Hello everyone. Have you suffocated beneath the crushing weight of all the gift guides yet? Please enjoy this small, shopping-link-free corner of the internet and let me virtually clasp your hands between mine as I whisper manically to you about all the things I got up to this month.
November is a cute month. She feels like the number nine, which is my favourite number. There are still a few crunchy leaves about, things are starting to feel festive, and the home run towards the end of the year has begun (without the panicked smash-and-grab energy of December).
I think this month’s theme would probably be ‘inspiring women’ aka. my North Star. Whenever I feel a bit rudderless, all it takes is listening to some sage femme to make me feel anchored and reassured.
Talks I went to
The first brain massage came c/o Phoebe Lovatt and former Threads of Conversation podcast guest Sharmadean Reid, who were discussing the literature behind Sharmadean’s luxurious new bathing brand, 39BC. (If I were going to push one more podcast/ newsletter down your throat other than my own, it would be Phoebe’s ‘Deep Read’.)
If I could magically download one bit of Phoebe-Sharma software into my brain, it would be their voracious reading habits. Those women eat books for breakfast! I asked them how they did it - Sharmadean said that leaving her phone in another room whilst she reads does the trick, whilst Phoebe said that using the Opal app has revolutionised her life (she only spends 30 mins per day on Instagram!)
Feeling optimistic and inspired, I stayed up til 3am ordering secondhand books on eBay. I bought ‘Living, Thinking, Looking’ by Siri Hustvedt, ‘Bad As I Wanna Be’ by Dennis Rodman and ‘A Room of One’s Own’ by Virginia Woolf.
I also saw set designer Es Devlin (of Beyoncé Renaissance tour fame) and art historian Katy Hessel in conversation at Liberty. They were discussing Katy’s new book, ‘How to Live An Artful Life’, full of advice from artists on exactly that.
Scribbled in my notes app: Es referencing the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, saying she went on a retreat at Plum Village, and describing how she once pressed a copy of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ into Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s hands.
Events + parties I attended
More strong women were in evidence at the launch of Dr Karen Doherty’s partnership with skincare brand Lesse, which was held at Dr KD’s eyewateringly chic HQ in Shoreditch. Imagine if Rick Owens met Phoebe Philo and then birthed a skincare clinic filled with impossibly glamorous women.
The event was also catered by culinary artist and friend-of-Threads-of-Conversation, Nil Mutluer, who created sci-fi beakers of green and yellow liquid levitating atop a lavish cheese board. I also ran into another past podcast guest (say it three times fast), Henrietta Gallina, Chief Creative Officer at Mulberry, founder of Citizen Magazine, and honestly just the epitome of the word ‘serene’.
On the other end of the spectrum, I stepped into a time capsule which hurtled me back to 2018, when I used to trawl around behind my friend Yuki’s band Bo Ningen whenever they had a London show. (I remember one time Yuki’s friend Shiori Takahashi gave him extra hair extensions for a show that were so long they got caught in his guitar. Somewhere in the internet there’s also a video of me backstage reading aloud from Otessa Moshfegh’s ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ for no apparent reason.)
Yuki and the Bo Ningen guys have long been fashion favourites, shot by everyone from Harley Weir to Liz Johnson Artur. They’re also a beloved fixture on the music scene. For their first London gig in ages, they’d collaborated with Jawara Alleyne (that’s right, another podcast guest! You can also watch his episode here) to create a line of custom t-shirts, which they launched at a party hosted by An0ther magazine. I saw a lot of old friends and felt very fuzzy and nostalgic.
Back to this month’s theme, though: powerful women. I certainly felt like one as I was speeding around a sodden racetrack in a go-kart, c/o the amazing duo Babes with Blades who had teamed up with Nike to put on probably the most fun and original event I’ve attended in a while. There was also a customisation station with designer Ancuta Sarca where I stashed a pair of free socks (it’s really hard to keep up with laundry day whilst also schmoozing at all these events!)
Wasn’t I a bit tired at this point? Of course not! The opening of a can hates to see me coming.
A few other notable events included sipping a whiskey cocktail from an elegant, handblown glass at The Singleton’s Christmas drinks with Alex Eagle, and attending the opening of the gargantuan new KITH store in central London, which is like a glittering maze full of treats - both the fashion kind, and the ice cream kind, plus a surprise DJ set from Little Simz. I didn’t take any pics because I was really drunk having too much fun.
At the risk of over-referencing my own work, remember when I wrote about how calendars are the new editorials? Well it seems I was onto something, because I also went to the launch of a gorgeous new calendar from Athlyn, a floral design studio who worked with SM Studio on a range of exquisite printed collateral. The event was organised by Panayiota Soutis, who you might recognise from her 3 Minute Thread. She commissioned a beautiful black sesame and lychee cake from pastry chef Louis Thompson, who you might also recognise from his 3 Minute Thread.
Videos I watched
Would you believe that even amongst all this glitz and glamour, my favourite evening of the month was actually parking my mum (sagest femme of all) in front of YouTube after dinner one night, and forcing her to accompany me down a rabbithole of My Favourite YouTube Videos Of All Time.
The first was Jamie xx’s 2016 music video for ‘Gosh’, which was directed by a French director called Romain Gavras (he also dated Dua Lipa back in 2023 *sips tea). It’s the most amazing and surreal video, shot in Tianducheng, China - a city designed for tourists which boasts its own Eiffel Tower and Champs Élysées. AI in real life, before the age of AI.
For the otherworldly video, they cast 300 students from a nearby kung fu school, and bleached their hair with the help of a local hair salon. “There was negotiation with the the bosses of the school,” Gavras explained in this 2016 interview. “They said ‘We’ll allow you to bleach them, as long as you put them back to a dark hair colour. And you can only bleach them one day before, because we don’t want to pervert them too long.’” Obviously we had to watch the BTS video, too.
You liked that mum? Well, allow me to screen another film that blows my mind every time I watch it - director Jonathan Glazer’s 2006 Sony Bravia ad, which was shot on an estate in Glasgow rigged with 70,000 litres of paint inside balloons which were exploded in formation, and took a team of 60 people 5 days to clean up afterwards. The definition of ‘you’ve got one shot’.
Of course she was agog! How did they do it? This meant I had the green light to show her the making-of video, too, which then got us onto another of Jonathan Glazer’s early hits, when he directed the music video for Jamiroquai’s ‘Virtual Insanity’. How did he do that?? Luckily, mum, there’s a video explaining that too!
By this point, she had grown weary of my YouTube watch party, announcing that it was time for bed, but that she was grateful for all the enthusiasm I’d shared. I’m sure if you’ve read this far, that’s probably how you feel, too.
Thanks for powering through, and see you next week! When (fingers crossed) I’ll have a new podcast episode to share with you. In the meantime, godspeed with all those gift guides…
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fabulous as always G x
Thank you for coming, Georgia <3