A Year of Writing About Trying Not to Set the Planet on Fire With My Wardrobe
What I've learned, what I'm still figuring out, and the joy of Secondhand September
This week I’m taking a break from my usual The RealReal stream of consciousness to share what I’ve learned after 53 Substack posts and counting. An ENORMOUS thank you to everyone that’s read my writing, subscribed to my newsletter, and connected with me on Substack. Your support makes all the difference.
How It Started
My MBA program had a required class that allowed us to explore a semester-long project related to your chosen career path. My school’s location in San Francisco meant my classmates were diving into AI/SaaS/tech/even more tech, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do for my project: launch a fashion Substack.
I came into my MBA with extensive corporate fashion merchandising experience and wanted to try something new with fashion writing. I’ve always been a heavy consumer of fashion magazines and digital media, and was hugely inspired by my very first Substack subscriptions to Anna Newton and Sarah Shapiro, whose content spoke to me on a deep, cellular level.
My early posts were a blend of trying to find my TOV (so. many. parentheses1), delving into responsible fashion issues, and meeting the requirements for my MBA project. I chose the name Semi-Sustainable2 from my belief that personal sustainability is progress over perfection. I try to balance buying more clothes than the Hot or Cool Institute deems acceptable, the fact I will never willingly live off the grid, and that I still purchase plastic packaged items with prioritizing secondhand shopping, reducing my footprint through walking and public transit, and recycling my plastic packaging at the grocery store and beauty retailer drop off bins.
While I graduated with my MBA this May - if you’re hiring someone with a wealth of apparel, accessory, and jewelry buying, site merchandising, and trend forecasting experience, I’m your person - I kept going with Substack for a multitude of reasons, among them the incredible community. My only regret is that I didn’t start sooner.
What Have I Learned?
I’ve had three key learnings in the last year of writing on Substack. None are groundbreaking, but they might resonate if you’ve been here for a while or might be helpful if you’re just getting started.
1. Community Is Everything
My immediate and overwhelming learning was that community comes first. The vibes on fashion Substack are largely positive, many writers genuinely want to support other writers, and you get a real chance to connect with people.
One of my MBA project goals was to reach out to creators to learn about their Substack journeys. Back then, this was a step outside of my comfort zone and I’m hugely grateful to Anika Krueger, Kelly Williams, and Style Analytics for graciously sharing their experiences for my project. A common thread in these informational interviews: community is everything.
As time went on, I became more comfortable sliding into the dm’s of the fashion writers and industry leaders I greatly admire3 and have made friendships all over the world. Substack also led me to the incredible opportunity of an MBA internship with Claire (Illmer) Gray of Future Reference4 that started with me sending her a dm.
While some people love Substack’s community spirit (meeeee), I know others may struggle with it. I’m a big believer in letting people know if you enjoy their work and try to do this through comments, chats, Notes, messages, and restacks in addition to tapping the heart. It can feel uncomfortable at first to comment on posts or message someone you don’t know, but the sense of community made it easier for me to get over the initial awkwardness of putting myself out there.
2. A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
One of the most common refrains I heard during my tenure as an online merchant was “a rising tide lifts all boats”. This came up all the time in the early 2010s when store merchants were worried that the influx of online shoppers would put their business at risk. While that might have felt true at times, adding an online channel gave brands a significantly larger audience, which drove more people into brick and mortar and ultimately increased store fleets based on where online orders were concentrated.
This might be the most merchant/MBA-coded thing I’ll ever write, but the same holds true on Substack: a rising tide really does lift all boats. As the platform grows, we all have the opportunity to grow, thanks to the heightened visibility that comes with a larger audience and the chance to make new connections and form meaningful relationships with readers and other creators.
There are established writers with large readerships that exemplify helping everyone rise: shoutout to Anna Newton, Hey Mrs. Solomon on Style, and Kelly Williams for uplifting other creators and building exceptional community experiences.
3. There Will Be A LOT of Ups and Downs
Some days are amazing - you worked hard on a post, it’s generating robust engagement, the views are phenomenal, you’re attracting new readers, and most importantly you finally feel like what you’re writing is resonating with people.
Then there are days you hit publish and get a flurry of unsubscribes in the first five minutes and your engagement plummets. It can feel demoralizing and from my POV, confusing, after a career lifetime of being rated on performance metrics with a clear cut understanding of why something did or didn’t work5.
When a post doesn’t hit or someone unsubscribes on Substack, it’s not as definitive as the shipment was stuck at the port for two months and now your holiday party dresses won’t be delivered to the DC until December 24th. The variables are nebulous and it’s easy to fall into the trap of second guessing yourself (is my writing terrible? am I boring? do people hate books/balloon skirts or just my take on books/balloon skirts?).
Instead I try to redirect and view this as a long game that I’m only a fraction of the way into. Although admittedly this is easier said than done, I also try to take pride in what I’ve achieved over the last 12 months: started a newsletter from scratch, graduated with honors from my MBA program, and have more confidence making connections than ever before thanks in part to my Substack experience.
Something I always redirect is playing the comparison game. I strongly believe we all bring something unique to this platform, and consistent quality content will stand out over time. I take joy in great writers finding success here and love that this community celebrates other creators’ accomplishments widely6.
In the meantime, I consciously work to wrench myself away from a numbers-first merchant mentality and remind myself that I write about a niche fashion topic that’s extremely close to my heart. It’s beyond thrilling when someone says I’ve influenced them to buy their first secondhand piece or invest in more preloved items, or tags me in their incredible resale find. I’ll take that over a thousand likes any day.
What Am I Still Trying To Figure Out?
Things I know:
My early posts focused mainly on sustainable fashion topics with deep dive research to better align with my MBA program. I found over time that I prefer to write about trends and personal style through the lens of secondhand fashion and outfit repeating. I’ll keep going in this direction with the caveat that I cannot resist a hyperlink for sharing sustainability and trend research.
Things I’m trying to figure out:
I’ve been waffling on turning on paid subscriptions for the past few months, and if I turn it on what it would look like. Flip the switch on everything a couple of weeks after publishing or only for information-intensive articles? I don’t know the answer yet, but my eyes and ears are always open to learn from everyone in the fashion Substack community. Which brings me to…
Things you might have already figured out:
If you have advice on what you’ve learned as your newsletter has evolved or want to share what you enjoy reading about, I’d love to hear more in the comments.
Secondhand September
New season, new temps, new-to-you fashion: Secondhand September is here. Launched by UK charity Oxfam in 2019, Secondhand September is a reminder that “small habits from all of us stack up and can make real change.”
I’m thrilled to see secondhand has become nearly mainstream in the US within the past decade. According to my HG Vogue Business, 68% of Gen Z shopped secondhand last year, while Gen Z and Millennials make up the majority of The RealReal’s customer base. My other HG ThredUp shared in their 2025 annual resale report that the global secondhand market is projected to grow almost 3x faster than the total global apparel market by 2029. At a time when next-gen industrial textile recycling is nascent and new fashion continues to be pumped out at alarming rates, this is an important step in the right direction.
My personal challenge this month is to document my outfits every day during Secondhand September. OOTD selfies are my bête noire between the posing just-so, taking enough photos to land on an acceptable image, and cropping everything to my mirror’s edges. While I can’t guarantee they’ll all be bangers, I can guarantee that every outfit will include one or more secondhand items.
I’d love it if you joined me in wearing something secondhand this month because we already have enough fashion to clothe the next six generations. And because it’s more fun to talk incessantly about the exorbitant shipping fees on our favorite resale platform than to buy something new.
What I Wore Last Week
In a bid to show how far I’ve come in the last year, leaving you with outfit selfies - the very thing I dreaded doing last September.
My favorite outfit of the week was this preloved leopard print dress to celebrate my favorite person’s birthday.
One week in and already wearing my new-to-me The Frankie Shop cropped jacket into the ground.
Fashion Notes
Sogole Kane is the Substack community building star for the most fun, creative, and standout collective fashion experience. Thank youuuuu Sogole!
That time when OFELIA gave fashion Substack the best tutorial on how to take a walking selfie.
Libby McCurrach and Traci Landy bringing us the “finding your new bff through Substack” energy in this joyful post.
Kendall Flavin’s mostly preloved/entirely inspirational fall wishlist to get you started on Secondhand September.
Kelly Williams pulling together the clothing swap of the decade to keep fashion Substack circular.
Nosy merchant poll of the week:
That’s it for this week, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading, supporting, and connecting with me over the last year. If you told me at this time last year my newsletter would have more than the 100 subscribers in my Innovation project goal, my mind would have been blown.
If you like what you’ve read, please tap the ❤️, comment, or share. It’s hugely helpful in growing this newsletter and appreciated more than you know.
This post includes affiliate links that help support my writing at no cost to you. Everything linked is something that I own, wear on repeat, and love.
Which have been replaced by so. many. footnotes.
My ideal Substack name was Preloved, the title of Emily Stochl’s glorious newsletter and podcast, and the perfect combination of creator and publication title. I was also into Sustainable-ish (taken on IG), Reloved (too many iterations on IG), Thanks, It’s Secondhand (before I saw Thanks, It’s From), and begrudgingly settled on Semi-Sustainable (not taken on IG for obvious reasons).
Angela Galvez, Anika Krueger, Asta / Aastha, Camilla, Claire (Illmer) Gray, Danielle Vermeer,Emily Grady Dodge, Kelly Williams, Lindsay Sword, OFELIA, Sarah Shapiro, Shop Girl at Carted, Sogole Kane, and Xue thank you for replying to my messages and for your support this year. I’m hugely grateful to Angela Galvez, Anika Krueger, Claire (Illmer) Gray of Future Reference, Emily Stochl, and Kelly Williams for including me in their amazing newsletters, Maureen McLennon Welton for the incredibly fun podcast interview, and Devon Rule for making my MBA dream of an Indyx collab come true. And as my fashion and food icons OFELIA and Zara Wong have experienced firsthand, if you have beautiful fruit-based imagery in your Instagram stories, you will get IG dm’s from me until the end of time.
I can’t say enough great things about Claire and everything she’s building at Future Reference to make resale more circular and frictionless, something near and dear to my secondhand-first ethos.
Didn’t work: too late/early on a trend, the color wasn’t right, the fit was off, there was a QC issue, the plan was unrealistic, etc etc. Did work: it was the exact right moment for the trend (aka you are a buying genius), the fit/color/design was on point, the quantity was perfect, the campaign imagery was emotional, your item went viral on socials, etc etc.
I acknowledge it helps that I’m the least competitive person, unless it’s comparing myself to myself - then all bets are off.
Huge, HUGE congrats Tina! What a year! And thank you for the *multiple* shout-outs that has made my day!!! If there’s anything I’ve learnt about substack it’s that the best posts are the ones you’re really buzzing to write and the best way to get involved is to really get stuck in to the community aspect of it all. It’s truly the best bit, isn’t it ❤️
Huge congrats on a year for the books Tina!! You are so impressive…an MBA in between newsletter writing, so cool 👏 thank you for sharing your passion so authentically on this platform. can’t wait to continue reading your work! ❤️