Capsule #45 ft. Jess Bantleman

Hello hello,

Hope you are all having a good week 🫶

Feels like there’s so much going on! A new Tavi Gevinson zine, a Taylor Swift album leak, an actual Taylor Swift album, a second, longer Taylor Swift album, another weekend of Coachella, tennis balls attached to all parts of Zendaya, more cheeky Rihanna interviews. It’s a lot!

Slowing things down a little, in this issue we’re looking at the creative processes of different artists and writers, listening to Donald Glover’s advice, and looking at the shoes of the moment.

Holly x

First up…

I love reading directly from artists about how their work is made. Intel can be roughly divided into two categories: where inspiration comes from, and how you actually create the thing (time spent, conditions needed). In her press interviews for her new album, Don’t Forget Me, Maggie Rogers reveals that she wrote two songs a day for five days - that’s 10 songs, the length of the completed album. She worked from 10am-5pm, and lots of the songs we hear are the first take of recording. Of course it feels insane that an album, something some artists slog at for like, five years, could be finished so quickly, so effortlessly.

I was reminded of an interview in which Lady Gaga shares that ‘Sheiße’ was written on her tour bus after a night out in a Berlin club, and there are countless other anecdotes like this. To add to the serendipity of it all, in her interview with Zane Lowe, Rogers says of her latest release: “You can hear how much fun I’m having,” and that “[her] friends say this sounds like the version of me they know.” What we hear then, is that authentic work can (or should?) be easy to make. Not easy in the sense that you can’t rush building the foundations - be that the craft of songwriting, playing instruments, poetry, or painting, whatever it is - or living through the experiences from which you draw, but if we allow those two things to happen, in theory we’re priming the conditions needed to create. We aren’t all Maggie Rogers, but you know what I mean. If we’re forcing something (trying to be someone we aren’t, producing art with too much anticipation over who will see it and what they’ll think), it’s hard to progress.

The conditions matter, too. Remember the Michaela Coel quote from her 2021 Emmys acceptance speech: “Do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.”

Coel delves into this idea further in this interview with Daniel Kaluuya for High Snobiety. She talks of needing solitude and nature to trigger her flow state - that classic image of the writer alone in the woods - but recognises it’s not the only way. Kaluuya admits that he “need[s] people”, that being alone or being without WiFi forces his brain to only focus on those two things, and panic. The point is about making the effort to find what feels right for you (okay Yoga with Adriene) so you can reproduce these conditions throughout your life.

On that topic…

I was reading this interview with Donald Glover from late 2022, during the time he was finishing Atlanta and making Mr and Mrs Smith. Speaking from his farm, he talks about privacy and worries that the younger generation (due to social media) may “have a hard time distinguishing whether something is for them or for others,” which “could play out as a diminished sense of self.” He believes that life is only real if you have things that you do just for you, and here’s the big thing:

So what’s the answer? It might take us a long time to truly find out, as the continuous competing priorities of work/love life/family/friends/admin/fun stuff fill every bit of time so quickly. But if you had a week or a month, where you could pause everything else in order to pursue creative suff, how might you spend it? If the answer is tricky, ask yourself what the child version of yourself might have done, before realising anyone was watching or learning what was cool.

Speaking of demystifying the artistic process…

This week Tavi Gevinson published Fan Fiction, a satirical fanzine about Taylor Swift. It begins with a piece cultural criticism, which is excellent, and genuinely makes comments I haven’t seen elsewhere in Taylor Swift lore and reviews. Gevinson then begins her work of fiction - or is it? - that’s the question she’s posing to us the whole time. I don’t want to ruin it for you before reading, but the zine is broadly an exploration of what it means to represent your life online and in artworks, and how it feels when ‘real’ life doesn’t feel enough. Read it! Promise it’s worth your while if you stick at it.

This week’s fashion thing…

Is boat shoes. ⛵️ They were on a few trend prediction lists at the start of the year and now the shoes are popping up out and about. The main contemporary reference point is the spring/summer 2024 Miu Miu show.

Miu Miu pretty much sets the tone for how stylish people dress. So many of the celebrities and influencers on best-dressed lists (or Instagram carousels) are ambassadors for the brand, and you can count on the likes of Zara and Mango to recreate their looks each season. This SS/24 show has been particularly huge for that, and here are the Mango boat shoes of course, styled with a Miu Miu-esque striped top and preppy shirt collar.

Pictures from the latest issue of Homme Girls with Gabbriette on the cover were released this week. I was clicking through and there they were, the Miu Miu boat shoes. I have to say I find them extremely convincing on her.

And on Aude-Julie Alingué, a French fashion designer and creator, the Timberland version. As with most shoe trends, you can rely on the “ugly” shoe brands (Ugg, Hoka, Dr Martens, Timberland, Crocs) to put out the chunkier version. Aside from being popular brands with huge votes of confidence from the public, their chunkier designs advocate for a longer-wearing version of a style. This is a win in the mass market, where practicality feeds into the lifespan of any trend. If it’s comfy and it lasts, it’ll stick around longer.

As I was looking for a couple more reference pics for this newsletter, I found Emma Chamberlain talking about boat shoes for a Vogue video. A classic example, I thought (and kind of still think). Though I did also stumble across this TikTok from Casey Lewis, who documents youth trends and culture. She posits that the return of boat shoes is a trend planted and paid for by Sperry, the original boat shoe brand. You might say that a brand pretty much exclusively known for this shoe wants them to come back in fashion to reach new consumers, and that is true. But Lewis points out instances where the exact same copy is used both by Sperry and Vogue, which if nothing else, raises our collective eyebrow. Personally I think the Miu Miu brand holds more power, but it does remind us that some trends are more organic, and perhaps “deeper” (reactions to broader cultural shifts and the economy, for example), and some are more surface level (big brand has big relationship with big tastemaker (magazine or person)).

And finally…

News updates from the extended Capsule universe.

• After a scandalous leak… The Tortured Poets Department is here. Buckle in!

• Rihanna also dropped some more breadcrumbs about her next album. I feel for the reporters trying to find an interesting way to ask the same question and not piss her off

• The reviews for Nicola Peltz Beckham’s new film, Lola, aren’t glowing… this one described it as “poverty porn”

• “This is realer to me than anything I’ve done in my entire life,” says Kate Hudson of the debut album she’s made. It’s called Glorious and comes out next month

• Official editorial photos of the Margiela couture show are in British Vogue, shot by Steven Meisel

• And it’s the second weekend of Coachella. Here are some of the best looks from weekend one

This week, Jess Bantleman popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Jess is a Social Media Manager at Hearst Magazines UK for the Women’s Lifestyle Portfolio. She manages Cosmopolitan UK, Red and Prima. 📚

📺 Watching: The Doja Cat set from Coachella last Sunday. The full set link I had has been taken down ☹️ but start here and work your way through. And then the video of her doing the metal version of ‘Say So’ at the EMA’s in 2020, which goes so hard. 😩

Also Crystal Anderson’s Coachella outfit reviews. So good.

📖 Reading: After that performance, Doja Cat’s Wikipedia page in full, pretty well summarised by this pull-quote from Billboard: “It'd be tough to name three artists of any kind who feel more like the 2020s so far than Doja Cat." And everything on Dirt this week, as they run their new series ‘The Middle Class Writer’ with Literary Hub. It’s all about the role of money in the lives of writers in 2024, and this Refinery29 Money Diaries-inspired piece of writers sharing their income and spending is a great place to start.

And another link to the new Tavi Gevinson zine to remind you!

🎧 Listening to: The Tortured Poets Department, of course. And Silence Is Loud, the full-length debut from Nia Archives.

In extremely divisive news, Lola wants to share the arrival of loafers made by New Balance. Imagine a trainer literally in the shape of a loafer. Lola fears these will feel ubiquitous within a few weeks, but don’t bet on them replacing a classic loafer or trainer long term.

If you’d like to adopt Lola or one of her friends, click here to learn more.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, please forward on 🥺

See you next week 💋