Loose Threads
Thank you to Ryan Bailey for having me on his podcast So Bad It’s Good to talk about Gwyneth: The Biography. Check out the full episode here.
Well, in spite of audience confusion over what even it is, the Vogue World numbers are… crazy. “The event is expected to generate north of $30 million in revenue for Condé Nast this year, up 50% from 2024,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The publisher unsurprisingly has to find stuff to monetize other than websites — traffic to Vogue is down 5 percent from the previous year, to 16.6 million monthly visits, according to Similarweb. Vanity Fair and Glamour are even worse off with a 40 percent decline, to 6.5 and 6.4 million respectively.
Katie Grand wrote a tribute to the late stylist Melanie Ward for The Business of Fashion.
If, like me, you have been having a hard time finding full-coverage swim bottoms — Carve Designs has a bunch of options in relatively simple styles. Also lots of full-length sun shirts and rash guards which I also seemed to struggle to find over the summer.
Bustle has an interesting look at memory recovery via MDMA therapy, which was the basis for Goop investor Amy Griffin’s memoir The Tell. Maggie Bullock writes, “In The Tell, recovered memory — the notion that past events, particularly traumas, can be long forgotten and later resurface — is treated as accepted fact. In reality, it’s been up for debate since it caught fire in the public consciousness in the 1970s.
Earlier in Back Row:
Ryan Murphy Vs. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy Influencers
This week, the Ryan Murphy’s FX series Love Story was spotted filming new scenes around New York City. (The title appears to have been shortened from American Love Story.) Sarah Pidgeon, who plays Carolyn Bessette, wore a black coat, jeans, and loafers, and held a cigarette.
Fans noticed discrepancies between her outfit and the photos of Carolyn on which it was surely based.
Samantha, who runs the @AllForCarolyn fan account on Instagram and Anything Ornate Substack newsletter, posted in her Instagram broadcast channel, “She was never seen smoking. Her loafers were brown. Her coat was always buttoned up. These jeans are too short.” She’s among a number of fan account owners who feel skeptical if not downright upset over the production, which — despite changing costume designers following backlash toward the looks over the summer — still isn’t replicating every precise detail of Carolyn’s style.
These Instagramers are a close-knit community, deeply devoted to documenting Carolyn and John F. Kennedy Jr. Though Murphy said over the summer that he planned to make overtures to this cohort, the production still hasn’t won them over. And although the backlash has died down, they share concerns about the show — ranging from things like the accuracy of the shoe color to the plot itself.
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