Beyoncé, Birkins, and a Note to Readers

Help me take this publication — and community — to the next level.

Dear Readers,

I am going to talk about Beyoncé and Birkins, but first, a note: I begin every post by thanking you for subscribing to this publication — and I mean it every time. I started this newsletter on the premise that fashion and women’s media was too constrained by advertising, access, and scaling audience. All of these things have way too much influence over what legacy outlets can say and what kinds of stories they tell. Substack removes those limitations by allowing readers to fund a publication, which means that publication just has to be good in the eyes of readers to be successful. It’s not about covering the Kardashians for Facebook clicks or filling a quota of bland Google search terms. It’s about writing quality stories.

I honestly wasn’t sure if Back Row would draw any sort of crowd when I started. I have been flattered and delighted to see the community here grow, which suggests to me that my initial hunch was right and there is a large group of us that feels underserved by legacy publications. I decided in the beginning to run this newsletter for free for as long as possible, and I’m at a point where it no longer is. You will notice that moving forward, many of these posts will be paywalled.

Charging for these articles will enable me to do a better job for all of you. I would love to be able to invest money in Back Row in order to bring you more ambitious work and branch into new endeavors. (A podcast? Meet-ups so we can get together over drinks and gossip about fashion?) Charging for this work is also necessary for me on a personal level: I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit and worked hard, and I have done a lot of reporting and writing over the course of my career for very little money. But as a fashion and culture journalist with roughly 15 years of experience, who has published two non-fiction books, including one New York Times bestseller, and who prides herself on being a distinct, expert voice on the beat, I believe I should be paid for my time and hard work.

I hope you will continue supporting this publication and sorely needed independent fashion and culture journalism as a paid subscriber. And thank you again from the bottom of my heart for all of your support thus far.

xo

Amy

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Now, About the Contents of Beyoncé’s Storage Unit…

Count me among the masses who absolutely love Beyoncé’s Renaissance. I’m not sure about the rest of you but it brings me right back to my pre-mom party days when I was able to untether from my residence after sundown and truly considered this to be fun. There was something magical back then about listening to house music in a horrible nightclub and drinking something even worse like lemon drop shots. There is also something magical about this verse from “Summer Renaissance,” upon which the fashion internet has seized:

BRI @BriMalandro

ENDED BIRKINS

“Birkins, them shits in storage” seems like the kind of phrase we ought to see on a Vetements tote bag. You could call it a populist sentiment, to the extent that lyrics about the world’s top luxury brands and flaunting couture, but relegating just one particular über luxury item to a storage unit can be considered populist.

Yet the way such a large audience seized on that line suggests that consumers are looking for something different from celebrities than an unabashed embrace of the clichéd fruits of capitalism — yachts, private jets, Birkins, etc.