👕 Shameless plug to start: I was stoked to meet and chat with Sophie about the possibility (or not) to regulate our emotional attachment to fashion. [if you can't read the article, let me know and I can send it to you]
If we don’t pay enough attention to what we want and why we want it, we just tend to crave for what’s next.
🚶♀️I can’t agree enough with Patricia's title ‘solved by walking’. I’ve personally always loved walking. I’m currently in Berkeley, CA and I’m very surprised by the low amount of people walking -especially in the hills. Below are Russel's words:
In addition to physical exercise and my family fondness, walking remains important to me as an emblem of the sacredness of life. Humans think. Human feel. Humans move.
We encounter others in our walks. The world – nature, cities, streams, forests – unfolds underfoot. Walking remains a primary way we go beyond ourselves.
🪡 The first name of my very first company -back in 2010- was ‘My Tailor is My Friend’ so this new section by Mathilde on The Objet Journal feels quite special. Clara Metayer is a Parisian tailor, founder of Sauve qui Peut and tailor-in-residence at Patine.
Over time, I realised that I didn’t want to sell new products. We already have so much. How about keeping those we have and love? This opened a brand new world! Mending is made of so many techniques. For one given challenge, there are a thousands solutions: visible -embroidery, patches,…-, invisible - darning, or the art of recreating fabric literally, be it jeans or wool stitches,…
🤰 This testimonial by Daniel is a must read: Looking for the Anti-Mimetic Doctors. The subtitle says it all: “Rethinking Medical Interventions, and the Courage to Do Less”. On many aspects, it reminded me Mathilde's experience -and I know she might share it all soon on A Wander Woman.
As doctors, we know full well that tracking the baby’s heart rate during labor has increased interventions but has not improved outcomes. In simpler terms, tracking the baby’s heart rate during labor has gotten more women induced or sliced open, but has not decreased stillbirths or postpartum deaths. Then why do we do it? Because it’s scary not to, that’s why. And I speak from experience.
📝 I’ve been touched by Rob's ode to manifestos in Manifestos are magic spells. I can’t agree more with this typically:
The process of writing a manifesto, at its core, is the process of clarifying your desire. In a world that's constantly distracting us with digital noise and shiny objects, keeping us running on a mimetic treadmill of manufactured desires, getting clear about what you want, deep down, is a radical act. Exploring and articulating what matters most, then committing it to writing, is a bit like waking up to your own humanity after a deep slumber. It kicks off a journey of coming home to yourself.
Which is exactly why we wrote ours at Objet: "LE NEW CONSUMER".
🏛 Great article on The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt.
Like any well-designed operating system, culture is invisible to most people most of the time. Hidden in plain sight, we make use of it constantly without realizing it. As an operating system, culture forms the base infrastructure layer of societal interaction, facilitating communication, cooperation, and interrelations. Always evolving, culture is elastic: we build on it, remix it, and even break it.
That line made me think of New_ Public work and what they study/ fight for:
As more and more spaces for meeting in real life close, we increasingly turn to digital platforms for connection to replace them. But these virtual spaces are optimized for shareholder returns, not public good.
🏡 One of my observation following my latest US trip was: “In both NYC and SF people were defining themselves and thought on a 'neighborhood-basis'.” Ava and Phil demonstrated this perfectly in their discussion about the importance of picking your neighborhood.
All this to say, my neighborhood choice has really affected my experience of San Francisco. So when I started chatting with Phil Levin, who founded Live Near Friends and Radish, a multigenerational compound in Oakland with 20 adults and six children living across 10 homes, and he mentioned that picking your neighborhood is more important than picking your city, everything clicked into place.
☠️ I’ve already sent this post to a few friends last week. Henrik at his best: Don't sacrifice the wrong thing.
You don’t have to do things others do, or have things they have, at the expense of the deeper things you want. You really don’t. Almost everything is an option. You have full permission to ask yourself what really matters to you—whatever that is—and then optimize for that in all hard tradeoffs of life.
💬 since I started tracking my screentime a long time ago, I know for a fact chat-based apps are taking more and more of my time. So when Sriram wrote about how group chats rule the world, I did agree with many of his thoughts.
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups. Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public.
Salons and groups have always existed but why the recent shift to private discourse?
🇫🇷 if you’re in Paris -two interesting events are coming this week 👇
on wednesday evening at 48 Collagen Café is Fashion Conversations dinner -more info and RSVP here. The Fashion Conversations think tank was created in 2019 to foster authentic relations among fashion professionals who are pushing the boundaries for our industry. The community includes founders and leaders discussing new models and solution-driven technology building the future of fashion.
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on sunday for a brunch with 2 very special people, Jenni and Patricia. The topic couldn’t be closer to my heart. I wish I could be there -more info and RSVP here. Patricia wrote about it here as well: a sense of place.
🪩 the question asked by Emily on GQ was utterly interesting: why members-only clubs are everywhere right now? I think that one below could sum up everything:
And will the prospective members find sex, connection, and community all under the guise of private networking?
