Hello,
I'm switching to a streamlined format this week due to lack of time (I'm too busy having fun in Johannesburg!)
This week I'm thinking about:
Staying in your lane. Balenciaga's Creative Director Demna Gvasalia has decided to go back to the basics after a disastrous campaign last year. My takeaway: so many businesses get lost when straying away from their core activities. There is something to be said about sticking to what you know and actually enjoy doing (this interview made me think about Leandra Medine Cohen's admission that she got caught up in the expectations to grow Man Repeller when in fact she was a terrible manager and not even interested in being one. She went back to doing what she knows best--writing about style--and is arguably very good at it.)
Defining the aesthetics of a country. The organising committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games has released its brand identity (I love the pictograms.) Burberry's redesign seeks to celebrate its British heritage. Being currently located in South Africa, where creative industries are still in their nascent stages and are working towards building visual signatures and narratives, I'm thinking about how brands and countries define and update an aesthetics of what it means to be [insert nationality here].
The end of Twitter, which looks increasingly near due to Elon Musk's antics, but also produces pleasant surprises such as the algorithm's odd insistence on promoting menswear writer Derek Guy's account (which is indeed good, see below.)
And also:
Kerby Jean-Raymond and the pitfalls of bringing a creative business to scale.
Pamela Anderson's moment of truth (yes, I watched the documentary. Let's discuss)
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