This roundup originally appeared in the Thursday, July 13, 2023, edition of the Secret Strategist newsletter, a weekly email where we share the stuff our staff — plus a rotating cast of writers, design-world people, and various others with very good taste — would otherwise keep to themselves. If you want to get our picks straight to your inbox each week, sign up here.
As editors of a shopping site and just a group of particularly obsessive shoppers, we unearth a lot of really good stuff on a really regular basis. We have a lot of eyes on the ground, internet and actual. But there’s not always a natural place to put all of the things we’ve found on the very site we work for — sometimes a lamp is really good and on sale and two of our really stylish editor’s friends have bought it in the last week, but there’s not much more to say about it than that.
That’s where this newsletter comes in: We’re creating a place for the very best stuff our staff turns up every week.
This Week’s List
* Pendants are an especially challenging category to crack, especially if you don’t go Noguchi: One of our features editors just bought this one for the dining room after a long hunt.
* And speaking of a challenging category to crack: men’s shoes. Right now, we think: beat-up Reeboks (as seen on Lichen’s Ed Be and the artist Sam Falls), black-oiled Birkenstocks (as seen on all the men in London right now), and Mephistos (as seen on Chase Hall, who owns over 50 pairs).
* J.Crew’s simple black-string bikini is suddenly looking very appealing. It’s (sorry!) a lot cheaper than the similar-looking Nuswim or Lido versions. (Which one editor recently spotted all around a popular upstate swimming hole, along with many copies of The Guest.)
* The best, easiest gift is this cup (buy two). It’ll work for a wide variety of tastes, is not wildly expensive, and is just special.
* In general for homestuff these days, we say: Go trad, so you won’t get sick of your stuff in two years. Annie Meyers-Shyer (Nancy Meyers’s daughter) has this lamp from Zara Home and says she’s “never gotten more compliments on a lamp in my life.”
* Get some Breuer merch while you still can.
* We’ve noticed a bunch of cool upstate new moms and a cohort of cool Copenhagen new moms wearing this really great Australian maternity line Juem. They don’t look like nursing bras — in a very appealing way.
* And we’re also seeing a lot of red-and-orange carpets — our colleague Wendy Goodman got one for her brand-new apartment (from Aronson’s Floor Coverings), then we spotted one in health coach Daphne Javitch’s living room and another in Cap Beauty founder Kerrilynn Pamer’s home (hers is by Nordic Knots).
* It has come to our attention that Calzuros come in a really nice putty-brown color, perfect for clomping around the yard or just with 501’s.
* For those actually tooling around the garden, Deborah Needleman told us about this multipurpose garden blade from the Japanese brand Niwaki.
* Danish brand Flore Flore makes the perfect cropped-but-not-too-cropped, structured-but-not-too-structured long-sleeve. We thought Margaret Austin — former buyer for Opening Ceremony and Totokaelo and current proprietor of excellent Brooklyn-based shop Outline — discovered them first. (Outline’s been selling them for months; they’ve since migrated over to Ssense.) But it turns out she discovered them second. “I found it through my friend Carmen, who owns Carmen in Amsterdam,” she says. “Flore Flore’s founder Flòrian is a good friend of hers, and I’m pretty sure she was the first to carry the brand. When I saw the pictures of the tees, I knew we needed them for Outline — it’s strangely difficult to find nice basics, quality- and silhouette-wise. They’ve been doing super-well. And Flòrian told me Hailey Bieber’s been wearing them recently.”
* Or just buy a Capezio long-sleeved leotard for $18 on Amazon; it’s really flattering. (And it comes in all different styles.)
Check These Out Too
Some online shops you may not have heard of but are really good.
* The Wax Apple (as always, buy the theater shoes in as many colors as ya can)
* Studio Ashby (for those that have $300 to spend on a cushion …)
* In Common With (it’s doing some interesting stuff with glass lately)
The Strategist is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. Some of our latest conquests include the best acne treatments, rolling luggage, pillows for side sleepers, natural anxiety remedies, and bath towels. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.
