Welcome to Mermaid Café
A newsletter by HALOSCOPE Editor-in-Chief Savannah Eden Bradley.
Hi there! MERMAID CAFÉ is a Substack newsletter/blog/community/lifestyle brand/Goop 2.0/fashion oasis. It’s about how fashion informs our lives and what it means to give into fashion as a sensory pleasure.
It’s written by me, writer and HALOSCOPE Editor-in-Chief Savannah Eden Bradley. I’ve worked in fashion journalism and criticism since I was a teenager. My work has appeared in Business Insider, L’Officiel, and Rookie (RIP), among other outlets, and I currently work as a freelance fashion consultant and trendspotter.
What is Mermaid Café?
For the past several years, my DMs have been deluged with panicked requests, from how to get a good deal on a pair of custom cowboy boots to how to dress for your adult conversion to Catholicism. Of course, I always answer.
In the process of doing that answering — and growing HALOSCOPE — I’ve built a community of fashion acolytes, jewelry hoarders, devoted slowmaxxers, yes-I-make-my-own-soap-why-do-you-ask-ers, and so on. I’ve always felt like there’s a dearth of spaces online to talk about fashion&living in an emotionally instructive, free-spirited, “”bohemian”” (sorry) way that does away with pollarded convention. This is that place.
I want people to see clothes the way I see them and bear witness to their instruction. I want to write thoughtfully about fashion’s blithe emotional power, from crying in the dressing room to how a good pair of jeans can be a metaphysical experience. Most of all, though, I want to explore all of this with you — essays, shopping guides, recommendations, Q+A’s, podcast eps, and more.
This is the first project I’ve ever led as ~*Savannah Eden Bradley*~ and not an invisible hand behind the wheel. People tell me I have “very specific tastes” which is usually an insult but not wholly incorrect. I am very discerning, overly critical, horribly ambitious, incredibly particular, and skeptical of all neatly-defined causes. I once spent seven whole months trying to find the exact right pair of baby blue Swedish Hasbeens and didn’t even buy them. I dislike meretricious displays of connoisseurship and love dressing like I’ve been lost in the desert for 30 years. This newsletter is named after a Joni Mitchell song about running away to Greece and doing a bunch of coke. I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself. I know who I am — and what I love and loathe — very deeply. If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place.
Why Mermaid Café?
I didn’t want to do only runway reviews or fashion business news — my peers do that very well, and that takes up the bulk of my freelancing anyway. I also didn’t want to write anything that could just be placed at HALOSCOPE. I asked dozens of people what the Savannah Substack Experience should look like and got wildly different answers, from asking people on the street about their outfits (hard pass) to blithe trend analysis (harder pass). I spent whole nights scribbling down newsletter idea gibberish, burning my eyes into my laptop screen, and whining about losing time. The thing I did the most frequently, though, was read.
Because I’m a big believer in the ceiling = the roof, I kept revisiting Katie Heindl’s genius newsletter BASKETBALL FEELINGS, which “…reconciles real life with basketball and expounds on the less quantifiable stuff.” I’ve always felt the same way about fashion. Most people I meet can’t stand talking — or even thinking for more than five minutes — about what they wear. To the average person, fashion is vainglorious, artificial, cosmetic, or merely “women’s work.” Over the years, the more people scoffed at it (or questioned my intelligence for working in this industry!), the more I became convinced that people were terrified of fashion and that their ire stemmed from fear of the unknown. If we believe that fashion is a language, full of little semiotic impulses, doesn’t that force us all to participate in it, even unwittingly? How strange it must be to obey invisible rules.
Fashion has always been a very powerful medicine for me, and I want to explore its big philosophical questions with you (without feeling too much like homework).
Everybody gets two occasionally free newsletters:
MERMAID CAFÉ (every Tuesday) — dispatches on fashion and living, shopping roundups, critical responses to beauty/wellness/culture, Q+A’s, playlists, podcast eps, and more
🦪 OFF-MENU 🦪 (every Friday) — round-ups of the things I love, from oyster rings to Robert Altman’s Nashville, along with new things I’ve discovered (as recommended by you!)
You actually get so many cool things if you pay btw. Paid subscribers get:
Access to all past and future articles from Mermaid Café and 🦪 OFF-MENU 🦪
Access to the Mermaid Café subscriber chat (I’ll be in there every week too— sharing things I love, answering questions, and more)
The ability to suggest topics for future posts
The ability to comment on articles
My eternal gratitude
If you want to be a 🕯🧜🏻♀♾️ Forever Mermaid ♾️🧜🏻♀️🕯, aka a Founding Member ($100/year), you get everything in the Paid tier and some occasional founder-only posts where I divulge my deepest, darkest secrets. Plus, you’ll be paying it forward for people who can’t afford the Paid subscription. For every 50 Founding Member signups I receive, I comp 10 paid subscriptions for people who can’t afford it. The comp program launches in November, so be on the lookout for more information.
Why Should You Pay For It?
In addition to paying it forward for other subscribers, a paid subscription enables me to do this job at my best — robust recommendations, unvarnished criticism, and long, thoughtful essays. Being able to afford to write this newsletter means I’ll be able to write better things and build bigger projects, just for you. So a paid subscription also helps you, too.
I never do sponsored posts, by the way. I may post an affiliate link here and there — which is thankfully in my control and never a company’s, meaning I can always choose not to support a brand — and I’ll always disclose if I’ve received something for free. And whenever I get something for free and write about it, it’s because I actually like it. This is a testament to the 30 single-use samples of the orange-nightmare Valentino Beauty foundation currently collecting dust in my desk drawer.
OK! That’s all from me. The first newsletter drops next Tuesday, September 3rd, so you might as well lock in a subscription. I’m happy you’re here. 🐚