And thank you, the audience, for having chosen to spend time here.

I wish you all the very best.

The post Notice of Wind Down & A Publishing Update appeared first on Repeller.

I have let you and the members of the Man Repeller team down and I am sorry.

The letter I published on Monday provided an insufficient explanation for how I plan to change the way Man Repeller operates, but I did not adequately address the way that it already has operated. I did not yet have a true understanding of the pain that has been caused, which has held me and therefore this company back from living up to its promised expectation to help women to feel less alone and more understood. To celebrate your you-ness.

The first thing I want to address is what we’re doing in the immediate term. Yesterday, we started the process of hiring a diversity and inclusion specialist to help me audit and transform this place from the inside out.

But I also need to learn from and engage with our past. I’m in the process of listening to current and former employees about their experiences. We will make sure that anyone who chooses to participate in communication sets the terms of their engagement.

That’s just one part of it, though, and I know it won’t work if I myself don’t make an unwavering commitment to amplifying Black and POC voices as part of our mission. To encouraging that your stories be told, faces be seen, and hearts feel welcome because I am committed to harboring space and safety for you-as-you-are to feel accepted here.

And this — acceptance — is what, I am realizing, is at the center of this. I have been the recipient of sobering feedback from you, from friends, from the members of my team — many of whom have received personal criticism for which I claim responsibility. The ways in which they have risen, using their platforms to contribute their skills, their dollars, their bandwidth, and hearts have been a humbling reminder of the lengths I must travel before I can ever call myself a leader.

You are leaders — for giving your valuable time to comment. For fighting for what you believe. I have a deep appreciation for the investment in our improvement that has been expressed and as a 31-year-old woman at the beginning of a process I should have started a very long time ago, I am humbled by the depth of wisdom on display in the private and public conversations that we have had. These interactions have been the primary source of the hope I have that we have a chance to get this right.

And doing that — getting this right is a crucial step in a long process. I owe you better. And I hope that this is the beginning of my chance to offer meaningful repair.

The post I Owe You Better: A Commitment to the Future appeared first on Repeller.

To the MR community:

I want to explicitly state on our site that Man Repeller will not remain silent in the face of police brutality and white supremacy. I have a lot of listening and learning and growing to do before I will truly know how to thoroughly make a sustained impact in the fight to eradicate systemic racism, but that won’t stop my effort. I know that the learning will be uncomfortable at times, but that won’t make it any less urgent.

I started Man Repeller out of a desire to connect through style—to feel less alone and more understood. The mission of MR has been to foster that feeling of connection for our community, but to make this irrevocably true, we must do more. In this moment, we are recommitting to those values—to thinking deeply about how we live our lives and thus use our platform to reflect the tenor of the time we’re in.

Last week, we took to our most immediate forms of communication on social media to help magnify the urgent need to join together to condemn the murder of George Floyd (and so many others) and to say that Black lives matter.

This week, we’re prepared to take a more steady, sustained approach to covering and exploring these complex issues in the ways we’re best equipped to do. Today, you’ll read a piece by Celeste Little that gives an intimate look at what it’s like when a new mother’s anxieties shift from Covid-19 to another kind of American disease. In the coming days, we’ll be publishing a story that explores how bad-faith legislation aimed at banning abortion during the pandemic has disproportionately impacted low-income women. I also talked with Aurora James of Brother Vellies for the next installment of our Founders Discuss series and we’ll be amplifying the businesses of other black entrepreneurs in the MR community who you can support.

Internally, we’re creating a plan that will hold us accountable to each other and our community. We will be turning this plan into formal guidelines that we will release to the public and start putting into action next week. This will include prioritizing and committing to:

• Providing meaningful support to a diverse mix of creative talent at the early stages of their careers
• Featuring underrepresented voices more consistently on our editorial and commerce platforms and supporting them with our budgets
• Establishing recurring days of service in which the team can make a positive impact on our local community
• Empowering more POC-owned businesses in the industry with advertising space and networking opportunities

This work will be ongoing. Fostering an environment in which everyone—employees and readers alike—feel comfortable speaking their mind directly, respectfully, and constructively is my most important work as a founder.

And as for me personally, I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve ordered this book, started this one, and am finding a semblance of resolve in the most actionable and straightforward directives that are being posted on social media. I’m listening to learn—not to fix or to win. I’m feeling ashamed, but also acutely aware of how much more learning I have to do. I’ve been thinking about how I’m raising my kids, what it means to use my privilege responsibly, but mostly, I am trying to figure out how to harness these feelings of ignorance and humility to become part of the solution—and, equally important, to never lose sight of that mission.

What are you doing, thinking, saying, reading, right now?

Photo via Getty Images.

The post Where We Go From Here: A Message for the MR Community appeared first on Repeller.

Last night was one of those nights that find you awake at 1:30 in the morning feeling like it’s time to wake up, or at least certain that you will not be going back to sleep. Instead, you will lay awake and chew on thoughts that will make you feel like you’re running an emotional marathon even though when you return to the present, you will remember that you have not moved an inch. Perhaps an hour, or two hours, maybe even three, have gone by, and you probably can’t even remember what you were thinking, even though it seemed so urgent while you were thinking it. You are still physically in exactly the same place you were when you woke up all that time ago.

This seems to be a recent theme on the internal hamster wheel. Do you ever feel like you’ve run an emotional marathon even though technically, nothing has happened? I have been trying to ground these dispatches to the anecdotal events of my life—the way in which The First Big Quarantine Fight incited a revelation, how Laura running across the street unattended invited me to map out the kind of parent I’m becoming, but you know what? I have nothing to report today. I had nothing to report yesterday, or the day before, and I might not have anything to report tomorrow.

I have been taking my coffee the same way every morning, and toasting the same kind of bread, and blending the same kind of smoothie, then retreating to my room, which sweeps me up into a haze of self-imposed deadlines and video meetings and all of these conversations that are so difficult because I’m terrible at saying what I mean in a direct way. I didn’t realize this until quarantine. I mean, I must have realized it, but I never paid much attention to it. Look at that sentence, even! “I am terrible at saying what I mean in a direct way.” Wouldn’t the easier, more straightforward sentence read, “I’m not direct”?

Or maybe that’s not it, because it doesn’t sound right. My thinking is direct, but maybe my language is not. Or maybe there is something else. In any case, it’s all the same. I look out the window and when the sun is shining, I feel a wave of pressure consume me because I wish I was among the masked walkers huffing down the West Side Highway. But I’m on self-imposed deadline, so I stay inside and think about whether the muscles in my legs are starting to atrophy.

Then I hear my kids in the other room and think: How is it possible that even from quarantine, I don’t have time for them? Then I look at the time and realize it’s about to be 12:30 p.m., which means that the morning shift—time I set aside to write and think and do “the deep work,” has ended. And thus the flurry of meetings begin until it’s 5 p.m. and the greatest treat—making dinner—meets me on the other side of this door.

I set out crackers and olives and cut up vegetables, which my kids and husband eat while I basically continue to iterate on my newfangled creative pursuit of cooking. It’s no doubt replacing the mental space that getting dressed used to occupy.

And by the way, the reason it’s possible that even from quarantine I don’t have time for my kids is because I have designed it that way. I’m on a self-imposed deadline and prioritizing that. I didn’t realize this before I asked the question out loud, but Abie often has to remind me that “I’m the master of my domain” because I routinely act like someone else is ordering me to live my life this way.

Back to the cooking: It’s different from getting dressed because even though the desire to do it is the same (create something new), it is much more satisfying to create something for the express purpose of giving it to another person. Sure, an outfit can inspire an onlooker, even provoke joy or incline them to take action, but the direct satisfaction of making something that fills another person up… it is a different kind of pleasure. Last night, for example, I fried shallots and capers in olive oil then poured it over a bed of arugula to serve with the fish I was baking, also drenched in capers and olive oil—with pitted kalamata olives and a couple of Meyer lemons, sliced up.

It was tasty as anything— I loved it so much, but even more, I loved that Abie loved it so much and that my kids scarfed it down. At one point, Madeline bit into an olive that had a pit in it and Abie yelled, mostly because he was scared she would choke, but it embarrassed her, it seems, and she started to quivering-lips-blue-in-the-face cry rather hysterically. This isn’t the first time it has happened—this enormous sense of embarrassment that arrives when she thinks she has done something wrong even though she has not. It causes her to cry hysterically which leads me to believe she’s very sensitive. I don’t know what it’s like for her — the way her sensitivity manifests, but Abie does, which I know because every time it happens, he’s triggered. He says, “Oh, Madeline, you’re like your dad.”

So I try to think about how to expel the shame. Is she feeling shame? She did nothing wrong. She is not wrong. Lately, instead of saying, “Don’t cry, it’s okay,” which I admit is a tempting reaction, I explain to her what is happening. I say, “You bit into an olive that had a pit in it and Dad got scared you would choke on it and that scared you. I know.” And I let her cry. I don’t say anything about wrong or right and I don’t tell her to stop, but I hold her hand if she will accept the grasp. I’m not sensitive in the way that she is, so theoretically, I could say I don’t know if this is the right response, but I know that it is because when I do it, it opens up my heart too. It enables me to see that:

-I’m not a terrible communicator. It just takes me more time to get to the point.

-I’m choosing to sit in this room and write. It is not a dungeon. It’s a fortress. My leg muscles are fine.

-If I feel that I’m not spending enough time with my kids, I can change my process. It is as simple as that.

I am the master of my domain and this—approaching a conclusion, feeling the relief of giving myself permission to unleash the process of getting there—is my domain. What is yours?

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Dispatch #010: Cooking Is My New Getting Dressed, Madeline’s Like Her Dad appeared first on Repeller.

In this week’s edition of Founders Discuss, Krissy Jones and Chloe Kernaghan of Sky Ting Yoga talk to Leandra about the challenges of running a studio-based fitness brand and how they have been able to quickly and nimbly pivot to keep their business alive.

Leandra Medine Cohen: How are you guys?

Krissy Jones: My back hurts but–

LMC: Alexa!

Chloe Kernaghan: Alexa is talking.

LMC: That was so dramatic. She voluntarily turned on music. But onwards! How are you, really?

CK: I feel we’ve hit a nice enough groove right now with the offerings that we have, and there are sponsorship classes that are coming through, which have been great for us. We’re doing a lot of work on the backend, updating our website, because, of course, once you start to see more people come in, all of a sudden other little things that you didn’t really think about before become problems, and you’re like, “Oh right, this needs to be changed and that needs to be changed.”

In some ways we’re working more than we ever were, and it’s on our computers. Krissy and I used to teach for a good portion of our work week, so it’s a weird, interesting shift in our own work ethics.

LMC: Isn’t it so wild how problems arise no matter how solid the solutions are—life is like a game of whack-a-mole.

KJ: I feel we’re always in a state of, “Oh, when this happens we can chill and work less.” But it’s never been that way. I’m not complaining. We’re both pretty driven, and we’re lucky that we’re even surviving this mess.

CK: And that we have work to do!

KJ: But yeah, I am doing less yoga than ever. My lower back hurts.

LMC: You mentioned finding a groove in your programming. What is some of that programming?

CK: We have our live schedule, which we’re calling Sky Ting Live. It’s the daily live classes that we offer. So once a day, we have a full-length class. Right now we’ve hit the mark of 45 minutes, and it appears to be the sweet spot for home practices. If it’s longer than that, there’s a ton of drop off right around then.

We’ve also been doing a lot of IG Lives—that content has been fun and entertaining because it features some yoga, but then some not yoga. Last week we cut our business manager’s hair.

We did it as a split screen with Michael Gordon, who cuts both of our hair. He’s the founder of Bumble and bumble, and he was telling us what to do over video. He’s like, “No, up to where his nose is.” And we’re like, “Really?”

KJ: And then we made some ramen with Adam Rappaport [EIC of Bon Appétit], which was fun. Ours was a little mushy, but his looked great.

It’s fun because the Lives are not necessarily one thing. These types of things let us explore the breadth of our world—we’ve always had other things than just yoga, but it came out in different ways. We did the Sky Ting talent show at our space, and we brought in book talks in our space, and on our retreats there’s always an emphasis on food and wine and whatever. It’s part of our community and how we keep in touch with them. Yoga is not the end-all, be-all for us.

But we’re not doing Zooms. With Zoom yoga classes, you can have the videos of your students participating, and you can watch them, and critique them, but the way we’ve got it programmed [through Sky Ting TV], it’s embedded through a Vimeo player so you don’t actually see your students practicing. You’re talking out to the ether and telling jokes, hoping somebody at home is laughing.

LMC: What are average views on an Instagram Live yoga session?

KJ: It depends. If it’s a regular Sky Ting teacher, we get between 300 and 400 views.

LMC: But in studio, how many people can you have in a class? Thirty at the most?

CK: It’s a little bigger—like 55, 60. But yeah.

KJ: Chloe and I thought we were going to be traveling around America this whole spring to different markets, but because of the pandemic, we realized we didn’t have to go there. We could do Lives, and they could practice with us from wherever they are.

LMC: And the classes that you’re doing through the site on Vimeo—those are free?

KJ: One a day is free.

CK: And then they get transferred over to Sky Ting TV’s library, which is subscription-based. So if you have the subscription, then you can access them forever, whenever. We keep the free Vimeo 45-minute files live on the site for two hours a day, so that you have some time to tune in.

LMC: Are you able to track views on those?

KJ: We get about 1,200 views per video in real time. On Sky Ting TV, we have a map of the world that shows you where everyone is tuning in from, and we have 60 countries tuning in.

CK: It’s cool. It’s like a really new but interesting way to connect with community and to know that we’re all out there doing this together. As a teacher, you always end a class by taking a deep breath in with the students, and it’s really cool to think that as a globe, we might all be breathing a bit more in tune with each other.

LMC: How are you structuring the partnership classes?

CK: It depends. Some partners have underwritten Instagram videos, but mostly they are the Vimeos. It depends. We charge a higher rate for Sky Ting Live on our site vs. Instagram. But the nice thing with the Sky Ting Lives on site is that once they go to the TV library, they’re there forever with the brand’s name attached.

We’ve been really fortunate with the generosity of so many brands, and it’s kind of how Sky Ting has always worked. The organic word of mouth of somebody who works for a brand or a friend of a brand, seeing one of our newsletters promoting a sponsored class, and then all of a sudden we get a forwarded newsletter being like, “Hey, can we sponsor a class too?”

LMC: Did you start by actively reaching out, or did brands immediately come to you?

CK: Once we started those live classes during the first week of quarantine, two or three brands who have been friends of Sky Ting (Vita Coco and Recess) emailed us directly to ask if we could partner in some way. So we came up with the idea of sponsored classes as the best way for the brand to support us supporting our community. Then we don’t have to ask for donations.

LMC: It also lets you continue to pay different instructors.

KJ: We’re lucky it’s working for us. We know so many fitness studios that are failing.

LMC: Why do you think it’s working for you?

CK: Well, we already had Sky Ting TV. We launched in November, but we’d been working on it for two years, building up to its launch by recording videos, and thinking about how we were going to run it, and what platform we wanted to use. So having that built out, already on the site, as a revenue source that didn’t require a brick-and-mortar space was a major, major help for us.

And then we just have a scrappy team that literally within hours of the lockdown starting were running out to get webcams—our manager Patrick was able to go and grab one of the last ones on the shelf at Best Buy, and we have an amazing designer who does our web development, and they were able to create a process to embed the live Vimeo classes so they could be streamed. Our team and culture is rooted in being flexible and nimble. It’s important to be able to respond quickly, and I think has been our greatest asset in figuring out how to do this.

LMC: Just want to point out the flexible pun for a yoga team.

KJ: The other thing is, we were living in this crazy era of growth, growth, growth, more brick-and-mortars, go to LA, go to Austin, open in S.F. It was getting exhausting, and this experience has helped us hone in on what we are good at. We love teaching, and we love being part of our community, and we never want to compromise on that. We never want to go to our studio and not know who’s practicing—to not know the teachers for real, for real.

LMC: It’s not a franchise.

KJ: It’s not a franchise. So, I think that’s working for us.

LMC: How big is your team?

KJ: Five full time, and then me and Chloe, so seven.

LMC: It sounds like you’ve been able to retain everyone.

KJ: We did a 15% cut in salaries for the first month, including our own. We just got our PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan, so we’ve restored the salaries.

LMC: Are any of your instructors full-time?

CK: No, not at this point. We’ve tried in the past because we wanted to offer health insurance to our instructors, but it’s hard.

KJ: One teacher can’t really do 30 classes a week for us, and that’s what they would have to do to be considered full time.

CK: And [this way] we don’t have to prohibit them from teaching elsewhere or having corporate clients, etc.

KJ: So at this point they’re all independent, which is why we’re trying to keep mixing it up with our Sky Ting Lives. Every week we have six to 10 different instructors on the Lives throughout the whole week, and we pay them for those classes.

It really is working for us right now—well, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens when we go back to New York City with our physical spaces. But we realized that to continue our brand and to grow it, we just don’t need as much. We don’t need as many people. We don’t need as many spaces. We don’t need as many–

CK: Simplify.

KJ: Simple is better. We were even talking yesterday about doing one teacher training a year instead of three.

LMC: Will you close any of the studios?

KJ: We’re thinking about having one studio for filming and just always keeping it set up for that.

CK: That’s where we’re interested in growing more with the brand, as opposed to more brick-and-mortar spaces. It’s so unclear what going back to live fitness in classes will be like, with the regulations and all.

KJ: It’s like a restaurant model. The fitness industry is the same. In order to make it work you have to pack in your classes. So the model is totally broken. We can’t have 60 people in a room anymore.

CK: I hope that we don’t have to go back to relying on those packed classes and the stressful moments of having to make decisions like, “Oh, this teacher isn’t doing numbers well enough and dah, dah, dah.” We don’t have to be such a Yoga Factory, because that definitely wasn’t our intention going in. But it’s funny how quickly you can fall into that mode when you start to look at your books and think, “We need to make ends meet.” I feel we’ve got this opportunity for Sky Ting to come back a little bit more to our quality. Not that we weren’t quality-driven before.

LMC: Is there a level of relief when you think about all of that stuff you were going to do that you’re now not going to do?

KJ: It’s mixed for me. I’m relieved that we have the time and space to reevaluate and work hopefully smarter and not grind as much.

CK: I think also there needed to be a shift, especially in New York — the bubble of how our world was functioning was just too ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense.

You know that Sinatra song—“If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.” It’s so true because you can. Living in New York, there’s blood on your knuckles, you’re gripping to keep things alive. But I hope there’s a little bit of a loosening of that grip, and life doesn’t become quite so strained in the city. The feeling of always needing to be so ahead and go, go, go all the time. It has been such a gift for us to have space to see how you can work in a way that’s maybe more conducive to your mental health.

KJ: And we don’t even need to do as much. We’ve been modeling our own merch and shooting it on our iPhones. We’re not doing a launch party for our new line of Sky Ting things. We don’t need all of that.

LMC: Although it does create jobs! But this has been and continues to be an eye-opening experience for all business owners and frankly everyone—the excess we create has never been so apparent, and you can’t ignore it. In the past, I think we were able to distract ourselves from it but there is no distraction now. So there is just a wild trimming of the fat going on. And I mean, I’ve seen it on my side too. Although I do feel a little bit like I’m in a rat race. I don’t know that I’ve yet found the same balance that it sounds like you guys have.

CK: Your business has always been online.

LMC: Yeah, totally. In some ways it feels we’re busier than we ever have been as a media brand, and working harder than we ever have worked to connect our content to partnership dollars, whether it’s for our “Too Many Cooks” video franchise on Instagram, our new texting service (Thoughtline), or sponsored posts on the site. It has not been easy but it does seem like the industry interest in working with traditional influencers has not really waned.

KJ: Yeah, it’s definitely about the lifestyle. For us, brands want both. All of the jobs we’re getting are asking that we post on Sky Ting and our personals.

LMC: It’s funny—there are so many parallels between our models to the extent that fashion is the language of Man Repeller, but it’s just the entry point the same way that yoga is for you. And as you’re talking about the way that you work with instructors, I’m thinking writers are teachers, too, and maybe they don’t all have to be full time. Especially the ones of Man Repeller, who are entertainers, too! And they earn loyal, cult followings the way a lot of your yoga instructors do.

And I’m sure that sometimes it’s painful to lose them, right?

KJ: Yeah, totally. When we first started these online classes, we wanted people to sign non-competes, but then again, teachers don’t make enough anyway, and we want them to make as much money as possible.

And you know what it’s like being a freelance writer, we know what it’s to be freelance teachers, and we know that unless you’re making a huge salary and have health insurance and all of that… we can’t expect everybody to stay with us forever and ever.

LMC: Even when you offer the health insurance and salaries, though, you can never really expect someone to stay forever. How important do you think video will become for your business?

KJ: I don’t think group fitness is ever going to go away. There’s something that cannot be replicated out of a classroom. But probably classroom size is going to be limited, probably everyone’s going to bring their own mats, probably no adjustments from teachers.

We’ll continue to do live streams to keep up with the global audience. We want to continue to offer something for everybody, but I think for us, the studios will be less of a way that we make money, and more of a way just to support our community and continue our community, and have physical space to do fun things like our talent shows. More of our money will be made coming from online.

LMC: So the studio becomes a church—that’s where you go for your Sunday mixer.

CK: Totally. But really, sky’s the limit.

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Founders Discuss: “How Are You Really?” With Krissy and Chloe of Sky Ting Yoga appeared first on Repeller.

Disclaimer: One of the products mentioned below (the bronzer) is from a brand (Kosas Cosmetics), in which I invested last Spring. 

I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror the other day. My skin was so white it was green—that same, drained-looking translucency I see in the winter when I’m spending so little time outdoors that we—my skin and me—become a stranger to natural light. The bags under my eyes were starting to droop and there was a ring of white around my lips like I had not washed my mouth after brushing my teeth.

Damn, I thought, I don’t think I can’t go on looking like this.

Now, this thinking might run counter to what you believe about me and the broader Man Repeller brand given that: (1) I don’t really wear makeup and (2) There is a misconception out there that our philosophy is rooted in looking “ugly.” But I will debunk these ideas and clarify that (1) I do wear some makeup (brow gel, lip tint), it’s just the no-makeup-makeup kind. And when I do choose not to wear any, it’s not because I’m trying to make a point. I genuinely prefer how I look without it, so the reason I don’t wear makeup is motivated by the same vanity that would probably compel me to wear it. And (2) this brand is not rooted in looking ugly. Looking ugly is as subjective as is looking pretty, but I never wish to look either because I don’t think such opaque adjectives, co-opted by predefined standards that don’t leave enough to develop my own, allow for the kind of nuance that makes an outward aesthetic interesting to discuss.

Beautiful, on the other hand, that’s a loaded fucking word. And I have a strong opinion on what is beautiful. You might call it ugly, you might call it pretty, and I am very loyal to this opinion. I do not wish to persuade you to buy into it but I do wish to persuade you to reconcile the world’s beauty standards with your own, then act out the latter. That’s what Man Repeller is really about.

When I say I could not go on looking like this, by the way, what I meant was: I could not go on feeling like this. The wilting in my face was at risk of becoming the wilting of my spirit, so I went to my bathroom to visit my makeup cabinet but did not extract the quotidian “essentials” of my erstwhile routine (the aforementioned brow gel and lip tint) but rather picked up two artifacts that would become the sum of a new routine.

Kosas Moisturizing Bronzer

Shop Now

Lake & Skye Oil Rollerball

Shop Now

Under a “regular” circumstance, I would probably consider them the frivolities—as interchangeable and insignificant to the beholden’s gaze as the color of my underwear, but from quarantine, they have become the most used—the only!—products in my paltry rotation. I’ve spent the last 48 hours trying to figure out how to put in words the reason why, but I think it’s simpler than I’m letting on.

The reason I’m loyal to my opinion of what’s beautiful is because as time tweaks me, I let it (the opinion) change. It contracts and fluctuates and redefines itself to accommodate my shit.

And right now, I just wanna smell good. I wanna smell good because I don’t shower as much and even though the perfume does not stop Abie from participating in his new favorite hobby of shoving his nose in my armpit to see if I have body odor (nor does it change the fact that most days, I do), catching a whiff of 11:11 is a unique kind of unilateral luxury that provokes this little voice in my head who says, “See, Leandra. You haven’t given up.”

And I want my skin to look like it has been kissed by the sun because there is either a gigantic window or a cloth face mask that stands between our contact under a normal circumstance, but when I feign liveliness on my face with a dab here and a dab there, I am reminded that I’m not dead inside. It’s not a great thing that I have to be reminded, I admit, but it’s refreshing to remind myself that I’d never let that happen! I care too much!

And that caring—it’s a beautiful thing, you know?

The post I’ve Upgraded My Beauty Routine to… Bronzer and Perfume appeared first on Repeller.

I walked past my favorite coffee shop on Sunday. It’s been closed since the end of March and I can barely recall what it was like to go there. I used to go every morning, and if I didn’t, Abie would stop in on his way home from the gym around 7:30 a.m., and return with a 16 oz. latte. If ever he missed a morning, or I missed a morning, the shape of the day was incomplete. And here it’s been two months without that.

On Sunday, I tried really hard to remember what it was like going there—putting on a “coffee outfit” and then experiencing the simultaneous thrill of being dressed and the anticipatory buzz of imminent caffeination, and, for some reason, I recalled this one memory of sitting in the back of the shop, scrolling through my phone while picking my eyebrows and wearing an ivory cardigan with a doily collar and high-waist blue jeans.

While lost in this exercise, I experienced a new sensation where suddenly, life BC (before corona) wasn’t a memory the same way all the other ones were. It was a different entity. Almost like someone else had lived it. There was no through-line, stringing past experiences together with current reality, weaving it into the sweater called Me.

Have you felt this way at all? I mentioned it to Abie on Sunday and he seemed to know exactly what I meant. Now that I think about it, I bet this—the finite separation of time: before calamity, after calamity—is the way a lot of people feel after they have encountered a significant bout of grief. The loss of a parent, a partner, a child, any external piece of you, really. I guess I’m lucky because I have never experienced grief in this way. After a miscarriage, for example, I could recognize who I was before the loss and she was still connected to who I was after the loss.

But the reason any of this is noteworthy at all is because I’m not grieving. At least I don’t think I am. Am I?

I have known for at least the last three weeks to throw the term “back to” away when discussing the topic of “normal.” There will be no going back. Only toward, forward, to something… New? Different? I’m not really sure. And maybe the sudden red-sea-split of time is essentially an internalization of this acknowledgment. I guess the thing of it is, for as much as I navel-gaze and analyze and criticize and contemplate, for as much as I complained and could find the dark holes with as much ease as I could find a silver lining… I liked how a lot of things were—in my life, that is—before the pandemic. I wouldn’t mind going “back to,” instead of “toward.” Not all of it, but some of it. This is probably not a popular opinion to share on the internet, and it runs counter to the way I have recommended that we stop and think and sit still and discard the excess, the ways in which we have distracted ourselves from being able to see ourselves and finally, to confront the Big Bad Truth and do The Hard Work that is becoming our most righteous, highest selves.

But you know what? I have been doing that—while missing some things. And in the process, I’ve discovered a lot of new dirty laundry I’ll need to send out for dry cleaning (I’m just kidding, I will wash it myself. Delegating things I have to do, even though I can rarely delegate what I don’t have to do, is one of the garments that require washing), but I might be approaching a new stage of lockdown. And in this stage, I’m good. I’m tired of excavating even though it served me well for a while. I’m good. Or at least I’m harvesting what is good, thinking less about the things I want to change, the things I look forward to changing, and more about the things I had and knew and liked before the lockdown.

Like, for example, my work. The writing, the dressing, the partnerships, the team—all of it. And an excuse to put on something nice even when I don’t need to. I could always make the case. And my space! The world I get to have that is mine independent of my family. It adds dimension and perspective and endurance to the relationships between these walls. It also adds a bit of thrill: the extent to which I used to look forward to Saturday nights to get dressed, go out, and just talk to Abie. Damn, we had it good.

Have it good.

Time is different now. And maybe I am grieving how it was before because I know it won’t be the same. It can’t be. Even if I tried to restore the past, it’s not only too far removed from the present, but it’s also too foreign a concept. I guess it’s just that even though I liked it (dare I even say loved it), I’m not that sad.

I don’t know if it’s reductive to time this turning tide to the weather brightening up, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t help to watch the sun saturate the planters full of tulips that line the streets of Greenwich Village. If sitting outside on grass and watching my kids collect branches and then rub them against the soil, cleverly turning sticks into pens with which to write on each other doesn’t remind me of a Kurt Vonnegut quote I find myself coming back to every time simple pleasures trump complicated thoughts: If this—the stand-alone satisfaction of sitting on the grass with my kids—isn’t nice, what is?

Graphics by Lorenza Centi.

The post Dispatch #009: Toward (But Never Back To) “Normal”  appeared first on Repeller.

Leandra Medine Cohen: How are you doing?

Amy Smilovic, founder of Tibi: Every day is different, right? It’s so indescribable. And weird to have something where there is no expert who knows how to handle this. Officially, no one’s been through this shit.

LMC: It’s funny to hear that coming from you because you’re a founder—and I get the sense that most founders tend not to rely on experts.

AS: That’s probably true, but at least I’d like to hear from one so I can feel more confident in a decision I’m going to make anyway. But there’s no perfect [fashion ecommerce] company to follow in terms of best practices.

LMC: I think sometimes we forget that we look to companies we admire as models for how we want to be, when ultimately, we all have a unique set of problems. It’s like trying to model your family after another person’s. Anyway, how are you feeling this week?

AS: I’m worried about the tidal wave of bankruptcies to come [for brands]. And I’m hoping that a lot of them can come back stronger, for the sake of smaller stores. Every worst case scenario that we could have dropped back in February is now being realized. That’s crazy.

LMC: Amy, I feel like you specifically have known that something is coming and it’s part of the reason that you started building an own-able platform with Tibi.com, and the reason you never took on funding, and started to pull out of department stores. You’ve been so vocal about the ways that the industry is broken. Do you feel like any of those insights are kicking into high gear?

AS: I’m just so glad that we stayed so small and operated by instinct. I think all of the things you’re saying, they weren’t prescribed on paper, it was just us operating by what felt right.

I’m glad we get to figure this out as a team without investors calling in, or department stores holding the keys to our fate. I mean, my God, I’m so thankful I didn’t do a runway show for the first time this February. It’s weird how sometimes you just know something is afoot.

LMC: What are some ways that you’re seeing your instincts pay off?

AS: When we were ordering spring inventory back in September, we (and this was for a sustainability reason) decided to go with zero excess inventory. And now I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” I mean, the one time that we sliced our inventory position was for the spring and now here we are in the middle of a pandemic. So that really did pay off. And then I think being small and nimble has let us rethink what Tibi looks like going forward. And I feel really good that.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

LMC: What does it look like? You sound very inspired!

AS: I am, because we don’t believe in big department store business. But I do believe there is big business to be had. So we are going double down on our global network of smaller specialty stores. Department store terms are tough for small businesses and as [the smaller brands] can no longer manage working with them, there’s a chance for specialty stores to get special again, with unique product that is not offered at every department store.

And then the other thing is that we’ve been trying to figure out our version of live selling for a long time — why doesn’t Home Shopping Network have a good, better, best model? Why is it the only segment of any industry that has no good, better, best?

For the first time we have an extremely captive audience that is our own network of amazing models, videographers, photographers, and incredible stylists who are all like, “We need a new way of doing business.” So I’m thinking, why aren’t we using our extended family to sell things, and instead of giving a department store half of that revenue, why wouldn’t I just give half to this community of people?

I think we’re really kicking away at this new way of selling where everyone who participates can win.

When I let go of half of our staff right after this pandemic hit—sewers, cutters, pattern makers, technicians, production people—I realized how many people did not have a safety net, and it scared the shit out of me. For years, I hadn’t been able to reward people financially the way I would want to because we were so compromised by having to do so many different things for so many different partners. Everyone had this different way of doing things and disrupting that came at a cost.

But it’s just crazy. It just really pissed me off the last few years that we weren’t able to really grow good employees because we were spread so thin. The new mantra is, like, keep the money in the extended family.

LMC: Does any part of it feel relieving?

AS: Yeah, it does. I had always been so proud, I was like, “We’re like a speed boat. If we want to take a sharp right, we can take a sharp right, we’re not a tanker.” But for the last couple of years, because people were spread very thin, you couldn’t go in and [change things] to move forward.

LMC: Do you have an idea of what the path forward looks like? I just came out of a leadership meeting, and the big topic of the day had to do with our office lease.

AS: Yeah. I mean, just since the pandemic, we’ve already racked up exorbitant bills in rent between the store and our office. So, that’s a fucking nightmare. And the store guy has been a total dick. But the office people are working with us.

If we move forward with this concept, then I see our office turning half into a studio-type space. And if the concept would work well, I could also see other brands coming in and using the space to sell their product. So I think you either have to pray that we can get out of spaces and downsize or take the space and really rethink its usage.

I mean, who knows, maybe the future is that we have some other designers working out of our space… there’s a lot of different options. What the pandemic has done for sure is it’s forced everyone to be a really creative thinker.

LMC: Necessity is the mother of invention!

AS: Exactly. I was watching a documentary on Chiara [Ferragni], and I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it reminded me of when you started out. They were saying she didn’t have this rock-solid business plan, so she just did everything by what was right for her. Whatever was best for her was going to lead the way. And I feel like that’s so much of what you did when you were starting Man Repeller.

It was just like, if it didn’t work for you, why would you do it? So you ended up creating something pretty perfect for the moment because it was ultimately fulfilling the needs that you had right then. And it turned out to be something incredible, new, and fabulous. So I think that if you think about the last 10 years, so much of the inventions have not been driven by a necessity.

LMC: Or even an honest desire!

AS: You see this ad and you’re like, “Have you always wanted socks to come in 30 different sizes? Well, we have your answer!” And I’m like, “I have never thought about a sock coming in 30 different sizes. You’re making this shit up now.” So I think that for a long time there was nothing disrupting the global needs.

LMC: It’s almost like we stopped operating based on primal instinct. All of a sudden it was like, “Well, this brand made this and so here’s a solution to the product they made. And then that product ‘solved’ this but here’s a solution for that.” And it just got so far from the core.

AS: I think with a smaller team, everyone viscerally feels a problem. No one’s coming at it from an intellectual standpoint.

LMC: In the grand scheme of this pandemic and what we’re learning, how important do you think fashion will be? Do you ever worry about the future of your business because of the way in which the pandemic is revealing how much we don’t need?

AS: Did you even think about the Met Gala? I don’t think bullshit fashion has any place in the future, but I think, based just on my own incubator on Instagram, that people do still want to feel good about themselves and they still equate having style with feeling good. I think if you can help people discover how to feel better about themselves through style, there will always be a place for that.

LMC: Well, yeah, I mean that’s the difference, right? It’s fashion versus style. I’ve been cooking so much and as a result, have been drawing so many correlations between the necessity for food and clothes. And obviously they’re different. Because after we eat food, it goes away and we need more. We don’t need clothes to the same degree, but

AS: I get it. Because even with food, right? You could either eat beans all day or you could choose to make a really delicious, beautiful pasta. And so I still think many people prefer the beautiful pasta.

LMC: To be clear my perspective on style is that it’s as important as ever because our worlds have become physically so much smaller and clothes help us to develop narratives about all the different parts of us that we can’t expound upon anymore. But I do wonder about what people are shopping for.

AS: They’re buying what we discuss with them. Sales are happening online but no one is laughing to the bank. What is selling are these cargo nylon pants that we did. The lightweight cashmere sweaters have been strong. For sure any of the cozier stuff is doing really well. Shoes are like impossible to solve right now.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Although I posted some fall penny loafers the other day and got a huge amount of pre-orders on them. People do seem to be optimistic about shoes next season.

LMC: Well, yes. They’re optimistic about their relationships with the concrete for the future. Right?

AS: Exactly. Half of the buyers though are people writing things like, “We just want to support you guys.” That’s one of the biggest things that I’m hearing from people, is that they just want to support people that they like. And that’s why I do think that boutiques have the potential to be big winners out of this.

LMC: What kinds of pivot strategies have you developed that are yielding good results? Do I sound like a tech startup founder?

AS: Well, [Styling Director] Dione Davis and I go live on Instagram every Friday, and we take three key pieces and style them with lots of other things in our closets. Things that aren’t ours as well, that we’ve both just had. So, that’s been really great. And then on Wednesdays, Elaine [Tibi’s CEO] and I do an Instagram business class for young designers and entrepreneurs.

People send me questions during the week: How do I calculate cost returns? Or what are my legal options if this department store is canceling an order? My factories are refusing to ship unless I pay. And so we answer all those questions every Wednesday. So that’s been great.

LMC: You’re calling it great because the engagement’s really high? What’s the, to sound like a tech start-up founder once more, “ROI”?

AS: The engagement is high, but I also think it’s nice to show your real personality and I find that even just regular customers are interested in the whole business of fashion. And people, it seems, are glad to see that companies would help other companies right now. I don’t know, people are a little more curious than before.

LMC: I’m now looking at the help us give back post that you put on Instagram on March 25th.

AS: That was my favorite thing we’ve ever done. Thanks for promoting it.

LMC: Well I sent you that screenshot of someone who received an outfit because of you.

AS: We sent out 1500 items and that made me realize how important it is for the employees too.They really get behind that kind of stuff. They needed right then for us to be doing something selfless.

LMC: What do you hope doesn’t change back after all of this?

AS: I mean [the international] fashion weeks for all their pros and cons—whatever people say about it—it’s this time where you get to escape your family and hang out with people who are speaking 20 different languages at one time and they’re all together.

Fashion week was so good in that respect. Especially for women. Men get their board meetings and summits and this was really great that way where you could have a table of women from 20 different countries eating and drinking and laughing, and you’re having a really good, rounded business conversation. You’re not just talking about skirt lengths. I want to get back to that.

LMC: What about for your own business? What do you hope doesn’t change back?

AS: I want all my specialty stores to stay solvent so that I can help them and they can help us. But our industry was on a lifeline at best. And so there’s not a whole lot that I want to stay the same. I’m really ready for the 3.0 version. 2.0 happened in the mid-00s. So I’d like it to be 3.0. Not a new look, but a new way.

Graphics by Lorenza Centi.

The post Founders Discuss: “How Are You, Really?” With Tibi’s Amy Smilovic appeared first on Repeller.

Are you getting sick of putting shit on a stove? I am getting a little sick of putting shit on a stove.

Don’t get me wrong—dinnertime is my favorite time of day. I pour myself a dollop (just a dollop!) of tequila and splash in some juice of a Meyer lemon, then ask Alexa to play jazz music as I roll up my sleeves and get ready to confront the quarantine kitchen. Then we decide in tandem what the citizens of Centre Street (i.e. my family) will eat for dinner. Last night, we had turkey meatballs and sauteed string beans that I drenched in tomato basil sauce. Madeline and Laura thought they were green noodles, which was a miracle. The night before, we had Banza pasta alla Norma with roasted eggplant cubes and everything. While Abie did not earn the gift of melted mozzarella cheese in his grain-and-dairy-free dish, Madeline and Laura did. I had the pasta with sun-dried tomatoes in oil. They were sitting in my fridge and I thought: Use them. Scintillating, right?

Tonight I was thinking about grilling some radicchio and zucchini to match a homemade putanesca sauce that I planned to toss over chicken until I remembered that I’m not an Italian restaurant, you don’t “toss” sauce over food and I have no idea how the fuck to make a putanesca sauce, much less what is in one, so!, instead, I will artfully arrange ingredients on toast.

I have been doing this most mornings for my kids and self: toasting Ezekiel bread and then covering it in avocado, almond butter, tahini, or something else and arranging scenes with: tomatoes, eggs, bananas, smoked salmon, or kimchi on top of the paste. I don’t know why it just occurred to me that the paste is like glue, the toast is like an easel and the toppings are the artifacts I affix to my mixed media installations, but there it is. There you go.

At a minimum, they are a good excuse to use what is leftover from The Great Bread Bake of 2020 as a vehicle for something greater. Maybe you’re sick, for example, of seeing rotund loaves coddled in towels fresh off the press. Maybe you’d rather see:

A tableau of food groups

How thin you can slice a cucumber, and a bed of sheer onions

This slideshow of options

Or a landscape.

Since the time of this writing, I have executed three different toast types, which you can consider recipes if you’d like but the great thing about this genre of food preparation is that the instructions aren’t stringent. You kind of just have to ask yourself: what flavors do I like to eat together? And then look inside yourself (fridge and pantry), see what you have and combine. It’s not so different from getting dressed, but here are the formulas, in case you need a thought starter or three:

Cinnamon raisin Ezekiel English muffin (open face) + almond butter + lemon saffron jam (or, wtvr, any jam you have, but seriously consider trying Brins lemon saffron jam) + left over sweet potato mash from the night before and a faint dash of cinnamon for art’s sake =

Breakfast.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Two slices of Base Culture keto bread + smashed avocado mixed with juice of half a lime, salt, chili flakes, and garlic powder + two big fat spoons worth of kimchi =

Lunch.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

One slice of Mestemacher pumpernickel bread + tahini + juice of a quarter lemon + paltry bed of arugula + smoked salmon + another squeeze of another quarter lemon + tellicherry peppercorn sprinkling (or capers, whatever) =

A good pass at Tahini toast.

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

Shop Now

And when all else fails, there is always taramasalata.

Graphics by Lorenza Centi.

The post So, What Are You Gonna Do With All That Bread You Baked?  appeared first on Repeller.

About a month ago, Mallory published a list: “Things I Miss, Don’t Miss, Won’t Miss, and Won’t Forget.” Today, Leandra shares hers from the vantage point of May.

What I Miss

The thrill of nailing an outfit

And the first several steps you take outside while wearing it on a sunny day

Smelling like I haven’t been home in hours

Picking up my head to ask a question across my desk and getting a live response

The gorgeously paradoxical quiet of an early morning in Soho and the preparational buzz you can feel vibrating off the sidewalk as it gears up for opening hour

Chattering strangers

Chance encounters

Asking Abie how his day was and genuinely not knowing the answer

What I Didn’t Think I’d Miss

Squiggly chairs

The sound of honking cars

Feeling real distance between me and my bed and longing to get in at the end of the day

Brunch lines snaking around the block where I live

Running home to change, then going right back out

I guess I mean: being in a rush

Occasionally wanting to wear makeup

What I Don’t Miss

The smell of residual beer on and around the trashcans of Bowery Street early on a Sunday morning

Waiting 16 minutes for the Q train

Not “having time” for people who matter (Love you, mom)

Sitting at an office, or really anywhere, when I don’t have to be there, just because it’s the middle of the day

Getting caught on the hamster wheel because it’s easier to speed up than to slow down

Taking things—like buying a cup of coffee or my walk to work—for granted

Feeling like an absent parent

What I Won’t Miss

Leggings

Depending on my phone for human connection

Cooking three meals day

Live newsfeeds of coronavirus updates

My bathtub as a makeshift office

Waking up with a lump in my chest, almost every morning

Feeling irresponsible every time the constant, nagging reminder of our collective mortality lifts from my mind

The frequency with which I wonder if I’m depressed

The 30-minute process of sanitizing after a visit to the grocery store

Not knowing

What I Won’t Forget

That even though I won’t miss not knowing, we never really know

The grocers who enabled my visits

How much I rely on the restaurants of my neighborhood to make me feel at home

That sharing a bedroom-as-office with my husband wasn’t that bad

Precisely what stay-at-home moms “do all day”

How much having a sense of humor helps

That New York needs me as much as I need it

Your turn.

Graphics by Lorenza Centi.

The post (Another) List of Things I Miss, Don’t Miss, Won’t Miss, and Won’t Forget appeared first on Repeller.