My favorite shoe collab, a guide to workwear, and what we can learn from IKEA catalogs
What's in my brain this month.
Quick note on our Substack Group Chat
I decided to close the Substack Group Chat for now.
I recently noticed that Substack’s built-in group chat feature was getting a bunch of spam in the threads. I obviously dislike this and never want this community to be inundated with self-promotion or conflict.
Instead, I’ve condensed our chat to Discord, which already has over 400 members :)
I’m way overdue for admitting a second batch of members, so if you want to migrate to our Discord, click the link below and we’ll get you approved!
One of my favorite collabs this fall
I have to say, there are some phenomenal collabs coming out as of late, but this one from Easymoc and Manresa is right up there with the top.
It’s such a well-executed partnership because you know they both mean it, which is criminally rare these days with most collabs. You know I yap about logo slaps, and I’m not shy to call out the ones that feel that way, but this one aligns well on both fronts.
Both brands are from New England, both focus on American manufacturing, and neither is in a rush to scale their own businesses. You see the methodology and intentionality behind what they’ve made, and I love that.
Give these guys a shout and support smaller independent brands like this.
Quality > quantity.
A report on the state of fashion in 2025
If you own a brand, work at a brand, work at an agency that has brands as clients, or invest in brands, then keep reading.
A bit of a different focus from the usual content I put out here, but I wanted to share a research-focused report that I created with my guy, Oren, for Hyper (the other newsletter I started), in conjunction with my friends at Vaan, a New York-based design agency.
We put a ton of love and work into this project, and it’s something I’m really proud of, so I’d love for you to read through it and LMK what you think!
There are plenty of tactical insights and strategies you can apply to your own situation.
A book you should know about
Menswear figure Anthony Sylvester is dropping a book about the history of workwear’s place in menswear. To me, this is a phenomenal book with a deep knowledge context behind masculine dress codes.
The book drops on November 6th, and you should pay respects with a preorder. Plus, any book with a forward from Dieworkwear is bound to be great.
We need more content like this
I recently discovered Nature Talks earlier this year and have loved their approach to normalizing conversations around mental and physical well-being in connection with nature.
And I wish more brands would adopt this format to discuss mental and physical health, with a backdrop set in nature, WITHOUT explicitly promoting their products in it.
Here’s another fun example.
Our friends at Fera, a great new British outdoor brand, have filmed a mini docu-series about Matt Sommerville, a bee conservationist who has devoted his life to preserving wild bee populations by building portable stations where the bees can dwell.
He’s obviously wearing the brand’s product, but it’s not about the product, and that’s why people love it. This is well worth the watch.
As a brand, you should always be thinking of ways to incorporate your products in natural ways. And I think you achieve this by investing in ideas, themes, and topics around the product.
This goes a long way for customers.
The nostalgia of catalogs
I really need us to revive the golden era of catalogs. Few did it better than these IKEA ones from the 80s and 90s, but at a time when there’s very little permanence on the consumer side, the brands or creatives that invest in print content easily separate themselves from the pack of throwaway content styles and campaigns.
I think I need a Fiat Panda
Satisfy has become one of the most “mainstream” independent running brands on the market over the last few years. I see a common thread between how they approach their brand and how ALD has approached theirs.
Which is to say that they put a lot of creative love and thematic elements into each release. They aren’t simply dropping products; they are building worlds around each one.
The photo, video, set design, creative direction, copy—it’s all part of a singular story. And this recent partnership, where they tricked out the iconic Fiat Panda 4x4, was a textbook Satisfy move.
You can see the coordination between teams: creative, product, ops, retail. But the thematic similarities between what the Panda 4x4 is (as a mountain car) and Satisfy’s mission to be an all-terrain focused running brand are on point.
Now: should we all go in on a 4x4 together?
The parallel between Satisfy and ALD is so true