Vibe Check: April 2025

Your Monthly Mood Board 🧚

This post is coming to you on April 2nd because, honestly, I hate April Fool's Day. I don’t like pranks to begin with, but then spending all day on an oversaturated internet flooded them was enough to hold off on publishing this. As my friend Alex perfectly phrased it at 7am yesterday: “April Fools Day is such a cursed little freak. All day we have to risk seeing the corporate brand account for Velveeta Cheese try and do standup comedy on Twitter.”

So, I’m easing into April gently, and I think we should all do the same. Let’s enter spring softly. It’s been a heavy first quarter (the LA fires, the stress and chaos of our new administration, global duress and destruction), so I’m giving us all permission to be delicate with ourselves. Sleep in an extra 30 minutes. Buy yourself flowers. Eat fancy pastries (This patisserie is on my list). Put your phone on DND and lay on a blanket in the sun. I want to be lying in my bed or in a field of flowers, in a face mask, surrounded by books and cats, zoning out.

Hug a bougainvillea bush, eat an entire baguette while flipping through a magazine, or have a picnic with an unreasonable amount of snacks. It’s the season for farmer’s markets, jelly beans, soft jazz, cherry blossoms, craft fairs, and licking sugar off your fingers.

I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with myself after The White Lotus ends on Sunday (final predictions?!?! Leave ‘em in the comments!), but I do know that I’m going to try and take it easy this month. Here are some bits and bobs to help you do the same!

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• Valentino’s recent show at Paris Fashion week, Le Méta-Théâtre Des Intimités, was one👏to👏watch👏! I am a diiieehard Allesandro Michelle fan (I designed my wedding dress based on some of his 2016 Gucci designs) and this was the return I’ve been waiting for! It’s even hard to say who the best-dressed guest was. 👗

• Dutch dance company CDK just released a new choreographed performance to Billie Eilish’s Bittersuite that’s just surreal and beautiful. 🕺

• As I progress with one of my big 2025 goals to buy less and really evaluate my spending, I found this piece on the ETC or Edit the Cart method centering! 🛒

• I did it, I made the viral Turkish Pasta recipe, and loved it! Here’s a proper recipe for it (and having made it twice - the tomato paste makes a big difference!) 🍝

• Artist Amanda Blake does lovely oil paintings about “fate and magic, wildflowers and stars, memories and fire,” and I think they’re so special. 💕

• This sad but beautiful comic by Tyler Feder really hit home. ❤️‍🩹

• Two house tours caught my eye recently: Designer Zoë Feldman’s 1920s DC home and Ganni Creative Director Ditte Reffstrup’s 19th-century Copenhagen home! 🏡

• We have been BLESSED with a new Haim single, Relationships! (Love the video and am obsessed with the single art referencing Nicole Kidman’s iconic 2001 divorce photo.) 🎶

• The other music I’ve had ON REPEAT for the last two weeks is Caroline Rose’s 2020 album Superstar. Every track slaps and all sound unique from each other.

• How CUTE are these propagation planters and bud wall vases?! (HERE!) 🌷

• I have finally come around to this season’s The White Lotus theme song, but nothing hits quite like Rennaissance did in S2. So if you’re jonesing, check out this beautiful live classical performance of it from the Pride celebration at the Barbicon in the UK. 🏳️‍🌈

• Spring feels like the perfect time to switch it up and start wearing a new perfume - I’m having trouble choosing one of the beauties by Régime des Fleurs. 🥀

• I have been loving everything Recho Omondi has to say lately, both on TikTok and in her fashion-forward podcast The Cutting Room Floor. 🎤

• Speaking of podcasts…

  • Amy Poehler’s new one Good Hang is charming - like getting to be a fly on the wall of chats with her and her famous friends. 🎧

  • And also! My friend Steph, a TV host and journalist, just launched hers I Am Not A Weather Girl, where she interviews inspiring women in media to learn about their lives and careers! ☀️

• I just found Brazilian artist Arthur Machado, known as Tuukzs, whose work was recently described as mesmerizing visual experiences at the intersection of broken code and spiritual symbolism. Would love to attend one of his installations! 🎨

Since I’m actively encouraging you all to be slow and soft for a little while, here’s your permission slip to curl up in a little ball and look at your phone for a bit. It’s fine. And I’m even going to give you some fun stuff to watch.

• Quite possibly the cutest video I’ve ever seen. 🥹

• Creator Christi Newrutzen’s series How Long Does it Take? is making me feel simultaneously very seen and very motivated. 💪

• We stan a Trader Joe’s flower arrangement - but especially when it’s done by Mikey Putnam of Putnam Flowers. 💐

• Can we bring back Banner Ladies?? Such an odd fun 19th century trend. 🎖️

• I’ve mentioned book cover designer Elisha Zepeda here before, but as we’re all currently obsessing over Severence, I had to share his Lumon-inspired post! 🩵

• We love a bedazzling for book nerds project! 📚

• Everything about this Grand Budapest Hotel miniature set in a suitcase is at the center of my venn. 🧳

• This pajama campaign by Nufferton is also giving Wes Anderson vibes. 👓

• Three ways to make over your picture frames! 🖼️

• I could watch ice skater Laine Dubin all day, particularly this Robyn routine. ⛸️

• Love this roundup of Nail Jewlery 💅

• From Afar Travel, with more things to add to my eternally growing bucket list, this one’s right in the center of my venn: 13 Beautiful Flower Blooms Around the World Worth Traveling For. 🌸

• This incredibly beautiful and painful piece from Cup of Jo: My Mom Was an Alcoholic. Here’s What I Finally Realized. ❤️‍🩹

• I wish this piece, focused on Blake Lively and Megan Markle, Why Do These Women Inspire Such Rage?, had gone further and dug deeper, but it’s an important call-out about the woman-on-woman hate online. 🤬

From Substack

First off - Rick Rubin has entered the chat! The creative genius and mentor has started a substack based on his insightful book The Creative Act, and I couldn’t hit the subscribe button fast enough. 💡

And some posts worth checking out!

• In The Joy of Being List-less, Zoe Spurg articulates some deeply identifiable slippery slopes for those of us obsessed with self-improvement. My compulsive planning was a way to obscure the truth of who I was. I got to live as a clean, disciplined future version of myself who didn’t have to face the messy, inevitable reality of my own inadequacies. I lived inside a set of goals to escape the immeasurable pain of not feeling good enough as I was. Wowwww. 🤯

• 100 things to support your mental health that aren't go for a walk and drink more water by Lauren McQuistin of realistic recovery (grit and grace) 🧘‍♀️

• Carolyn Yoo recently took a month offline to create fully in analog and it’s an interesting read. As someone who deals with the constant struggle between my digital and personal lives, I enjoyed reading her Diary of an Analog Month. 📖

• This isn’t a post (yet - she says one’s coming! 👀) but Serene Hassouna of Cosmopolitics has been sharing Middle Eastern design inspo in her notes, and I had to share some because they’re so cool: Arabic magazine covers, Middle Eastern graphic design and art direction. 🖊️

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How’s everybody feeling? New season, new month, new quarter, new possibilities! Let me know any recs you have for me to enhance my soft slow shift into spring!