Leftovers v.11

Plus: my thoughts on the "no influencers" sign

It’s been quite the week for influencers (and wicker baskets, for that matter). If you haven’t caught up, a Nantucket shop called Four Winds Craft Guild set the internet ablaze this week when they hung a hand-painted sign bearing the words “No Influencers” in their shop.

This was not just a dinky sign, btw, it’s a handmade quarterboard sign (so it likely cost a pretty penny to commission).

Anyway, Four Winds Craft Guild then took to Instagram to share an image of the sign hanging in its shop. Paige Lorenze (a very successful influencer who recently opened a Nantucket outpost of her lifestyle brand, Diary Boy) then commented on the photo.

“If you call yourself a feminist but proudly put up a ‘No Influencers’ sign, it’s worth asking who you are attempting to delegitimize, and why,” Lorenze wrote, going on to note that most “influencers” are, indeed, women, and that the sign sent “a strange message coming from a store that celebrates a craft with such a rich history of women shaping the island and its economy.”

The owner of the shop said he didn’t mean to be anti-feminist, telling The Cut, “This influencer culture, I just don’t play to it. I’ve been doing this so long. I don’t really need it.”

Of course, it’s a business that can do whatever it wants! Now, as a businessperson myself, do I understand the decision? No. On the one hand, the sign is a great way to bring people in to Four Winds Craft Guild, as it’s now a huge part of the cultural conversation. I imagine the sign will be the most photographed thing in Nantucket this summer! But the owner himself said he hates when people come into his store with their phones out and don’t talk to him, so I’m not sure he wants that. That’s the irony, right? Hanging a sign chiding people for being on their phones and thereby creating the most viral sign in America?

Four Winds Craft Guild sells incredible Nantucket baskets made by local artisans (these baskets are available at shops around the island, btw). They are of high quality and have a deep history. They also start at $1,000 (some go for over $6,000). You know who buys $1,000 baskets? The same women who catalog their outfits and stylistic choices online. I am guessing a lot of influencers who vacation in Nantucket own a Nantucket basket or two.

“Influencer” is not a dirty word, but it is a word very often used to delegitimize the work of women. I know because when someone uses it in a comment on any of my posts, it’s usually meant to try and make me feel small. “You don’t know what you are talking about, you are just an influencer,” etc. A “No influencers” sign is, very literally, suggesting that influencers are silly.

The backlash to the sign was unsurprising (hanging a sign that says “No XYZ type of person” is not a great look, historically, especially in a very wealthy enclave like Nantucket!).

More surprising to me has been the backlash to the backlash.

I have seen so many people (mostly women!) arguing that hating on influencers might be kinda misogynistic, but we should all focus on more pressing matters. But two things can be true at once! You can wade into discourse about one thing, and also care about more pressing things! Those little things — the way we talk about professional women, the words we use to describe them — add up, and we absolutely should talk about it.

You can believe we need to stop delegitimizing and stigmatizing an industry largely run by women, and you can also feel passionately about other issues. We all contain multitudes. It’s the same reason I can appreciate both Married at First Sight and The Bear, or enjoy a Crunchwrap Supreme one day and an Erewhon smoothie the next (or both in the same day, for that matter! I am woman, hear me roar.)

In truth, I think the “No influencers” sign is rooted in the fact that we still don’t quite know how to handle content creation as a society. A very significant portion of the population thinks that being an “influencer” means holding a selfie stick and being obnoxious, but that’s not influencing — that’s just being weird with your phone.

Here’s the deal: Goldman Sachs estimates that the content creator economy could approach half a trillion dollars next year. Read that again. $500 billion. “Influencing” is no longer just a selfie, or a GRWM or an OOTD. Being an influencer does not mean you “live on your phone,” but that you built your business on one.

And while I will still be on the hunt for Nantucket baskets at Goodwill (I have a friend who has found two in recent years) and will happily peek inside Four Winds if I ever visit Nantucket in the future, I also think the sign has sparked a much-needed conversation.

To me, the most telling part of it all is the quote from the Four Winds owner that I mentioned above (“This influencer culture, I just don’t play to it. I’ve been doing this so long. I don’t really need it.”). It has echoes of a quote I think about a lot, from Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes in 2008, when he said a then-burgeoning company called Netflix was “not even on the radar screen in terms of competition.”

Often, new and shiny things seem like flash-in-the-pan moments when they are actually really seismic shifts in culture and commerce. I think content creation/influencing/etc. is a great example of that, and it’s not going anywhere, whether it’s welcome or not.

What say you?

xx,

VC

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A home I cannot stop thinking about: that of Days of Our Lives star Peter Porte and his husband, Jacob Villere, via Architectural Digest.

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I am incredibly obsessed with this set of eight mid-century modern interior and furniture design watercolors. What a fun idea, to frame a set of sketches used to create something and likely not intended to be “art” in the first place.

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An outfit I wore to see The Odyssey (which was amazing and everyone should see it on the big screen but not necessarily in the chairs that move and vibrate because I felt like I was at an amusement park): black t-shirt; silk pants (mine are By Malene Birger, and no longer available but these are and also washable); big chunky vintage necklace; vintage fringed shawl tied around my waist (mine is wool, but this silk version is similar), sunglasses, tan flip-flops.

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A new thing I’ve been adding to my oatmeal: this powdered peanut butter, which is the best I’ve tried and under $22 for a two-pound canister (this will last me a year). I also add it to my smoothies.

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There is nothing I love more than when a designer reinterprets a vintage silhouette or pattern. Tibi did just that with this psychedelic printed skort and cropped top. It is very clearly modeled after a 1970s bathing suit with tap shorts (like those in the photos above)! I love the idea of using a chocolate brown blazer as a foil to the wild pattern.

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On the subject of vintage psychedelic prints: God, this skirt is good.

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Everyone goes nuts at my vintage bag roundups, so here are a few more for ya:

• ombré velvet bag with net overlay, $80

• navy and red crochet tassel bag, $81

• multicolored beaded micro bag, $395

• black velvet velour pouch with sequins, $40

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Next on my list of must-makes: Kendra’s whipped potato salad and broiler blackened salmon. One of my fave follows, btw.

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