Together & March Recap
An occasional newsletter as a deep dive into the minds, habits, obsessions, affairs, and influences of our friends and fam.
Spring is in the air. Or at least, that was for a few days here in the Netherlands the thing. Seems like winter made its re-emergence, just like the general state of the world seems to stay very cold and gnarly. The highlights of the past weeks; we’ve had two Foretaste newsletters that were super positive, sharing the current affairs of two fine gentlemen whom are both very concerned with the world around us, which started some positive vibes nonetheless. So lets try to stay in that spring mood with this March Recap - coincidently (?) including a lot of flowers.
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BY POPULAR DEMAND: A recap of last months ideas/articles/links/music/podcasts/movies/vibes as shared by you all on the slacks (in no particular order)
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🌱 Natura Urbana is a publication, a study of urban nature, that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought. Bloomberg did a nice writeup on this book. ‘From roadside weeds to accidental gardens.’
📖 Our ‘classic favourite’ made some waves in the slack: Kenya Hara’s Designing Design. If this book isn’t already on your shelve, make sure to get one, read it at least twice. It really is that classic favourite and considered the design bible by many (Make sure to watch this interview too)
“Constantly pushing the era forward isn’t always progress. We stand between the future and the past. I wonder if we could discover a key to our creativity not in the far-off target at which all of society stares so intently, but rather in the extension of a vision that looks right through society from the past. The future lies ahead of us, but behind us there is also a great accumulation of history—a resource for imagination and creativity. I think we call creative that dynamism of intellectual conception that flows back and forth between the future and the past.” — Kenya Hara.
🪙 Daniel Eckler’s thread on 7 super simple marketing principles they used to make history. Nostalgia. Mystery. Contrast. Second Screen Optimization. Actionability. Memorability. Comparison. Or How Coinbase went from #200 to #2 on the App Store with a $0 production budget.
🕴️ The New York Times article on How Thom Browne turned the gray flannel suit into something subversive is just very inspiring. As he notes somewhere along the interview “we’re in a world where everything is so immediate and fast-paced, and I like the idea of making it uncomfortable — I don’t want to do something that’s so easy for people…” Thank you for that.
🐕🦺 The New York Times took some time to put down the Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto. Molly White, together with a group of 12+ critics took some more time to comment on… basically everything. Take your time.
🚲 We very much love this Wood Wood x Hermansen e-bike. Combining khaki and army green parts plus some red anodised details, the reference to vintage 4x4 vehicles and outdoor gear is fire!
Also share on slack: A Bicycle Is an Anti-Poverty Machine.
✖️ For the type-nerds among us: Try this Touch(screen) type tool by Schultzschultz.
🌸 Celebrating its 200th birthday, Mauritshuis in The Hague made a stunning show around the most beautiful flower still lifes of the seventeenth century: In Full Bloom. An ‘exhibition about how flower still-life paintings 'flourished' in the 17th century, spearheaded by a legion of talented female artists and scientist. Also - fun detail - the exhibition's wall design is made of flower waste from the bulb industry: flowers are pressed into the material so that the structures of the leaves are visible.’
🚜 The Slowdown featured Sky High Farm Workwear, the collaboration between Sky High Farm and Dover Street Market Paris, as clothes fit for modern farmers, with a message. A beautiful project by Sky High Farm, a nonprofit 40-acre regenerative ecosystem in New York’s Hudson Valley. A unisex collection, mostly made from salvaged or vintage fabric with the extra layer that any store that carries the collection must commit to a donation to the farm.
🐢 We have to give up on endless economic growth. Yes we do. And Dominic Boyer wrote it down in very clear words in Noema Magazine.
“Capitalism is a giant energy-sucking machine. In order to reduce energy use, we need to slow it all down. Slow down the mad pace of extraction, production and waste, and slow down the mad pace of our lives.”
🎬 Fresh is just…. The horrors of modern dating seen through one young woman's defiant battle to survive her new boyfriend's unusual appetites… very very fresh.

📣 New York Times made a nice interactive story on ‘A new stealth kind of protest music’, beautifully illustrated by our good friend Lennard Kok.
🥑 Newsletters directing to newsletters directing to newsletters. Lets do this! Kneeling Bus pointed to the interesting post of The Blackbird Spyplane on Un-Grammable Hang Zone. Something we all very much like. “Maybe this is why the word “vibes” is everywhere now—it’s the placeholder for all of the variables we can’t see.”
🔥 The World Is On Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes. Alec Leach wrote this highly recommended book on today’s fashion industry. Explaining why we love to shop so much, how fashion keeps us hungry for more, and the tricks it plays to cover up its true impact on the planet. It's a journey touching on consumerism, sneaker hype, greenwashing, Karl Marx, mindfulness and everything in between. The result is a manifesto for a slower, more intentional approach to fashion, one that redefines what shopping is - and what it isn't. Lets do buy this one.

🇺🇦 So good to see Pictures for Purpose raising over €250k with the works of 45 contributing artists including Olya Oleinic, Inez & Vinoodh, Rineke Dijkstra, Alec Soth, Yang Ji Hoon and many more, to support World Central Kitchen in Ukraine.
Alastair Philip Wiper is also raising money and will donate 100% of all its sales of the coming days of books, prints, tees and posters to the Red Cross to provide aid to Ukraine.
Let’s end this one very optimistic: Fuck Putin And His Stupid Fucking War. Sold out already, but also profits of this one went to the World Central Kitchen in Ukraine.
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Hope you enjoyed this one - And as always, let’s get Together soon IRL!
PS. There are enough bots and ghosts in our lives. We’ve always seen Together&, human and alive, so please enjoy, share and forward this. And we'd love to see you in Slack to discuss things often. If you know people who should join, let us know!