I think the real path forward is more about optimism and generosity of spirit. Essentially giving people the benefit of the doubt when how they’re dressed stirs judgment within you. Perhaps their brain is rotted by TikTok trends and a defective sense of self — maybe it is, maybe it’s likely. But what I’ve learned writing American Style so far is that the most unoriginal outfits, the most cringe looks, can, and often do, come from sincere intention. I’m not saying you should suspend your judgment entirely. But maybe we should all think a little more about what’s making us so judgmental (is it the same platforms that created those brain rot outfits?).
Pause. Substack says this post is “too long for email” (it has a lot of pictures ok), so if you’re reading in your inbox make sure to tap the three little dots to read the whole thing.
Probably this call for greater acceptance is influenced by my recent readings on love, including All About Love by bell hooks. This is one of those books that is easy to judge, like a sleeve of patchwork tattoos done between the years 2014 and 2019. But I found hooks’ meditations on love not only enlightening but also… actionable. I think we could all use more considered morale-raising on love when so much of the conversation around it today comes from scary Twitter threads and men and women who talk about it (who advise on it!) from a place of scarcity and control. I’ve scanned in a few of my highlights below. (I’m experimenting with format here and wonder if it would be nice for me to paste quotes directly into the text instead, so that you can restack if you’d like. Let me know if you have any feeling on this).
The great creative director switcharoo has been very big for people who like to talk about those things. I’m no authority here (Rachel Tashjian is though!), but the erratic, calculated churn of designers from house to house is a keen reminder of how neatly human talent and performance is commodified in the creative industries.
Margot Robbie on the set of Wuthering Heights directed by Emerald Fennell is upsetting #BookTok types, in part because she is a thirty-something woman playing a teenager. Also because she’s wearing a confusing dress that bears little resemblance to the fashion of the early nineteenth century, when the book is set. Admittedly, it does look a little bit like a Danielle Frankel wedding gown (New York bridal studio to the chicest brides with the skinniest waists). The sleeves are certainly… historical but not accurate to the time. I actually haven’t read Wuthering Heights, but I’m quite interested in how more and more people are appointing themselves historical accuracy cops, especially when it comes to period dramas. I blame the Costume Institute, I blame myself.
Last night, Gabbriette posted that she will be starring in a remake of I Know What You Did Last Summer this summer. I will be seeing this, but I hope she gets really freaky in it and doesn’t just do an unaffected goth chick thing.
Justin Bieber is dressing like himself if he had a stylist, because he just got a new one. Personally, I’ve accepted that this is as good as it’s going to get, at least in this phase of his life. While I have fond, adolescent memories of Justin when he looked like the star player of a Premier League football club, that is not his truth. Dressing like a guy who sells DVDs in a parking lot in the 2000s is.
We’re seeing something of a come to Jesus moment for swaggy white boys born in the ‘90s. Timothée Chalamet led the way here when he stopped dressing like a bellhop in a Wes Anderson movie in favor of a chiller look that’s in touch with his real raised-in-New York self — a self that loves hot women, hip-hop and dicking around. I suspect he got into East London soft tactical drip by way of photographer and handsome Glaswegian Aidan Zamiri, who's been a close collaborator of Timothée for some time now. It must feel good to take the mask off (there’s more on Timothée’s new era in this episode of Nymphet Alumni).
Last weekend, I spent time with my English friend Sylvie and her childhood best mate Isabella in New York. I am always impressed with how Isabella looks (Sylvie too, I had her photograph her outfits for Nuts issue two, but I get to see her much more often). We escaped a DJ set in the basement of what I call a girl restaurant (martinis, good lighting, bread and butter, olives) across from Balthazar, fleeing to the lobby bar of the Bowery Hotel. Two separate men over the age of thirty-five told us that it was very uncool to go and have a drink at Bowery Hotel. What do you think? We enjoyed the Sunday night quiet and laughed on the brocaded sofas until it was time to go home.
The following evening we set upon the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, hoping to experience some famous New York City stand-up during Isabella’s trip from London. I arrived in a cab as Sylvie WhatsApped me to say that we’d made a big mistake, the show was sold out! We resolved to try to get into the next one in a few hours, a decision which spiraled into a night that involved a very narrow 7-Eleven, crack (we didn’t do it) and a new friend from Mumbai who came to America with her two small dogs to pursue a degree in Media Studies at Parsons. On both occasions, Isabella was wearing a black leather Marc by Marc Jacobs bag, which I first recognized by the chunky serif font printed on its fabric lining.
An electric blue Marc by Marc Jacobs crossbody was my first not a girl, not yet a woman bag, which I wore to middle school with my plaid uniform and my BACKPACK (I was most definitely still a girl). Isabella’s bag bears two sweet gold birds that I found my eye drawn to, perhaps aided by a half-decade and counting of Miu Miu-mania and a memory of the flock of swallows that descended upon visual culture after Mrs. Prada sent them down the runway in 2009 (perceptible even by my child-eyes).
I will leave you with a few words on something that also feels very not a girl, not yet a woman: Clinique Black Honey lipstick.
Whilst I am susceptible to the allure of its magical flattering qualities, especially as someone who dressed up as an elf recreationally in my early twenties, I’ve held it in contempt for at least a year, in favor of more interesting shades. But on Saturday night, as I got ready for a steakhouse dinner to celebrate the launch of American Style with a couple of friends and the lovely Austin (who can order for the table as if commanded to by the Old Testament God), I found that a swipe of Black Honey just looked so good, much better than my other ideas. Sometimes you do not have a choice in your face.
I’ll be back next week with a field report that I’m very excited about.
Until then, here are a few more bits in case you get hungry:
I have a morsel of writing published in Spike’s new Food issue, out yesterday. It looks at Crumbl cookies and the strange American bliss of eating in your car.
This week’s episode of Nymphet Alumni is about affluent Swedish teenagers and how they dress. A lot of the insight came from Charles, an Echo Park-based Swedish listener who emailed me in response to the first American Style report from Disney World. It was a truly aligned moment — I was just beginning the research for this episode and Charles was kind enough to share his insider perspective.
I and my gorgeous Nymphet Alumni co-hosts shared our references for Silk, a platform that calls itself a new curated internet. Mine includes a look at what’s on the American Style moodboard!
P.S.— Don’t forget to send me pics of outfits that made you think (or feel) ;-)
"I think we could all use more considered morale-raising on love when so much of the conversation around it today comes from scary Twitter threads and men and women who talk about it (who advise on it!) from a place of scarcity and control." — those last two points resonated so much. The abundance mindset is adjacent to positive thinking, in my experience, and we need more of both
Justin Bieber physical media truther 🤩