I’m a publishing romantic. I still believe in the role of an editor, the thrill of discovery, and in someone with good taste that I trust telling me, “you need to know about this.” But lately, I have to admit, my favorite publications aren’t run by Vox, Conde, or Hearst. It’s sitting in my Messages app. A typical morning for me entails waking up and opening my phone to at least three or four things waiting on me. Someone dropped a Spotify or Youtube link with a reminder that it’s the anniversary of our favorite legacy artists debut album. Somebody else has the latest on a celebrity couple drama we were kiki’ng about last week. Another chat is giving us a review of a new soul food (a cuisine we take VERY seriously) restaurant they went to for dinner the night before. And in the mix of it all there will be a couple culturally revelant TikTok memes. Before I’ve even intentionally checked my Apple News alerts, a good portion of my media digest has already been edited for me.

The internet gives us an endless amount of things I could care about. My group chats send me the things the people who know me the best think I will care about. Now, isn’t this basically the job of any great magazine? Media platforms act as a place to discover, decide what matters, organize it, while also introducing you to things you maybe didn’t know you like. Our group chats are performing many of these same functions, except the masthead is your friends. There’s a fashion editor, a music critic, someone covering the celebrity beat, and the fact checker.

The algo knows what you click. Your friends know why.

We know how it goes. Instagram knows that I follow interior design accounts. My friends know that while I like a sterile room, “this weird sofa is very you.” That small difference makes all the difference. Algorithms are there to understand behavior, where your friends understand taste, context, aspiration, and even the contradiction. They know that sometimes the best recommendation isn’t something that is perfectly aligned with your taste, it’s something sitting right at the edge. This is what also makes a good editor: someone who doesn’t just know what we like, they know what we might be ready to like next. And it’s a two-way street, for sure. I trust the people closest to me to never intentionally steer me in the wrong direction or put something in front of me that is completely farce. We’re bombarded all day on every platform with what’s “for you” or something “you might like”. I’ve been tricked into adding something to my cart that “customers also bought” one too many times. There have also been times where I’ve dropped it in the group for a second opinion only to be reminded I have four of those already in my closet. A friend, but also a filter!

It’s funny because the more personalization becomes sophisticated, I find myself retreating back to the old-fashioned word of mouth. Sure, Opentable can give me hundreds of reviews on the new hot LA watering hole but it rarely trumps the friend who works at Moet Hennessy who just produced an event there. “Go there, order this.” Shout out to Nelson! And that recco has something an algorithm doesn’t really have: accountability. If the bar sucks, you know I’m coming back to the chat.

The link is just the beginning.

The other great thing about the group chat is that the link is usually just the start of where the topic goes. Someone will react with an emoji, someone else adds more context, there’s someone that’s calling bullshit, and that one person who remembers that random fact from years ago that then changes how we all see it. Eventually the original story has become something else. because we’re in the chat not only to consumer but to process it together. Recently someone in the group chat dropped the latest British Vogue cover story featuring actress, Wunmi Mosaku. We started the conversation talking about how dope and precious it was that she was photographed with her daughter, cause duh. But I had to be honest, I had a visceral reaction to the choice of neon green for the masthead. It was so bold and distracting to the beautiful image of Mosaku. Someone else agreed. The conversation then went into a deep dive on all things Vogue, comparing the UK edition to its US sister. What’s working versus what’s not.

Of course I enjoy these fashion conversations based on my personal and professional interests, but I really appreciate them with this specific group chat because none of them work in the fashion industry. Instead, it’s a mix of hospitality, non-profit, music, entertainment so they’re able to bring their own expertise and POV. I usually hate talking fashion with fashion people. We’re all so jaded. Sometimes those furthest from your world can give you the clearest read on it. They haven’t been trained into the same assumptions or references. They don’t have the same level of cynicism that we walk around with. They just know what moves them, what doesn’t, and why.

Now just because I’m claiming the group chat is the new magazine, doesn’t mean it’s replacing our precious print and it’s younger, quicker digital counterpart. It’s probably only replacing the homepage. We still need the reporters, the critics, editors, and everyone else to create the content. But the route from content to audience has changed. Instead of:

Magazine → reader

it’s increasingly:

Story → person → group chat → conversation → five more stories → purchase / opinion / action

The group chat is now a layer of distribution and editorial at the same time. This, ultimately, makes the strong editorial brands that more valuable. The goal is no longer “will someone click this?” now its “Will they share this?”

And underneath the whole media conversation, there’s something intimate about being known well enough that, somewhere in the endless scroll of the internet, someone can spot a thing and know exactly who needs to see it. The best group chats aren’t just information networks. THey’re little archives of friendship. Years of links, memes, vacation recommendations, outfits, career advice and “this made me think of you.”

So no, I don’t believe magazines are disappearing. They’re just changing shape and the editors are your besties.

Hot take: the ballet sneaker is not really about ballet. Ok, glad we got the obvious out of the way.

Yes, thin soles, soft shapes, the occasional strap. Most carry a certain I have barre class at noon and a gallery opening at five energy. But guys aren’t suddenly buying these because they want to look like dancers. I just think men are tired of looking like they’re preparing for combat.

Footwear kept getting heavier for years. Bigger soles. More technical uppers. Dad shoes became granddad shoes, and somehow sneakers started looking like gear you’d need before scaling something after brunch. It got exhausting.

Then the ballet sneaker showed up. Low, soft, close to the foot. A shoe that doesn’t stomp into a room. It arrives quietly and trusts that you noticed.

I first clocked it on Miu Miu’s SS24 runway, their second New Balance collaboration. Most of us remember that run Miuccia went on from Spring 2021 through Fall 2025 (s/o to the NYT feature where i confess my love for Mrs Prada). The brand was leaning into its “menswear, but not the menswear” bag. The 530 SL borrowed the New Balance 991 upper and paired it with a sole that was barely there. The streets paid attention.

Other brands followed. Adidas brought the Bad Bunny Ballerina. Puma leaned into the Speedcat Ballet. Onitsuka Tiger softened the Mexico 66 into something close to a Mary Jane. And Salomon and Sandy Liang put ribbons on a trail shoe, which still feels like one of the more accurate fashion jokes in recent memory.

I can admit none of this is entirely new ground, though. Fashion has always pulled from dance, martial arts, indoor training. Repetto, Margiela, Prada, Dries, old taekwondo sneakers. They all live somewhere on the same family tree. The shape keeps coming back because it keeps meaning something.

I’ve been collecting versions of this shoe for a while. It started with the Miu Miu x New Balance 530 SL. Through my PR connections and my Miu Miu Soho SA, I was able to cop the sold-out cinnamon suede colorway. After the Miu Mius, the pickups kept coming. The Nike Moon Shoe, Julian Klausner’s Dries sneaker, the Celine flat sneaker from my last Rodeo visit, the Adidas x Wales Bonner Karintha, and the OG Vibram FiveFingers for, but not exclusive to, leg day.

There has always been a type of stylish man who understands a small shoe. Not feminine, but not afraid of beauty. Not streetwear, but still heavily inspired. The ballet sneaker fits that space. Pretty, but not precious. That’s also why the ballet reference actually works because ballet looks graceful, but it is brutal. The entire point is to make the effort invisible.

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Most of my work as an image-maker is exactly that, making the most effort look effortless. The mood boards, research, fittings, and edits that pile up before you ever walk onto set, all to produce something that just feels easy. Something that gives people a small escape from wherever they are. It looks simple. It isn’t.

The more interesting men I know aren’t trying to escape masculinity. They’re trying to make it less narrow. Strength, ambition, beauty, money, taste, control. All still very much on the table. They just don’t need to prove it with a heavy sole. A ballet sneaker, worn well, doesn’t make a man look less masculine. It makes the masculinity less desperate.

The internet will flatten this into a joke. Men in ballet flats. Tiny shoes. The decline of civilization, now available in satin trim. But that reaction says more than the shoe does. Why does a small shoe bother people? Why does delicacy on a man still read as provocation? The ballet sneaker interrupts that logic. It suggests confidence might not need to take up as much space as possible. Some folk find that harder to sit with than it should be.

It also makes the outfit work harder. A chunky sneaker can carry a lazy look. A small shoe can’t. The pant has to be right, the proportions have to be considered. There’s no single correct way to wear them, but unlike their heavier counterpart, a cropped pant doesn’t look unhinged here. A wide leg works too, barely grazing the toe. I would never have worn my Balenciaga Triple S with a tailored trouser and a little break. The Balenciaga Radars? Immediate yes.

It all circles back to the larger question I keep returning to with men’s style: what happens when men stop dressing to project power and start dressing to communicate taste, feeling, sensuality, self-possession?

The ballet sneaker is one answer. Not every trend is for every spirit, and I’m not saying every man needs a pair. But the best versions of these shoes aren’t trying to make men look dainty. They’re trying to make men look aware. Aware of proportion. Aware of movement. Aware that masculinity doesn’t always need to be built like armor.

Maybe men are ready for shoes that make a little less noise. Slight is not the same as insignificant. Sometimes the smallest shoe in the room tells you exactly where things are going.

You Feel Me?

Ending this with a quick interview clip of Arthur Mitchell, one of the most influential ballet dancers of our time. Learn you something!

The Soft Shoe Edit

Because I am consistent in my obsessions, I wanted to end with a small edit of ballet sneakers, ballet flats, and ballet-adjacent shoes I either own, want, or keep mentally filing away for the right outfit. Some are literal. Some are spiritual cousins. All of them understand the assignment: stay low, stay elegant, and don’t stomp when you can glide.

Adidas Taekwondo Mei Ballet Sneaker

The easiest entry point. Sporty enough to feel familiar, soft enough to make the point.

Adidas x Bad Bunny Ballerina

The one that made the conversation louder. Still a sneaker, but clearly speaking in dance references. The girlies were going to understand it either way, but Bad Bunny helped the guys catch up.

Bode County Clare Shoes

Not a ballet sneaker exactly, but very much in the spirit. Soft, charming, a little old-world, and best worn by someone who understands a cropped pant.

Maison Margiela Sprinters

For when you want the idea of a running shoe, but flatter, stranger, and more “don’t ask me too many questions.”

Dries Van Noten Satin Sneakers

Elegant, soft, and a little impractical in the best way. The satin is doing a lot of the work here, and honestly, let her.

New Balance x Miu Miu 530 SL Suede Sneakers

My OGs have been restocked. Amen.

Celine Flat Sneaker

A very clean version of the idea. Low, narrow, polished, and easy to imagine with a great trouser.

The first Monday in May, also known as fashion’s Super Bowl.

For most people, the Met Gala is about gathering, in person or virtually, with your friends and putting on your best Joan Rivers impersonation. Who understood the theme? Who ignored it completely? Who looked fab anyway?

For a few hundred people behind the scenes, though, the Met is something else entirely. It is months of planning, fittings, approvals, tailoring, glam tests, and emotional regulation. Stylists, hairstylists, makeup artists, publicists, designers, tailors, and assistants all spend weeks, sometimes months, trying to make one person look their absolute best while also answering the year’s assignment.

This year, the exhibition was Costume Art. The dress code was Fashion Is Art. Vague, easily debatable, and honestly, confusing. Which is usually where things get interesting.

This year, I had the opportunity to style the inimitable Jon Batiste. The musical legend, who also happens to be sample size, reached out casually only a few weeks before the gala and asked if I would dress him for the evening.

No questions. Immediate yes.

This wasn’t the first time Jon and I had worked together. Back in 2021, I styled him for the cover of the German publication ZEIT. It was the middle of the pandemic, when things felt bleak personally and professionally, and being on set with Jon and his infectious energy felt like a beautiful break. Who would have thought that, five years later, that day would have stayed with him enough to consider me for one of fashion’s biggest nights?

Once the logistics were handled, the next questions were obvious: How were we approaching the theme? And what designer could help us execute it? Timing was a concern. We had three weeks to make this happen. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t already had my “if I were dressing someone for the Met, this is what I’d do” conversations, both with myself and with my group chat.

This is where Barkley Hendricks enters the chat.

Barkley L. Hendricks was born in Philadelphia in 1945 and came of age as an artist during one of the most turbulent and creatively charged periods in American history. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before earning his MFA at Yale, where he was influenced by photographer Walker Evans.

A trip to Europe in his twenties helped set everything in motion. Standing in front of portraits by Rembrandt and Velázquez, Hendricks was awestruck by the scale, dignity, and authority given to those subjects. He was also bothered by what those museums failed to reflect: people of color, rendered with the same seriousness, presence, and permanence. So he decided to do something about it.

What followed was a body of work unlike anything American art had produced. Hendricks’ portraits almost exclusively depicted Black subjects, with particular attention to their clothing, posture, and self-possession. He painted the people around him, friends, neighbors, people he saw on the street in Philadelphia and New York, and placed them on canvases with the same scale and gravity the Old Masters reserved for kings.

Fur coats. Wide-brim hats. Platforms. Leather. Sunglasses. The full expression of Black style in the 1960s and ’70s, rendered in oil and acrylic with the weight of a Velázquez portrait. His subjects did not explain themselves. They did not perform. They simply stood there, fully dressed, and looked back at you.

His work was personal, not explicitly political, though the act itself was radical. To insist that a Black man in the right coat deserved a museum wall was, in 1970s America, an argument. Hendricks made it anyway, canvas after canvas, for decades.

His work would go on to influence generations of artists, including Kehinde Wiley and Mickalene Thomas. His paintings now live in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, Tate Modern, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He passed away in April 2017, two days after his 72nd birthday, leaving behind one of the most important and still under-discussed bodies of work in American art history.

I was first introduced to Barkley’s work through my friend Antwaun Sargent, the art critic, curator, writer, and director at Gagosian. Since then, Hendricks’ work has been a constant source of inspiration and reference for many projects I have been part of.

And then there is Jon.

There is a particular kind of artist who does not just inhabit their craft. They inhabit culture itself. Jon Batiste is that kind of artist.

Born in New Orleans into one of the most celebrated musical families in American history, Jon grew up understanding that music was never just sound. It was identity. It was lineage. It was the thing you put on in the morning like a good coat, the thing that told the room who you were before you said a word.

He studied at Juilliard. He led the house band on The Late Show. He won five Grammys in a single night, including Album of the Year for We Are, a record that refused to be boxed into a single genre because Jon himself has never fit inside one. Classical, jazz, R&B, soul, gospel, pop. He plays all of it, and none of it fully contains him. Which is exactly why Hendricks felt inevitable as a reference.

Hendricks painted men who could not be contained either. Men who existed at the intersection of style and substance. Men whose presence demanded attention without demanding permission. That self-possession, that ease, that refusal to shrink, that is Jon Batiste on any given day.

To bring Jon to the Met Gala, the most art-coded red carpet in the world, in a year where the exhibition explored the dressed body as a subject of art history, and anchor his look in the work of Barkley L. Hendricks felt less like a creative decision and more like an obvious truth.

Jon is already a Hendricks subject. He always has been. We just finally had the right canvas.

After a few conversations and proposals with some of your favorite designers, we landed on Eli Russell Linnetz, the Venice-born founder and creative director of ERL. Eli is one of my favorite menswear designers because of his ability to take simple silhouettes and familiar pieces, the hoodie, the knit, the boxer, the sneaker, and make them feel special without making them feel precious. He is also a talented photographer, and we had worked together before on a Highsnobiety cover with Naomi Osaka in 2021. Eli is what I would consider a fashion darling, loved by stylists, talent, editors, and even his peers. When he and his team agreed to design a custom look for Jon based on the concept, I was over the moon.

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All the pieces started falling into place.

I will save you all the back and forth and get straight to the main attraction. After several discussions and rounds of sketches, we landed on two custom ERL looks for the day. The pre-Met look was inspired by Hendricks’ 1969 self-portrait Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved Any Black People, Bobby Seale). The carpet look was inspired by Steve, a 1976 Hendricks painting now in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection. Both looks were finished with a Cartier timepiece and jewels.

And the cherry on top? Thanks to a couple of phone calls and connections to the Barkley Hendricks estate, we were able to get into the Whitney Museum of American Art the night before the Met and photograph Jon alongside Steve, which is currently on display on the seventh floor as part of the institution’s permanent collection.

The Met is funny because everyone sees the final image and thinks the look just sort of appeared. An individual walks onto a carpet, people scream, cameras flash, and the internet decides in real time whether you did your job.

But what I will remember most is not the carpet.

I will remember Jon standing inside the Whitney the night before, next to Steve, wearing a look made in conversation with a painting that had already been saying what we were trying to say: that style can be evidence. That a Black man, fully himself, fully dressed, and fully aware of the room he is in, is more than enough subject matter. That was the moment it all clicked for me.

I have worked on a lot of fashion moments, but this one will stay with me for a while. Not because it was the Met, although obviously, it was the Met Gala. Not because the look came together in three weeks, though I still cannot believe it did. And not even because we got to shoot Jon inside the Whitney beside the painting that started the whole idea.

It will stay with me because it reminded me why I love styling in the first place.

Black men have been shaping the visual language of cool for generations, from jazz clubs to street corners, from the archive to the algorithm. And still, so often, by the time the look reaches the runway, the magazine or the mood board, it’s origin story has been softened, blurred, or removed altogether.

At its best, this work is not about putting clothes on famous people. It is about knowing how to read someone, knowing what they carry, and finding the visual language that helps the rest of the world see it too. Barkley Hendricks saw Black men that way. Jon Batiste moves through the world that way. And for one night, I got to help connect those dots.

The Met was the assignment. Barkley was the language. Jon was the proof.

Special thanks to Eli, Hilary, the entire ERL team, Antwaun Sargent, Jack Shainman Gallery, The Whitney, ID-PR, Brooklin Phelps, Kristtian Chèvre, and Shirlee for making this moment happen.

Welcome to “You Feel Me?”, a weekly-ish note from LIKE SUEDE where men’s style, culture, taste, and the emotional texture of real life all get to sit in the same room. This is where I’ll share what I’m noticing, what I’m into, what I’m questioning, and what feels worth talking about. Think of it as part point of view, part personal dispatch, part very opinionated group chat, with a little humor and just enough rigor to keep it honest.

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A spring cleaning has a way of humbling you.

My recent humiliation ritual involved a pile of clothes and Francesca, the neighborhood Luxury Manager from The RealReal, which has now become less a resale website and more a witness to my personal growth. I spent the morning facing clothing I once felt sure about and can now barely explain.

After this latest visit, it feels like a good time to formally announce the passing of a certain category of clothing in my life: the pieces I bought recklessly before I really knew myself.

May they rest.

The Marni pony hair mules that I purchased in multiple color ways (tell me you remember that moment?). The cropped Martine Rose jacket that made perfect sense in theory, a little less sense on my body, and absolutely no sense in my real life. The oversized Botter polo I bought on a work trip that looked great in the dressing room, until it made its way in my actual home, under some real lighting. The list goes on.

These are the pieces I bought willy-nilly, sometimes to keep up and other times to experiment with a life adjacent to mine, but not exactly mine.

And let me be clear, none of them were “ugly”. In fact, all were quite good. That’s almost what makes it worse. Because the problem was rarely that the piece itself was bad. It was really misalignment. They were bought out of admiration, aspiration, boredom, or even simple seduction. Fashion is persuasive and I have, at multiple points in my life, been susceptible to a beautifully styled argument.

Watching Francesca sift through the pile, I could ID entire eras of aesthetic chaos. While she commented on what great style I had, all I could feel was embarrassment and frustration for all the wasted money sitting in front of me.

What became clear, standing there with my judgmental inner voice, is that impulsive shopping is often what happens before self-trust. Before you understand the difference between what looks good in an image and what feels right in repetition.

And repetition, unfortunately for trend-report devotees, is where personal style starts telling the truth.

Personal style is not built on the fantasy of who you might be in one very specific setting with ideal weather and a car waiting outside. It is built in the pieces you reach for again. The ones that make sense at noon and at night, in real moods, and in real life.

I’m not new to the idea of a simpler wardrobe. Back in 2013, when I was the Market Editor at Complex, I had an entire summer where I wore nothing but white T-shirts (Alexander Wang and J.Crew, mostly) and denim (Nudie, AllSaints, and a pair of Saint Laurent dupes). That was it. This is definitely not some revelation around simplicity. I already knew that. If anything, this recent cleanout felt like an acknowledgment of something I understood before. And maybe that clarity started even earlier.

My late grandfather, Lloyd Jones, was probably my first example of a man who knew exactly who he was. His wardrobe reflected that. He never needed a reason to wear a suit, or really any excuse to present himself with intention. After raising five children in Michigan, he eventually moved back to Memphis, where he was born, but over the years he visited us often just to be close to family. Presentation mattered deeply to him, and he made sure I knew that. I’d say it worked, tenfold.

One of his favorite styling principles was starch. On everything. Jeans especially. Younger me never understood it, thought it was too old school for the YN in me. Of course, that was never said to his face, but I did learn to find myself focused on another task when I sensed the conversation heading in that direction.

Now, as a 35-year-old man, I specifically ask my dry cleaner to starch a crease into multiple pairs of jeans. I am, in many ways, Lloyd’s sartorial spawn. I hope he’s watching with pride, in his own perfectly pressed Wranglers. Salute to a real one.

The starched jeans, along with a few other pieces, have become MVP’s in my wardrobe. They don’t announce much, which is exactly the point. They reflect a quieter confidence in the man I am now. And this doesn’t mean that these items won’t end up in a consignment pile down the line, but the reason won’t be one rooted in shame.

Which brings me back to my The RealReal pile, where several former versions of myself are now waiting to be photographed, priced, and hopefully rehomed with people who can give them the life I couldn’t.

I wish them well. Truly.

May the Entire Studios wide leg jeans I bought during that brief, misguided period of silhouette experimentation find a new owner. I pray that jeweled Simone Rocha blazer that required an audience locate someone with a more theatrical day-to-day. And that both of those Craig Green jackets copped in my early Highsnob days when I needed to present as on top of things find their way into a guy discovering the talent that is UK designers.

And may I, in this next chapter, continue to buy less for the fantasy.

Personal style, at least for me, isn’t the ability to keep up. It’s the slow and occasionally ugly process of understanding what belongs to you and what simply passes through. Which, frankly, is a lot cheaper. Emotionally, if not always financially.

So yeah, this was a spring cleaning. But it kind of felt like a small funeral. Respectful, necessary, a little overdue. Flowers may be sent in the form of store credit.

You feel me?

Anna Wintour being on the cover of Vogue triggered a larger thought I have been having about legacy media for a while now.

Not even really about her, specifically. Or Vogue, really. They just happen to make the point a little too well. Wintour, who stepped down as editor-in-chief last year but kept her global power intact, appearing as the subject of the magazine she once ran, helping promote a film she did not make, based on a book written by a former assistant who saw the machine up close and didn’t love what she saw.

The first Devil Wears Prada was originally viewed as an act of high treason inside the offices of 4 Times Square. Then the film became a cultural phenomenon and they backpedaled. This time there is no ambivalence. This is a calculated, full-contact legend-burnishing exercise. The cover, the press, the Met Gala timing, the sequel itself (which, honestly, we could’ve done without), it is all part of one giant self-referential cultural loop that the industry will spend weeks reposting and reinterpreting.

What this cover really reflects is how legacy media behaves when it has run out of new ways to assert relevance. It turns inward. It starts feeding on its own mythology. The institution becomes the subject, the people behind it become the product, and the whole thing starts to feel less like editorial and more like self-preservation with mid lighting.

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The best magazines used to direct your attention outward. They introduced you to people, ideas, aesthetics, and worlds you had not considered before. Even when the editor was powerful, you were not meant to feel their hand this heavily. The publication was supposed to feel bigger than any one person. That, to me, was part of the allure.

Now the fantasy has collapsed inward.

And once that happens, once the person in charge becomes the subject, the whole thing starts to lose its magic. The magazine stops being a window and starts becoming a mirror. Not a reflection of culture, but a reflection of itself.

That is where so much legacy media is right now. Shrinking staffs, weaker POV’s, less risk, more recycling, more dependence on name recognition and institutional prestige to do the work that actual editorial conviction used to do. You can feel when a publication is talking to itself. You can feel when something is preserving itself instead of actually saying something. Mythology without momentum is just maintenance.

Meanwhile, some of the most interesting work is happening in the margins. And if you are paying attention, it has been for a while. Independent media has never looked more alive to me. The most exciting magazines, newsletters, and niche publications right now are obsessed with something specific. They know exactly who they are for. They are not trying to maintain a myth. They are trying to make something people actually care about.

What Renell Medrano has built with ICE Magazine proves that. More than 500 women showed up off a single Instagram casting call. The first issue pulled tens of thousands of PDF downloads. Volume two sold out 300 physical copies at the launch party alone. And if you know Renell’s work, none of that feels surprising. ICE is an extension of a gaze she had already built, one rooted in the women in front of the lens and the community that showed up because nobody else was really making space for them.

The same goes for HommeGirls, which has turned a clear point of view into an actual world people want to be part of. The same goes for Justsmile, built by Kevin Hunter and Bryce Thomas, two people who came up through the very institutions that were not making room for them and went on to build something sharper, more specific, and more alive. These are not side projects. They are proof that people still want media with taste, intention, and a real relationship to the audience.

What all three share is the thing that has gone missing at the top: they are still in genuine conversation with the world.

This isn’t exclusive to women’s fashion or art photography. It exists in men’s media too. I feel it every time I pick up a GQ or an Esquire and realize it is not actually talking to me, it is talking at a demographic. The coverage is louder than ever, but there is no real home for the man who moves between worlds, who has taste and context and does not need things explained to him. That intersection of style, culture, and modern living, written with real proximity and lived fluency.

The institutions that once defined culture seem increasingly preoccupied with documenting their own importance, while smaller, hungrier publications are busy building real trust with readers. One side is protecting legacy. The other is creating it.

If you know the territory, you already understand why now is the right time. We are not waiting for permission from the institutions that are busy photographing themselves.

Welcome to the first edition of You Feel Me?, a weekly-ish note from LIKE SUEDE where men’s style, culture, taste, and the emotional texture of real life all get to sit in the same room. This is where I’ll share what I’m noticing, what I’m into, what I’m questioning, and what feels worth talking about. Think of it as part point of view, part personal dispatch, part very opinionated group chat, with a little humor and just enough rigor to keep it honest.

Lately, I’ve noticed a different kind of aspiration among the men in my life.

Not just career, money, the right watch, or the impossible reservation, but a deeper interest in how life actually feels. The apartment matters, sure, but so does the lighting. The clothes matter, but so does whether they communicate anything. Being in shape is great, but so is having decent sheets and a bathroom that doesn’t feel like an afterthought. More and more, I’m seeing men want lives that are not only successful, but considered.

And honestly, I’m into it.

For too long, masculinity has been organized around competence. Be reliable, be capable, keep things moving. Fine. But it is a narrow architecture for a life. It leaves very little room for pleasure, softness, or beauty.

What feels different now is not that men suddenly discovered beauty. History would like a word. Black style would also like several. The Met’s Superfine: Tailoring Black Style exhibition was, in many ways, a love letter to Black style and the impact of dandyism, but what stayed with me most was the reminder that presentation is language. It can signal pride, precision, play, resistance, and self-invention. How you present yourself can be aesthetic, sure, but it can also be deeply intentional.

That’s the part I keep thinking about. Not men becoming more decorative. Men becoming more specific. More honest about what we want life to feel like.

You can see it in the home. We’ve evolved past “there is a couch somewhere in here” and into “I considered how this room should feel at 7:30 p.m.” I like to call it adulthood with range.

You can see it in fashion, too. I no longer get paid as a fashion director to run around the world sitting front row, though I will gladly see my fashion friends in Paris this June for what is essentially a reunion in good shoes. But I still check the shows almost immediately, partly out of habit, partly because I remain deeply interested in what clothes are trying to say about the people wearing them, and about the lives we imagine for ourselves through them.

Michael Rider, the new designer at Celine, seems to understand what the wardrobe of a man living a beautiful life looks like. The same way the fashion-obsessed women in my orbit have embraced Matthieu Blazy’s interpretation of Chanel, I anticipate men to lean into Rider’s vision for Celine with that same energy. Not because we need more clothes, but because we want a clearer fantasy of ourselves.

I went to the Rodeo Drive store to see the clothes in person, because looking at runway photos on an iPhone is cute, but only gets you so far. The difference was immediate. The store felt lighter than it did during Hedi Slimane’s tenure. Not structurally, Rider hasn’t redesigned anything yet, but emotionally. One of the SA’s who has been with the brand for years mentioned that while lots of Hedi’s cult male followers jumped ship with the designer, they are seeing Philophiles creep back in, having clearly decided it’s safe to return. Hedi’s Celine man always felt a little tormented to me. Rider’s feels freer. Both confident and well-dressed, but the latter is definitely more beautiful.

I tried on a black blazer, a polo, a pair of sneakers, and white jeans. Everything felt easy, classic, and actually fun. Capital F. I bought the sneakers and jeans. I’ll be back when my finances and my impulses align again.

Shopper Sidenote: my friends at Departamento, the best menswear store in the country, will start carrying Celine starting with the Fall ‘26 collection. Owner, Andrew Dryden’s eye/buy is one of the strongest I know. This is a win for all of us.

But a beautiful life is not necessarily an expensive one, and it definitely isn’t a precious one. It’s just a life with some evidence of intention. Denim that fits without a belt. A proper glass. Towels that don’t feel vaguely hostile. A friend group that has been edited with care.

One of the best conversations I’ve had lately about this started with my barber. A friend of mine and I go to the same guy, and yes, the price came up, because this is Los Angeles, and every barber is apparently a celebrity barber with the price to match. But what we were really talking about was the world he’s built in his shop. The music is top tier. The vibe is easy. If conversation happens, it’s good. If it doesn’t, the quiet still feels good. You walk in and immediately feel yourself unclench a little.

My friend told me he never takes calls during his appointment. He refuses to work while getting a haircut. In his mind, that hour is his. And I thought that was both hilarious and kind of revolutionary, mostly because I’m used to seeing “professional” men working during their appointment, and I’ve definitely done it myself. But my friend’s stance was clear. “Sorry I was at the barbershop.” Incredible sentence. Funny, yes. But also not a joke at all. It is a boundary. It is ritual. It is self-respect disguised as a lineup.

That, to me, is part of what a beautiful life actually looks like. Not extravagance, just the refusal to treat every moment of care like something that needs to be justified, rushed, or interrupted.

For a long time, beauty was treated like something men could appreciate from a distance, but not necessarily claim for themselves. You could want success, comfort, status, sure. But beauty and a life arranged with any emotional intelligence? That often got coded as extra. Optional. Maybe even suspect.

Finally, I feel like more men are moving past that.

Wanting your home to feel good, your clothes to fit, your skin to cooperate, your haircut to happen in peace, none of that is childish. It’s standards. It’s self-respect. It’s understanding that how your life feels matters just as much as how it functions.

And that, to me, is the shift.

Not men becoming softer, necessarily. Men becoming less willing to act like utility is the highest form of living. More willing to admit that beauty, pleasure, and care belong in the picture too.

We have historically had to justify care in very specific ways. The beautiful watch is fine because it’s an investment. The beautiful chair is allowed because it’s well made. We can cop the beautiful coat because it’s practical. Everything needs a masc alibi.

A beautiful life does not have to carry a huge price tag, be beige, imported, or impossible to sit on. Sometimes it is as simple as a proper haircut without a conference call in the middle of it.

“Sorry I was at the barbershop” is funny, but it also says I was tending to myself. I was unavailable because I was inside my life.

You feel me?

I’ve been a little quiet online this past year and some change.

Not in a “new era” way. More like: I needed my attention back.

After over a decade long career in fashion media and publishing (Complex, Highsnobiety, ESSENCE, with a little freelance stint in between), I pivoted. Like a lot of people in the industry, the writing was on the wall regarding the future of fashion and publishing. You could either keep on keeping on, hoping you would come out on top or you jumped ship into a more lucrative space (hello all my “Head of Fashion at hot tech company” folk).

After relocating to Los Angeles full-time, I pivoted into entertainment and I’ve been focused on doing well there. When your work gets that big, your brain starts protecting itself. Less commentary. More execution. Also, if I’m being honest, I was in need of a break from the city and the industry (and the constant sense that you’re supposed to always be visible to be valid.)

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So I stepped back in the space, both physically on the west and mentally. Since then my taste has gotten sharper and my patience has gotten shorter. The things I care about—style, pop culture, art, the difference between expensive and valuable—have become a constant topic in my orbit. In a moment where everything is getting more automated, a strong point of view feels like the only thing worth subscribing to.

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A lot of men’s fashion and culture conversations are either:

1. consumption dressed up as identity, or

2. “classic menswear” as a personality, or

3. hype and access and flexing.

I’m more interested in the overlap: style, art, culture, and beauty and what those things reveal about how we live.

LIKE SUEDE is going to be a space for the things men care about. The things we obsess over. I’ll mostly be discussing men’s fashion, pop culture, and the business of both. I’m trying to build a corner of the internet for the individuals that look and think like me. This corner is where taste is respected, questions are welcome, and we don’t have to perform. If you reply, you’ll get a reply. If you disagree, do it with reasons. We’re strengthening the muscle of discernment over here.

And yes, sometimes it’ll just be: here’s what I’m wearing / reading / watching / listening to / obsessed with this week. Because that’s also the point.

If you’ve ever asked me what to buy, where to go, what to read, what matters right now—or you just like how I see—subscribe and stay close. I’ll be here regularly.

More soon.

— Corey

P.S. If you know one person who’d be into this, forward it to them. That’s the whole growth plan.