What this is
For the girl who lost herself
in a record store
and never fully came back.
Charlotte Sometimes is the publication that exists in the gap between Sassy magazine and the Paris Review — between the girl who cried at a concert at 16 and the adult who still doesn't have a word for what that felt like. It is literary and personal and nostalgic and sharp. It is for everyone who loved culture so hard when they were young that they've spent their adult life trying to get back to that intensity.
The feeling that a song could save your life. That a film could teach you who you were. That a photograph could break something open in you. That feeling didn't lie. It just doesn't have a home anymore. Until now.
The three DNA strands
Sassy Magazine — 1988 to 1996
The voice that talked to you like you were already smart
Sassy didn't condescend. It didn't simplify. It covered race, sexuality, mental health, and political identity in 1990 while every other teen magazine was writing about lip gloss. It had personality on every page — you could feel a specific person wrote each piece, and that person genuinely cared what you thought. Christina Kelly. Jane Pratt. Mary Clarke. They wrote to you like a brilliant older sister who happened to have access to every band, every film, every movement that mattered.
What we steal: the intimacy. The specificity. The refusal to talk down. The sense that the reader is already the most interesting person in the room — the publication is just catching up to her.
The Paris Review — Founded 1953
The long interview. The art treated as worthy of serious attention.
The Paris Review's "Art of Fiction" interviews established the template for taking creative people seriously — asking not just what they made but how they think, how they work, what they're afraid of, what they're trying to do. The interviews ran to 10,000 words. Nobody apologized for the length. The conviction underneath it all: art is serious. Artists are worth this amount of attention. The reader can handle the depth.
What we steal: the depth. The willingness to sit with one thing for as long as it takes. The interview as a form of portraiture. The sense that reading carefully is its own reward.
The New Yorker — The cultural essay
The piece that takes one thing completely seriously for 3,000 words
The New Yorker taught the world that you can write 3,000 words about a single photograph, a single song, a single neighborhood, and make it feel essential. The Talk of the Town. The critic profiles. The long cultural essays that don't have a point beyond: this matters, here's why, and here's what you'll notice now that you know. The magazine that made attentiveness a practice.
What we steal: the attentiveness. The belief that a single object — a record, a film, a place — can sustain sustained attention. The essay as the highest form of caring about something.
The 90s — The specific ache
The era that is both reference point and open wound
The 90s matter here not as an aesthetic to perform but as a feeling to recover. The intensity of adolescent cultural love — before irony became armor, before everything became content, before you learned to be strategic about what you admitted moved you. Mix tapes. Record stores. Films on VHS that you rewound immediately. Shows in small rooms. The feeling that this music was yours specifically and nobody else had found it yet. Charlotte Sometimes lives in that feeling — even for people who weren't there for the decade itself and just somehow know exactly what it meant.
What we steal: the sincerity. The willingness to love things without quotation marks. The specific melancholy of nostalgia for an intensity you can't recreate. The refusal to be cool about the things that matter most.
Who reads Charlotte Sometimes
The core reader
35–50, was 14–20 in the 90s
She kept her Sassy issues. She still talks about the film that changed her. She has opinions about Lauryn Hill, about Vivian Maier, about what happened to indie music. She's tired of publications that treat culture as content to be optimized and is hungry for something that still believes art matters.
The displaced reader
24–35, born too late but arrived anyway
She discovered the 90s through films and records and feels the ache of nostalgia for a decade she didn't quite live through. She watches Daria on streaming. She knows every word of The Miseducation. She feels slightly out of time and wants a publication that understands that feeling.
The creative reader
Any age, making something
She makes music, photographs, films, writing. She reads Charlotte Sometimes not for business advice but for the thing that reminds her why she started. The column about a film or a record that reconnects her to the original feeling — the one that made her want to make things in the first place.
The man who reads it
Any age, doesn't mention it but never misses an issue
Charlotte Sometimes is written primarily for women and nonbinary readers — but the specific emotional territory it occupies (the nostalgia for adolescent cultural intensity, the serious treatment of music and film) has no gender. He just doesn't tell anyone he subscribes. That's fine. The publication knows he's there.
The editorial lineup
The columns.
Named like Sassy.
Written like the Review.
Eight recurring columns. Some appear every issue. Some rotate. None of them are advice. All of them are attention paid to things that deserve it.
The Sassy DNA
Sassy's "It Happened to Me" was the most copied column in magazine history for a reason — it gave first-person narrative to experiences that had never been named in print. Assault, sexuality, mental illness, family violence, the specific humiliations of adolescence. Written by real people, not staff writers. Charlotte Sometimes revives it for adults who survived their teens and are still processing what happened there.
First-person essays, 800–1,500 words. The experience can be from any point in life — but the lens is always: what did this teach me about who I am, what I love, what I'm still carrying? The culture essays that feel most personal live here too: "The first time I heard this album." "The film I watched the week everything fell apart." "The photograph I took when I couldn't say anything else." Contributions from readers welcome — this column is genuinely open.
I tried to become my brand and lost myself for three years
The mixtape I made for someone who never listened to it
My mother didn't understand my music. I understand now that it was never for her.
I went back to the record store where I found myself at 16. It's a Chase Bank now.
What it meant to be the only Black girl at the Bikini Kill show
The Paris Review DNA
The Paris Review made you care about writers you'd never read and films you'd never seen because the writing was so specific and so attentive that the subject became irrelevant — it was about the quality of attention being paid. The Reel does this for film: not a review, not a ranking, but an extended act of looking closely at one film and reporting back on what's there.
600–900 words per issue. Always a specific film, never a genre or a director's "body of work." Written in present tense, as if you're watching it now. The aim: to write about a film so specifically that the reader either needs to see it or understands exactly why they already love it. Can be new, old, well-known, or obscure — what matters is that it does something real.
In the Mood for Love — a film about not saying the thing, and why that's the whole point
Daughters of the Dust — Julie Dash understood visual storytelling in 1991 in ways Hollywood still doesn't
Reality Bites, watched at 40 — I finally understand what Lelaina Pierce was trying to do
Clueless was never a comedy — it was a precision instrument aimed directly at white feminism
The scene in Moonlight on the beach. Just that scene. 800 words about those three minutes.
The Sassy DNA — direct resurrection
Cute Band Alert was Sassy's music discovery column. It ran brief, enthusiastic pieces about bands the editors loved — before anyone else loved them. It discovered R.E.M., Nirvana, Hole, and dozens of others while they were still small. The energy was that of a friend who spent the whole week listening to music on your behalf and came back with her six favourite discoveries. No hierarchy. No genre gatekeeping. Just genuine enthusiasm.
Six artists per issue. 100–150 words each. Written with genuine enthusiasm — not industry language, not streaming metrics, not "if you like X you'll love Y." Just: here is this person making this specific sound, and here is why it matters that they exist. Can include one historical recovery — an artist from the 90s who deserves to be rediscovered right now.
"Amaarae makes music that sounds like being 3am in a city you love. She's from Ghana and has lived in Atlanta and London and you can hear all three places in one song. She is completely her own thing. Cute Band Alert. Obviously."
The Paris Review DNA — direct inheritance
The Art of Fiction interviews ran long, asked hard questions, and let the subject actually think before answering. They were never promotional. They were portraiture. Charlotte Sometimes applies this format to creatives who are making work right now — giving them the kind of attention usually reserved for literary novelists. A musician. A filmmaker. A photographer. An artist. Treated with Paris Review seriousness.
1,200–2,000 words. Bi-weekly — this appears in every other issue, not every one. The questions are always about process, identity, and what the work costs — never about "what's next" or streaming numbers. The interviewee should leave feeling like they said something true. The reader should finish knowing this person in a specific, lasting way. This is the column that earns the Paris Review comparison.
The Art of Being: a Rochester filmmaker on making work in a city the industry has forgotten
The Art of Being: a musician on what it meant to make an album that nobody heard — and why she'd make it exactly the same way again
The Art of Being: a photographer on the difference between taking pictures and making photographs
400–600 words on a single photograph. Could be by Gordon Parks, Vivian Maier, Deana Lawson, Carrie Mae Weems, or an emerging photographer whose work stopped something in you. Written as an extended act of looking — what the photographer chose, what they left out, what the image keeps doing to you. The George Eastman Museum connection makes this column Rochester-rooted. This is the New Yorker essay format applied to a single image.
Vivian Maier photographed herself in shop windows for 40 years. Nobody saw it until she died. I want to sit with what that means.
The Gordon Parks photograph that hangs in my memory like a painting I've never seen in person
Deana Lawson's photographs look like they were always going to exist. Here's what that takes.
The Sassy DNA
Sassy's advice column handled questions that no other publication would touch — questions about sexuality, family, identity, the specific ache of not fitting in. Written with honesty, warmth, and zero condescension. Charlotte Sometimes' version handles the adult version of those questions: the grief of growing up, the nostalgia that sits like a bruise, the fear that the things you loved most are behind you.
One question, one answer per issue. The questions are about culture, identity, and the feelings that live in art — not career advice, not pricing strategy (that's Dear Aura in Cool, Actually). "How do I stop being sad about the record store closing?" "I can't listen to this album anymore because of who I was with when I loved it. Is that going to change?" "My mother finally asked me about my music. I didn't know what to say." These are real questions. They deserve real answers.
"Dear Charlotte — I've been trying to write about a film I love for three years and every draft sounds wrong. The film matters so much to me that I'm scared of doing it badly. What do I do? — Afraid in Oakland"
The shortest column. Eight items. Each one gets one sentence — no more. The sentence explains why it's living in you, not what it is. This is the column that generates the most reader responses because readers recognize themselves in the specific things on the list and feel immediately known. It's also the most shareable column: a list of eight things that reveals a complete sensibility in under 200 words.
"The way Lauryn Hill says the word 'forgiveness' in the song about her mother. A photograph I've been trying to take for five years. The last ten minutes of In the Mood for Love, which I've now seen eight times and still don't feel ready for. The way Rochester looks at 6am in winter — specific, forgotten, exactly itself."
800–1,200 words. A deep profile of a figure from music, film, or photography who deserves more careful attention than they've received — or different attention than the culture gave them. Could be historical recovery (Poly Styrene, Charles Burnett, Vivian Maier) or a reassessment of someone still living whose work has been misread. Written with Paris Review seriousness and Sassy warmth. The goal: to give this person the profile they always deserved.
Poly Styrene saw everything coming in 1977. Nobody listened until she was gone.
Charles Burnett made Killer of Sheep for nothing. It became a masterpiece. The industry still doesn't know what to do with him.
What Sassy got right that every publication since has gotten wrong
Carrie Mae Weems has been making the work the art world claims to want for 40 years. Here's what she's actually been saying.
How Charlotte Sometimes sounds
The voice that
never performs
caring.
The Charlotte Sometimes voice is the opposite of content. It is the thing you write when you can't not write it. It is specific, warm, a little sad in the best way, and always treating the reader as the most interesting person in the room.
Sassy's great gift was writing that sounded like it came from a real person who happened to have access to the cultural conversation. Not a brand. A person. Charlotte Sometimes writes the same way — from inside a genuine relationship with culture, not from above it.
Charlotte Sometimes sounds like
Present tense, first person. Happening now, even when it's a memory.
Specific nouns. Not "a song." The specific song. The specific year. The specific feeling of hearing it in that specific room.
Short sentences that arrive. Followed by longer ones that breathe.
Genuine love. Not ironic appreciation. Not "guilty pleasure." The refusal to put quotation marks around things you actually love.
The admission of not knowing. "I still don't understand why this film wrecks me. I've watched it four times trying to figure it out."
vs
Charlotte Sometimes never sounds like
SEO language. "Here are five reasons why." "You need to know about." "Don't miss."
Industry language. "This artist's latest drop." "Their brand." "The rollout."
Ironic distance. The raised eyebrow. The quotation marks around things you actually mean.
The think-piece voice. The "unpacking" and "interrogating" and "centering the conversation around."
Summary. Charlotte Sometimes never summarizes a film or album — it inhabits them.
The vocabulary
Words we use
The Charlotte Sometimes lexicon
Wrecks. Haunts. Specific. Particular. Still. The way. The thing where. I've watched it four times. I don't know how to explain this. It sounds like. The feeling of being. The room where. In the year when. Before I understood. The part that stays.
Words we avoid
The vocabulary of content
Curated. Aesthetic. Vibe. Resonates. Authentic. Journey. Pivoting. Leaning in. Content. Platform. Engagement. Dropped. Collab. Brand. Influencer. Algorithm. Game-changing. Masterclass.
The emotional register
The feeling behind every piece
Not happy. Not sad. The specific feeling of caring about something deeply enough that it can hurt you. Nostalgia with its eyes open. Love that knows exactly what it loves and why. The bittersweet knowledge that certain intensities only happen once.
"I heard this album the week my grandmother died. I don't know if that's why I love it or if I would have loved it anyway. I've stopped trying to separate the two."
The reference pool
Where Charlotte Sometimes lives culturally
My So-Called Life. Daria. Reality Bites. Singles. Empire Records. Hole. PJ Harvey. Liz Phair. The Fugees. Lauryn Hill. Sassy. Riot grrrl zines. Mixtapes. Record stores that no longer exist. Films you watched on VHS. The 2am conversation. The show in the small room.
The debut
Issue 001
The Arrival.
The first issue exists to answer one question for a new reader: is this the publication I've been waiting for? Every piece should create the feeling of finding the right record store in an unfamiliar city. Yes. This is where I belong.
Charlotte Sometimes · Vol. 1, No. 1 · The Arrival Issue
For the girl who found herself
in a record store at 16
and has been looking for her ever since.
The debut issue of Charlotte Sometimes — the publication that exists in the gap between Sassy magazine and the Paris Review, between the girl who cried at a concert and the adult who still doesn't have words for it.
It Happened to Me
I tried to become my brand and lost myself for three years
The founding essay. What happens when you turn your identity into a marketing strategy — and how you find yourself again when the strategy stops working. Personal, specific, the piece that makes Issue 001 essential for every creative who has ever felt like they disappeared into their own content.
The Reel
Reality Bites, watched at 40
The film that defined a generation of young women navigating art, ambition, and authenticity — watched again with 25 years of hindsight. What Lelaina Pierce was actually trying to do. What the film got right about creative identity that we didn't understand at the time. 700 words about watching yourself in a movie you first saw at 17.
Cute Band Alert
Six musicians you should know. No algorithms involved.
The inaugural Cute Band Alert — six artists making music right now that has the specific quality of the 90s music we loved: specific, uncompromising, sounds like a person and not a brand. Plus one historical recovery: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, 30 years on, and why it sounds more contemporary than most music released last month.
Developed
The photograph Vivian Maier took of herself in a shop window on October 18, 1956
One photograph. 600 words about what it means to spend 40 years making work that you never needed anyone else to see. The George Eastman Museum holds part of the Maier archive. This is a Rochester dateline piece.
Dear Charlotte
"I went back to the record store where I found myself at 16. It's a Chase Bank now."
The inaugural Dear Charlotte — a reader question about grief for physical culture spaces and what we do with the intensity of adolescent love for art when the places that held it are gone. The answer is not consolation. It's honest.
Haunted By
What I'm currently haunted by — the debut list
Eight things living in the founder's mind right now. The list that tells you everything about the publication's sensibility in under 200 words. Sets the tone. Creates the feeling of finding someone who loves the same things you do, in the same specific way.
Before She Was Famous
What Sassy got right that every publication since has gotten wrong
The history piece that earns Charlotte Sometimes its origin story. Not just nostalgia — a specific argument for what Sassy understood about its readers that no publication since has replicated, and what that means for how Charlotte Sometimes is made.
The relaunch letter — to existing subscribers
"If you've been here before, thank you for staying. Charlotte Sometimes just became what it was always trying to be. Same soul, new wardrobe — and a much more honest sense of who she is and what she's for. Welcome to the arrival issue. I'm glad you're here."
The look
Darker than Sassy.
Warmer than the Review.
Specifically itself.
The palette
Typography
Display — IM Fell English Italic — all headlines, the title, bylines
Charlotte Sometimes
The girl who woke up as someone else — and the music she found when she did.
Body copy — Instrument Sans — captions, labels, navigation, the type voice
Sassy talked to girls like they were already smart. The Paris Review talked to artists like their process mattered. Charlotte Sometimes does both — in a voice that sounds like the thing you say to a friend at 2am about a film that wrecked you.
Pull quotes — Cormorant Garamond — the long literary quote, the featured line
"I went back to the record store where I found myself at 16. It's a Chase Bank now. I stood outside it for a long time."
Labels + structure — Special Elite — the typewriter voice, section markers
It Happened to Me · Vol. 1, No. 1 · Charlotte Sometimes · A Publication of Artistry Aura
The print edition aesthetic
Paper stock
Newsprint with attitude
Newsprint interior — the tactile quality of something not trying to last forever, like Sassy. Matte card cover, heavier stock. Saddle-stitched. The object should feel like it was made by someone who cared about every detail but didn't have a corporate budget. Because it was.
Photography direction
Film grain. Natural light. Nothing posed.
Images that look like they were shot on film because they should have been. High grain, slightly underexposed, the specific warmth of a 90s photograph. No stock photography. No lifestyle photography with obvious mood boards behind it. Real things in real light.
Layout philosophy
Print first, then digital
The print edition drives the design decisions — even for the Substack. The Substack should feel like a digital version of a real magazine, not a newsletter with a magazine's ambitions. Big headlines. Columns that breathe. White space treated as content.
The cover
Always the title. Always the rose.
"Charlotte Sometimes" in IM Fell italic is the cover every issue. The color of the title shifts — rose for Issue 001, lilac for Issue 002, worn gold for Issue 003 — but the typography is invariant. The magazine is recognizable from the spine, like Vogue was recognizable from the masthead.
The model
Separate from
Artistry Aura.
Connected to everything.
Charlotte Sometimes is a sister publication — not a subdivision. It has its own Substack, its own audience, its own visual identity. It connects to Artistry Aura through the founder's voice, the Rochester location, and the shared belief that culture is serious. But it never becomes a brand strategy publication.
Platform
Separate Substack
Charlotte Sometimes lives on its own Substack, separate from Cool, Actually. Different subscriber list. Different aesthetic. A reader can subscribe to one, the other, or both. The separation keeps both publications from diluting each other — and doubles the potential subscriber base.
Pricing
Free + $6/month
Free tier: every other issue, Cute Band Alert always free. Paid ($6/month): full access, The Art of Being interview in every issue, the Before She Was Famous profile, the Dear Charlotte column, and the quarterly print edition mailed to paid subscribers anywhere in the US.
Cadence
Bi-weekly — every other Wednesday
Charlotte Sometimes publishes the Wednesday that Cool, Actually doesn't. So between the two publications, there is a Substack delivery every Wednesday — but from alternating publications, with completely different voices and content. The reader gets a weekly arrival without the founder producing two full issues every week.
The print edition
Quarterly — the object that earns the subscription
Four print issues per year, mailed to paid subscribers. Each print issue collects the best of 6 digital issues, plus print-only content. This is the product that Charlotte Sometimes readers will photograph, display, keep. The physical object is the brand's most important ambassador.
Audience crossover
Different people, same world
Some readers subscribe to both publications. Many subscribe to only one. Charlotte Sometimes reaches people who would never read a business publication — which expands the total Artistry Aura audience significantly. A Charlotte Sometimes subscriber who loves The Reel becomes a Cool, Actually subscriber when they start thinking about their own creative business. The pipeline flows both ways.
The short film connection
The narrative Charlotte Sometimes film
The Charlotte Sometimes short film (planned in the media company model) premieres as a Substack exclusive for paid subscribers of this publication. This is the most powerful subscriber acquisition moment — the film the publication is named for, seen first by the people who've been reading it longest. Creates genuine community and genuine value simultaneously.
Charlotte Sometimes succeeds when a reader finishes an issue and feels less alone in their relationship with culture. When they feel that someone else loves the things they love with the same specific, embarrassing, uncool intensity. That's the whole job. Everything else follows from that.