Be Yourself
Recently, I had the chance to attend an event called “Threads of Culture,” focused on hip-hop and fashion. The organizers brought in a local Atlanta stylist named Renaldo Nehemiah, who has styled nearly every rapper to come out of Atlanta. He spoke about his experiences, his career, and what was important in the people that he worked with. Though nothing that he said was surprising, the way he carried himself had its own power. One of the first things he said was “I do what I wanna do in a cool, collected way,” which he has been doing since he started. He built a career on simply being himself with confidence.
His career began when he was a football player in college and one day one of his friends asked him to buy some clothes for an artist named Kanye West since Kanye liked the way Renaldo dressed. After spending an hour buying stuff for Kanye, he was paid $5000 and started regularly styling artists. He’s been extremely successful in everything he’s been involved in, from styling to creating digital experiences with Intel, and even representing Atlanta art internationally at Art Basel. The undercurrent of everything he’s done has been a strong belief in himself, without paying too much attention to trends or what everyone else is trying, and working with people that believe in themselves.
This was a powerful idea that resonated with me and one that I needed. Recently, I’ve found myself spending too much time comparing my life and friendships to others as I mindlessly scroll through Instagram every day. Rather than working on my own life and trying to move forward, or being myself completely and unapologetically, I’ve often fallen into the habit of trying to keep up with others who have completely different values, thought processes and backgrounds. “Be yourself” is an annoyingly common platitude, but it has so much value. It’s so easy to mimic everyone else when we have so much material to build off of and steal from at all times, but if everyone is copying each other, everyone ends up being the same.
More than anything else, I want to focus on my creative output more, and less on the output of other designers, artists and musicians. There’s a metaphor where consuming is inhaling and creating is exhaling. I think my creative lungs are ready to pop since I’ve spent so much time inhaling recently. I need to change it up ASAP. Stay tuned for some creative outputs.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Art Thingy
art.miami preview - There’s a huge art fair in Miami coming up, and this site has a preview of most of the pieces that will be there. It’s pretty sweet!
Longread
"Where Millennials Come From” by Jia Tolentino - amazing New Yorker piece about why the millennials are the way they are. I wrote a much less nuanced, and less interesting piece about millennials a while ago too.
Playlist
november 17 - November has come to a close, so here’s my playlist of the month! It’s pretty eclectic as usual, but mostly atmospheric, chill tunes this month.
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends too! :~)
Love,
Nikhil