On Pace
(a preface)
You’ve seen more baking recipes than you’ll ever bake, absorbed more personalities, anecdotes, and political takes than you could possibly remember. Everything arrives quickly and disappears just as fast, often with little more than a swipe.
You would think that this constant stream would leave us more informed, more knowing. Instead, it often leaves very little behind. Even the most memorable clips blur together, replaced almost as quickly as they appear.
Consumption itself isn’t the problem. Consuming can be a beautiful, and at times transformational, thing. We remember the films that moved us, the books we finished in tears, the images that stayed with us long after we encountered them. Those experiences mattered because they were chosen, and because we had time to sit with them. The issue lies in the speed at which we now consume — a pace that removes value, choice, and curiosity before they have a chance to form.
Where slower paced media suggests and invites, fast media imposes. Content doesn’t wait to be sought out; it seeps. Trend reports tell us who we should be and what we should buy. Our taste develops, both knowingly and unknowingly.
And so we begin to crave something quieter, slower. There’s a growing desire to engage with fashion and culture in ways that feel more deliberate, more personal. To spend time with ideas instead of skimming past them, and to let taste form through observation and curiosity rather than instruction.
To sit in a coffee shop and read an article of our choosing. To sit in front of a desktop, open a browser, and search for answers to questions we already carry. To cultivate consistency and loyalty in where we choose to look
This isn’t about rejecting the digital world or retreating from culture. It’s about deciding where we give our attention, and trusting that taste develops when it’s given time. In slowing the way we consume, we make room to think, to notice, and to return to ideas more than once. And in that space, fashion begins to feel less like instruction, and more like a means of self expression.