September was, by my account, not bad. I traveled to the U.K., Palm Springs, and Mendocino. I saw old friends and made some new ones—a hazard of mine. I partied with Madonna, hung out with Slowdive, cried to The Cure, recorded some podcasts, managed to shop, did some psychedelics with friends and closed a film deal. I drove up and down the state of California which you already know is my favorite pastime. I ate at Melvyn’s, my favorite restaurant. I bathed in natural hot springs and got a tarot reading by the best astrologer in America. As my siblings were cleaning out my late mother’s house to put it up for sale I was treated to the psychically assaultive experience of being confronted by all the humiliating (in the proper sense of the word) photos and ephemera from my Petaluma childhood. All of this is to say that past, future, fantasy and reality have all been intersecting and colliding in erratic and slippery ways. I’m in the process of concretizing it (somehow) into a narrative film project I plan to make my next priority. In doing so, I’ve been forced to contemplate, perhaps for the first time personally, the way life and art reflect and distort one another, like a funhouse mirror on a revolving door.

I’ve spent about 25 hours, so far, listening to the audiobook of Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, Mitchell Zuckoff’s authorized dive comprising interviews with Altman and 200 of his friends, collaborators, relatives, and critics. Many of the actors who were interviewed for the book—which employs a playfully overlapping, quasi-linear, casually oratory narrative structure—do their own voiceovers in the audio version. Some, conspicuously, do not, which gives the experience a unique tension between documentary and reenactment. It’s odd and addictive, the sort of experience I can fall into forever. I think the reason I return so often to both Kubrick and Altman is that one to me represents the apotheosis of style, form following function, executed with pristine precision. And the other represents a rejection of it, which is to say, a fanatical embrace of a certain realism, the execution of which is no less precise, but which necessarily invites spontaneity and a certain free-wheeling verisimilitude: an embrace of the documentary style, perhaps. Many films succeed in striking a balance between the two. What can a new version look like? I just saw the new Tom Cruise movie Digger and I don’t think, despite its attempts, that it has the answer.

I recently went on the Sexy Unique Podcast to talk about my favorite reality TV episode(s), the “Scary Island” arc of The Real Housewives of New York (Season 3, episodes 11-13). You can watch the podcast here. Or listen wherever. Some might have noticed The Real Housewives of New York was pointedly omitted from The New York Times’s 100 Best TV Shows Of The 21st Century feature, a shortsighted rejection by the anointed thought-leaders of one of the most psychedelic and entertaining spectacles of American society and female rage ever captured on film. Of course, reality TV somehow remains disrespected in 2026, despite dominating the cultural conversation for the past 30 years, easily. This is not to be confused with a rejection of the documentary form. Documentaries are conversely taken quite seriously, at turns, primarily depending upon the seriousness of their subjects rather than their own style and execution. I find both attitudes exhausting and beneath us all.

I hold documentary films and reality television both in the highest regard—especially when it’s trashy. There’s just nothing like the real thing in this life, I’m sorry. A documentary about a seemingly superficial or unserious subject can say as much about our humanity and the way we relate to each other as a documentary about famine, abuse, murder, or war. When these things can intersect, it’s even better. Much of reality TV is, of course, a construct, but that also is telling. It adds an extra layer of what people are willing to sign up for and how they choose to portray themselves, allowing a certain artifice to slip. I’m all about the slip.

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The group chat treated me to a discourse that briefly seized Substack about the reputational hazard of employing “affiliate links.” I find this hilarious because the people I trust the most are writers who happen to use them. I think if you’re a poor judge of character and you can’t separate out which fashion writers are being honest and which ones are employing that saccharine, phony, pseudo-enthusiastic tone of voice when selling you a suspicious surplus of mass market products then you have bigger problems than how much couch-cushion change a writer (read: notoriously exploited and underpaid laborer) is scrounging by recommending you a sun cream. Natasha Stagg actually invented the affiliate linking craze—something she would never take credit for and would hate that I’m exposing here, now. When we worked at V Magazine in the early 2010s, she was either contacted by or made the erstwhile discovery of (who cares) a company called “RewardStyle” that promised to earn the magazine cents on the dollar from any sell-through on a linked fashion purchase. To our knowledge, no other fashion magazines were using any such program—most web development in the industry at that time was of the rudimentary CMS variety. I would be shocked if any fashion writers actually knew any HTML. Natasha became possessed by it, much like Kourtney Kardashian in that episode of Kourtney & Kim Take New York in which she discovers the intoxicating power of coupon-clipping. Every post had to have a RewardStyle link. If a story went live, Natasha would ask “did you link to RewardStyle?” Invariably, the answer would be no, and Natasha would sigh and get so pissed off she’d have to leave the office for a cigarette break. She saw the future of media way back then. We just weren’t listening.

So anyway, I’m going to make a shopping list using affiliate links because I think it’s funny if I do it. And if anyone actually buys this stuff, you’ll probably have a more gorgeous life and be one step closer to becoming just like me. I’m keeping it brief for now… I could have gone a little ballistic but maybe I’ll keep doing it if people really like this type of thing.

• Eli Russell Linnetz, whose photographs and campaigns are genius, and who constitutes to me what makes a true fashion designer, created the most progressive suburban goth sneaker on the planet. I think Drake’s new mallgoth girlfriend would probably wear it. I don’t want these shoes nor will I buy them but they do amuse me and they might work for somebody else. When it comes to Eli’s stuff, it’s all spectacularly fabricated. I love the raggedy texture of the inside of his hoodies. Of course, I want this biker jacket.

• A lof of people ask me what my choice of SPF is, due to the de-pigmented gene mutation that makes me a physical freak. I only use Japanese Nivea Sun Protect Super Water Gel Sunscreen, which comes in a stupid, purple pump bottle. Despite it resembling a Barbie accessory, it is the most full coverage, invisible, and yet completely effective SPF I’ve ever used. I am not interested in switching. When I find something that works I use it forever. I drench myself in it every morning like my life depends on it because it does.

• I am a known sock enthusiast. Specifically crew socks, and the best socks you can buy are from Stüssy. I’ve tried them all. Fresh out of the box, they are a bit stretchy, wash them first and then wear them. I asked my streetwear designer friends to tell me where Stüssy gets their blanks so I could find some without the logo embroidered on them, and all the reports that came back indicated that the brand manufactures them in-house. If they ever stop making them I’m going to go berserk. I would like to be able to wear dress socks like a normal person, but they drive me insane. People who wear loose socks are simply a different species.

• I can’t leave the house in the Eckhaus Latta Bend Jean without everyone asking me who made my jeans. Eckhaus Latta made my jeans. Their new collection was also an unequivocal high point of New York Fashion Week. When will they get to take over Calvin Klein? I also liked Khaite, Colleen Allen, Lii, and the un-Googlable new brand Uniform, designed by the equally un-Googlable Betsy Johnson. Of all the emergent post-Margiela designers, they feel like the most vital right now. Their shows are cool.

• This looks great. I won’t be there.

• I’ve always coveted this Martin Parr catalogue.

• I was recently talking with some of the most innately stylish Northern California women on a hot springs getaway about the greatest tote bag of all time, the Hermès Herline. When we were younger a few of us shared one, it bounced between us all but really belonged to my friend Laura Sutro’s mom. We destroyed it, basically. I had to track down another one so I can finally have it all to myself. I don’t know what I was waiting for.

• The best button-up shirts right now are by SSSTEIN. Personal opinion.

• The most devastating jacket I tried on recently was by A.Presse.

• I’m probably not going to get onboard the YSL Howl sunglasses train but it has been really fun seeing people out and about wearing them. In hindsight they will feel like an accessory of this precise moment. Anthony, please don’t abandon us.

• The new status symbol is a collaboration with Jacques Marie Mage, speaking of sunglasses. Why am I so into the Muhammad Alis?

• The best magazines this season: Josh O’Connor on Another Magazine shot by Alasdair McLellan and styled by Alister Mackie. MYTH Magazine’s entire new issue (especially the Dario Vitale Versace special by Haley Wollens—a work of art). Jordan Firstman in Fantastic Man shot by Luca Guadagnino. The Larry Clark Supreme zine (free with purchase? Mine came gifted in the mail). Corporate magazines still suck. I give zero credit to any of them.

• Now for some entertainment. I really enjoyed Oprah Winfrey’s special on the Lindsay Clancy postpartum psychosis case. It went viral for disingenuous reasons, which I fell for. A clip circulated of Dr. Kameelah Phillips expressing a desire for (presumably) child murderers of color to be given the same privilege and advocacy as Clancy—an insane MadLibs-style neoliberal soundbite practically designed to piss sane people off. To that end, Caitlin Flanagan makes an incoherent appearance toward the end of the episode, during which she seems to want to express that the support for Clancy has gone too far, but becomes flummoxed in the presence of Oprah, and by the preceding hour which rather brilliantly lays out the psychology of the psychosis. (It is a mania, separate from PPD and schizotypal disorders.) I found this special more educational and eye-opening than anything I saw the defense present during the trial. But mainly, and counterintuitively, it felt luxurious and incredible watching, essentially, an episode of The Oprah Show in 2026. I hope she continues doing these specials about every big national story. It almost makes me feel like we’re a proper country again.

• Did you successfully snag a pair of the Cèline Freestyle Lo Reeboks? Don’t even worry about it. When you see some inferior nemesis clomping around in them awkwardly at a party you’ll wonder why you ever wanted them in the first place. (I will kill for the white ones if anyone’s listening. Size US mens 10.)

PARAPHERNALIA #021

I’m a product of profit.

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I noticed Substack is rolling out a new feature called “audience-specific content.” I have not taken the time to understand what that’s about but it intrigues me. Has anyone began using it and if so, what do you think? In today’s paid edition, I’m sharing a few things I’ve been into—music, books, film—and would like to ask what you guys have been into as well. Don’t be afraid to talk back to me.

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If Madonna Calls…

Well, the bitch did it. As I’m sending this out Madonna has achieved her tenth #1 album in the U.S. with Confessions II. It’s been a rare pleasure watching word of mouth spread, from rumors, to the rollout feedback, to a reappraisal of a lot of her earlier work—albums like Erotica, Ray Of Light, and American Life have been re-entering the conversation of late—and ultimately to the release and the reviews. (I can’t stand alliteration, it was an accident, I swear.) I’ve noticed that a lot of people who might be inclined to dismiss a new Madonna record have been persuaded to give this one a chance based on the recommendations of people with taste, and they’re telling me they’re hooked on it now. That’s probably why the positive reception feels so authentic to me, which is rare in the music industry right now. A lot will be analyzed and discussed about what made Confessions II such a success (trailblazing in ways), and there is a lot to applaud in terms of the decision making that led us here. You might think an artist of Madonna’s stature would be guaranteed a top-selling album in 2026 but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s worth keeping in mind that it was very much not a given. So this is a big deal. And if you were ever a Madonna fan, you have the opportunity to live through an iconic Madonna moment, to paraphrase Mel Ottenberg, which, to the pop-minded individual, is priceless. In a new episode of Bandsplain with Yasi Salek, I second-mic my perspective on whether or not the album has Grammy potential. It should surprise no one that I think it absolutely does. It feels like the most opportune time we might get to honor Madonna both for her entire decades-spanning run and for a record that actually deserves the award on its merits. It might even be the final opportunity to do so, some are saying. (Knowing her, it absolutely won’t be, but her inevitable awards campaign should lean into that talking point regardless. “Honor the phenomenon. Honor the woman.” Or something.) Listen to the full episode:

It’s Gaultier, Sweetie.

I always enjoy the sociology of a fashion season, the way it resonates (or repels) the denizens of my group chats, sends social media into a state of vitriol, or causes general dispute among the Ones That Care. What I don’t like is when the discourse around a collection reverts back to clickbait, especially clickbait from the previous season, clickbait that has already proven to have worked, unoriginal clickbait, ran-through clickbait being employed by certain commentators. It feels desperate to me. But I suppose the fashion crusades are long, the eight-plus times a year that they happen. We have to forgive fashion writers for running out of things to talk about and lowering themselves to replay the hits. Maybe analysis of a collection within its own context—that of the house and the designer—is boring to them, unless they spice it up with some reductive indictment of fashion writ large, and what it’s doing to women! Or even more commonly: what’s the point of it all!

(I really enjoy listening to Tim Blanks unpacking the shows on the BoF podcast, which feels like the way it ought to be done, in my personal opinion.)

There was a time, culturally, when most people were not glued to industry trade publications. Even if you imagined yourself a cinephile, policy wonk, or fashion fanatic, you likely weren’t spending time browsing Deadline, TechCrunch, or Women’s Wear Daily on a constant basis. Somewhere along the line, social media accounts sprung up whose entire existence is based upon scanning the trades all day and aggregating rumors and news, which became the way that a lot of breaking information actually reaches people. And from there, out sprang a million business-obsessed spectators, newly trained on the behind-the-scenes goings-on of their favorite companies, record labels, fashion conglomerates and film studios. It became like a spiderwebbing operatic effect, in which discussion of mergers and acquisitions replaced conversations about the product or output itself. Feeding this hunger, Puck launched its business newsletters, applying a bottom-line mandate to not just politics and tech, but also entertainment, art, fashion, media, and sports. Now, it seems, everyone has adopted a certain vocabulary when discussing things like the Haute Couture collections, and it’s memetic in nature. It centers V.I.C.s, stakeholders, and share prices. It’s tinged with fear and hysteria, and it hinges on existential peril and total annihilation.

A couple days ago, the writer Tim Noah published an article in The New Republic labeling this tendency as “doom porn,” asking, “Is There Any End To The Atlantic’s End-Ism Fetish?”, which addresses this precise trend. I found this litany particularly amusing:

In fashion, as in every other business segment, endless growth is the only option. Anything short of it is deemed a cataclysm, even if your business is bringing in €6 billion annually. Not only that, but the disaster is now announced and called out on sight, before any revenues have even been reported. It can taint a designer’s collection upon arrival and communicate to the fashion-literati that to support XY brand is akin to getting onboard a sinking ship. “They’re not thinking about the client,” goes the common refrain whenever a designer is seen to have taken too much of a risk, or pushed a brand into a genuinely new direction. It seems that some alleged fashion lovers cannot wait to express concern on the behalf of, presumably, individuals like Noura Bint Faisal Al Saud, Queen Rania of Jordan, Ivy Getty, or whoever else is regularly purchasing $80,000 dresses—or even getting $16,000 embroidered cashmere sweaters from Chanel. There’s much less hand-wringing over what resonance a garment has as an idea or an expression, how it filters into the rest of the brand and informs other product ranges, or what it communicates.

So of course, the designers first in line for the guillotine are always the ones who work within a high-concept framework. I used to refer to a certain type of person as a “luxury hog” back when I worked at V magazine. The industry is filled with people who are into fashion for aspirational, rather than artistic, reasons. You can hardly blame them. In many ways, fashion is built to attract and exploit the shopper. These people see fashion’s function as helping them create a wardrobe or craft an image, to project onto the world that they are a connoisseur… a highbrow person who appreciates nice things. When it comes to perennially conceptual designers like Rick Owens, Rei Kawakubo, or Junya Watanabe, the luxury hog politely tolerates their presence, as it comes with the association of being among the flock. But if you’re a designer with a fresher face and you attempt to do something avant-garde, it’s not long before the knives come out. Into this scenario walked Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier.

When Jean Paul Gaultier emerged onto the scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s he was known as fashion’s “enfant terrible,” due to his instinctive perversion of classical tailoring and his willingness to shock or even offend. Gaultier was a constructor: his designs came from the scaffolded approach of suiting, corseting, bustiers and brassieres. His gowns were deceptively complex and often embedded with elements of camp. To me, Duran is cut from the same cloth, albeit from a distinct and original angle that separates his work aesthetically from Jean Paul’s. He’s astutely mining the Gaultier archives for elements that suit his own sensibility, rather than trying to curve his sensibility to fit the existing expectation for the brand. The way he referenced some of Gaultier’s more maligned collections, like Autumn/Winter 2013 haute couture, with its voluminous, Eiko-Ishioka-inspired tendon coats, felt like a logical throughline to his own protruding, anatomical specimens. It also might have been an embrace of work from his predecessor that he feels was misunderstood and warrants reconsideration, albeit in shapes that are hyper-exaggerated and bear their own opulent, fearless lunacy. (Duran’s iteration is here for reference). What emerges from this alchemy is a shock of newness you sadly don’t often see anymore.

Citing Marie Antoinette and Louis XIV as inspiration, this season Duran takes a deconstructionist approach to the idea of haute couture, dismantling and questioning the utility of timeworn formalities like bustles, crinolines, and protrusions of tulle. His faucet silhouettes, Frankensteined leathers, and contorted bodices ridicule the standards and practices of what constitutes highborn status in design. It’s a primitive, theoretical exploration not unlike the hypotheses of spiritual forebears like Hussein Chalayan and Martin Margiela. (Even Kanye West, with his obsessive minimalist removal of layers, shoes, undergarments, and even clothing itself has some anchor in this same iconoclastic, blow-it-all-to-smithereens and start-over approach.) Whatever you think about the collection and how it pertains to actually being wearable, is, to me, beside the point. There are plenty of covetable daywear and eveningwear looks within the collection from which you could see entire ready-to-wear propositions being formed. Many houses are, right now, relying primarily on an excellence, and even an overwroughtness, of craft as their couture proposition, from Chanel to Dior, Fendi, Armani, and even Balenciaga. It takes a certain audacity, if not spiritual cauterization from outside criticism, to put forward a genuinely interrogative artistic statement in 2026, even within the walled-off category that has historically intersected with the avant-garde (see past collections from Thierry Mugler, Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen, Margiela Artisanal, or John Galliano for Dior). What Lantink’s harshest critics are missing is that couture doesn’t have to be about beauty, luxury, politics, or even sales. It doesn’t have to dictate the way that anyone ought to dress—one thing does not negate another. Sometimes it’s about asking questions. If someone is given the opportunity to do so, wouldn’t it be depressing if they didn’t?

“Have you ever fucked on cocaine, Nick?”

Paraphernalia rule #1 is always meet your heroes. It’s impossible to be disappointed by anyone, in my experience, as they always give you something to come away with, even in the worst instances. Luckily, there were no such instances when I interviewed the legendary Joe Eszterhas for Interview magazine’s Summer 2026 issue—the Madonna Interview, you might call it. The screenwriter behind movies such as (but not limited to) Flashdance, Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Sliver, and Showgirls is still in an echelon of his own, in terms of how much money he’s made on script deals. He’s also defined pop culture with his scorched-earth dialogue and penchant for erotic, tabloid voyeurism. I can’t believe I got to meet him. He inspires me endlessly and is a charming, lowkey, genuinely nice guy. Check it out.

Do Yourself a Favor

And if you’re in the vicinity, planning a trip up or down the state of California, take fucking HIGHWAY 1. I do the drive alone, tacking hours onto the duration I might instead have on the hellish Highway 5. Every time I do it, I pull the top down on my Jeep Wrangler and listen to a playlist I’ve now had for many years, named after the vortex I like to call the “California swirl” of Big Sur. Communing with the most beautiful coastline on earth to bands like The Wake, Lansing-Dreiden, Cocteau Twins, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Brian Eno, Wild Nothing, Soft Kill, the Mary Onettes, Private World, Narrow Head, Nothing, Pure X, Big Star, Craft Spells, This Mortal Coil, Weekend, The Cure, DIIV, the Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, Deafheaven, Ariel Pink, and Yves Tumor just does something to me I can’t really explain. It’s supernatural and it yields dividends. I ask for things and they come true. It’s where spells are born and my soul gets reset. Besides, where better do I have to be? Free playlist for everyone. Do the drive with the windows open and thank me later.

PARAPHERNALIA #014

Call it trance, call it house.

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I went and voted in Franklin Village yesterday, and then watched the (bad) results trickle in with the same ambient, noncommittal amusement with which I receive most pseudo-consequential information these days. But it’s been brought to my attention—viciously, vociferously, and unforgivingly—that I’m not like most people. There is nothing wrong with being vocally politically engaged, it’s just not something I’m interested in. Maybe it’s because so many other people are. I always feel better after speaking to friends of mine who work in politics, or whose work revolves around political organizing, in general, because their point-of-view tends to be rooted in a sort of world-weary, straightforward rationality. I was talking to my friend Amber, who succinctly brushed off my anxiety saying that the Los Angeles mayor is, generally speaking, constitutionally powerless. “L.A. has a horribly byzantine political system by design.” This clear-eyed attitude rests in opposition to the histrionics on social media, people who seem eager to betray their lack of bonafides or perspective via sheer volume and ferocity of nonstop mongering. To use my friend Greg’s favorite expression, it’s a full panic. And after the culturally destructive, artistically bankrupt, socially deleterious waves of righteous indignation that accompanied both Trump presidencies, I’m unfortunately noticing a disturbing pattern.

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If you don’t care about any of this, I’ll be back to regular scheduled programming shortly.

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Let’s keep it brief, as I am OOO.

I attended the preview week for the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Biennale in Venice as a tangential participant of the Danish Pavilion where artist Maja Malou Lyse presented Things To Come, an interrogation of how images and fertility can potentially intersect in a rapidly advancing, artificially intelligent, virtual reality atomization of erotic lonerism. I had written a loose script for a film by Lyse and DIS, featuring Brazzers porn stars working in sperm labs and engaging in verbal humiliation toward the, presumably, beta male participants. I loved the exhibition staging by Common Accounts, which included an adjacent installation of cryogenic sperm containers and a new fertility ritual of “sperm races,” designed to foment rivalries between men online over their own virility. Apparently declining birth rates are on everyone’s minds? The Japanese Pavilion also featured a show on the subject, Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Grass Babies, Moon Babies, in which 200 lifelike babydolls cried through amplifiers, hung from scaffolding, lounged in chaises, slid down ropes, and basically exploded from every angle of the pavilion’s surfaces. They all wore printed onesies and reflective sunglasses, giving the proceedings a taunting lunacy. Both exhibitions were favorites (I’m biased), not because I share their alarmism but because they both made supposedly catastrophic global concerns seem ludicrously funny—such is life.

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Moving on: the Universal Pictures Michael Jackson movie is a phantasmagoric, multi-sensory, spectacular issue for me. And that’s fine. I’m simultaneously ecstatic that it’s happening, fascinated by the peculiar dimensions of its architecture, and cynical about its intentions. All of these feelings can and should coexist if we are watching movies in good faith, and if we care about films and pop iconography (and in my case, rifling through the personal debris of other people).

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It feels, increasingly as if everything has turned into a zero sum game, which has me questioning if we’re depriving ourselves of certain indulgences. Certain mysteries, theories, or analyses. I think a symptom of living in terrible times is a sort of ambient extremity in temper. People want certainty, and they want to know where everyone stands. Flare-ups shoot up like flames in a burning building, windows blown out almost out of nowhere. Even the BBL influencers are running each other over with their cars. Everything is either incredible or heinous, we’re either obsessed with it or we hate it and it’s fucking over and it’s embarrassing. You either condemn someone or you condone them, and actually, you’re probably complicit. I’m guilty of this often. I hear the things coming out of my mouth and stop dead half the time because I can’t believe I got got! Like a sucker, like a fucking mark. So I issue the quick rejoinder “unless…”

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Some quick plugs:

• I will be attending the Venice Biennale the week of May 4. If anyone is going, hit me up.

• Last week I moderated the Q&A for the U.S. debut screening of John Early’s Maddie’s Secret as part of the emerging and impressive Los Angeles Festival of Movies. I think the movie is a masterpiece and advise everyone to keep it at the top their lists in case any screenings pop up. It comes out in theaters later this year.

• This week I appeared on Bandsplain to talk about Hole’s “Boys On The Radio,” a sonic trojan horse through which I got to smuggle out my unleashed thoughts on indie snobbery, dope fiend mentality, ambition, jealousy, female rage, pop subversion, California punk, and Courtney Love’s unforgettable Hollywood rise. This is the kind of thing that gets me cooking with gas, so to speak, so have at it. Courtney even gave us a nice review in the comments, even though I used the term “gutter snipe” at one point. Hey, you either get it or you don’t.

It’s been interesting reliving the Celebrity Skin era in preparation for that podcast, as well as Madonna’s entire career for another project, and thinking about ambition in general — how it’s perceived, glossed over, covered up, defended, excused, demonized, ironized, celebrated, totally ignored, or widely condemned.

It feels like we’re living in a moment of widespread desperation across the board.

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