It’s been three months since the last our last newsletter update, though it feels both longer and shorter than that – like most things lately. Since then, we’ve moved constantly: Scotland to  England, city to city, trains and overnights and cafes that all blur together now. Glasgow, London, Stamford, Manchester. A collage of impressions.

Now we’ve paused. The flat is filled with sun – actual, insistent light – and framed by floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a view of distant hills and trees just beginning to rust. We’re watching the seasons shift, slowly. Something about it feels like the beginning of a quieter chapter. Or at least, the illusion of one.

Though we’ve moved away from our Weekend Links format, we still like to write about what we’ve been up to lately and these thoughts have found their way into Hyperreality, our weekly newsletter. For those who’ve come to expect these glimpses of our thinking-in-progress, they’re still there – just in a different form. Below, we’ve gathered a few recent letters that have made their way to subscribers over recent weeks.

1

This week’s edition of Listening, Reading, Thinking, Shopping, Watching includes a brief history of tennis; an ultra-boutique hotel in Marylebone with only six rooms; the headscarf’s journey through time and its modern comeback; tan lines as aesthetic markers in fashion and social media; my experiment with nano and microcurrents; and much more.

2

Since we last spoke, we also began a new series: Dispatches & Dreams: Letters to Hyperreality. Every week, letters arrive from readers around the world – people writing about leaving one city for another, about work that might actually matter, about trying to live with more intention. Their questions sound familiar because they are ours too, so we’ve decided to try something new. In every instalment of this new series, we’ll take one letter and work through it together – not to solve anything, necessarily, but to think it through properly. Sometimes it will be about travel, sometimes about work, sometimes about relationships. Usually all three.

Read the first two instalments below:

Dispatches & Dreams: Letters to Hyperreality /001
Dispatches & Dreams: Letters to Hyperreality /002 (Presence over Pixels)

3

This week’s edition of Listening, Reading, Thinking, Shopping, Watching includes a quietly iconic country house hotel in Rutland, a sculptural return to busts and headpieces, a Paris apartment full of subtle drama, Carrie Bradshaw’s best outfits (and the Zoë Kravitz moment that echoes them), a kale Caesar pasta salad worth bookmarking, and a corner shop that turns into a wine bar after dark. Plus: late summer inspiration, analogue pinboards, and a few thoughts on fashion’s looping timelines.

4

I also wrote an epic essay on metamodernism:

There’s an exodus of sorts happening, and I think I’m part of it. I broke the doomscrolling habit some time ago, but only recently have I lost the urge to post personal photos on Instagram. (I still enjoy sharing a few here – there’s something more intimate about this space.) Was it posting ennui? I can’t be sure. Perhaps something deeper. Either way, the time I’ve reclaimed for reading and learning has opened up entire worlds – from the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) to metamodernism. It was this second discovery that caught my attention yesterday: while reading a rather bleak article that P forwarded to me, I stumbled across the term and immediately disappeared down a research rabbit hole.

5

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about authenticity: what it means, how we perform it, and what happens when the line between inspiration and appropriation gets blurry. This week, I had an experience that crystallised all of these thoughts in the most unsettling way.

6

It comes to me now, as I sit with the sound of rain pressing at the windows, that the moments (in books, films, life) which I think the most poignant are not those filled with words, but those suspended – half-said, unsaid, caught between breath and silence. I have been thinking about love. Not the kind with denouements and curtain calls, but the quieter kind, the kind that rests in the spaces of things left unsaid.

There are more letters, of course. Too many to fold neatly into one update. We’ll hold onto them for now, let them settle, surface slowly in the next newsletter – or the one after that. Happy reading!

MORE IN THIS SERIES

Lately at our Newsletter, Hyperreality /004

Lately at our Newsletter, Hyperreality /003

Lately at our Newsletter, Hyperreality /002