Rebooting Esmé Squalor

rejecting the personal brand, debating Heathcliff's ethnicity, and coming out as a product manager

Sep 25, 2024

Happy Wednesday everyone, and happy fall! Guess who’s back~

I spent a very long time overthinking my reboot of Esmé Squalor instead of just doing it. The biggest reason for this is I put too much pressure on myself to settle on a new blog format that’s A) totally unique/myself, B) a cohesive “brand” with a strategy and C) situated within a defined niche with audience growth potential. Obviously requirement A is the only important one. B and C stemmed from my anxieties about what the blog could or “should” be, after letting it lie dormant for over a year.

In the 18 months since my last newsletter, I’ve watched Substack prioritize intra-platform discovery by launching social features like Notes, adding a media tab, and investing in the mobile app. As a result, there are many Substack writers who have since sprung up who not only publish content very similar to my old newsletters, but who have also found ways to monetize their casual “girlblogs” and lists and trend analyses. (This phenomenon has already been discussed on Substack at length, so I will direct any friends unfamiliar with the discourse to Emily’s viral post.)

Anyway, while scrolling the Substack app this past year and seeing successful blogs that were similar to my abandoned Esmé Squalor, I felt a pit in my stomach that was part FOMO, part guilt. Since I had been an early adopter, I felt foolish for not staying consistent with the blog and doing everything possible to monetize my hobby from the get-go. It’s easier than ever for writers without large existing audiences to get discovered on Substack, after all.

The discourse around the Writer-as-Influencer on Substack, especially in the fashion category, is comforting to me because it’s shown that I’m not alone in wanting more out of the fashion and culture writers I follow. People are hungry for authenticity, unpopular opinions, and a unique point of view, not a wall of affiliate links.

In retrospect, I’m really glad I didn’t overthink the early days of Esmé Squalor. I wrote what I wanted, when I wanted, for fun. If the blog evolves in tone or content, it’ll be because I myself have changed and found new interests over the last 1.5 years. One major thing that’s shifted since I started the blog is that I feel more confident and energized in my career than I ever have before. I don’t need to use the blog as catharsis for my 9-5 anymore because… I like my 9-5 now. My career became interesting when I started taking risks, and actively pursuing jobs because I found them interesting, not because of any perceived stability (which, let’s be honest, in this economy, doesn’t truly exist) or status associated with them.

I’ve learned a ton since saying fuck it and rejecting the scarcity mindset that led me to choose product management as a career in the first place (I wanted to be a writer like Carrie Bradshaw, but that wasn’t going to cut it bills-wise). As a result of going with my gut, I’ve been exposed to situations and learning opportunities I never would’ve experienced if I hadn’t taken risks. I may not be a Vogue staff writer (do those even still exist?), but I’ve gotten to build interesting products in the fashion tech/e-comm space, which is honestly way cooler, and a bucket list item of mine I didn’t think I’d get to check off for quite some time. I recently landed an ad tech role in the music & audio space that I’m really excited about. I’ve discovered that I do enjoy working in product and I have the capacity to be a more than decent PM if I work hard at it. Most importantly, I’ve proven to myself that I’m capable of surviving and even thriving in the wake of extremely shitty life events (a death in the family, a layoff, etc).

A dramatic Notes app screenshot from summer 2022, when I still worked for a FAANG company.

This relates to the blog because I don’t want to keep my interests in tech and POV as a product manager from mingling with my obsession with various corners of culture and fashion. Siloing my interests in tech and culture has been counterproductive to writing about things I actually care about, and topics that might produce a unique perspective. This is why I got hung up for so long defining a niche for the rebooted Esmé Squalor. In my high school and college years, there were no blogger or fashion girls who had a 9-5 (that I knew of) who I looked up to and thought were cool. You could either be Cat Marnell and write about wildly personal NSFW topics, or you could be a product manager with a cringe-y LinkedIn presence. Hopefully I can be a Substacker with a tech job who also has decent style, idk. I’m very content to remain niche-less until proven otherwise.

At the end of the day, I felt motivated to bring the blog back because some of you have expressed that you miss seeing it in your inboxes! I’m done with over-planning and trying to pin down a personal brand. I need to just write. So, without further ado…

My recent obsessions

The Harper-Eric dynamic on Industry (and the genius of Season 3 as a whole). I’ve gotten so into it that Ryan called me an industriva (Industry diva) the other day.
The outfits on this season of Industry are on another level. I’ll do a post diving deeper on this, but these are some of my favorites so far. Yas’s sunglasses are by Linda Farrow. The industriva heiress look can be yours for just $540.
Lucidity - a hilarious, unfiltered blog about day-to-day life in the tech industry written by Nikhil Suresh, a Melbourne-based dev. I found this post, Most Tech Jobs Are Jokes And I Am Not Laughing, especially real and relatable given my recent experience on the job market.
This military-inspired jacket from the Khaite Fall/Winter 2024 collection. And this bag. The colorway is English Green Suede, which conjures images of horses, dew-soaked moorlands under cloudy skies, and fall.
Speaking of English moorlands, I’m enjoying the backlash around the casting of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. As a Saltburn and Barbie lover, I was initially excited by news of the casting, but critics have pointed out that literary evidence heavily indicates that Heathcliff is mixed race, not white. Also, Cathy is supposed to be in her mid-teens, and Margot Robbie is in her 30s. (Shamefully, I never read Wuthering Heights, but I will before the movie comes out).
I love this theoretical casting… Elle Fanning was perfect in The Great, and Dev Patel is dreamy.
I was cackling reading John Mulaney’s roasts of attendants at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in SF last week. Apparently his jokes did not go over too well. A cursory Reddit search made for even more entertainment.
I’m moving to Brooklyn this week ! and so of course I’ve been diligently curating a Pinterest board of potential directions for my new apartment’s interior design scheme. If anyone knows what this aesthetic is called, please let me know.
Lastly, I love this quote by Catherine Deneuve, a YSL muse. I often feel like I live a double life, as a corporate woman in a male-dominated field and fashion lover, and I want to build a wardrobe that allows me to do that with ease.