52. I bought a door mat and called it resistance.
Revolutionary behavior: going to the store.
Hi friends.
Recently, we needed a new door mat. I love going out, but somehow also hate leaving my house. I forced myself to walk to the local hardware store, not Home Depot, not Lowes. I asked if they had door mats, thinking that they wouldn’t.
“That aisle back there,” the shopkeeper pointed from behind the counter.
Sure I didn’t get to pick the exact color or design, but I didn’t use Amazon. And I got to walk home with it right away. It was like rediscovering how gratifying it can be to need something, go buy it, and have it immediately - not wait 3 days for it to show up on your doorstep.
Scott Galloway started a campaign to get people to cancel Amazon Prime. Economic pressure, he argued, is the only kind that actually registers. On March 11th, I did it. Prime and One Medical, gone.
I assumed it would be painful. I have a lot going on and Amazon had become my shortcut for feeling on top of it. Turns out two months later, things are fine. I haven’t bought every little thing I thought my apartment needed, which mostly confirms I didn’t need it.
I’ve been stopping into physical stores instead. They almost always have what I need. And I found myself thinking about all of this while being inundated with Met Gala content.
This year’s gala, with Bezos and Lauren Sánchez as honorary chairs and lead sponsors to the tune of at least $10 million, triggered boycott calls, protest posters near the museum, and a roster of notable no-shows including Zendaya and, allegedly, Meryl Streep. The activist group Everyone Hates Elon smuggled hundreds of bottles of fake urine into the Met ahead of the red carpet, a nod to longstanding reports about Amazon warehouse conditions. The Met’s own union pointed out that 19% of its members earn less annually than the cost of a single ticket to last year’s gala.
While all of that was happening on the Upper East Side, the rest of the city was busy hosting its own fashion week. In the Meatpacking District, Ball Without Billionaires drew hundreds of people in handmade looks bearing slogans like “The Devil Wears Amazon” in front of a makeshift bodega that read “Labor Is Power.” Fashion stylist Gabriella Karefa-Johnson hosted; Lisa Ann Walter of Abbott Elementary emceed and delivered her verdict on Jeff Bezos: “Temu Lex Luthor,” “Q-tip with a yacht,” and simply, “very bald.” Workers harmed by Amazon walked the red carpet in custom couture, among them warehouse employees injured on the job, organizers fighting the company’s AI data centers, and laid-off Washington Post staff.
Across the river in Brooklyn, the annual People’s Ball filled the Central Library at Grand Army Plaza with amateur fashionistas, a free runway, and no prize except the crowd’s approval.
On that very same Sunday I was out with a friend who is an actress and when she’s not on stage she helps rich Brooklyn women organize their homes and take care of their children. One such employer has filled a beautiful Brownstone with unopened Amazon boxes. She orders say, sponges, forgets that she ordered them because she doesn’t open the box, and then orders them again.
Perhaps the ease with which we can order things is enabling us to consume more than we actually require.
P.S.
I gotta “hand” it to Mandy Lee @oldloserinbrooklyn who predicted we’d see a lot of hands in fashion prior to the Met Gala.
If you missed last week:
Party Talk. 🍸
Rumor has it that Substack is suppressing free content. If you’d like to resist the algorithm pushing paid content only, then liking, sharing, and commenting on this newsletter will help! <3
Have you read a burnout memoir? Last week I wrote about my own desire for coziness and balance and mental health and why I had initially named this newsletter “Cozy girls.” I also referenced the piece I wrote about the end of hustle culture last year. Publishing trends are a useful barometer. When the industry starts packaging a feeling into a genre, the feeling has usually been circulating for a while, long enough to write, edit, and print.
Alice Robb wrote in Bloomberg:
“In this decade, a very different agenda has emerged: the pleasures of giving up. In A Year of Nothing (Whitefox Publishing), prolific British podcaster Emma Gannon cancels all her commitments in favor of long walks and eating bananas in bed. In Ambition Monster (Atria Books), startup veteran Jennifer Romolini laments the toll of all that work on her mental health and marriage. Journalist Rainesford Stauffer’s gentle manifesto, *All the Gold Stars* (Balance), suggests we reframe success to encompass hobbies and community.”
The G train is shutting down for 10 weekends this summer. This is the third straight summer of disruptions, despite residents being told last year it would be the last. Hope you like shuttle buses.
The most expensive home ever listed just hit the market. Asking price? $400 Million. It’s an LA Mega-mansion on an eight-acre estate featuring 39 bedrooms and multiple kitchens across a Mediterranean-style main residence and guest house. On the grounds, you’ll also find three swimming pools, a pool house, a tennis court, a tennis pavilion, and a hammam.
Coinbase laying off 14% of staff. CEO Brian Armstrong announced the reduction in response to a volatile market and, of course, AI advancement. 15 direct reports sounds nightmarish but I generally agree that there is a coordination tax if you let your teams bloat too much at large orgs.
“We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles.”
American Girl x Hill House. My brain when I saw this news: “Why?” then, “Do children even know what Hill House is?” But then I realized it’s really for their moms. Launched this week and timed to Mother’s Day, the 10-piece collection reimagines prints from the original historical dolls (Felicity, Addy, Kirsten, and Samantha) across Hill House’s signature Nap Dress silhouettes in women’s, kids’, baby, and doll sizes, so you can match with your daughter and her doll simultaneously. Actually brilliant.
Do I need to get back on Facebook? Rachel Karten reported that content creators and brand accounts started noticing a spike on Facebook around October 2025. A cheese shop in Beverly Hills pulled 13 million Facebook views in 30 days, and another client got 20 million on a single video. A comment on Karten’s LinkedIn post reads:
“I've gone from 0 to 30,000 followers on Facebook in 3 months just by dual posting my reels. The engagement there is crazy right now and the creator fund payouts are much higher than TikTok.”
IKEA has finally cracked inflatable furniture, and it only took 30 years. The PS 2026 collection, the brand's first since 2017, is headlined by an armchair filled with air but built on a carbon steel frame with a textile cover, so it actually holds its shape. The original 1990s attempt, which required a hair dryer to inflate and had a tendency to slide out from under you, was one of the more notable failures in IKEA design history. The full collection, with 35-plus pieces, drops May 14.
“Ganni is one of those brands that has cute stores and nothing to buy.” Chris Danton had some harsh but true words for Ganni this week: “This brand suffers from thinking it was too cool for the masses, while simultaneously pursuing them at top speed.” CEO Laura du Rusquec, who came over from Balenciaga to steer a brand already in super-growth, stepped down after two years. Her mandate was elevation: Paris Fashion Week instead of Copenhagen, higher price points, a new Paris headquarters. The workforce shrank from over 600 to 453 in the process.
Spirit Airlines shut down at 3 a.m. on May 2nd, and thousands of passengers found out when they showed up to the airport. A $500 million government rescue collapsed at the last minute, bondholders said no, and 34 years of budget travel ended overnight — the first major U.S. airline to fold in 25 years. It turns out the demand for budget travel never really recovered after Covid, and the airlines paying attention figured that out.
The WSJ ran a big feature this week on United Airlines' CEO and his revelation that making your airline not terrible is actually a winning business strategy (duh.) They’re taking a page from Delta, which has been executing on this for years. The proof: Delta's co-branded Amex cards are swiped so frequently that spending on them approaches 1% of U.S. GDP.
Ok bye! 🍊
Thanks for reading!
Time to embrace knitting - a mindful hobby
Sometimes I forget to soften the edges. But still stand behind it. Thanks for sharing!