🔮 5 predictions for 2024 🔮
my hot takes for the year ahead
Hi friends!
Writing to you from the tail-end of the worst food poisoning of my life. Hoping that’s less of an ominous sign of the year to come and instead a rough end to what was a big growth year for me. As part of this growth, I’m proud of how I focused on writing. In 2023, I sent over 186 pitches (5 of those have been published—don’t do the conversion rate unless you want to cry).
An essential part of pitching is forming perspectives and watching trends, which has been super fun and made for great chat. With my brain thinking that way, I wanted to share a few observations and predictions I have for the year ahead.
Here are 5 Things I Can’t Stop Thinking About:
The barbell method of traveling: I’m confident in the rise of what I am calling the barbell method of traveling—meaning you either travel super cheap or super luxurious, with no in-between. What I mean is that I’m either sleeping on a friend’s couch or saving my money to ball out on one night at the five-star hotel that I’ve saved a million times on Instagram (ahem, Estelle Manor). Gone are the days of spending $250 on a not-very-nice Airbnb that requires I take the trash out. Companies are popping up to cater to the barbell travelers—on the thrifty end, home-swapping site Kindred joined the incumbents HomeExchange, BeHomm, and the Facebook group YesNomads to try to do the impossible and make house-swapping efficient. On the luxury side, there is an even greater awareness of what’s out there thanks to TikTok, luxury travel publications, and aggregators like Small Luxury Hotels, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Yolo Journal, and Design Hotels to serve up recommendations.
Rise of the restaurant wedding: Despite how it might feel like everyone online is trying to do their own spin on Sofia Richie Grange’s maximalist wedding, I'm starting to see a strong cohort of alternative wedding advocates who are doing their weddings as cheaply as possible. (I need to whisper into my phone to ensure I get more of this in my TikTok algorithm.) My favorite of this trend is the restaurant wedding a la the likes of Mari Andrew, Christina Cleveland, and Lauren, the last two being styled by my brilliant friend Lindsay Jones. (Disclosure: I am not sure if these actually do cost less than a full wedding, but I would have to guess that they do).
Scotland is HOT!!! An astute observer might have noticed that Hill House came to the Scottish Highlands to shoot their holiday campaign at The Fife Arms, Barbour and Ganni teamed up for an influencer trip in Loch Ness, and Stella McCartney launched a lifestyle collection that pays homage to her time in Scotland as a child. Fair Isle sweaters, from the Scottish island named “Fair Isle,” are everywhere—with Bode, Khaite, Loro Piana, and more launching their own iterations. While it may appear that Scotland is trendy now, I learned at the Scottish Festival of Fashion that Scotland is steeped with fashion history. Elsa Schiaparelli was a frequent guest at Braemar Castle and Gabrielle Chanel was a champion of Scottish textiles, using tweeds, tartan, and cashmere from the Shetland Islands. Maybe Scotland’s revival in high street fashion can be chalked up to the "old money" and “Sloane Ranger” aesthetics, or perhaps some of the Scotland scenes interwoven into the final season of The Crown have served as inspiration. Whatever it is, Scotland is having a moment.
Where did all the raw vegans go? This is something I first observed among my friends. Many of my plant-based and vegan friends started to switch away from non-dairy milks (is this due to a successful lobby of the Got Milk campaign?) and then started to incorporate eggs, fish, and even steak into their diets. I was recently #influenced to try oysters and steak by G and I have to admit they are delicious. I do think that seven years of being on-and-off vegan has meant I am missing some essential nutrients. I spent many years in my teens watching raw vegan Youtube and being influenced to eat an excessive amount of bananas and chickpea pasta—perhaps this desire to bring in more protein is the delayed effect of those hours watching #RawVegan videos finally wearing off or a larger cultural movement towards people incorporating a small amount of sustainably and humanely farmed animal proteins into a predominantly plant-based diet.
Sobriety is ever on the rise: Is it just me or are more people running marathons? Is it too much of a reach to connect more people running marathons to the growing sobriety movement? Who knows. Only Whoop knows. All jokes aside, I do think wearables have accelerated the trend of drinking less or stopping drinking completely because people can directly see how alcohol affects their sleep. Linking sleep with sobriety has linked not drinking to the productivity movement and frankly, being productive is more socially acceptable than being sober. This year saw sobriety become the latest productivity hack (alongside cold plunges) which I don’t see as a bad thing—it definitely makes rethinking your relationship to alcohol more accessible to a group of people who might have not been able to find a way to sobriety otherwise. Coming up on three years of sobriety this March, I do believe that sobriety will continue to enter the mainstream in a meaningful way.
Those are my strongest held convictions for the year ahead. What do you think? Did I miss anything? Am I flat-out wrong? Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Sarah
We are from such different worlds! I’m old. There have always been teetotallers - those of us who don’t drink. We just never talked about it much. All the runners might leave the party early and head off to bed, but yes the sharing of these options on social media these days at least reminds people that abstaining is a socially acceptable option.
I think we generally end up socialising with those who have compatible tastes. It just takes one bad experience with a handsy drunk, or one horrendous hangover and we do make these little decisions. I guess there’s a time period in life when we do what we think our peers expect of us, but hopefully we live long enough to realise that the only opinions that matter are of those we actually respect.
Social media is a pretty nasty place from my perspective, as an oldie, so I steer clear. I know my online safe spaces and I stick to them and give the other places a wide berth. It must be so hard being young these days. Sigh...
Anyway, Happy New Year dear Sarah. I wish you and your loved ones all the best for the year ahead. Enjoy your wedding and your writing and life in general. Sending heaps of hugs and best wishes. 🤗🤗😘
Happy New Year, Sarah!! Love this and definitely am seeing most of these trends show up in my life too.
For the rise in sobriety, I’d also add that an increase in accessibility to sophisticated non-alcoholic options is helping the trend. Sort of a chicken or the egg situation: interest in not drinking is breading more non alcoholic options which is breading more interest in not drinking and so on.
AND I think gen Z’s lack of interest in drinking + their increasing economic influence plays a big role too, which I suspect is the result of a combination of factors, but one of the big ones is the way they socialized in more intimate settings during COVID as opposed to big house parties or things of the like.
Thank you again for this, Sarah!! Wishing you a lovely, joyful 2024 :)