NO NONSENSE #19

Hello hello hello to our lovely supporters <3

Welcome to our #19th No-Nonsense Newsletter. The newsletter where we give you all of our team recommendations. Here's what we are vibing with this month x

💋 Lets get into it! 💋

🕺🏿TEAM RECOMMENDATIONS🕺🏿

DEPUTY EDITOR, GINA TONIC

Book: Bad Behaviour, Mary Gaitskill - Borrowed this from Ione's desk and couldn't put it down! A series of vignettes based in New York in the 1980s, I was amazed at how so much of the problems of the characters resonated with me now, the writing is really incred and I wanna read more by her already. Warning though, some of them are fuckin miserable.

TV: Search Party - Another Ione Gamble recommendation, but I only ever watched series one and two and she convinced me to get caught up with the show. If you love dark comedies, this is the perfect one for you. All the characters have Girls-esque insufferability about them, but in a way that makes you piss yourself rather than get irritated.

JUNIOR EDITOR, CHARLOTTE AMY LANDRUM

Book: Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma. I never usually read sci-fi, or at least anything that alludes to the future, but I'm really enjoying this. I recommend for sci-fi haters.

MANAGING EDITOR, EDEN YOUNG

Film: Sick of Myself - WHAT A FILM! a dark, dark satire about a woman who fakes an illness because her boyfriends art is getting more attention than her. it's so funny and sick and twisted but has lots to say about social media and the way we seek attention online, illness and sickness, the way we treat ill people, visible vs hidden illnesses, diversity and how we represent disability and illness but only when it's in a very specific type of beautiful body. a must see.

Book: I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel - we're all about sharing recommendations at Polyester HQ. Gina lent me this and I couldn't put it down. excellent book about relationships, sex and getting obsessed with strangers on the internet. critiques Instagram culture in a funny and interesting way without being too on the nose and cringey

CULTURE EDITOR, MISHA MN

Film: Peter Strickland’s Duke of Burgundy, an exploration in sapphic sadism and hot bitch moth professors. I remember seeing this in the cinema when it came out nearly ten years ago, but watching it again now is a whole other experience. Plus a great minor role as a kinky carpenter for Strickland muse Fatma Mohamed, who I always keep an eye out for now since her scene stealing turn as a sinister shop assistant in In Fabric.

Film: Bright Young Things! Stephen Fry’s directorial debut back in 2003, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s sensational book Vile Bodies, following a group of young aristocrats in the 1920s dashing from mad parties to love triangles to car races. Lots of madcap fun, like the book, with very pleasing touches of pathos highlighting the ultimate downfalls of many of our young heroes. The new ending, added by Fry, is not good. It aims for sentimentalism, but actually lands in the dated, even then, realm of misogynistic 90s rom com comeuppances.

Film: McQueen, the fantastic documentary about the incomparable Alexander McQueen, focusing on his meteoric rise in the industry and his highly personal runway shows. One of the things I love about this is the amount of time it devotes to Isabella Blow, one of the most influential people working in fashion at the turn of the century. There is so much of her story that is just as compelling as the great designer’s, one can only hope that one day maybe we could get a documentary focused just on her and her relationships with young designers and avant garde fashion.

C ya soooon 🥰

XOXO,

Charlotte ❤️