Holly Friend, Cultural Strategist & Writer
💭 Thoughts on the gender / generational disconnect, Traveler's Company notebook covers, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest & Relaxation.
Holly Friend is a cultural strategist based mostly in London. She was formerly a trend forecaster for The Future Laboratory and now works with the likes of SPACE10, Bumble, Google and Audible, using a blend of storytelling and cultural research to identify what people are doing today and what this means for tomorrow. In her spare time she writes fiction, tries to find the best cookies in London, and wonders if she needs a coat.
🧺 The gender / generational disconnect
Like anyone who watches TikTok videos like they are postcards from another world, I’ve noticed the return of ‘trad’ gender norms and wondered what’s going on. I’m working on a project about this, so I may be biased, but it can’t be a coincidence that this has come at a time of cultural disconnect between the genders. Ironically, as time goes on, I’ve become less interested in the Gen Zs cooking their husbands dinner and more interested in the Millennials who are horrified by it.
🎥 John Malkovich
You know you’ve hit 30 when you make the jump from Ryan Philippe as Sebastian to John Malkovich as Valmont. Watching Dangerous Liaisons was a second adolescence that sent me down some Malkovich-shaped internet holes and ended with me finding an interview from the 1980s when he says (or whispers hazily) that culture is unerotic because society is unrepressed. ‘It’s very difficult to have unrepressed eroticism. If you think you can have something, you might not really want it.’ It’s funny to hear someone talking about 1988 as unerotic. I wonder what he thinks of 2024?
📚 Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest & Relaxation
I’m re-reading this book for the first time since 2019. Not only does it hit different post pandemic, but I’ve been fascinated by how Ottessa Moshfegh captures the precise texture of contemporary (read: cool, urban, capitalist but pretending not to be) culture, all the while being set in 2000. Just like how young people are using nostalgia to help them live today, I’m starting to think about the role of the past in understanding our present moment & how it could be used in trend forecasting or fiction.
✅ Intuitive gratification
I’m a list person: films, restaurants, books, beauty products, travel recs. But I’m getting list fatigue, so I’m trying to impose a ‘now’ philosophy, kind of like intuitive eating. If I hear about something I think is cool, what if, instead of putting it on a list, I just… did it? Then maybe one day I can delete my lists! Maybe.
Elif is a novelist and journalist, but my prediction is that she’ll be looked back on as a great philosopher of our time. She’s funny, weird, curious, obsessive, mischievous, perceptive, and a bit annoying. All the things I would like to be.
🎶 CMAT
One thing I’m not ahead of the curve on is music, so I need to thank my cool friend – and karaoke-fluencer – Fiona O’Grady for introducing me to CMAT, an Irish country singer whose brand I can only describe as ‘self-destructive cowgirl’. Anyway, I’m seeing her live for the third time this week and I can’t wait to lose myself in a crowd of Gen Z girls high on Adderall and crying about their failed affairs with married men.
🧐 Dream/threat
This is a cultural criticism tool I’ve learned from Emma Baker, who hosts the podcast Stargirl, and it’s totally changed the way I think about culture, whether content or celebrities. Sometimes I consume things and carry on with my life. Other times, when my love and hate for something (a film, book, musician) becomes muddled and therefore interesting, I think about the ‘dream’ and ‘threat’ they represent. What do I want from them, and why do they scare me?
📒 Traveler’s Company notebooks
I can’t live without my leather Traveler’s Company notebook cover. You only need to buy the cover and can slot in new notebooks, preferably fun ones that double as travel souvenirs. When I finish one, I sit on the sofa and flick through: cringing, laughing, or being surprised by the clarity of my 3am brain. I’ll regret this habit when I require storage facilities for all my silly little thoughts.
Follow Holly on Instagram & Linkedin and check out her website here.