High Noon 4: Ephemerality, the Internet, and the End of Summer
What Stays? What disappears?
I mentioned briefly in last week’s issue of High Noon that I’m interested in what happens to internet projects that come to an end. There are now three main types of publications: (1) heritage brands born pre-internet that have had to develop an online presence to survive (NYT, Vogue, New York); (2) publications that have always been print-digital hybrids (Kinfolk, The Gentlewoman, The Fader); and (3) online-only projects. This last category started in the early aughts as personal blogs and grew into full-fledged publications with multiple contributors and editorial staff.
Many of the projects in the third category eventually fold for the variously expected reasons — a lack of revenue, a creator outgrowing the projects — but what happens to those publications? Like abandoned digital villages, in many cases they remain online, archives preserved in ones and zeros. Sorry if I become a bit nostalgic about it, but I still miss the expansive and egalitarian environment of early internet writing.
Now, some internet-first publications are experimenting with new ways to stay afloat and relevant. SSENSE and Semaine are two such examples that appear to be thriving by functioning as blended magazine / curated online shops (a sort of elevated version of your average blogger’s affiliated link posts). Then, Semaine paywalled most of its site. Manrepeller includes branded advertorial content, launched (and closed) an online shop, and started a brand consultancy. Colossal has launched a membership program. Still, there are some online brands with no obviously innovative revenue solution: Spike Art Magazine, Damage, NY Tyrant. Homes for highly independent writing. How much longer will they last? And what will they look like when they stop publishing?
In this week’s Links Roundup are three instances of farewells from former online publications that now exist only as archives, abandoned digital villages. What do you think about digital ephemerality vs. permanence? I’d like to know.
xx SCREMES (Shawn)
The Roundup
Links to things you should be reading this week
The Toast closed July 1, 2016. The Awl stopped publishing in January 2018. And in November 2018 Rookie Mag said goodbye. What does privacy look like on Google Street View? Who is in the new iteration of The Bloomsbury Group, a set of bohemian intellectuals living in England at the beginning of the last century? A personal blog, now defunct, that still offers up some fantastic browsing in Luke Edward Hall’s Orlando and the Fountain. How app-based babysitting offers a glimpse into how the other half lives.
The Long Read
The week’s keynote story
Only going to read one thing? Read me.
Photo by Alasdair McLellan
Out of Town: Alessandro Michele | Gert Jonkers | Fantastic Man
Creative Directors of major fashion houses are chosen for their ability to both maintain heritage and reinvent very old brands. When Alessandro Michele was elevated to Creative Director at Gucci in 2015, he was not a very well-known name yet. If the other role of a creative director is to imagine what could be, inventing an entire world, Alessandro is perhaps the creative director most interested in fantasy.
“No, I wasn’t looking, I was dreaming of an empty place with a lot of land, and then this place found me. Mutual attraction. This old lady was living here – it was her family’s estate. The place was collapsing. She was looking to sell and she was about to sign with a real estate developer who wanted to turn this into a spa hotel! Can you imagine?” There’s an expression of horror on his face. “So I told her that I wanted to live here, and she started to cry. ‘I don’t know who you are, but you just saved my life,’ she said.”
Alessandro rejects nostalgia. He loves history, but also modernity and sees a way for them to exist side-by-side.
“I’m not really a nostalgic person. I mean, I love the past, but only when the past is really alive in the present. Otherwise you’re just sitting in a ruin.” And anyway, who knows exactly what happened here in the past? “Maybe they held raves here in the Middle Ages.”
The interview, begun in December 2019, was picked up again in June 2020 remotely. With the backdrop of a major reckoning moment for the fashion industry behind the second half of the conversation, Mr. Jonkers’ questions are more barbed, trying to uncover some insight into the future of a director whose whole world is fantasy.
Maybe unconsciously I’ve tried to destroy the fashion system a few times already. I’ve gently tried to burn the things that oppress us. I adore fashion, but there’s something inside fashion that belongs to marketing that’s trying to kill creativity, trying to reduce the beautiful voice of fashion.
How much say will the creative directors at major houses have in the future of the fashion calendar, the amount, scale, and timeline, of production, in sales models? Probably far less than their public positions may suggest, but if not the inventors, the fantasy makers, who will be the ones to imagine new modes of being?
Listen
As summer is coming to a close, vibe with some groovy and sultry late summer tunes.
Cheers
The Little Red Door
1 oz. Blanco Tequila
3/4 oz. Green Chartreuse
3/4 oz. Lillet Blanc
1/2 oz. lemon juice
Garnish with pickled carrot and cilantro sprig