[SERIES INTRO] summer is sooo last year...
why your summer seems to feel shorter and shorter. now, everything feels [OFF-TREND] - summer 'for breakfast' 2024 pt. 1
Almost three weeks after Labor Day, I come to you with a short and sweet summertime series:
summer ‘for breakfast’ 2024, is my second annual edition of the writing and loving that my favorite season seems to bring me to. This September filled me with dread because I felt the window to wax poetic about summer closing quicker than usual. In August, I was stepping out of mind-numbing heatwaves into frigid grocery stores already peddling pumpkins and cinnamon brooms, thinking I’d have to shelve summer ‘for breakfast’ altogether this year for fear of it being too late. Summer feels like the only season that ends halfway through. However, I (and the 20-slide summer-themed photo dumps I’m still seeing) beg to differ.1
There’s clearly a push and pull between letting summer and go feeling delusional if you think it’s still here once August comes. Tomorrow, September 22nd, marks the fall equinox, and if you’re a true summer lover then it’s the latest possible day to argue that the season is then truly over. Even on the day and time determined by the sun and moon, I fear the factors at play that keep summer a fleeting luxury that’s wrapping up in August may be more powerful than I thought.
About two months ago, fashion creator, Elliot Duprey (With a name like that, of course, he dresses nicely.) made his complaint about the early rise of “fall fashion content.” He laments:
“We just got past the hot summer nights of mid-July and I guess we are all ready to move on…
It is impossible to live a life in our clothes if we are constantly looking for the next season and then the trends and purchases that come with it.”
He continues, explaining that while the fashion industry operates on a purely capitalist timeline, we ourselves don’t have to go so fast. In fact, those in pursuit of developing their personal style should probably slow down the most:
“The comfort and securities and beauties of personal style exist in reflections and pauses and in our ability to be intentional observers and consumers”
Duprey is a man after my own heart in his words about intentional consumption. His video made me realize that the transitions between seasons are often when I feel tested the most as a consumer. Summer, coming in and being dragged out kicking and screaming, is the nexus point of my consumerist year.
I wonder if anyone else feels the same. Can you fight the voices in your head that say you need to be working out come springtime? Can you resist buying a coat you’re not sure you need because it’s a great deal to snag it in the off-season? Do you have a bin of 100 bikinis you’ll keep adding to until you die?2
We live in a summer commodified. Everything is a trend, yet nothing is trendy. Your things, your bucket list items, and your hot-weather aspirations wither and die before you get the chance to try them on. We think the fall will bring stability, so we break out the knits and corduroy far too soon. As a consumer, master of your seasonal domain, it would be the worst thing to be caught outside without a jacket. So, we sweat in our layers a month before we should.
summer ‘for breakfast’ 2024 is late. It’s unseasonable and out of place.
For the next few pieces, I’ll be talking pop culture, media, and the internet as usual, but this time as a way to explore this late summer/early fall paranoia that makes me not want to show my face until it’s Halloween.
For summer ‘for breakfast’ 2024, the theme is [OFF-TREND].
Here’s a vague preview of what you’ll be getting over the next week or so:
commentary on the song of the summer (Guesses welcome.)
a girly and iterative summertime trend, ‘for breakfast’
an analysis of why a certain tv show of the fall took so long to beat the [OFF-TREND] allegations
a curation of my current media diet to ease the pain of a summertime lost
And one more thing! Each piece will be getting its own featured song of the summer from 2024.
[I wrote extensively about songs of the summer last year.]
Here’s today's feature that comes from a sick summertime album:
Kyle Chakya has a bone to pick with these in “The Desperation of the Instagram Photo Dump”
For my ego you should know: I own like three bikinis. This trend just traumatized me.
We love an off season at times ma’am!
LETS GOOOO