What makes a shopping newsletter?

Last week we partnered with Emilia Petrarca of Shop Rat to kick off New York Fashion Week with a series of panel discussions, featuring writers and retailers, on the state of shopping in 2025. One panel seemed particularly valuable to the wider audience of writers and creators on Substack: “What Makes a Shopping Newsletter?”

Here, we’ve collected a few of the most salient clips and quotes from the panel of experts: laura reilly of Magasin, Jalil Johnson of Consider Yourself Cultured, and Rachel Seville Tashjian of the invite-only newsletter Opulent Tips and the Washington Post’s new fashion-week Substack. It’s a glance at one of the fastest-growing categories on Substack, including reflections that are likely to resonate with creators in any category.

When you guys started your respective newsletters, what references were you looking at, if any?

Rachel: I was informed by two old-school magazine experiences that I’d had, one of which was working at Vanity Fair when Graydon [Carter] was there, and the gift guide was put together by this woman named Punch Hutton. The level of discernment that Punch had about, like, “We can’t just put any children’s Bentley in the Neiman Marcus catalog gift guide. It has to be the best children’s Bentley.” I was always really struck by that kind of discernment about these really strange and eccentric things.

And the other was working at GQ with Will Welch. Will would always say when we were looking at products, “Would you actually use this? Would you really wear this?” And that was really shocking to me, because having worked at several fashion magazines, that wasn’t really a question you asked. It was [more] sort of “What’s the advertiser need?”

Laura: I came to similar conclusions by seeing what not to do. I was at InStyle. I learned a million things from them, but it was at the peak of women’s mass media trying to reach as many people with affiliate content, and it really diluted the message, I think. So while it was an amazing learning experience, when I decided to go out on my own, I said I really need to dig a lot deeper and figure out what I want to say and what’s actually relevant, and what conversation really is going on with shoppers.

Jalil:  I used to work at Saks. There were certain aspects of my job where I didn’t really feel fulfilled in a creative sense. So I saw Substack as a way to get my thoughts about fashion and whatnot out there. And of course, Rachel’s newsletter is fantastic, and that was definitely an inspiration. Also, the writing of André Leon Talley.

What makes a good shopping story?

Rachel:  What at least your three newsletters [Laura, Jalil, and Emilia] and some of the others you mentioned have, is that they’re able to treat mood and ambience and these things that seem sort of ephemeral as news or information that’s actionable.

I remember the first time I opened your newsletter, Laura, I was like, this is like reading a newspaper. I mean, it’s organized, reported, and it’s so thorough. What propels something beyond a roundup of links is having that feeling of authority and storytelling.

Jalil:  Usually on Wednesdays [my posts] are kind of like a roundup situation, which is I think a common feature with a lot of Substacks. But the stories that I am most passionate about, the ones that really get me excited, are my lookbook stories, which really tap into the emotion and tap into the feelings that are abstract.

When I was at Saks, something that really frustrated me was, why are we not teaching our customers how to style their things in so many different ways?

People were buying a lot of stuff, but they were also returning it. So my thought was, okay, you want to curtail people returning their items, you should show them like 10 different ways of how to wear a flip-flop. So that’s what I think I really morphed my newsletter to in the end. I want to tap into the feelings that I’m feeling at the moment, what’s happening on the runway, but also, “These are 15 ways that you can wear a flip-flop and not feel lost.”

Laura: Whenever I see a shopping story and think, “I wish I wrote that,” it’s because the writer found something happening in the ether and has been able to articulate it just in time. You know? It’s just seeing it in that moment and calling it out. I’m always so mad whenever someone else gets it.

I think it’s about tapping into something that maybe everyone’s feeling or sensing or wondering. And it can be down to a super-specific product, or nebulous, or a brand, but it’s fun to see those things that unite us all in the subconscious.

Emilia:  Totally. And I think something that I really love about Substack, too, is that I’m not seeing the stories that are like “everyone on TikTok is wearing x, y, and z.” I was so sick of writing those stories, because I felt like I didn’t believe what I was saying and I didn’t see these trends in real life.

How have shopping newsletters shaped consumer habits in the past five years?

Laura: One thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of [fashion newsletters] are so deeply linked to the affiliate world and the ShopMy of it all. And obviously that’s a huge part of how I make my living, so I am always going to stand by that, because I still think you can make great content and have [affiliate links] be part of it. But I think that the fashion newsletter boom, for those with less journalistic integrity maybe, created a lot of brands. And so it’s kind of been a kingmaker, for better or worse. It’s just something to call out, I think.

Emilia: Yeah. I mean, this is not a bad thing—I wore them the other day—but like the “newsletter pants.”

Jalil: Certain brands have really benefited from the exposure on Substack.

Emilia:  Smaller brands too, which is really cool to see. And something that I’ve enjoyed, too, is getting to know these people behind these brands a bit more. Something that I’ve learned is that bigger publications can cover these bigger brands, and we can cover the small [brands]—like, there’s enough for everybody to go around. It’s not one or the other.

How do you decide what goes in a newsletter?

Jalil: For my send-out that is more link-focused, I have a running note of things I want to talk about. And then when it comes to my send-outs that are more lookbooks, I pre-style everything. So everything that I shoot will make it into the newsletter. And I have a rack of clothes dedicated to styling that, so if you’re on the rack, then you’ll be in the newsletter.

Laura:  I publish multiple times a week, so there’s room for lots of stuff. When I do a news send, I wait until right before I’m actually going to publish it, basically, to write everything, so that it feels timely. And I go through my infinite list of things that are happening, have launched, or sales that are going on, and just see what feels right. So the decision-making doesn’t take any time at all.

Rachel: It has to be something that I would buy and that I just don’t have the money to buy at the moment. And then sometimes I think, “Who’s someone who doesn’t really like me?” and if they were opening this, would they be like, “Ugh. I hate to admit it, but she kind of knows her stuff.”

How has Substack changed Fashion Week?

Rachel:  I like that now there are more people from backgrounds that aren’t necessarily legacy media coming to Fashion Week, and that there are events like this that become a part of Fashion Week.

 A year ago, I wrote a piece where I talked to maybe all three of you about how this was just beginning, and that was only a year ago. So think of what’s going to happen next. I think it’s exciting.

Emilia:  It’s amazing. I reread that article this morning, and I couldn’t believe that that was just last year. The article was like, “Substackers are at Fashion Week, they’re front-row!” Also, like, “Where do we put them?” Which I