September 8 2025

September 8, 2025 Newsletter 

Emma Stone for VOGUE September 2025, Photo by Jamie Hawkesworth

Dearest Prattlers,

Recently, I watched a super enlightening video by Jay Choyce Tibbitts, an NYC-based fashion creator who I’ve been following for a little while, about how the American ideal of aspiring to a sort of “middle-ground” and the overwhelming presence of aesthetic neutrality has beige-ified American fashion, and we are seeing these consequences as modeled by the September issue of Vogue. Emma Stone in Louis Vuitton, a well-liked actress in a well-liked brand, is a mild and safe approach. Nothing super crazy about it. Not like the pictures/looks are bad, but very mellow.

I miss the wild and weird editorials of the past. It feels like campiness is dying. I went to some gallery openings this past Thursday, and was delighted to see one show that was blissfully maximalist. Every color was emboldened, every shape was defined, and the details were innumerable. I used to work in the basement of a fairly-successful gallery in Chelsea, where I’d often observe people spend 20k randomly on a piece of art they kinda liked, then go to lunch afterward like it was any normal day. A lot of the art that was bought was boring and malleable. The wacky and bold pieces collected dust on the wall. People liked to look at them for a time, but perhaps felt like they couldn’t contain these pieces to a digestible, aesthetically-neutral object that they could own. Art as a commodity can so easily lose its subtextual significance. Art as a business is all about aesthetics.

Belle DeVelle Co. usually makes videos about Coraline, but she made an amazing video about the history of denim as a textile, and how it relates to the great American Eagle debacle of 2025. She explains that while white slave-owners usually donned soft fabrics such as linens, silks, etc, denim as a textile was reserved for enslaved people, due to its rough material and noticeable indigo hue. In the 1960s, Civil Rights activists and Freedom Fighters revived the wearing of denim to demonstrate how little had been accomplished since the Reconstruction Era. Denim quickly became a subversive emblem of the working class and the manual laborer because of its tough, durable material and its storied past as an oppressive cloth. Now, the aesthetic of manual labor has been co-opted by the upper class because of the value that has been historically placed on manual labor as the backbone of American society. And rich people love to appropriate when they get bored. Denim has been scrubbed of its subversive revival and is now valued as a symbol of hard work without actually representing it. Now, if American Eagle, a brand propelled by denim, wants to release an ad praising the “good genes/jeans” of a blonde, white woman, while trying to erase the history of what denim represents to Black Americans, then we should 100% be labeling this ad as a white supremacist, ignorant attack. 

Anyways, all of that is to give you all a bit of food for thought about our current issue, and the kinds of complexities we are grappling with. We are so excited to say that we are overwhelmed with the amount of writing submissions we have received. Well done everybody! Sarina and I are excited to read your work. As for visual work, we are still looking for Image Cue and Standalone Visual Media submissions. If you are just now joining us from the Involvement Fair, welcome, and please consider helping us with our visual material for the magazine!

Standalone Visual Media Applications HERE

Image Cue Applications HERE

Writing Pitch Logs (CLOSED)

Rumor has it that Jeff Bezos might buy Condé Nast as a wedding gift for his wife, Lauren Sanchez. Resist the beige. Don’t let fascist co-opting of culture and the arts dissuade you from creating what you love! Send us some wacky stuff…

As for team updates: Sarina is taking up surfing when she isn’t keeping our magazine from imploding, Chassidy and Rickie are making The Vogue Edit beautiful, Jasmine gave our website a needed refresh, Ewa is working on getting this magazine in your hands, and I am doing a lot of unnecessary research about fascism in pop culture as always… who would I be if I wasn’t?

Stay well-read, stay safe, stay sexy.

XOXO,

Ella Ferrero

Managing Editor

The Prattler