our substack starter pack: everything from fashion, to poetry, to politics
“a catalog of ways to illuminate your inbox”
As we trudge further into the internet age—further, also, into our twenties and thirties—the goal increasingly becomes to be online without being online, that is, to have a relationship with our phone that’s less doom-scrolly, less envious, “toxic,” omnipotent, and more informative, intentional, uplifting, maybe even that most daunting of words—serious. We mean, I think, to ultimately create an online network of intelligence, acuteness, but also trendiness, information that’s valuable but also “insider.” We mean to spend our morning coffee hour reading and not scrolling, our brief lunch breaks learning and not spiraling, our late-night bed slumps invested in the storyline, and not scrolling through Lilly Sisto’s esteemed shopping recs. For me, the secret to that sweet spot, between Refinery29 and New York Times, between hard-hitting journalism and begrudging Matilda Djerf, is Substack. Here lives the voice of what the New York Times just called Marx’s “urban artisanate,” giving us palatable summaries of new occurrences in the business world, a slew of recs from the mind of Charli XCX, another article where Alison Roman teaches us how to keep beans interesting, and other musings on the new waves in music, fashion, film, tech, off-kilter cultural critique—the list goes on.
We’ve left Patreon and made our own jump to Substack, joining the ranks of our friends and favorite Substacks, many written by those we’ve featured in our own magazine. We’re bringing you the same perks: discounts at Maimoun, Saie Beauty, Hudson Wilder; exclusive event passes to classes at the ness, Sky Ting, and NYFF tickets; weekly culture recommendations; monthly favorites curated by a passerby tastemaker and our founder, and interviews with passersby that inspire us.
En theme, we’ve tapped the passerby community to collect their go-tos for raw reading recommendations, ushering us into the luminary, unsponsored corners of the internet.
A newsletter, Alison Roman
Recommended by @jean.catherine
I’m putting this one first because I know you already subscribe to it. And if not a subscriber, you’ve frequented it to pull out some pasta salad recipe, or check for things to do with your old grape tomatoes, canned clams, surplus of scallions. Alison Roman has never, ever steered me wrong, and I won’t say that about any other chef (looking at you Mark Bittman, with your insanely sparse garlic and salt ratios). And besides that, we just love her, as will you when you peer through our 2018 interview with her.
tender herbs, Ethaney Lee
Recommended by @kpettus
Ethaney also appeared in passerby—I guess we’ve always loved a Substack—on our camera roll series. Lee is an esteemed chef and aesthetician, and her Substack is a melodic blend of creative recipes and personal reflection. Her writing is soothing and thoughtful, like a pentanemered meditation on taking things slow and in stride.
Hung Up, Hunter Harris
recommended by @jean.catherine, @natisagee, @laurel2296 & @azlevin#6092 on the passerby discord
By far a passerby favorite, Hung Up is like a living Gossip Girl substack (so it’s no surprise Harris quite literally wrote for HBO’s Gossip Girl), self-described as “essays, interviews, recommendations, reviews, gossip, line readings, love notes, cool stuff you want to share with your friends.” Harris looks into what Miriam of the viral Love Is Blind clip actually does for a living, Taylor Swift’s role in the Turner-Jonas divorce, the fans violent reaction to Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner’s relationship, basically everything you’re actually thinking about when you’re supposed to be learning new software for work in a 2-hour Zoom meeting. It is quite literally the most fun thing in my inbox. Perhaps even more than when La Garçonne is finally having a reasonable sale.
Shop Rat, Emilia Petrarca
Recommended by @clemencepoles & @azlevin#6092 on the passerby discord
Shop Rat is what I wish every feature piece in New York Magazine was, with topics like “My Conspiracy Theory About the Row Shoes,” and headlines like “Milan Fashion Week Was Haunted.” Shop Rat boasts “original reporting, unbiased recommendations, and unfiltered criticism” in the fashion world, going beyond what’s trendy to what’s actually worth it, whether to spend $50 or $500 on something, and why you should.
How To Cure A Ghost, Fariha Róisín
Recommended by @clemencepoles
Succeeding her 2019 poetry collection of the same name (her Like A Bird appears in our holiday gift guide), poet Fariha Róisín takes to Substack to keep writing, questioning, exploring her interpersonal world. She writes on representation, on boundaries, on being unbearable. Much like Ethaney Lee, there is a calmness in her writing that feels as meditative as its subjects, but at the same time, her writing is so commanding and sure of itself. Róisín is a prolific writer and thinker and a welcome addition to my inbox, always. We also love our feature with her, a wonderful peek behind the curtain of her success.
Perfectly Imperfect, Tyler Bainbridge and Alex Cushing
Recommended by @ettinger, @dual_ipa on the passerby discord
If you’ve heard of Substack, you’ve heard of Perfectly Imperfect. Offering “a taste of someone’s taste,” this is a living, breathing catalog of celebrity mood boards, featuring everyone from a house-arrested Anna Delvey to our very own founder, Clémence, to my friend’s literal uncle. Your favorite micro-celebrity is most certainly on here, recommending to you things like mango boba or doordashing Lucien or acupressure mats or Edith Wharton’s canon. It’s everything you ever wanted to know that you never needed to know.
1-900-Very-Famous, Kelsey Lawrence
Recommended by @marinasulmona on the passerby discord
A self-proclaimed “luxuriously trashy slice of the internet,” 1-900 sort of defies category. It’s glamorous, gaudy, a chaotic grouping of recommendations and information and profiles—it’s historical, and very, very y2k LA.
Things I Would Buy If I Didn’t Have to Pay Rent, Anna Gray
Recommended by the passerby team
We’re a little obsessed with Anna Gray whose recommendations make their way into our features often, and whose Substack we just promo-ed on our last weekly recs. Anna’s fashion perspective is infused with reflections on performance anxiety, addiction to desire, and how to define your own taste.
Joshua Citarella’s Newsletter, Joshua Citarella
Recommended by @clemencepoles
This newsletter is perfect for a very educational lunch hour. Joshua combines interviews, cultural perspective, reviews, posits things like “Agrarian Voluntaryism” and “Evolutionary Socialism,” as well as interviews people like a 19 year old left-wing Islamic nationalist from Tennessee on his political journey. The content is unpredictable and always intelligent, and exposes you to things you never would have heard of otherwise, like the lore of an Instagram-based role-playing simulation like Linkonia or the operatic voice of Dianna Lucia Dragonetti.
Magasin, Laura Reilly
Recommended by the passerby team
We might be biased—we launched a closet sale with Magasin this year, and our most recent managing editor is also a writer at Magasin—but this is pretty much the best shopping newsletter we’ve ever encountered. With her ever-impeccable taste, Laura Reilly writes us through wardrobe must-haves, what’s on sale, where, and what’s worth the hype. I especially love ones like these, a list of chic items under $250, and a guide to the most essential SS’24 shopping.
Maybe Baby, Haley Nahman
Recommended by @michtru, @jean.catherine, & @laurel2296 on the passerby discord
Haley Nahman (another one of our passerby features!) has done us the favor of assembling her top 10 most read posts, so we can dive right in to the best and brightest of Maybe Baby, a weekly newsletter exploring, more or less, culture at large, including why we’re so obsessed with our independence, breaking down Emily Ratajkowski’s notorious The Cut essay, and a critique of “cope culture.” There is absolutely no certainty in what Nahman will float to your inbox each week, her talent surpasses predictability or narrowness, and always results in some completely useful critical thinking piece, or personal revelation.
NEVERWORNS, Liana Satenstein
Recommended by the passerby team
“Talking about nothing and everything,” but mostly about clothes, from a sexy summer shawl to a $25 pair of perfect jeans. Liana has a crucial sense of personal style and an incredibly welcoming voice to her writing, which makes you feel as if you too are sitting on a quilted bed with Liana and DAZED’s Lynette Nylander, swapping eBay secrets. This newsletter also serves as an inspiring shopping guide, and incredible fashion insight, reminding us to step away from the influencer, from the designer, and recall the lived-in look, wear your clothes, don’t flaunt your clothes, and ruminate on the idea that “Jane Birkin’s beat-to-shit Birkin, is, duh, the ultimate Birkin.”
Why Is This Interesting?, Noah Brier & Colin Nagy
Recommended by the passerby team
A newsletter for fans of the podcast Stuff You Should Know, or curious minds tired of the dull tonal sequence of NPR’s Morning Edition. Noah and Colin give us downloads on the history of the Roland 808, why urban bee-keeping stinks of complexity theory, and installments of different notable people explaining their “media diet.” It is, we admit, very interesting.
We also love (and subscribe to) the following: The Cereal Aisle by Leandra Cohen, The Unpublishable by Jessica Defino, Moon Lists by Leigh Patterson, Ayesha A. Saddiqi’s newsletter, Sitting Pretty by Tyler Watamanuk, The life and errors of molly young by Molly Young, Downtime by Alisha Ramos, The Sociology of Business by Ana Andjelic, CLiuAnon by Catherine Liu, First Floor by Shawn Reynaldo and Embedded by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci.
Words by julia harrison