If you want to call yourself a writer in this day and age, sooner or later, you’ll have to start a Substack. While the cinephiles are bustling about on Letterboxd, authors, journalists, cultural critics, and poets have taken to Substack – a media platform that allows independent creators to publish subscription-based content and monetize their readership. Founded in 2017, the platform has been growing steadily with a reported five million paid subscriptions by March of last year. With an 80% boom in 2024, fashion and beauty content make for a significant portion of those subscribers.
In an environment where traditional media outlets like The Face or Teen Vogue are closing down, and AI is taking entry-level roles, it seems as though Substack has become fashion writers’ new favorite playground. One that is more lucrative than you would think. “Fashion and beauty publishers collectively earn more than 10 million dollars per year from paid subscriptions to their Substack platforms”, the company told French news agency AFP. Louis Pisano, whose newsletter Discoursted muses on the politics of fashion and the fashion of politics, claims that: “[Substack] is an Eldorado primarily because I no longer have to chase late payments. You just have to look at what is happening with legacy traditional media. They are either dying, transforming into event agencies, or surviving solely to generate sensationalist clicks to reassure their advertisers.”
But before we talk about the future, let us take a look at the past. Specifically, blogs. During the mid-2000’s, blogging was a popular way for people to share their thoughts, experiences, and advice. Platforms like Blogger (1999), LiveJournal (1999), or WordPress (2003) provided the opportunity to publish freely and publicly and what started as personal diaries evolved into niche fashion, beauty and tech content that attracted regular readers.
I myself used to run a lifestyle blog together with my high school best friend. Its tagline calls it “the young and fresh blog for world travelers, kitchen chefs, fashionistas, and bookworms. We would highlight current fashion trends, monthly booklists, or publish recipes we had tried. While it’s certainly somewhat cringeworthy to look at now, this blog is like a screenshot of our teenagehood, and it allowed us to participate in the world beyond our little village. I was never really sure how many people actually read our blog entries, but somehow we still managed to receive several gifts from small businesses that we would then write reviews about. We weren’t concerned about numbers or personal branding; no one had ever even seen our faces.
Today, a personal brand is everything. I recently came across a think piece by fashion and culture writer Amber Chow on her Substack online culture where she asks the question “Is a Personal Brand the Key to Surviving Fashion Journalism?” And before we go any further, the answer is yes. Munashe Ashlyn, editor in chief of In The Fashion Focus, tells Chow: “A personal brand is non-negotiable today in the age of the digital footprint. I’ve worked with some of my dream publications because of my Instagram.” So what does this look like for journalists and writers?
Amy Francombe, contributing editor at Vogue Business and the person behind amy_coded on Substack, shares with Chow that “a personal brand for journalists is more about a distinct, recognisable voice, which can be seen in the content you write or perhaps more experimentation on places like Substack.” On one hand, I do agree with Francombe, but on the other hand, we all know that the algorithm favours faces over text and that your content is much more likely to be seen if you have the right visuals and aesthetic to go with your words. Francombe herself seems to have figured out the perfect ratio of insta baddie fit pics, screenshots of her articles, and witty, self-aware memes – all of which have gained her a following of more than 25k and counting. But where does that leave the writers who simply want to write?
This is where Substack enters the conversation. It’s a place where you can find everyone from New York City’s favorite major couple, award-winning authors like Arundhati Roy, and yes, Doechii, to the Black queer somatic practitioner who gets shadowbanned on Instagram or the mom who talks fashion while her baby naps. While the platform has now introduced the option to post pictures and videos, its focus remains on written content. A little number on the bottom corner of the article informs you of the average length of your read so you can fit it perfectly in between whatever else you have planned for that day. You’re able to like, comment, reshare, and directly communicate with your favorite writers.
It actually reminds me of my old Wattpad days, a platform for reading and publishing original fiction and connecting with fellow writers and readers. I don’t know what the Wattpad landscape looks like today but back then it must’ve been around 90% fanfiction (with at least 50% of that being smut). They had a feature that let you comment directly on a sentence or paragraph, and I remember that some especially outrageous or cliffhanger-y ones had more than a thousand comments next to them, which distracted me most deliciously from continuing my read. Wattpad has been around since 2006, so what I want to say with this tangent is that Substack is far from new. It just happens to be the perfect alternative for a creative industry that’s exhausted other social media platforms, and that’s just exhausted – period. And while I’m all for the meritocracy and editorial independence that Substack entails for us (fashion) writers, I’d like to point out that the platform is not just a haven for us but also for harmful, reactionary voices.
In 2023, The Atlantic journalist Jonathan M. Katz conducted research on the topic and identified sixteen accounts that “have overt Nazi symbols, including the swastika and the sonnenrad, in their logos or in prominent graphics.” He went on to show that some of these fascist accounts have tens of thousands of subscribers and that many of them are monetized which means Substack profits from them as well.
A year later, Inkstick writer Shane Burley found nearly forty fascist, white supremacist or associated far-right publications with some of them run by established players in the white nationalist movement such as Richard Spencer, Keith Woods or former AlternativeRight.com editor Colin Liddel. The issue has become so prominent that other platform users banded together to sign a letter to Substack titled “Substackers Against Nazis” or have left the platform altogether. And what does Substack have to say for itself? Well, editor-in-chief Hamish McKenzie wrote in a post that he “just want[s] to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no-one held those views. But some people do hold those and other extreme views. […] We are committed to upholding and protecting freedom of expression, even when it hurts. We don’t expect everyone to agree with our approach and policies, and we believe it’s helpful for there to be continued robust debate on these issues.” It’s giving “We don’t like Nazis but we like Nazi money”.
But if we’re being honest, Substack has already become part of the infrastructure of the creative industry, and no one can blame the writers who want to take their career into their own hands. Due to its “freedom of expression” policy, we also get pieces like Louis Pisano’s that call out sexual predators within the fashion industry, unveil arms manufacturing companies behind fashion brands, or analyze how fashion’s investments, locations, and materials normalize extraction and complicity in genocide. If you pitched these topics to any mainstream fashion publication, you’d probably never hear back from them. So, as always, there are two sides to the coin, and the question is: What will we make of Substack?
