Retail Therapy 041: The Case For Travel (and Cottage Cheese)
Fisherman sandals and Jacob Elordi's legs.
Listen to Retail Therapy on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (see above), and anywhere else podcasts are found.
The Case For Travel
You know, not that anyone really needs to make a case for travel, but now The New Yorker has forced us to go down this path after their recent column The Case Against Travel. And if you listened to our In/Out episode recently, you know this is very much anti-Barrett’s agenda.
As an Early Flight Connoisseur, you should know that I’m no stranger to avoiding travel annoyances at all costs. But to abandon travel altogether in favor of sitting idly at home? No thank you. Here’s an excerpt from the column that I absolutely hate:
One common argument for travel is that it lifts us into an enlightened state, educating us about the world and connecting us to its denizens. Even Samuel Johnson, a skeptic—“What I gained by being in France was, learning to be better satisfied with my own country,” he once said—conceded that travel had a certain cachet. Advising his beloved Boswell, Johnson recommended a trip to China, for the sake of Boswell’s children: “There would be a lustre reflected upon them. . . . They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China.”
Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is?
Too many grumpy people in this world.
The Fisherman have their own sandals now.
In the last few weeks or so, Substack has made it seemingly impossible to embed an Instagram post without it appearing totally zoomed-in. If you click through on noted Deadhead Mr. Mort’s photo above, you’ll see him wearing something that became quite the topic of conversation this week: Fisherman Sandals.
And here you can see them on our First Lady’s feet:
Do I want to buy £1,096 sandals from The Row just to look like Hailey Bieber? No. Will I? Surprisingly enough, the answer is still “no.”
“It’s cheese made out of cottages, Tone.”
It’s probably the Midwest in me jumping out, but I’ve been eating cottage cheese regularly for as long as I can remember. Yep, it’s me, a noted Cottage Cheese Guy.
Recently, however, cottage cheese seems to be shooting up in popularity everywhere. Whether Tinx is posting about her affinity for it or Gen-Z is buying it at a rapid clip, cottage cheese truly seems to be having a moment. Here’s some stats behind it from The Wall Street Journal:
Millennials and Gen Z-ers have started tossing tubs of their grandmother’s favorite weight-management tool into their grocery carts. They blend it into creamy pasta sauces, pancakes, dips, cookies and two-ingredient bread. It’s a departure from when cottage cheese surged in popularity in the 1960s and 1970s
and was often eaten more plainly, with fruit or on salads. A “diet plate” once consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese next to a hamburger patty.
Dairy executives credit the resurgence to the innovation of the recipes spreading on social media—the #cottagecheese has more than 323 million views on TikTok—and the young consumers who are discovering it for the first time.
“It was the bastion of side dishes and retirement homes and was definitely a category that was associated with an older demographic,” said Sarah Healy, senior vice president of marketing at Cabot Creamery, which produces millions of pounds of cottage cheese a year. “Then it started to explode.”
Cottage cheese sales in the U.S. were up 15.9% to $1.2 billion over the 52 weeks that ended May 21, according to market-research firm Circana. U.S. farmers’ cooperative Organic Valley found additional production to keep up with demand for the creamy curds. And new-kid-on-the-block dairy company Good Culture saw roughly 50% growth in the four weeks ending May 11 and is eyeing plans to open one or two new facilities, according to CEO and co-founder Jesse Merrill.
Is #Cottagecore about to vibe-shift into #CottageCheesecore? Not a lot of podcasts have the guts to ask those hard-hitting questions.
I can’t stop thinking about these fits.
There were a couple outfits this week that made a splash in the fashion world. The first was a UES-styled Taylor Swift look, and the other was the above-linked Valentino outfit from Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi. And for fear of getting hot and bothered again by overthinking what Jacob Elordi wore, we’ll simply let you listen.
Of course, we closed things out with our wishlists and imminent cops.
For 2023, we’ve hit the reset button on our wishlists and made them a bit more digestible for the year ahead. To access the complete version of our 2022 wishlists, look no further than our final Listener Digest of 2022. New items in bold.
Will’s Wishlist (2023)
YSL Patent Tortoise Le Loafers ($895) — Link
AYR Sweatpants ($145) — Link
Pebble Strike Match Holder by Houseplant ($125) — Link
NikeCraft General Purpose Shoe —Link(Bought/Returned)Sangre de Fruta Garden of Earthly Delights Body Wash ($48) —Link(Purchased)New Balance 574 Legacy (MKT) — Link
Bode Kids Lace Shirt ($198) —Link(Too ridiculous)Aime Leon Dore Eyelet Knit Shorts (Sold Out) —Link(Tried on, too heavy)Birkenstock Kyoto Suede Leather Gray ($220) — Link
Manresa Corn Neck Shorts ($105) —LinkNew: Adidas Adilette 22 Slides ($60) — Link
New: Football: Designing the Beautiful Game Book ($45) — Link
Barrett’s Wishlist (2023)
Loewe Puzzle Cardholder ($335) — Link
Bottega Veneta Credit Card Case ($420) — Link
R13 Beige Kurt Sneakers ($470) — Link
Le Labo Fragrances ($220) — The Matcha 26 | Another 13
Homme Plisse Issey Miyake “Color Pleats” ($325) — Link
Polo Country Ball Cap ($55) — Link
Moscot Yontif Sunglasses in Blonde ($340) — Link
John Elliott Patchwork Military Shirt Jacket ($998) — Link
Todd Snyder Seersucker Weekender Shirt ($118) — Link
Birkenstock EVA Arizona ($50) — Link
OAS Bohemia Swim Shorts ($90) — Link
J.Crew 6” Tech Dock Short ($70) — Link
New: Made In Carbon Steel Griddle + Press ($199) — Link
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Curious if y'all read the blackbird spyplane piece on ssense 💁🏻♀️
If the article was just “don’t use travel as a crutch to solve your life problems” I would have agreed but holy shit that was smug.