🍸 Light it up
A very fire horse party game for you.
This is Cocktail Charm, a weekly email filled with delicious little things to talk about at parties. In today’s edition: plummy purples, tween CEOs, and some spectacular Olympic pufferwork.
Hello, friends! Happy year of the fire horse. I was at a cool Lunar New Year party last night where artist Laiti Hsu put a great party game on display with a table of paper horses. When lit with a flame, each horse burned off to reveal a fortune cookie that contained a probing question to ask a stranger. On the mic, fashion entrepreneur talked about her first memory of being connected with nature; later, a restauranteur came over to ask me and my friend Hope Corrigan if we believe in magic. (Absolutely; ask me about the night I was lost in Rome and a stranger strolled beside me until we were somehow standing right in front of my hotel.)
Any good party games you’ve been pulled into of late, fire horse or otherwise? Hit reply and let me know.
Tell me about it
Conversation-starters to take to happy hour, your group chat, or your fire horse year.
STYLES
Are we about to see 🍆 everywhere? Critics have noticed deep plummy purple is sprouting up all over the NYFW runways.
Has your favorite brand gotten boring lately? If it was also recently acquired by a company with “Capital” in its name, condolences: it’s been run through by the private equity dilution playbook.
Does this 13-year-old CEO think I have bad skin? Keeping up with Yes Day’s Coco Granderson, who’s leading her beauty company between pre-algebra classes.
ARTS
What can we do when an artist loses their archives? A stirring essay from artist Damien Davis about what happened when he couldn’t afford his studio’s storage unit anymore — and found his lost work auctioned off for parts online.
Which of your TikToks belongs in a literal museum? For a new exhibition, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum acquired the first video ever uploaded to YouTube.
CULTURE
I’m sure this “conservative Cosmo” is going to end well, right? It appears the media industry has one and a half assigning editors left, since Vanity Fair, WIRED, and the WSJ all just published party reports of Evie Magazine, the anti-feminist women’s glossy that already got a treatment in the NYT almost a year ago. But for all the headlines being handed out here, I deeply enjoyed seeing how much actual influence MAGAmoiselle wields.
[A spokesperson described] engagement rates that “rival and even outperform those of legacy giants” … According to Similarweb, a data firm that tracks web traffic, Evie’s website drew 364,476 visits in January. By comparison, in the same time period, Vogue had nearly 16 million monthly visits, Cosmopolitan, roughly 27.5 million, and Elle, 31 million.
How expensive is your brain? I was hooked on this Money Diaries-esque story where women tell all about how much they’re paying for their mental health. One woman finds she’s spent nearly $20,000 in an effort to cure her panic attacks.
Is there any theory of celebrity better than one that centers Rita Ora? My favorite podcast is writing a book.
DEPARTMENT OF INTERLUDES
AND AN OLYMPIAN NEWS BREAK
I’m decidedly not a Sporting Girl, probably thanks to many formative years being picked near-last every time my middle school gym class had a kickball game. So while I admire the things Olympians can do with their bodies, I’m usually more interested in the weird sideshow stories from the Games — the swipes, the slanders, and all the hypothermic pressure I assume is cast off when you’ve spent a few decades teaching your body to mimic the literal aerodynamics of crashing racecars. There are sinister skaters! Swiffing scandals! Champions begging their ex-girlfriends to get back with them on the air! The best of the Olympics, in my opinion, has nothing to do with medals and everything to do with camp.
⛸️ PAPAL ICE? I am so obsessed with the Italian figure skater whose Conclave free skate ended in him becoming the pope. Really didn’t get the breathless coverage it deserved. Thank godness1 for an outlet called the National Catholic Reporter giving us a proper preview. B2B media, for Christians!
🥟 SMALL BITES? Team Poland has been carrying around a pierogi plushie as their mascot, and I would personally like to see more nations bringing stuffed versions of their signature dishes to the slopes.
🧳 CHECK MATES? Former ice dancer Benoit Richaud is coaching 16 figure skaters from 13 nations in this year’s Games. That means repping 13 different countries’ uniforms, some of which he swaps on the spot as his skaters take the ice. One brave reporter pursued the question the public deserves: how many suitcases did all the coats take up? The answer is three.
🌨️ CLOUDCORE? But if you ask me, the best Opening Ceremonies attire came from Moncler, who returned after a 60-year hiatus from the Games to do some truly spectacular pufferwork for Team Brazil.
👠 AND WHERE’S BIG FASHION? I’ve been wondering why we aren’t seeing major fashion houses outfitting ice skating — arguably the Olympics’ most sartorial sport. Fashion writer Amy Odell digs into why fashion labels don’t touch this technical apparel. Tuck away this excellent fun fact: an estimated 80% of Olympian skating costumes are designed by just three people.
One party that caught my attention lately
An anti-Valentine’s Day party where guests put reminders of old flames through the shredder. They called it the Ex Files.
Last chatter
Great catching up with you. Now I’m off to alternate between my high-brow and low-brow entertainment choices for the evening: finish Lost Lambs, or The Real Housewives of New York season seven.
Clink clink!
Gabriela
Thanks for being a reader of Cocktail Charm! Has this newsletter helped you out at happy hour? Let me know; I’d love to hear it.
I’d just like you to know I resisted the temptation to call this one “Blades of Godly.”