The [Tuesday] Media Diet with Laura Reilly

On The Passion, Color Combinations, and Perplexity

Laura Reilly (LR) runs the essential shopping newsletter Magasin. We’re happy to have her with us this week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I'm Laura. I was born in London and I grew up in Costa Rica. I went to university in San Francisco before moving to New York, where I've lived for the past nine years.

I run the fashion shopping newsletter Magasin, which is turning three soon—it's a biweekly containing what I think is the most interesting shopping news and sales from independent, emerging, and luxury brands, plus recommendations on what to buy and where to find the best deals. It also puts out crowd-sourced Google Sheets of what readers are buying for fall or for Black Friday, and does other fun, off-piste things as the occasion arises.

Before that, I was the Ecommerce Editor at InStyle and have at various points had columns at The New York Times and The Cut. I live in Clinton Hill with my husband and two parakeets.

Describe your media diet. 

It's become soooo newsletter-heavy. The ones I most often read snout to tail are Emily's Feed Me, Lauren's Line Sheet on Puck, Jonah and Erin's Blackbird Spyplane, Rachel's Opulent Tips whenever it deins to arrive. Then there's After School, I <3 Mess, Byline, Perfectly Imperfect, Passerby, Love and Other Rugs, McLotto, Deep Voices. I think my contemporaries are Leandra's Cereal Aisle, Jalil's Consider Yourself Cultured, Emilia's Shop Rat, Becky's Five Things, Laurel's Earl Earl—I love what they're doing and like to keep up and support.

For news and industry headlines (beyond what I already mentioned), I look to NYT, BoF, Miss Tweed, The Information, Style Not Com. I read Rachel's pieces on WaPo when I see them on Twitter, same with anything Amanda Mull writes and Brenda's interviews on 032c.

I keep up with brand news on Instagram and take a million screenshots for my newsletter's weekly news + sales send. I subscribe to all of their newsletters with my junk account, too.

I listen to podcasts when I run—Founders, Huberman Lab, How I Built This. I listen to my Discover Weekly and my Liked Songs from the top down more than I seek out new music independently, but I always listen when my friend Quinton Mulvey releases a new playlist. His archives plus the central playlist for my husband's food business ETI are the go-to dinner party music.

We've got Netflix, Max, Hulu (I think), and Apple TV (I think), but I watch something maybe once a week these days, not a ton. My vice is Reddit, where I'm part of a bunch of bad-for-my-mental-health subs that I refuse to quit and will doomscroll for a minimum of two hours before bed each night.

What’s the last great book you read?

My book reading fell off when I stopped having a commute. I went from burning through a novel every few days to barely reading them at all. The last positive book I audio-read was Rich Dad, Poor Dad (lol). The greatest book ever is The Passion According to G.H.

What are you reading now?

Two lovely books I received as gifts for my birthday last week: a Photofile book on Sophie Calle and "A Dictionary of Color Combinations" published by Seigensha.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I've ceased a lot of print subscriptions over the years. I only get the Times anymore when me or someone I know is in it (or if it's the Mega crossword as with this week). If I'm at my mom's or my neighbor gets a New Yorker, I look at the back page and then Around Town and then flip through to see if anything gets my attention. If it's an independent, I love to look at the masthead first (I have always done this for some reason) and then front to back to completion.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

My friend Alex Rapine writes a Substack, Bar Tab, reviewing dive bars (and the like). He used to post selfies wearing other people's sunglasses with meandering, introspective captions on IG, and he's recently migrated that content over to his newsletter, too. It's not trying to get anything from you, it's just enjoyable, sometimes useful prose that's pleasant to take in.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? 

I recently discovered the AI search engine Perplexity through Ian Betteridge's newsletter, and it's so much more helpful than Google, which is now all SEM. They have an app, and it makes me feel that early-internet, information-at-your-fingertips digital benevolence I've been missing for a while.

Plane or train?

Train from New York to DC, plane everywhere else.

What is one place everyone should visit? 

I'm pretty sure half of everyone already has visited, so my work here is largely done. But, I'm going back, so it's on my mind: The thing I'm most looking forward to about Mexico City is Contramar. Perfect meal, perfect setting, perfect experience. It's impossible to improve upon and is the metric by which I measure all other dining experiences.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into. 

I'm researching luxury auction catalogs for a project right now and just set myself up with a whole stack. Christie's and Sotheby's, naturally, but the Japanese ones—Shinwa, Mainichi—and French—Cornette, Artcurial—are so fun to flip through and learn about everything from whisky to handbags to Louis XVI furniture. (LR)

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