NEW YORK — They were there even when they weren’t there.
But on the way out, an editor whispered, “That whole front row should have been Substackers!”
A new breed of fashion voices was hovering around (and occasionally puncturing) the inner circle of fashion: the Substack writer.
When it launched in 2017, Substack promised an easily monetizable direct-to-audience platform for writers — most of them cultural and political writers and reporters. Substack began making news in 2020 and early 2021 when personality-journalists such as Matt Yglesias, Glenn Greenwald, Anne Helen Peterson and Hunter Harris joined the platform, some of whom were paid minimum guarantees that came from a round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2021. But increasingly, it is a place to discuss, offer advice on and celebrate shopping — and make a lot of money doing so.
A handful of Substackers, including Jess Graves of The Love List, Jalil Johnson of Consider Yourself Cultured and Emilia Petrarca of Shop Rat, held events during New York Fashion Week. Graves hosted a pop-up shop in her apartment and a dinner toasting designers such as milliner Gigi Burris and lab-grown diamond brand Dorsey, which she has championed on her newsletter since its 2021 relaunch on Substack. Johnson celebrated a jewelry collaboration. And Petrarca hosted an evening of fashion-related readings by fellow Substackers at the elegant Brooklyn boutique Outline.
Only Petrarca’s was officially affiliated with Substack. But the start-up will make a more aggressive push in Europe. During Paris Fashion Week, which begins later this month, Substack will host a dinner and a party. In an interview, Christina Loff, head of lifestyle, writer partnerships, said the platform hopes to have a more visible presence at NYFW next year.
Other Substack notables at Fashion Week were Laura Reilly, who chronicles secret sales, under-the-radar stores and designers with near-scientific precision on Magasin and during Fashion Week editions shared outfits and quick-hit reviews of her favorite shows of the week; and Becky Malinsky, whose letter is an ingeniously straightforward concept, 5 Things You Should Buy. Laurel Pantin, whose Earl Earl provides outfit ideas alongside tender reflections on motherhood, came in from Los Angeles. And Liana Satenstein, a former Vogue writer, talked about unexpected vintage-inspired runway looks and a behind-the-scenes fashion eccentric.
Longtime fashion personalities such as Joanna Goddard, Amy Odell and Kim France are on the site — New Yorker writer Susan Orlean has a particularly charming Substack — but the names that are becoming fashion personalities, earning the attention of designers or readers or both, are mostly those who were previously unknown except to insiders.
Substack shared that over the past year, publications and subscriptions in the Fashion & Beauty category have more than doubled. Collectively, these writers earn more than $10 million annually in subscriptions, a figure that does not account for affiliate revenue that generally brings writers 15 percent of the price of an item linked in their newsletter, but can reach up to 25 percent. (When you’re talking $1,490 Toteme coats and $1,290 Alaia shoes, that adds up.) Many newsletter writers, like traditional influencers, also accept gifts. Some accept advertisements from brands: 5 Things You Should Buy has been sponsored by Tory Burch, and a resale start-up called Croissant sponsored several newsletters this summer (prompting an investigation on, you guessed it, Substack). Six of the top 10 fashion and beauty Substacks are about shopping. Several newsletter writers said they have earned in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from affiliate revenue and paid subscriptions.
Malinsky, who created perhaps the first such shopping newsletter on the platform, said she launched her Substack to help women sift through the overwhelming amount of things available online. “I know what to look for when you’re shopping online, when you can’t feel it in person,” she said. “So I can share that wisdom. That was the idea for me: creating a more edited place so shopping online could become enjoyable again, since it’s really the only option for a lot of people.”
Malinsky, who also has a personal styling business, worked for more than two decades as a market director — an editor who navigates the morass of trends and select the season’s best offerings — most recently at the Wall Street Journal.
The influence of the shoppable aesthetic promoted by many of these writers and epitomized by brands such as Toteme — whose scarf coats, handbags and oversize trousers are some of the most discussed products on the platform — dominated at fashion shows. It was there at Khaite, the critically panned but highly successful label that regurgitates the archival designs of 1990s avant-gardists into something more easily swallowed. And at Cos, the mass quiet luxury brand that, for some reason, insists on putting on fashion shows. Kallmeyer, which makes ultra-streamlined tailoring, and Maria McManus, an environmentally conscious label, have both grown their ambitions over the past year, with bigger collections and splashier runway shows. (There is even a pair of $890 stretchy leggings that became so popular via shopping Substacks that Reilly christened them “newsletter pants.”)
The mainstream fashion media may not see these brands as standouts, but they speak to the demographic of upper-middle-class women with expendable incomes who admire brands like The Row — the extravagantly expensive label by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen that blends Uniqlo-simplistic basics with couture-level weirdness — and crave advice on what to wear but don’t find it in the pages of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. (Many magazines do have affiliate-driven shopping sections online, including roundups by well-known editors or writers.)
Call them the Substack brands: wearable “wardrobe” businesses that make the bread and butter of your quiet luxury closet. (Graves even had matchboxes printed to promote her newsletter that read: “THE ROW & KHAITE & TOTEME.”) They are not for the person who obsessively follows fashion, but for those who see an old photo of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, or a spicy look by a European label like Alaïa, and want a more immediate, commercial version. The prices are sometimes astronomically high, sometimes not. A viral Substack post this summer was an ode to the J. Crew catalogue by Erika Veurink. Coincidentally, J. Crew relaunched its catalogue this fall. Regardless of price point, what many of the labels share is a smoothed-edged, accessible look.
“What I’m always talking about is, buy good things, wear them a long time, wear them a lot and take care of them,” Graves said. “Most of my readers are willing to pay a little bit more for a sweater they can pull out of their closet in 10 years and won’t fall apart after one season.” Graves regularly talks about The Row and Toteme (and Khaite), and also raves about, say, a handmade basket business.
Still, while many of the Substacks emerged to combat the algorithm, there are now so many promoting the same products or ideas — finding your personal style, building your wardrobe and even, ironically, screeds against the homogeny of algorithmic fashion and taste — that they risk running together. And businesses that get little attention in fashion magazines and which are notable for their high-quality manufacturing, such as Batsheva, Naomi Nomi and Engineered Garments, are not often discussed on Substack. (This reporter should probably mention she has a shopping newsletter, though it is not on Substack, she makes no money from it and it was launched in 2020.)
As with anything online, the backlash ensued before the trend has truly begun. This summer, Feed Me writer Emily Sundberg wrote a controversial post bemoaning that Substack is now “a really good way for women to monetize their diary entries — lists, random thoughts, and (easy to write) roundups of ‘what I’ve been doing’ do really well on this site. Substack is making everyone into writers the same way Instagram made everyone into photographers.” Several writers with shopping newsletters seemed to take personal offense to the letter, responding with their own letters. (Oy!)
Publicists said they struggle to know who to work with, since many writers launch Substacks that quickly fall by the wayside. Unlike Instagram, whose Eva Chen helps connect brands and creators, Substack does not suggest writers for brands to work with. “That’s not why Substack was created. [We want] there to be no middle person to broker those things, so the creator can get all the money themselves,” Loff said.
That means the Substack has little say in what its writers want to speak about or how they want to earn additional revenue through advertising or affiliate links.
“Your space is your space,” said Loff, “although I know some [writers] have agents to broker deals, but we don’t ever get involved.”
Still, the platform maintains a list of writers it hopes to recruit (Petrarca was one), and helps some writers by promoting the newsletters to potential paid subscribers. Loff said brands often ask her about joining the platform, and she advises them to be driven by voice or a personality, rather than product. “Readers subscribe because they don’t want to be marketed to.”
But they help steer readers to certain publications by promoting their content across the platform. Petrarca, a veteran magazine reporter, launched her Substack after leaving a staff writer job at the Cut, and said paid subscriptions make her freelance career much more feasible. “It’s been a good source of consistent income.”
So what are they? Influencers? Critics? A new breed of retailers? The next generation of magazines? Unlike the disrupters of decades past — the fashion bloggers of 15 years ago or cancel culture darlings like Diet Prada — they are rarely controversial or mean. (Few criticize or report on the industry, although Odell and Jeremy Lewis, who has a cult following for his dyspeptic Instagram takes, do both.) Malinsky said many brands still aren’t sure what to make of her, sometimes seating her with influencers at shows, other times with editors and occasionally with retailers.
But does that mean fashion is just about shopping? “I don’t think fashion is mostly about consumption. Fashion is about expression more than anything. Fashion is how we present ourselves to the world,” said Graves. “Shopping can be fashion, but fashion isn’t shopping.”
Petrarca relishes the community, knowledge-sharing aspect: “When I was first reading all these fashion Substacks and I didn’t have my own, I was really struck by the fact that there were just so many women online talking about buying clothes and shoes. And I thought, this is kind of awesome.”
But she wants to write less about her own purchases going forward: “I’m no longer going to share with people how much I’m buying. Because really, all they want to know is how much money everyone else is spending on things.”
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Emilia Petrarca does not use affiliate links and said that Substack did not provide money for her NYFW event. She does use affiliate links, and the platform provided funding. The article has been corrected.
