Kinfolk and Identity
Doing some reading on the remaining in-print magazines of our day and age: notably Kinfolk and Monocle, I came over an interview with Kinfolk’s editor with some notable sentences and insights.
On the origin of our Selves and our desires:
As I wandered across Copenhagen from artisanal coffee shop to curated bookstore, I thought about why I want the things I want: an industrial loft apartment, a precisely poured cortado, intimate dinner parties — all things that show up in Kinfolk.
I learned these aspirations through magazines, novels, television shows, and the tastes of my friends. Lined up, they seem like the punchline of a joke at my own expense, the reduction of an identity to a few arbitrary objects, and yet I feel an unjustifiable loyalty to them as mine.
On lifestyle being a shared method of communicating belonging:
A lifestyle is made up of a shared vernacular. My Instagram was so popular because my friends recognized a quiet coffee in a foreign city as a badge of the lifestyle that we aspire to.