The Friday Dispatch: August 22, 2025

Greetings! Happy Friday! Did you know LMFAO is comprised of not just an uncle and nephew...but that the men in question are the son (Redfoo) and grandson (SkyBlu) of BERRY GORDY??? This is how nepotism should work. They should invent a third Safdie brother who teaches endangered animals to skateboard.

The Amelia books live in my head rent-free. No, not Amelia Bedelia, who is fine, but not relatable to me, someone who understands all idioms perfectly.1 Anytime I went to my cousin Mamie’s house, I would read her collection of the Amelia’s Notebooks series. She eventually gave the whole collection to me, partially because she is a nice cousin, and partially because I always wanted to “borrow” them from her. They look like diaries, like composition books, a spiritual predecessor to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, with drawings and charts etc.

There are a lot of weird little details from these books that stay on the surface of my brain today, like the description of her sister Cleo's "jelly-roll nose" and the way “real” items that were meant to be “taped into” the notebooks were rendered in soft watercolor. In one of the books, Amelia wore eyeshadow, and she said that her eyelids felt somewhat sticky/slimy, "like a lizard licked them."

And that’s why I’m mentioning these books in the first place, because I’ve been trying to wear eyeshadow more frequently, and I wanted to tell you all that, when I do, my eyelids feel sort of sticky and slimy. Like a lizard licked them!

You’ll receive my next Book Empties over the weekend, because I got sentimental yesterday and wrote this instead of finishing the Book Empties draft.2

For those of you in NYC, if you are a poetry person, PLEASE go to Poets House to see the Mary Ruefle exhibit before it closes! P.H. goes on summer break on the 24th, so you basically have, like, 2ish days. It’s a selection of her erasure and collage poetry. I’ve actually seen this exhibit before, and visited it again, because I love it so much. There’s also a free craft talk on September 4th, where Mark Wunderlich will talk about Ruefle’s work; I am out of town, otherwise I’d be there. Please go! Take notes! Report back!

Louis Vuitton debuts its beauty line this month, which includes a $160 lipstick.

My friend Gabe texted me to ask what I thought:

Listen, as someone who has absolutely no problem shelling out $403 for a lipstick, you’re going to have to work really hard to convince me that I should pay four times the price of my most expensive makeup product. The LV Beauté collection is a miss for me, and that's in part because other companies have done a much better job! The Guerlain Rouge G lipsticks have a decent "luxe" formula but a really fun, functional and inventive range of cases. See also Hermes. Even the Christian Louboutin beauty line, which felt similarly stunt-y, strike a better balance with their color range and “luxurious but still interesting” packaging. Does anyone else remember when Tom Ford did the Boys & Girls lipstick colelction in 2017? It was 50 colors, they were UNDER $40, and even with a lot of overlap in the nudes/reds/berries, that range still felt more thoughtfully developed than Louis Vuitton's.

Also, for those of you who don’t log hours per week thinking about lipstick, here’s what the hell I mean when I talk about Pat McGrath in that text. Pat McGrath (makeup world legend) has her own beauty line, Pat McGrath Labs, and since late 2023/early 2024, people have noticed its declining quality. The product itself, the packaging, the range of products offered, brand collabs—all of it has been kind of “meh.” This, from a cosmetic company that built its name on high-pigment high-shimmer everything!

WELL. It makes sense, because McGrath has, presumably, been putting all her time/attention on the LV makeup stuff. Which also makes sense when you look at the LV lipstick packaging (PMcG Labs left, LV right):

The little clear window on top of the LV lipstick is great, I’ll give them that.

To me, this launch feels like a drastic misunderstanding of luxury beauty. High-end beauty brands are often an entry point to a luxury brand. It’s getting the Cracker Jack ring engraved at Breakfast at Tiffany’s. College Hattie couldn't afford a Chanel Boy Bag (and neither can 30-year-old Hattie lol) but she saved up for a Chanel lipstick, and you bet your ass it LOOKED like a Chanel lipstick.

LV Beauté implements logos and motifs from the broader Louis Vuitton ecosystem, but they really missed the mark with this. Nine times out of 10, when I see someone carrying a Speedy or Neverfull bag, it's got the LV logo in high-contrast ALL OVER IT. The "downmarket" Louis Vuitton consumer is purposefully buying something that announces itself; cosmetics are, by their consumable nature, an intrinsically downmarket product. If LV Beauté really wanted to be a luxury product and a luxury experience, they would lean into the travel element. Luggage is the actual luxury, here. Give me a train case with magnetic clasps for my lipstick! An eyeshadow quad that slots into a special suitcase compartment, like the ones that Away uses for travel power banks, so I can easily touch up my makeup without having to keep my makeup in my handbag! Such a wasted opportunity.

The other thing is this—professional makeup artists aren’t going to be using the Louis Vuitton makeup line. Frankly, I doubt they’re using a wide range of the Pat McGrath Labs products. MAC, Kryolan, Mehron, all the “go-to” makeup artist brands, they’re all making durable, high-quality, luxurious makeup products without the ridiculous mark-up. So who is this for??? The average beauty consumer already has so many better options for luxury makeup! I’m not curious at all about the LV eyeshadow but at a glance it doesn’t excite me. I could get three Les Ombres quads from Chanel, or one $250 eyeshadow palette from Louis Vuitton? Unconvinced! Un-won-over!

Sure, the lipsticks and eyeshadows are refillable. As someone who wears lipstick almost every day, I can see, in theory, how this would be valuable. Yesterday, I sharpened this NARS Dragon Girl lip pencil I bought in 2014 down to its last little nub. It was $26, I think. Over ELEVEN YEARS, that comes out to ~$2.40 per year.

Guys, I don’t think Louis Vuitton can do better.

Maybe I’ve talked about FocusMate here before. I recently started using it again, and so I have returned to sing its praises! FocusMate is a free web app which pairs you with a rando somewhere in the world, and you both work quietly on your own little projects. There are a lot more settings than there were when I started! You can choose from 25-, 50- or 75-minute sessions; you can choose from “desk tasks” or “motion tasks” (ideal for me, a girl who hates putting away laundry); you can keep your mic on or stick with mic-off mode. Being paired with a stranger makes me feel more accountable to whatever I’m doing. I can’t disappoint Jason from Seattle by telling him I got distracted and didn’t meet my word count goal!

I used FocusMate when I wrote my first draft of my first novel, and I find that, for my brain, it’s great to use fo longer projects which require dedicated blocks of time every week. But you can use it for anything! Sometimes, I’m paired with someone else who’s also working on a long fiction project, and other times I’m paired with someone who just needs to get through their email inbox. I’ve also made friends with some of the people I met on FocusMate, and it’s sweet, keeping in touch with people who saw you muddle through the middle of a long project.

Here’s how much I like FocusMate: I went almost a year without using it whatsoever, from late 2022 to late 2023, and I kept my paid “pro” membership. It was only $5 per month—it’s $6.99 now—but I got SO MUCH benefit from FocusMate, I kept my membership because I truly just wanted to give them money. If you use my referral link, you get a free month of FocusMate plus. And also it puts a big burst of confetti on my screen when you join. That’s cute! Please do it.

Also, courtesy my friend Emily, here is a website that is the opposite of focus: The Stimulation Clicker.

Of course, every Louis Vuitton makeup product is on the list of What I Did Not Buy This Week: