I did a lot this season and feel incredibly grateful to all the designers, PR mavens, fashion houses, and everyone behind the scenes who continue to give fashion the stage it deserves—and who allowed me into so many of the spaces I was lucky to find myself in.

Here are my field n…

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I write today’s letter with full cognizance of the overwhelming amount of “influencer discourse” circulating right now. The word chic is ruined, and maybe even cool too. Which is funny, because I will keep writing this series ’til the end of time. So I feel compelled to reiterate that being devastatingly hot and cool has very little to do with what you wear, where you go, or what you buy. It is, still, a way of moving through the world with curiosity, discernment, and confidence. To be devastatingly hot and cool means:

• Curating your life for the love of beauty, fashion, art, food, travel, and knowledge—not because they’re status symbols, but because they genuinely delight you

• Becoming the person your friends go to when they want outfit help, product recommendations, a restaurant recommendation, a book, or simply to know what’s worth paying attention to

• Living with a foot in various corners of the world (literally or figuratively), staying curious about people and places, and collecting observations instead of consuming places

• Moving through life with quiet confidence. You don’t need to have everything figured out, but you trust yourself enough to know you’ll figure it out

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Few things annoy me more than talk of summer ending. Every August, the waning of the best season of the year becomes a collective fixation. Like, the tomatoes are still perfect, what do you mean you’re shopping for fall? I will indulge this only a little, especially because this letter is coming out a bit late.

August is actually when when late-summer travels ramp up and there’s a second wave of excitement around getting dressed for the heat. (September is hot too, remember?) Everyone who spent July wearing the same three things suddenly remembers the clothes they bought in May, vacations call for something new, and the prospect of another 4-5 weeks of bare shoulders and bare feet feels like a recommitment to the season.

But I know fall is on retailers’ minds. Pre-fall and fall collections are populating stores, and I’m shooting campaigns with briefs asking that styling leans toward fall—all while New York is still very much in the throes of summer.

So, in the spirit of meeting the industry halfway, I’ll concede a few things: pieces that feel right for August now, but won’t look completely out of place when the first cool night finally arrives. I write this newsletter to you from the Berkshires, where the nights do turn cool enough that I’m very glad I packed my Dôen Petra Cardigan.

FASHION

• The US Open always brings spectator fashion into the spotlight, with brands capitalizing on the tournament’s increasingly potent intersection of sport, fashion, and celebrity. I know a lot has been said about the influencer-ization of the US Open, but there’s something overly simplistic but true about it: the accessibility of sports as culture is undeniable. You can come for the clothes, the celebrities, the Honey Deuces, the people-watching, and you can also get into the sport itself along the way :)

  • Polo Ralph Lauren, the official outfitter of the Open, debuted their annual US Open collection last week. This year’s collection skews sportier than the brand’s Wimbledon collection, with a greater emphasis on casual staples like this US Open-blue fleece polo shirt, the perfect boat neck sweatshirt, and the striped cable knit cardigan that I missed out on last year. I also love this yellow cap, which flips the US Open’s color way into something a bit brighter. The official store at Arthur Ashe also has items that you can’t find online.

  • Madesome’s viral surf shorts come in a mini skirt in the perfect US Open blue.

  • White skirts galore, to be dressed up or down: I love this Khaite paneled one, the perfect poplin pull on skirt under $100, Aritzia’s A-line silhouette with a thicker waistband, or Matteau’s drawstring one that brings a hint of resort wear courtside.

  • Or opt for white shorts. GWYN makes a very sturdy denim Bermuda short, Chan Luu’s techno taffeta range is expanded with white shorts in the mix, or these easygoing longline lyocell-linen ones.

  • One-and-done dresses are the perfect spectator outfit. I love the idea of a t shirt dress at Arthur Ashe, looking cool and unaffected by the frenzy of the spectacle. I also love this relaxed drop waist dress and this striped Suzie Kondi moment.

• Pre-fall collections are always exciting because they seem to arrive exactly when you’re ready to wear them. I look to New York’s quintessential womenswear labels to shape my early thoughts of fall.

  • Kallmeyer’s earthen-toned pieces for pre-fall feature a raw-edged, shiny, summer wool dress, a case to bring back the dramatic top, a cotton knit tunic to be worn over skirts, pants, and dresses, and gauzey coverups that can be worn in the city too.

  • Ruching is a big theme for many of Khaite’s pre-fall pieces. This dress in the most beautiful salmon pink color is calling my name for breezy, warm nights in August and early September. The tank version is very good too.

  • Proenza Schouler’s new arrivals are trickling in! Their brown leather east-west bag remains my most-worn purse of the summer that isn’t a raffia tote. This crinkly leather tote is also something I’d like to sling to the beach and also when my days feel busier.

  • Tory Burch’s 70s-inspired floral dress has me thinking a lot about nostalgic florals. I saw this skirt in J.Crew’s new campaign imagery and made parallels. Same goes for this Sir. skirt. With a simple tank or a sweater, these florals prove longevity!

• I’m always shopping for more serious shoes at the end of summer. After three months of schlepping around in rubber flip-flops, I’m desperate to up my footwear game. (Although I just discovered Archies and I’m more convinced than ever that flip flops are the end-game shoe)

  • I missed out on Jude’s perfect Ease mule last time they were in stock, so these, in a lower heel are perfect to me.

  • Very into this Margaux slipper-mule situation. And this Polo Ralph Lauren slipper-loafer situation. Or how about Proenza’s lace ballet flats, heavily disocunted right now?

  • The Net-a-Porter shoe sale is a very good place to be right now.

• Purple is everywhere right now, and I think that turquoise blue we saw all summer is transmuting into cooler, more muted shades of lavender, periwinkle, and pale blue as we head into fall.

  • Doen’s signature cardigan that now comes in new colors every season now comes in a dusky purple called ‘violet thistle’. And there are just a few more sizes of their lace-trimmed silk skirt in a striking lilac purple.

  • I missed out on all the Chloe SS26 babydoll dresses, so this new lace-trimmed dress is tempting and feels perfect for right now. Or this for a maxi version to be worn with layers.

  • I love velvet-trimmed anything for date night or deep V-cut anything for your next wedding RSVP.

• Black raffia/woven bags straddle summer and pre-fall perfectly, though I’m not opposed to wearing one year-round. The Row made a waxed cotton one that looks like it’ll be perfectly slung over the shoulder, Jenni Kayne makes a bare bones silhouette that will work with virtually every outfit, and this Little Liffner one is a crowd favorite.

BEAUTY

• Saie got the summer-is-still-on memo with the launch of their newest cult-favorite Glowy Super Gel in a shade called ‘BeachGlow’. I’m not really a primer girl, but I do love mixing my foundation or tinted moisturizer with this stuff to give my face a subtle, clean glow!

• I’ve been obsessed with The Odyssey for many different contradicting reasons. One of them is how beautiful all the female actors were, despite inhabiting a world of war, hardship, and a general absence of modern beauty infrastructure lol (the anachronisms are among the movie’s biggest criticisms). BUT, in a delightful bit of anachronistic beauty intel, we did get confirmation that the film’s makeup team used a Merit blush on Zendaya: “we wanted her character to be flawless while maintaining a grounded quality…she has a very youthful, translucent look that we achieved with sheer makeup, such as Merit blush.” It is still my most-worn blush no matter the season.

• I was on set recently for a brand that really nails the whole ‘effortless girl’ look and the makeup artist used Make Up For Ever’s multi-use crayons that come in the same shades as their beloved lip liners. I liked that I got to have a little say on the flush of color on my face :) She used my favorite lip liner shade Anywhere Caffeine on my cheeks.

• m.ph has been churning out new products at an impressive speed, and the girls are eating it up. Their newest launch, a lip gloss, launches today (!) and I got an early peek at how good the formula is. I will never stop collecting and writing about hydrating lip products that make your lips look perfectly kissable.

  • Side note: on a recent trip to Sephora (I always get so much anxiety walking into one but it’s really insightful boots-on-the-ground journalism), m.ph’s display was the hit of the store (Soho location) and I think her signature look is really what we’re all stuck on right now: the Instagram face, softened—still sculpted and perfected, but made approachable, a little more undone, and ostensibly achievable.

I’m excited for the slow down that comes with August and with Labor Day approaching. After what feels like the busiest summer I’ve had in recent memory work-wise, I’m leaning into the second act of summer and I hope you can too.

Xxx

Growth is the slow process of watching capacity catch up to desire. We know what we want long before we (ever) become the kind of person who can fully receive it. But no matter how much we desire to be that person, life insists that we build them slowly and often painfully.

There’s so much discourse about Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. One of the biggest critiques was how Matt Damon’s Odysseus lacked the deeply complicated, flawed humanity that defines Homer's hero—a man whose greatest strength was matched only by his susceptibility to temptation, pride, and desire. Nolan's Odysseus, by contrast, is riddled with anxiety, guilt, and the quiet burden of everything he's survived: the pillaging and the bloodshed and the moral compromises. (Even Athena was washed with Odysseus's guilt—Zendaya wearing that same haunted, thousand-yard stare like Rue did) He’s seen too much. And once you've seen enough of the world, there are some versions of yourself you just cannot return to. For nearly three hours, we watch a man carrying the unbearable weight of his memory. Every decision is filtered through grief, every silence through guilt. He isn't merely trying to find his way home; he's trying to reconcile with the person the journey has made him.

(I mean, this is a metaphor for the decline of the American empire through and through. That's an essay in its own right—and one of the film's most compelling through lines—but this is about who the journey required Odysseus to become before he could return back to Anne!!!! I mean Penelope.)

I have not read The Odyssey in its entirety (though a copy of Emily Wilson’s translation is on its way to me as we speak) but I was less interested in whether Nolan faithfully adapted Homer than in what his film suggested about becoming. Because I don’t think The Odyssey is ultimately a story about getting home. This is an aDaPtAtIoN after all. And Nolan had something to say about becoming!

We spend so much of our lives believing we’re meant to “find ourselves,” as though our truest identity already exists somewhere beneath the surface waiting to be uncovered. It is one of modern life’s most seductive myths—and one that extends far beyond the astrology charts, Human Design readings, personality tests, and every other framework promising to tell us who we’re meant to be.

That may be only a fraction of the story. Which is probably why I have not spoken to my astrologer in over a year lol.

The world, with all its horror and confusion and unfairness and grit, has a way of proving otherwise. I just really love the idea that a very specific version of us has to exist before we can actually experience the life we dream of living. Not because we’re being punished or tested, but because some dreams ask something of us before they can become ours. They demand a certain depth, discernment, resilience, generosity, or courage that only experience can cultivate.

That horrific, body-altering breakup (my friend and I joke that the period I was my thinnest was “body-by-Kevin” LOL). The friendship that shattered your understanding of loyalty. The job you didn't get. The job you did get that made you hate your life. The city you reluctantly left. The class you took on a whim. None of these moments are random interruptions to your life before you self-actualize. They are the raw materials from which your future self is built. Every one of them expands your capacity in ways you rarely recognize in real time. The evidence isn't that your life changes. It's that one day you respond differently than you once would have.

It's funny because I don't actually think my dreams have changed all that much over the last decade. If I’m being honest, I've always wanted to write. I've always wanted to love deeply. I've always wanted a beautiful home, thoughtful work, autonomy, a small inner circle, and beautiful dinners. The dreams stayed remarkably consistent. What changed was my capacity to inhabit them.

Along the way, you shed people, places, and versions of yourself that once felt impossible to imagine living without. You react differently. Things that once would have devastated you barely register. Then, almost imperceptibly, they stop carrying the same weight they once did.

I didn’t ask to never speak to some people ever again. I didn’t know certain chapters would end when they did—or that some would end in ways that would humiliate me. I certainly didn’t know I’d spend years reconciling with my work in what feels like 9930207 different ways. But that’s just the way becoming works. Not everyone who helps make you is meant to meet the person you become.

Nolan offers no triumphant homecoming. By the time Odysseus returns to Ithaca, the man who sailed for Troy no longer exists. His birthright may have made him king, but the journey made him question whether he could ever rule again.

This philosophy isn’t “get your fucking ass up and work.” It’s “become someone who can sustain what you want.” Those are two very different pursuits. Because almost anyone can receive something wonderful. Very few people are prepared to keep it.

The person you're meant to be isn't hidden behind some immutable core waiting to be uncovered. She emerges through every experience that deepens your capacity for the life you hoped to live. I'm still becoming her, day by day.

Anyways, New Yorkers have never felt happier to be in New York this summer. Businesses are booming, restaurants are spilling onto the sidewalks, and the city feels unusually alive with the pleasure of people choosing to stay put instead of escaping. Like, for example, I didn’t commit to seeing BTS next weekend at MetLife Stadium because I thought I’d be traveling but somehow I am in New York in August with no plans to leave???

Reorganizing my closet—and turning my office into a second one—has led me back to pieces in my wardrobe I had long forgotten about. Wearing them again has felt even better than shopping for something new and this has generally been the attitude of this summer. Feeling content with what I already have, with what is already in front of me, and focusing on building on what already exists. It's a beautiful metaphor for getting dressed, but also for life.

Here are the outfits I’ve managed to document between my Europe travels in June bopping around the city.

I’m wearing a full Sézane look: pants, tank, raffia tote (which fits my 15in MacBook I must note)

Sézane’s cotton tops keep selling out before I can even check out, which feels like a testament to our collective desire to wear nothing but cotton and other natural fibers this summer. I understand why their summer collections are so beloved. The fabrics, the cuts, the embroidery, the fit—every detail feels thoughtfully considered. At this price point, I genuinely don’t think there’s anyone doing this look of romantic summer dressing better!!

Some pieces are not sold out that I’m eyeing: this surfer-inspired striped tank, this embroidered black cami, and this perfect pointelle tank.

Khaite silk organza dress that is virtually sold out everywhere, Proenza Schouler bag, Jenni Kayne sandals, Lié Studio x Lesse lip balm necklace (so very Hermès, no?)

A full Polo Ralph Lauren look—Scarf, pants, shirt. The jacket was a part of their Wimbledon collection.

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It’s around now that every other Instagram reel and TikTok video is set to the audio of Lana Del Rey cooing, "Hot summer nights, mid-July, when you and I were forever wiiiiild." Mid-July is the emotional peak of summer and it’s the most perfect time to be devastatingly hot and cool. We’re embodying and we’re living.

This month, I’ve reworked my definition of what it means to be devastatingly hot and cool. It’s become my most-engaged-with series!, so I want to reiterate that being devastatingly hot and cool (DHC) is less about physical appearance than it is a way of thinking and moving through the world. It has nothing to do with your job, race, gender, or socioeconomic status. It’s about being curious. Remaining a lifelong learner. Cultivating your own taste. Feeling deeply secure in what you love and who you are. And as a result, that kind of self-possession is what makes someone magnetic, devastatingly hot, and cool.

Being devastatingly hot and cool looks like:

• Curating your life for the love of beauty, fashion, art, food, travel, and knowledge—not because they’re status symbols, but because they genuinely delight you

• Becoming the person your friends go to when they want outfit help, product recommendations, a restaurant recommendation, a book, or simply to know what’s worth paying attention to

• Living with a foot in various corners of the world (literally or figuratively), staying curious about people and places, and collecting observations instead of consuming places

• Moving through life with quiet confidence. You don’t need to have everything figured out, but you trust yourself enough to know you’ll figure it out

Now back to July's issue of How to Be Devastatingly Hot and Cool. It finds us in peak summer magic, when the workweek is more or less four days long and the haze of the heat lulls us into a slow and sweet rhythm. The produce at the farmer's market is abundant, and the stone fruit is as sweet as honey. Dinners call for a chilled red, and you might even have a glass of white wine at lunch. You keep a book in your bag at all times because you never know when you'll stumble into an unexpected hour of idleness. Perfume settles into your skin as it mingles with the humidity. You let your body do the talking, and I'll let you decide what that means for you.

Whether you're staying in your city, taking local trips, or doing the whole Euro summer thing, here’s my guide on how to be devastatingly hot and cool for the second half of summer.

FASHION

• Color, color, color! The DHC girl never shies away from wearing color in the summer. If head-to-toe color isn't your thing, let your shoes, bag, or other accessories do the work.

  • Summer travels are a great time to pick up bags from a local market, boutique, or flea market. All the better if they’re made artistically with local textiles and fabrics. They make for the best throw-on accessories to complement your easy summer outfits.

  • Chan Luu’s embellished market totes get better by the season, Cordera’s understated and surprisingly seasonless beaded bags have been restocked and ready for preorder, the Jimmy Choo Cinch bag has been reimagined in raffia and candy beads! I also think Dries has really good clutches for adding a pop of whimsical color and sparkle to your wardrobe. They look otherworldly in the best way possible.

  • These Tory Burch sandals are one part anklet, one part shoe. These embellished corded sandals on Revolve are great, and if you have smaller feet, the Éliou collab ones are even better, this purple is everywhere and you need it on your feet.

• I know I just said color, color, color, but now I’m saying white!!! In all its high-summer forms: sheer, opaque, breezy, short, embroidered, open-knit, and everything in between. Whites fit into your wardrobe seamlessly and something white can always be thrown in your bag for endless layering opportunities on the go.

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I fell off my Pilates reformer—right onto my butt—for the first time in my fifteen years of practicing Pilates. It was humiliating and painful enough that I still feel it every time I get up from a seated or lying position. I know why I fell: a distraction from a very upsetting communication mishap that has resulted in me missing out on a dream brand trip. My body in a workout class staring at one too many bad spray tans in front of me but my mind somewhere entirely elsewhere, trying to soothe a career disappointment.

My brain is wired to maximize opportunities and experiences. Somewhere along the way, I've developed a very specific idea of what a "person in demand" looks like—and I've come to believe that everything has to go exactly according to plan in order for me to become her.

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Ciao from a tiny, sleepy town in the southernmost region of Puglia, the final destination of my summer travels this month before heading back to New York. This town I’m in is so charming, so remote, so off the beaten path that the local townspeople have been looking at me and my sister with endearing bemusement.

But it’s here where I’m practicing a form of mindful meditation: truly slowing down and maintaining the rituals that keep me in balance so that I can charge forward with clarity and intention. Of all the things I’m neurotic about—and there are many when it comes to my lifestyle—my morning routine might be the one I take most seriously. It’s something I actively try to maintain even when I’m traveling.

My skincare routine is an important part of that ritual. It isn’t simply about appearance (though I’d be lying if I said I don’t enjoy the results); it’s a small act of care that signals the start of the day. Alongside my coffee, journaling, and a few quiet moments before setting out for the day, I’ve introduced something to my skincare routine that I’ve only heard in headlines from supermodels: a daily shot of olive oil.

I’ve always known that beautiful, radiant skin starts from within. It’s not rocket science. We are what we eat and a single night of bad eating or drinking will manifest in some angry pimples that will tell me something’s up.

My first introduction to olive oil as a skincare ingredient was through Furtuna Skin’s Biphase Moisturizing Oil. The brand, founded by Agatha Relota Luczo—a model and double certified olive oil sommelier (!!!)—uses olives grown on its 800-acre Sicilian estate to create skincare products designed to nourish the skin. That face oil, along with the brand’s balm have been part of my routine for years.

More recently, however, I’ve become interested in olive oil not just as a topical skincare ingredient but as something to incorporate into my daily wellness ritual. Furtuna’s olive oil introduced me to the habit of taking a tablespoon each morning—a simple practice rich in antioxidants, healthy fats, and other nutrients that support moisture retention and hydration.

I should note why I’m traveling through Italy, home to some of the world’s best olive oils, with a bottle of Furtuna’s LXR06 in tow. The reason is quite simple: this blend is particularly rich in many of the compounds that make olive oil so celebrated in the first place. It contains higher levels of antioxidants, polyphenols, and unsaturated fatty acids than your standard extra virgin olive oils.

None of this is to suggest that a spoonful of olive oil is a shortcut to perfect skin. At 30, I’ve lived long enough to know there is no single ingredient, supplement, or product that can deliver that. Good skin, genetics aside, is usually the result of many small choices made consistently over time. In a world that constantly asks us to optimize, hack, and experiment with pseudo science, olive oil is just so… straightforward.

This habit feels especially fitting here in southern Italy, surrounded by olive trees that have shaped both the landscape and the culture for generations. I look around on my drives and see endless groves of olive trees stretching across the countryside. Olives and olive oil, in every way, have shaped the rhythms of daily life here for centuries. There is something special about participating in a ritual that has endured for so long. I feel more connected than ever to my body, to my routine, and to this beautiful place I get to be in.

Code LAURA gets you 20% off Furtuna Skin’s products sitewide. Try the olive oil, trust me on this one!

In love and beautiful skin,
Laura

The caps lock byline and exclamation points really are that important. This is peak devastatingly hot and cool (DHC) weather and the beginning of summer signals something the rest of summer can’t quite capture: that intoxicating mix of excitement and possibility.

The Knicks’ historic win seems to have primed the city for a kind of magical energy, with people making statements like, “You’re a loser if you’re not in New York right now.” I don’t fully disagree. As someone who notoriously never experiences FOMO, I have it. And I’m currently in Puglia, deep in my summer magic, still feeling like I’m missing out on the joy.

I’m coming off the high of an incredible week in Turkey, where I spent several days at the Maxx Royal Resort, now only in its third season—a relative infancy in hotel years. It is the kind of place that makes you rethink what a luxury resort can be. It was from here I texted friends, “Why go to the South of France when you can go to Bodrum?” and finally wore t…

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I feel like I say that a lot—attributed to my tendency to be easily delighted—but I’m already plotting my return. Three nights in Napa (tacked onto the end of a trip to Vegas to attend a BTS concert) was nowhere near enough time. The valley rewards those who arrive with a group of friends, a huge appetite, and a driver’s license, three things absent on this trip. I did visit three wineries, all intentionally different from one another, and left feeling thirstier to see more. There’s a reason my friend is heading back for a fourth visit. “There’s just so much to see, you’ll see,” she told me the day before I left.

At one point, I texted my sister that I felt homesick because it was simply too beautiful here. I stayed at the Auberge du Soleil, where you could easily spend an entire day doing absolutely nothing beyond lingering…

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A lot happened in New York this week in the world of fashion. Gucci staged their cruise show, aptly titled #GucciCore, in Times Square. Louis Vuitton showed a playful cruise collection at the opulent Frick Museum. Fendi relaunched 14 of their most beloved Baguette styles at their Madison Ave boutique. (The collection is available exclusively in their Milan flagship, Madison Ave flagship, and Shanghai IFC boutique)

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I spent just under a week in LA, where I took meetings (I feel very cool to say this lol), saw my beautiful friends, and relished in the strange magic of Los Angeles, a place I once associated with a kind of diffuse loneliness I couldn’t quite put into words. Every time I tried, the person I was speaking to would inevitably respond, “But it’s so beautiful?” And it is. There is something fantastical about this city. The light is almost too flattering. The palm trees feel arranged with cinematic precision. Even mundane errands can feel faintly cinematic. And yet beneath all that beauty, I used to feel untethered, as t…

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It took me way too long to finish the second season of Beef on Netflix. Every time I sat down to watch it, I would tire in the middle of an episode, nothing having to do with the quality of the show, but instead with the heavy themes of capitalism and Marxism that Lee Sung Jin, the creator, went to lengths to explore. And every time, my brain was too wary, my body too tired, to focus on it the way the show deserves.

Beef focuses on two couples: an older couple Josh (Oscar Isaac) & Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) and a younger one, Austin (Charles Melton) & Ashley (Caileey Spaeny). Josh and Lindsay have spent years chasing proximity to wealth and status and move to California to run a prestigious country club that caters to the 1 percent. Austin and Ashley are deep in the kind of naïve, all-encompassing, idyllic infatuation that only young love can produce. They don’t have much, but at least they have each other.

What sets this season off isn’t road rage à la season one, but something more dramatic in my opinion: the younger couple witnesses—and subsequently films—the older couple fighting with rage and violence. The footage becomes a tool of blackmail, setting off a chain of chaotic events, entanglements, and plot twists. The young couple’s hope is that the video can be leveraged to move up the ranks at the country club—and it works. But that’s only the beginning.

The real plot isn’t actually about the incident itself, but about what proximity to power does to people. As the season unfolds, nearly every relationship becomes shaped by usefulness. Beef suggests that capitalism does not merely shape our working lives but fundamentally reshapes our emotional ones too, conditioning people to approach love through utility, stability, leverage, and survival rather than emotional vulnerability and real connection, whatever that means. The tragedy of the show is not that love is impossible, but that under systems defined by scarcity and competition, healthy relationships require forms of emotional risk and mutual care that capitalism actively discourages.

At the center of the country club is owner Chairwoman Park, a billionaire whose wealth and influence quietly dictate the moral logic of everyone beneath her. Park embezzles money out of the club to cover up wrongful deaths by her younger plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Kim. As scandals surrounding the family begin to surface, the people orbiting Chairwoman Park become increasingly willing to lie, betray, and commit heinous crimes in exchange for power, protection, and upward mobility.

When Eunice, the chairwoman’s assistant, grows close to Austin, he begins to believe he’s experiencing something deeper than the idyllic infatuation he shares with Ashley. But what he mistakes for intimacy is actually just usefulness. While Ashley pours all her love into Austin unconditionally as a codependent compulsion, Eunice merely relates to Austin as someone tied to her own survival under Chairwoman Park.

If looked at under a Marxist framework, Josh, Lindsay, Austin, Ashley, and Eunice are all members of the working class “proletariat” who, in the end, should theoretically bond over their shared exploitation and worsening inequality plaguing their lives. In the eyes of Chairwoman Park, they are all the same, even though Josh and Lindsay have spent years aspiring to align themselves with the very people who exploit them.

I thought that Dr. Kim’s monologue did a lot of the heavy lifting to set up the ending of the show. He basically gives Austin, Ashley, and Lindsay a cautionary warning about their future, and an offer to escape the capitalist structure he failed to remove himself from, but they totally miss it because they don’t speak Korean. It’s my favorite scene in the show. Marx believed capitalism itself would eventually push the working class toward collective action because of their collective struggle. But in the end, collective solidarity never materializes. After all, they have to survive somehow. And the people at the top will do everything in their power to stop the working class from banding together.

In the finale, Austin realizes he has not been failing at love so much as participating in another form of transactional relationship entirely. What is most harrowing is what he does with that realization. Rather than stepping outside the system, he chooses it because it feels safer to inhabit a world where relationships are openly transactional than to risk the vulnerability of being unwanted. Moral compromise and exploitation become not obstacles to his ascent, but the very mechanism through which he rises. In the final scene, he and Ashley run the country club, just as Josh and Lindsay once did.

Josh is the only one who is able to break the cycle. He gives up status, leverage, and any possible return to that society when he takes the fall for the embezzlement. There’s no upside, no deferred benefit, no guarantee Lindsay even remains loyal to him until his prison release (she doesn’t). For once, love is stripped of status, utility, and self-interest. It exists outside exchange value. It lines up with the Marxist idea that once relationships are no longer mediated by utility, something more genuinely human can appear.

Capitalism and relationships are deeply intertwined. There’s no one without the other. Human relationships, and most significantly romantic ones, are tied to value, stability, future payoff, and security. Capitalism doesn’t just distort love but it conditions people to prefer exchange over vulnerability. Who do we want to be and what do we want? How can our partners help achieve that?

A lot of online discourse about Beef has touched on how the show paints love as futile. Lee Sung Jin isn’t offering up any groundbreaking statement about why love doesn’t work today. Every generation suffers under the pressure of capitalism, even when it believes it profits from it. Trauma is nothing new, we learn behavior from our childhoods, and we all bring our pasts into our relationships. All of this creates deeply destructive, and often dysfunctional, relationships that survive for the sake of mutual survival, convenience, and fear of loneliness.

The ending, as pessimistic as it is, felt oddly refreshing. I don’t think Lee is suggesting that love is futile, but rather asks why humans remain so obsessed with winning—both in romance and within society itself. How can we build truly healthy, harmonious relationships when we exist within an economic system that keeps us in a constant state of instability, competition, and self-preservation?

It’s not lost on me that there’s an insane rise in popularity of online relationship gurus like the “sprinkle sprinkle” lady and others championing women to be “in their feminine” to find a provider man. What’s framed as a return to femininity, softness, or traditional romance is actually a symptom of late-stage capitalism and further reinforces the patriarchy. Men are conditioned to believe that their only value is in their ability to provide, and women are conditioned to perform the emotional and physical labor that makes it necessary for that to happen.

What’s underlying these creators’ quippy videos is the pervading fantasy of relief. A lot of women are not necessarily fantasizing about dependence in the old-fashioned sense. They’re fantasizing about relief from precariousness, from optimization, from having to constantly monetize themselves, self-improve, negotiate, hustle, perform emotional labor, maintain beauty labor, build careers, and somehow still remain desirable and emotionally available. The “provider man” becomes less a romantic archetype and more a fantasy of structural stability in an economy that increasingly feels unstable and extractive.

Marxist feminists believe capitalism and patriarchy reinforce one another through the nuclear family unit itself: women uphold the family through unpaid emotional and domestic labor, while men control the family through provision and productivity. Patriarchy may privilege men structurally, but it also punishes male vulnerability. Which perhaps explains why so many modern relationships feel emotionally starved beneath all the language of “masculine energy” and “feminine softness.” Everyone wants tenderness, but no one feels entirely safe stepping outside the role they believe secures their survival. Under capitalism, relationships are economic arrangements. Everyone becomes a portfolio of assets.

I write all of this as at least three girlfriends send me daily voice notes about their dating woes and how “men are not lonely enough.” No one seems to be having a particularly good time dating right now. Some people persist in searching anyway, clinging to the possibility that intimacy might still redeem the exhaustion of modern life. Others are opting out altogether. As another friend says, “it’s a really bad time for straight men right now.” I would argue it’s bad for straight women too.

I have spent a great deal of time in psychotherapy and one of my favorite things my psychoanalyst has told me is, “The beauty of relationships is that you can craft the exact situation you want.” Which is why life feels most meaningful in the rare moments when people stop performing curated versions of themselves and allow their real desires, griefs, disappointments, and vulnerabilities to emerge. Someone once told me that a good first-date question should be: What are your core wounds, and how are you actively working through them? Which is an intense thing to ask someone you just met. But just imagine…what if we were able to answer this question honestly?

Maybe what people are actually searching for is not a perfectly optimized partner, but relief from performance itself. Relief from having to embody competence, desirability, status, control, self-sufficiency, emotional management, all at once. Perhaps this is why genuine vulnerability now feels almost radical: it briefly allows people to encounter one another outside the rigid rules of performance, transaction, and survival. There is light here, but it’s thin and often fragmented. That fragile refusal to give up on one another may be the most hopeful thing left in us.

May comes with a kind of fervor this year—at least for me. A lull in brand work has opened into something quieter and far more generative: time spent honing my hobbies, writing, and seeing friends with real intention. It’s also created space to think through new ventures, and, unsurprisingly, the best ideas tend to arrive when you’re not buried deep in DeLiVeRaBlEs ‘n aSsEts!

So the fervor feels less like urgency, and more like clarity: who am I at my core and what do I want each newsletter issue to offer you guys? I loved writing the last one because it felt rooted in the kind of quiet observation that often shapes my days. Making connections and paying attention to raw, human moments—and translating them into something that might invite someone to live a more considered life offline, too.

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My fridge broke down last week and the ensuing meltdown I had over it was admittedly disproportionate to the issue at hand. Of course, it wasn’t really about the fridge. Besides the fact that I had to throw away all my beautiful produce and sentimental foods like my kimchi from Korea, it revealed how quickly a practical inconvenience can tip into existential overwhelm—how something as banal as an appliance malfunction can conjure questions of support, safety, and even loneliness. My landlord did what she could. My mother wailed with me over FaceTime. My superintendent, somewhere in Ireland, ghosted me until I found a repairman myself: a Turkish man who didn’t speak English and told me through Google Translate that the fix would take five to seven business days.

I’ve found that what undoes me is rarely catastrophe. Catastrophe, oddly, I can handle quite well. It’s the mundane roadblocks and the tiny ruptures that expose where I am already depleted. My refrigerator saga revealed a quieter grief: not a wish to be rescued, but a longing for someone beside me to help me—to share the burden of troubleshooting, to problem solve in tandem. Or someone to just wail with me, not over FaceTime but quite literally beside me.

I thought, too, about how many years I’ve lived in this country alone, without family nearby to call and ask to come over. Friends become chosen family over time, yes, but it is different. I’ve navigated much of my 13 years in America on my own. Proud as I am of what I’ve built, it’s comforting to know there can someone you can lean on when something just…breaks. And usually, that someone is a partner or family member.

I’m halfway through my WSET Level 2 wine course and already mourning what was once the beginning of a new endeavor and the earnestness with which I took it on. In the past five weeks since embarking on this journey from hobbyist to (hopeful) expert, I have found a new kind of confidence, which I can only attribute to a trust in self that grows when curiosity is given structure. There is a kind of dignity that comes when a passion is taken seriously. And this is why they tell you to have hobbies!

I’ve been going to bars and restaurants and telling my servers I’m taking the course, and they respond with great enthusiasm. At Chambers—something of a mecca for wine in New York—a quietly formal sommelier (John Paul <3) in a navy twill blazer brought out a spittoon and four blind tastings mid-meal. It was a complete, kind surprise and I was touched. I only got the Pinot Noir correct, and was taught to discern why the others were what they were. At Stars—a new wave wine bar overlooking a freshman NYU dorm I have too many memories in—a disarmingly casual but razor-sharp young bartender in low-slung jeans did the same, sans spittoon. I only got the Vinho Verde correct. (I had gone with a new friend from wine class who also went to NYU with me, and the whole thing felt strangely full circle: back downtown, a student again, but of something entirely different.)

Different priests, same lesson in humility.

I didn’t attend a single brand event this past week except for a ceramics-making night with a clothing brand I worked with once four years ago. The openness in my schedule has done more for my mental clarity than any meditation or mindfulness exercise ever has. I’ve traded back-to-back obligations for early mornings spent writing and midday naps in a red light bed. This, I think, is true wealth.

During the ceramics class, other creatives who I am sure are overloaded every day were hyper focused on shaping clay into whatever vessel they wanted. It was one of those odd nights where you’re locked in to the kind of work you almost never get to do, participating in a small communion built around something tactile. I got a 91 Oura sleep score that night.

Ava and I decided to meet on the Upper East Side—somewhere we both always seem to feel especially happy—for our reunion after a month and some weeks apart. We are both always spending extended periods of time in Asia and we looked forward to this reunion for weeks. Sant Ambroeus Madison was a somewhat random pick on my end, but after being turned away from there on a random Wednesday the other week trying for a solo lunch, I was determined to participate in the fantasy of being transported to Milan in the middle of Manhattan. “YESSS”, Ava responded.

Ava is around six months pregnant, and the first of my close friends to be expecting. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet that her life—and, by extension, our friendship—will be changed forever. There’s a quiet awareness that our time as just the two of us is becoming finite. And if I feel this way, imagine how couples feel!

The momentum of life, and its quiet insistence on change, feels stronger than ever. I feel it when I look at Ava, who appears exactly herself except now with the improbable presence of a little baby inside of her. I hope she still texts me back immediately even after she gives birth.

At the Knicks playoff game, a man seated behind me spent most of the night tossing around small talk and jokes with my friend who dabbles heavily in sports—straight male banter, as I like to call it. It’s fun being in environments where I don’t always know exactly what’s happening, as though I’m borrowing entry through atmosphere alone. I go for the viiiibes, after all. But as we stood to leave, teetering out in my Matthieu Blazy pumps, the guy tapped me on my shoulder, grinning: “Great shoes, by the way. Great. So good, that collection.”

Fluency takes many forms and we contain multitudes. One person reads the game; another reads the shoes. And god forbid sometimes a man can read both!

Charlotte invited me to a dinner at the James Beard House for some sushi innovation that has apparently taken Japan by storm. An odd invite, but we were mainly there for the free sushi and as a launch pad for a girls’ night in the West Village.

The company’s CEO gave a speech and, after apologizing for his poor English—which was really not poor! I’m always sad when non-native speakers feel obliged to disclaim this in a room full of Americans!—stage fright seemed to overtake him. After what felt like a 60-second stretched out silence in his speech, I had to physically move my body into another room from secondhand embarrassment.

Almost absurdly, two waitstaff approached me to ask what perfume I was wearing, saying it was the best thing they had ever smelled. They asked so I had to answer and I felt even more ridiculous for pointing them to a perfume combo that my sister reminded me is literally a thousand dollars.

I realized I lived much of this week offline. And in doing so, I noticed how life keeps unfolding in the analog, interrupting abstraction through human contact. We are always colliding with other people’s attention in ways that soften life.

Why was I so touched by a sommelier bringing out blind tastings I never asked for? Why was my friend so moved on my behalf that he left a 50 percent tip? These gestures register differently from the fucking matrix. And for all the ways I remain plugged into the matrix, I find I can still discern the difference. I’m reminded more than ever how restorative these minor exchanges in the world can be.

I woke up the next day thinking about that sushi robot CEO and how stage fright may be one of the most human experiences left untouched by the digital—the body faltering in public, and a room full of strangers feeling it with you. Embarrassment, too, is a form of communion. Almost nothing is an original experience and that is so comforting.

A lot of the trees seem to have already bloomed past their peak, earlier than I remember from last year. I haven’t put away my coats because I have trust issues. The air is so dry the reoccurring eczema spot on my face has flared up.

And yet, through this awkward dance of being neither here nor there, it’s spring. We begin to shed our layers, unclench our jaws, and stop to smell the flowers. I am feeling more and more like myself again, returning to intuition and instinct to guide me through the last bit of “in between” weather before the summer, my favorite season.

I’ve been thinking a lot about intuition and instinct lately. The past six months have pushed me to question the parameters we, as a culture so preoccupied with optimization and productivity, have come to rely on—when, at the end…

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I was very lucky to return to one of my favorite little corners of the world, Belmond’s Riviera Maya property Maroma, for a little spring break. Sargassum chronicles aside (very scary and sad to see the material effects of climate change), it is still, to me, my idea of a perfect property. A spring break trip always gets me excited for the season ahead and while beach attire is entirely its own genre of dressing, I’m so excited to dress for warmer days in the city. A trip like this always br…

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After getting back from long-haul trips, I leave my suitcase out for multiple days, sometimes even over a week. And lately, most of my travel has been long-haul, so the familiar sight of an opened, full suitcase sprawled across my living room has become normal. It gives me anxiety, but seemingly not enough to do anything about it until a full seven days has passed. Today is day seven, so I suppose I have to.

My clothes in there aren’t folded. Instead, all of my stuff has formed a tall, rounded mound, the result of me rummaging through for very specific things—usually souvenirs or beauty purchases I want to use immediately, as if that justifies leaving everything else untouched. I don’t unpack all at once, only in parts. This isn’t just about my suitcase.

I’m so type B it’s crazy, and it’s gotten worse with age, I tell my friend over lunch at home the other day. The open suitcase was right there next to us. I was a little embarrassed.

The food at the Aritzia luncheon is almost too beautiful to eat, but the moment one person breaks the seal in the spread, we all follow. There’s a wall of farm-fresh produce—some collaboration with an internet buzz-y farm I follow on Instagram—and I fill my bag with it, preemptively stocking up for the weekend I already know I’ll spend alone, recovering from this week of socializing.

I have two more events later that night, and I can already feel how quickly that sense of gratitude could tip into something more brittle. So I make a quiet effort to stay inside the gratitude—to let the day feel full instead of letting the anxiety override.

I made sure my first event back in New York after traveling was a good one. I get to see so many people I admire, people who remind me, in a very immediate way, how lucky I am to exist inside this particular world. To go to a beautiful lunch and call it work.

Michelle and I are among the last to leave, which feels like proof that it was, in fact, a good time. There’s still so much food left. We wrap chunks of Gouda in a napkin and take them with us. The next day, she texts me how happy she is that we took the cheese.

I’ve spent the past year or so trying to cultivate an identity as a writer first, and a content creator second. The insecurity I used to have about “just being an influencer” has shifted into something else—an anxiety around the credibility and legitimacy of calling myself a writer at all.

When people ask what I do, I still feel a kind of anticipatory discomfort around the question and knowing I’ll have to answer it.

You’re very charming, my ex-boyfriend tells me over FaceTime. It lands less like a compliment and more like a reassurance. I don’t think he realizes how much I like hearing that, or how quickly I accept it as enough.

I like how our relationship has evolved into something far deeper than at any point when we were actually together. It feels cleaner now, or at least less reactive. I’m less agitated, less viperous, which I think has allowed me to be softer with him. I’m trying to be softer in general, including literally the volume and intensity of how I speak.

I still can’t feel the turn of spring, which is very rarely the case this time of year. And this is how I realize that I’m not thrilled to be back in New York after three weeks in Korea and Japan. Usually when I take an early spring trip, I come back and feel a noticeable shift, like the city has been waiting for me to return to begin again. But this winter, as everyone keeps saying, has been relentless.

But still, I emerge out of winter relatively unscathed. I feel a particular gratefulness and joy knowing I can do whatever I want in this life. And I realize this comes from being as untethered as possible to literally anything, including a relationship. I’m learning the art of detachment, among other principles that have genuinely made me adopt a more stoic lifestyle, something that seems entirely antithetical to my persona just one year ago.

But then I see one rogue tree on the sidewalk with purple buds and I almost cry.

I stopped by LA on my way back to the U.S. after Tokyo. I needed a sunny buffer before diving back into life as usual on the east coast. My first stop was Erewhon, which I took a Waymo to get to and from. Sitting alone in the backseat with no driver felt slightly illegal, but it was also the coolest thing I’ve done as of late. Like the first time I got to be naked in my first solo adult apartment. I called it cute for knowing how to do the weird, scary left turn thing you do in LA. The contrarian in me orders a blue coconut smoothie instead of the strawberry Hailey Bieber one everyone gets. It tastes fucking good and this is literally something New York will never have.

I used to hate LA in the way every other staunchly proud New Yorker hated LA, which is to say I had already decided how I felt about it before trying to spend any real time there. After just a few days in a hot, bright LA—days filled with shoots, meetings, and seeing friends I’ve gotten really close with in just one year (<3!!)—I realized why I hated it: I literally never had anything to do there before.

Any place is just infinitely better with a purpose and people you love. It sounds obvious, but it didn’t feel obvious before. I think I used to expect a place to give me something on its own. Now I feel more responsible for constructing what I want.

Girls in athleisure with overfilled lips still abound, though.

I started my WSET wine course this week, and in the first class we go around the room and introduce ourselves and say why we’re there. I haven’t felt nervous to introduce myself to a room full of strangers since my NYU seminar days. I liked it immediately—the feeling of being a little too aware of myself. I like randomly feeling nervous.

Everyone is so cute and funny and interesting, I text my friend in the middle of class. There’s a couple taking the course together and I think, how cool is that. Two brothers are taking it so they can better communicate with their Italian winemaker grandfather. Another girl wants to destigmatize Chinese wine.

When it’s my turn, I tell 20 strangers I’m here because I love beauty and leisure and pleasure and travel, and wine sits inside all of that. I want to understand the earth and the history and the artistry behind something that makes me feel so much. I wonder if they liked my answer. I liked all of theirs and I suddenly want to make new friends, an odd feeling I don’t usually have.

I have to leave my first wine class early because of a brand event. I show up to coat check and check in my textbooks and then get my photos taken for BFA.

I keep thinking about Will Welch’s final editor’s note at GQ (it’s a fantastic read, btw), where he recounts asking Jay-Z how he moves so seamlessly between such different worlds of music, sports, politics, and art. Jay-Z just shrugs and says, “I walk into every room as myself.”

When Welch first got to GQ nearly two decades ago, he describes himself as awkward, eager to please, constantly morphing into whoever he thought he needed to be. That was probably me too, five years ago—moving through the various rooms this career, and this life, has put me in, adjusting as I went.

I don’t do that anymore. The anxiety is still there sometimes, as evidenced by my many Irish exits and lone wolf decompression weekends, but it doesn’t change who I am in a room. This first week back from my trip feels like a small distillation of that. Moving through different rooms with confidence, curiosity, and a kind of steadiness I didn’t have before. I know I’m exactly where I want to be, and I’m enjoying learning how to exist inside it.

People keep reminding me that I’m crushing it. That I am so lucky. It feels strange to hear because I know exactly who I am and what I want, despite not fully knowing exactly what I am doing. And at the same time, I have no idea who I am to other people. I walk into every room and let it be whatever it is. I’m starting to think that’s the point.

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I’m in Seoul right now, about to leave for a ski trip to Niseko, Japan. I’m honestly gutted to be missing the impending freak summer weather arriving in New York next week. (For someone who has vowed never to experience a full winter again, I seem to be chasing it.) But if I were in New York, the formula would be quite simple. It would be something that doesn’t require much thought or effort, intuitive and easy but still looks good. Before I left New York, I dressed for the weather I want.

A silk slip skirt, a baby tee, and a cardigan: a formula so simple and effortle…

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