The best things I've worn, read and used lately
This week, Annie divulges her tried-and-tested wins making life better in 2026.
I’m writing from my chaotic little house, where my mother-in-law is helping prep dinner, the floor is covered in toy trains, and my dog is doing her best to dodge my toddler’s advances. It’s late afternoon and I’ve bailed on my walk to sit down and write this because sometimes it’s worth cutting loose with your messy thoughts, especially in this era of AI-fuelled perfection.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about AI — how I want to use it vs. how I’m actually using it — feeling allllll the optimism and pessimism about how it will impact the world and my little patch of it. But it struck me this week that one thing AI hasn’t been able to pummel into the paste of its grey matter is the weird and wonderful art of a truly personal recommendation. The tip-offs that can only flow from one human to another, based entirely on first-hand experience.
We’re obviously in the business of personal recommendations here, but this week I’m branching out beyond fashion to bring you the best things I have discovered lately.
Shout out to the OG in this game, Highly Enthused. Oh, and this week’s newsletter is free, but if you want to subscribe you can do so below. Our paid subscribers have access to our private group chat, which has become the first place I turn to for hot takes, scoops and advice on all things shopping.
Ok, onwards!
This materials analyser tool
This materials analyser tool helps to decode and make sense of your garment. There’s also a cost-per-wear tool (smart) and a Q&A function — which told me I might be able to bring my shrunken cashmere cardigan back to life through a gentle soaking method?! I will try and report back.
This is an example of how AI can be used to create something additive and enlightening rather than depressingly efficient but soulless.
The tool is by a company called Casa Branda, which says it is an ‘independent research agency’. It’s hard to find much about them, but it looks like they’re about to launch a brand index of sorts that catalogues brands through some sort of valued-based framework. We tried to do something similar in 2020… it took us years, and we didn’t have AI to supercharge it, so hopefully this is a game-changer for real!
This l/s top
This was a recent splurge and I realise it’s an extravagance, but sometimes a girl’s just gotta go there. I’ve been wearing a lot of long sleeve, loose tees lately (this one by Beare Park which is also available in white is the best cut) — I like the 90s feel, and I’ve been wearing them a lot with silk skirts and leather thongs all summer. I also have my eye on this one from Dissh, which looks like it also has a nice threadbare quality. This one has a lot of intentional distressing which is cool, but partly why it costs so much. It feels like something I have owned for 20 years that previously belonged to my cooler older brother. Instantaneous ease. If I was looking for something similar on a budget, I’d look at vintage / secondhand stores for old men’s athletics jerseys in the most threadbare cotton I could find. I’m wearing an M.
This moisturiser
I was lucky to go on a tour of RATIONALE’s Kyneton HQ this week and was blown away at the level of detail, commitment to quality and sheer investment that has gone into this cult skincare business. RATIONALE is the largest Australian skincare business to make all its products on shore, and they’re all made out at their impossibly chic headquarters, which feels more like an art gallery than an office/manufacturing facility.
I’ve been using their #1 Hydragel first thing in the morning for the last 6 months, layered under my SPF. I am basically illiterate when it comes to skincare, but this product has B-group vitamins that supposedly help to deliver a dose of hydration while protecting skin barrier damage. All I know for sure is that it’s done a lot to brighten and quench my tired, grey, post-baby skin. It smells like a citrus garden, has the texture of custard, and gives you a juicy bounce.
This suede bag
Just a very good slouchy suede bag at a very unreasonable price point of just $200!
’Save Me The Plums’, by Ruth Reichl
God, I devoured this delicious memoir by the famous American food critic Ruth Reichl about her time as editor-in-chief at Condé Nast’s premiere food magazine Gourmet during publishing’s golden age. It charts her unexpected journey from the New York Times’ chief restaurant critic to transforming a tired, but beloved, food magazine until its sudden closure in 2009 (fun fact: Condé Nast let the trademark on “Gourmet” lapse in 2021, which prompted a group of food journalists to acquire it and launch their own newsletter with the same name).
Reichl’s success came not as a result of her burning ambition, but because of her talent, hardwork and commitment to her craft. Her tenure as EIC at Gourmet was under the watchful (and inscrutable) eye of the legendary Si Newhouse, owner of Condé Nast, and overlapped with the editorial tenures of Gradyon Carter at Vanity Fair (who also recently wrote an excellent, juicy and hilarious memoir) and Anna Wintour at Vogue. What. A. Time.
Reichl’s memoir reveals so much about the push-pull of creativity and commercial viability. Even if you’re not a publishing diehard like me, there’s a lot to glean from the lessons she absorbed from her time at Gourmet.
This passage
I cannot give any context to this excerpt by Substacker Vidya, other than to say it landed on my screen last Sunday afternoon and I have not stopped thinking about it since. I want to print it, frame it and prop it up behind my bed.
Splendid isolation: the long way home, by Maria Shollenbarger
Speaking of writing that cuts home, this piece by the Travel Editor at the Financial Times’ HTSI magazine Maria Shollenbarger stopped me dead in my tracks when I read it last week.
It’s a personal essay tracking her experience of the first few months of Covid in early 2020. It starts with a break-up and ends with her preparing to leave her parents’ safehaven in Carmel, California to re-enter the world. A beautiful ode to freedom, restriction and what home really means. You can basically feel the salt on your tongue from her descriptions of the California coastline. I have read it three times.
Justin’s mic-drop performance
I have not stopped thinking about Justin’s performance of Yukon at the Grammy’s. Yes, the voice is insanely good. Yes, the staging and costuming (or lack thereof) is very effective. And, yes, I think 2026 will be the year the slutty little man earring goes mainstream. But it was Justin’s energy that was the real mic drop for me. It’s the most raw, punk display of talent I can remember seeing in so long. Far out, this kid!
The internet concurs.
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Also, for anyone who, like me, has spent the last six months devouring Olivia Dean’s entire back catalogue at every opportunity, I urge you to be seated for Sienna Spiro’s live recording of this song that is all over radio/Spotify. I had written it off when I first heard it as a top 30 ballad, but my looooord, what a voice (she is 20, mind you). Life affirming.
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Ok, that’s it for now - we will be back soon with our first workwear edit of the year. See you then.
Annie x
That passage 😵💫
Really enjoyed this Annie.