The Weekly Roundup (week of 8.21)
vapes are out, cigs are cool again.
1. A Viral Cigarette Brand? In 2023?
Starting an indie cigarette brand these days is like starting a new oil company or building a grass-roots weapons manufacturing plant. It’s a crazy thing to pursue. To be fair at least cigs mostly isolate harm to the people using them. Hestia is a new cigarette brand started by David Sley. Prohibited from any kind of traditional or digital advertising channels, Hestia has to do what any modern brand aching to make its way into influential circles would do, by giving their product to people with juice. Naturally, this means handing out cigs to hipsters in Dimes Square. Read here.
2. How Alton Mason Became the World’s Only Male Supermodel
That this conversation transpires at all is illustrative of the rare position Alton Mason holds in the world of men’s fashion in 2023. Practically every other male model is treated like a sexy cog, a figure whose individuality is molded to serve a higher aesthetic vision. Mason is not an equal to the designers, not yet at least, but he’s something exceedingly rare: a male model who’s granted tremendous deference, legitimate agency, and a power-brokering say in the fashion world right now—and, increasingly, in other creative industries.
Alton Mason has truly defined what it means to be a male supermodel in an industry dominated by women. He’s laying the blueprint for any future aspiring Zoolanders. Read here.
3. Tremaine Emory on life & death, friendships & family, artifice & authenticity.
A Q&A with Denim Tears founder and Supreme’s creative director Tremaine Emory, who had some very inspiring wise words for people:
LVMH is a bank. Kering Group is a bank. Paramount’s a bank. This is late-stage capitalism. These institutions will finance a designer, an artist, a band, a director, a writer or whatever to make something to get more money than what they put in. That’s what it’s about for them. So, if you seek their validation because so and so made you creative director, you’re losing. In fact, you’ve already lost. But if you seek validation, firstly, in yourself and secondly, in the community that you care about and who cares about you, you’ve got a chance to live a life without regrets. Not a perfect life and not a life without mistakes or flaws but a full life. You won’t be a perfect human, but a whole human with shades of gray. If I’m gonna be a role model, that’s what I’m kicking to kids. I’m not out here telling kids that you can be Virgil version two. You could be who you want to be if you have the courage to find out who you are.
4. Why Does Everyone on TikTok Talk Like That?
This phenomenon is basically the TikTok influencer’s version of the news anchor voice.
TikTok voice is often “high-pitched, breathless, youthful, with over-emphasised keywords and sequences, slightly odd speeded-up and slowed-down sequences, and coy intonation and body language.” Dr Christian Ilbury, a sociolinguist at the University of Edinburgh, adds that uptalk – where people end their sentences with a higher pitch as if they’re asking a question – is another common characteristic of TikTok voice.
Don’t even get me started on the other annoying viral commenting patterns or cringe expressions like “delulu”. One day Gen-Z is gonna look back at all of this and wonder how we ended up like millennials and their awful obsession with saying “pupper” or “doggo”.