Notes Between Us /004
Our media consumption this week: AI models in Vogue; gold diggers rebranded; a chatbot-fuelled delusion; J.Crew’s fake nostalgia; the myth of the British boyfriend, and more.
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The light has changed – thinner now, more brittle, like glass stretched too far. I notice the way it falls across the floor, a little earlier each day, catching on corners that were once in shadow. Things are shifting again. We knew they would. If you’ve been here a while, you probably sensed it. September, and already I feel the ache of endings. The melancholy that comes not from any one thing, but from the accumulation of passing days. I think often of what Hemingway wrote about fall, how something in you dies with the leaves. 2025 has been a strange one. A limbo year, quiet and necessary, after the chaos of the last. It feels early to be reflecting on it, mid-September and all, but technically, there are just over three months left. I’ve been pensive. Taking stock. Letting the feelings catch up.
So here we are again – a moment to pause. To gather the pieces and pay attention to what’s been echoing lately.
This Sunday letter is the fourth instalment of Notes Between Us – a space where we share what's been capturing our attention lately: cultural moments and ideas, fleeting observations, reflections, and things worth pausing for. Our personal marginalia – the notes we'd scribble in the margins of our shared life.
This week’s letter travels from the hollow polish of algorithm-approved films to the lingering scent of Barneys New York; from AI-generated ad campaigns and memoirist epiphanies to the rise of the “performative male” and the quiet unease beneath J.Crew’s AI-styled nostalgia.
We look at what happens when chatbots echo our darkest thoughts, when beauty is built from code, and when attention becomes our most precious currency. Also inside: sleeper trains, gold diggers, British boyfriends, the soft rituals of autumn, and so much more.
Here’s a collection of the meaningful and the fleeting – small moments of thought, art, and life to carry you through the week.
