★★★★★ Goth basketballer
Caitlin Cunningham is a Melbourne-based professional basketballer who plays for the Rockhampton Cyclones. Chances are by now, you already know who they are, or you know them by their nickname “Caitlin Dark” (so called for the WNBA player Caitlin Clark) after a compilation video of their on-court aesthetic went viral. They habitually play in a full face of gothy clown makeup; think the Joker meets Shane from The L Word meets Pete Wentz. Their commitment to the bit is underscored by surgically-implanted fangs and neck tatts. IG comments pick up what Mx Dark is putting down: “very metal. I like it,” wrote @pumpedforchrist. “New crush unlocked thanks,” wrote a woman in Denver. But look, this isn’t bloody Buzzfeed. We wouldn’t normally report on viral fodder. The thing is: we know Caitlin. Sort of. At least, we’ve met them once or twice in passing. We swear. Thus, we’ve had the unique experience of watching someone we’ve made small talk with at a rental inspection rocket to fame. We also have Caitlin to thank for a major piece of celesbian gossip that folks in the extended Flippy’s set may have heard at parties over the years—a tale involving Kristen Stewart, toilet paper, and a werewolf furry moment (we can’t print it but if you see us around, we’ll dish). Whenever we’ve crossed paths, Caitlin has been sweet and personable. So, we wanted to know, has fame changed them? And what’s next? A Rick Owens collab, a Bachelorette slot, a move to Bondi? “Life hasn’t changed too much,” they told us over voice memo. “But I’ve got over 2000 DMs.” They showed us one of the bleaker ones, from a man, a 100-word enjambed monologue that ended with the line: “i’ve been in therapy for awhile.” Aside from that, they’re accruing a huge following of love-struck American queers and getting approached by Naarm locals. Not so much in Rockhampton, though. When in Rocky, they are “definitely the only goth in the village. The looks I get when I go to the shopping centre are wild. They’ve never seen anything like me up there.” Oh, and, as very amateur basketballers, we asked Caitlin for some advice about how to make the most of our limited talents during our weeknight social games. They said that if you can run faster than anyone else and get to the ring before your competitors shoot, you have a high chance of stopping them because, from what they’ve seen of [redacted] league, “nobody is that good at shooting.”
★★★★ Kobido
Not long ago, TPE received an intriguing press email (keep ‘em coming) enquiring as to whether we wanted to experience “Swan Light,” the 70 minute “kobido practice” of one Madeleine Iona Lukács Smith. What is kobido, you ask? We didn't know either. Turns out it’s a facial massage technique that originated in medieval Japan and now has practitioners all around the world, including in South Yarra. The Swan Light website described kobido as an “unfolding” of the face like a “gift.” “Muscles are re-educated,” and “Parisian people of all ages ‘in the know’” seek the treatment regularly for its anti-aging benefits—it is, apparently, “a natural facelift.” There was a photograph of Smith, a lithe, elegant woman, perched on her treatment bed, her long fingers outstretched and waiting for a willing face to knead. The reviews were extraordinary. “After the first session,” one recipient wrote, “I saw colours that hadn’t previously existed to me.” The only problem was that we couldn’t decide which of the Eds was most deserving of the treatment. Luckily, Oscar was out of the running due to being a hard-working father with unresolved masculinity complexes. Sally and Cam were just about to fight to the death for the facial when they had the bright idea of asking for a session each. Smith graciously accommodated us (separately). Now, we can confirm that receiving a Swan Light kobido face massage is an exceedingly pleasant and relaxing experience. Imagine: Smith welcomes you into her neat art deco apartment. You remove your shirt to bare your clavicles, lie down, close your eyes, and she begins rubbing a sweet-smelling pale pink oil all over your tired, screen-baked visage. Your body relaxes. You start to notice birdsong. She is featherlight at first, then a little more vigorous, making swirling, pressing, and soft tapping motions. At some moments, it may feel like your face is in a finger car wash. Bliss. Is this how the other side of the river live?! Four stars because we can’t afford the $255 price tag as a regular treatment—we are just humble wannabe-beauty bloggers, after all. But research tells us that at the crass new Mecca megahub about to open in the Bourke St Mall, a 60 minute Biologique Recherche facial will set you back minimum $350, so… if you got a big tax return this EOFY, we say opt for Swan Light. We left our session so chilled out that even bonnet-to-bonnet peak hour traffic on Punt Rd couldn’t aggravate us. Our subsequent epidermal glow received compliments for days.
★★★ Materialists
Are you pro or anti Materialists? Despite the fact that we wept continuously for the last 30 minutes of Celine Song’s glossy new romcom (emphasis on the rom) about a New York City matchmaker choosing whether to marry for love or money, we feel kinda meh about it now. Don’t get us wrong: Materialists is a solid update of the nineteenth century marriage plot for our neofeudal, Bezos wedding era. Dakota Johnson’s wardrobe delivered good sexy normie inspo—Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy fits for girls with email jobs. The plotting was tightly paced. But they should have cut the cavepeople scenes. Also, the TPE jury is divided about whether Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans, and Dasha Nekrasova were well-cast (Sally is pro Pedro and thinks Dasha’s acting was quite good actually; Cam thought Dasha was all over the shop and is randomly pro Chris; Oscar simply has no idea who these people are). All in all, it feels safe to say that this is going to be a really great plane movie.
★★ Dior’s book totes
This week, the Good Weekend Magazine published a gloomy feature declaring that no one reads anymore and that the next generation will all be illiterate sociopaths unable to parse anything longer than TikTok micro dramas. Another thing that happened is Dior released a line of book-themed tote bags. At the Paris launch of Jonathan Anderson’s inaugural collection for the house, models walked down the runway dressed like twink Bunny Corcorans (see: The Secret History, Donna Tartt), clutching totes embroidered with canonical titles including Dracula, Bonjour Tristesse, Madame Bovary, Les Fleurs du Mal, and Ulysses. Dior’s use of literary fiction for brand activation is just one instance of a recent trend in the world of high-end luxury. Other examples include: Miu Miu’s “Summer Reads” series, Aesop’s feminist and queer libraries, Prada’s bound edition of their commissioned Ottessa Moshfegh short stories, Valentino's Hanya Yanagihara partnership (inspired by A Little Life), Chanel's literary prize, Saint Laurent's Proust-inspired holiday campaign, and a Swedish perfumier’s collaboration with Bret Easton Ellis on an American Psycho fragrance. Even Melbourne’s pre-eminent short story writer, Paul Dalla Rosa, is in the Carharrt magazine. Oh, and who can forget the Roland Barthes scarf by Hermes? What would the grand-père of cultural semiotics make of all this? He’d probably be weeping into his beautiful silk scarf. Barthes believed that literary culture could function “contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society” only if it rid itself of the fetishistic worship of the author, and instead, celebrated the real producer of the text i.e. the active and intelligent reader. Haha. Instead, we have a small coterie of celebrity authors who write blockbusters that nobody can read due to screen-induced synapse deterioration and an unread canon repurposed to sell luxury merchandise. That being said, a photograph surfaced of Rihanna in Paris looking stunning with her turmeric yellow, ruby-red lettered Dracula tote. She paired it with a baby bump-baring polo, low-slung cargo jeans, and Mary Janes. And to finish the look? Glasses. Clear ones. Dare we say… for reading??? Or maybe just for blue-light blocking.
★ Spam
It has recently come to our attention that some of our deeply reported, carefully written, edited, proofread, fact-checked, polished, and entirely ChatGPT-free emails might be going into your spam inboxes. It’s a crying shame. To fix this, can we suggest the following:
Check your spam/junk folder. If you do find TPE emails there, mark them as “not spam” or drag them into your inbox.
Add our email address, theparisend@substack.com, to your contact list.
Send us an email back, as it proves to the filter that we are friend and not spam.
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