You know when you hear a word and suddenly tune into it being repeated by everyone? Spicy. For everything from food to people to writing to the general zeitgeist, it’s everywhere right now. And it’s shaping up to be a spicy week in the UK…
Out and about on Saturday, I was struck by just how, well, well, everyone looked. For a long time we Brits have had a name for dressing badly in the heat - everything from tops off (in Glasgow I once saw a man marching around like that in the autumn chill, too) to heavy coats whenever the mercury veers from whatever it felt like doing the day before.
Plus, the last few years … it wasn’t good was it, as we emerged from the pandemic. And I thoroughly include myself there, as someone who basically ran out of all summer clothes after not buying anything besides tie-dye leisurewear and handbags for a couple of years. But onwards. On Saturday, as the sun came out, so did the outfits: colours! Shapes! Directional styling!
I was so inspired I felt like I SHOULD start a street style photo blog: girls in chic bodycon midis; a woman in a flirty A-line sundress with two black bows holding the back together; another striding around in fire-engine red silky flares; a man outside his salon in a lemon short sleeve shirt, frayed denim cut offs, ankle socks and Doc Marten T-bars that somehow just looked 🤌. But I have learned my lesson about over-scheduling my side hustles, so words will do have to do.
Of course, as always, it wasn’t just about clothes (see: the world leader at this, Derek Guy, the style guru currently using his tailoring expertise to take on Alpha Bros).
Is it too much suggest that there’s very cautious, very delicate optimism in the air? We finally have some sun, the Euros are on, and Thursday might be … interesting.
How are you feeling about it all? Fatigued? Numbed out? Worried? I have to say, I am getting excited. To quote the incomparable Pam in Gavin and Stacey: “It’s all the drama, Mick! I just love it!” There’s something about a polling day that I love, too: everyone going off (REMEMBER: with your photo ID this year, don’t let anyone disenfranchise you 💪) to exercise our rights. Yes, I will mist up on my way in to vote.
London’s last really good summer was when it hosted the Olympics: Fingers crossed the proximity of the one across the pond will bring us all good vibes too.
My new retail recipe: One shop then a pit stop
I also stopped off in Rixo - the wedding guest dress search continued - and had the nicest shopping experience in years. It’s all vaguely Rolling Stones-in-Morocco vibes (suiting the history of its King’s Road setting), with long colourful curtains, floors studded with pebbles, a barista in the lobby and a separate bar in the middle of the shop, where they brings ice cold drinks and free nibbles to your table. I was thrilled. There is rosé by the glass if you trust yourself not to go mad at the till.
As the high street, squeezed middle and luxury brands struggle on, maybe retail really will be all about swinging to experiential (and no doubt expensive to run) flagship stores to support the brand’s sales online.
As well as the usual west London international set overheard shopping “for Saint Tropez”, it was also noticeable just how full of tourists (mostly young American women - travelling post-college?) it was. In contrast, the huge nearby Zara was full of Brits. But then that’s the beauty of the severely weakened pound they promised us: inwards investment. Not so great when you’re trying to spend on your outwards.
What to r̶e̶a̶d̶ listen to this summer
Everyone’s sharing their summer reading lists - find your hot summer reads from Substackers here. I love a bandwagon and especially hopping on one, so I am doing the same with a twist. There’s a lot of celebration about the physical page which I appreciate … up to a point. But when the sun’s blazing down, you’re squinting through your sunglasses, and you’ve left the novel you want to read up in your hotel room … or just want a distraction on your drive or walk to work?
Audio books, of course. But not just any audio books. Imo, it’s memoir where they absolutely come into their own, voiced by their actual authors. These picks aren’t all new - which is deliberate. Having been on the receiving end of book PRs as a journalist, I think coming to stuff late is actually a great way of cutting through the marketing efforts around the tide of content we face these days, to see what resonates with you rather than what publishers are betting will be their most profitable sellers. (Which isn’t a slur on PRs - they need to cheerlead for books, which are competing against so much else for your attention.) That’s my line for consuming at my own pace, and I am sticking to it. So, here’re some of the most compelling listens (I’ve shared the Spotify links first if available, as they seem they fiddliest to track down):
Down the Drain by Julia Fox
I’ve just finished this. It’s a wild ride of a book where Julia’s stint as a teenage dominatrix is just a little side quest. Often with memoir, you get a lot of retrospective reflection on past behaviour; one of the joys of this one is that there is little to no justification of the author’s antics to slow down the action. Writing in the breathless present tense, the artist-actress-model-fashion girl lets it all speak for itself, until a brief and not quite so convincing coda to her rollercoaster life wraps it all up. It’s left for the reader to draw your conclusions to what has clearly been a tough ascent into womanhood, under all the gritty clubrat glamour.
She’s honest, too: about her sugardaddy - her words - who pays her and her two friends’ rent (um, kudos) for years; the lows of her drug use; sex (there are regular interludes where she’ll launch into slightly out-of-place episodes which feel vaguely Jackie Collins in their detail). What shines out, though, is her creativity: she’s got main character energy, and is never self-pitying. Now famous in her own right, she doesn’t play the coy game of clamming up about her starry liasions either, other than changing names (Ye is The Artist; while the A-list celeb identified by a baseball cap is easily guessable). Above all, dark as it gets, it’s still great fun.
How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell
Moving in overlapping circles with Julia Fox - fashion / graffiti artists / New York creatives (by which they don’t mean marketing directors) -
is the kind of woman (yes that’s relevant) writer where I think people don’t always appreciate the skill involved. Especially when she reads it as an audiobook, this memoir feels like someone’s talking to you in a sharing-a-cigarette-outside-a bar-stream of consciousness. Of course, that air of careless, chatty intimacy is not actually easy to to achieve (she has written quite a bit about how she works hard to do that).You could sum up the plot as The Devil Wears Prada with an addiction problem, but that doesn’t do justice to this tale of a beauty editor brushing up against life’s ugliest aspects through her drug use. Also - and again this is frequently underestimated in writing, though it’s so hard to do - it’s really funny.
Private Equity by Carrie Sun
I read this as a proof at the start of the year and a few chapters in thought, hang on, this is actually a memoir? I could not believe that the writer was being so open about her life working for a billionaire boss of a private equity company (since identified by the New York Times). The world of high finance is far from accessible, so this account of what it is like to work in day-to-day is fascinating. I was most struck by the unsettling culture of aggressively professional “niceness” that, you realise after a while, is a weird sort of corporate defence tactic. Like much about this world, it starts to chill.
Private Equity got quite the marketing push, but perhaps not the attention it deserved, perhaps because it sits quite alone in the market. The UK cover is also illustrated a bit like a rom com (which it’s the furthest thing from). While I read it in print, I’ve checked for you and it’s narrated by the author, which gives another layer to her never-quite-shocked-enough narration.
Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier by Marisa Meltzer
Like me, you may have followed Emily Weiss’ career from her brief but scene-stealing spot as a Vogue power intern on The Hills, to her brilliant Into The Gloss site, to the beauty brand Glossier that she created from that platform - and, maybe, her famously rigorous wedding beauty prep which had me thinking of the extremely detailed self-care routine in American Psycho. Here, journalist Marisa Meltzer tracks Weiss’s ascent to success and attempts to position her beauty brand as a tech start-up (shades of workspace company WeWork? Likewise, it’s being made into a TV drama - cannot wait) until - no plot spoiler here, given all the chat about it heralding the end of the “girl boss” (ugh) - her eventual stepping down as CEO. This is read by the writer, admittedly, but I’ll defend that by saying I have yet to find a really great memoir from the so-called girl bosses (sorry): maybe they need a bit of distance from it all first. Until then, a really thorough third-party report is the next best thing.
Or just turn on the TV with me
Of course, you don’t have to read (or audio read, it still counts, babe) anything. There’s so much guilt about reading - people treating it like homework to keep up with the latest title being pushed on book clubs. I remember one friend being totally shocked when I said I don’t finish every book I start, if I am not enjoying it or that interested. But why plough grimly through every read you try, any more than you’d stick with a show that was boring you to tears? No one is giving out Brownie points for either.
Maybe it’s the puritan or perfectionist within. As has been well documented, reading has become a much more public pursuit in recent years (Lit Girls, showing off your TBR list on socials, the rise of - winces - cool books). You can just totally opt out. Or, give it a few years and come to that prize-winner when the hype has died down and see if you enjoy it just as much. Or don’t do either! Watch America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, just like me.
As the books above show, whether navigating Condé Nasties or high-stakes finance, we love to find out how much literal blood, sweat and tears goes into seemingly glamorous worlds. Playboy Mansion tell-alls are almost a sub-genre in their own right, by this point (the mansion was filthy, being just the start of it; read Izabella St James’ Bunny Tales for a very unimpressed take on life as one of Hugh Hefner’s Girlfriends). In this case, Netflix must have seen the response to Cheer, its series on college cheerleaders, and upped the stakes by joining the squad cheering on the American football team. Not officially competitive, but just as if not more gruelling, as both veterans and newbies battle to keep their spots on the famous dance squad.
Set in Texas, it’s all huge hair, stiff smiles, and weeping women as they’re cut from the line-up (publicly, even for veteran squad members who struggle to keep smiling through). The most resilient seem to know it’s unfair that they’re paid a pittance, but are in it for the experience and, more crucially (in the manner of every Love Islander and Batchelor contestant vying to be an influencer), the profile. Others seem to be barely holding it together in an environment which is relentlessly focused on their looks and weight. Most fascinating of all are the women running the squad - steely former cheerleaders now enforcing all the rules, even as they know just how they hurt.
PS I can’t talk about the dark side of cheerleaders without name-checking
’s legendary article for Spin, Death of The Cheerleaders, since republished by the Daily Beast. Be warned, it’s deeply sad, but brilliantly done.What are you reading, watching or recommending this summer? Please let me know in the comments below. I’m in the mood for a twist on the old-school bonkbuster, goldfish galore (IYKYK)… is anyone even writing them anymore?
Life and death of a cheerleader: what to r̶e̶a̶d̶ listen to and watch right now