Hi friends,

due to a sunny weather forecast I sneaked out of the home office on Tuesday at the magical time of an early “Feierabend” to meet two beloved besties to sit outside on a blanket for hours, with a safe distance. We felt like we had just indulged in some crazy, over the top luxury, bumping into another loved person on our way home (past 9pm), celebrating that shared bike ride through a mild breeze of spring like total first timers.

Little did we know that this outburst of euphoria will have to last for a bit until we mingle again. In the meantime, here are some carefully selected digital bits for you below.

Have lovely extended weekend

Yours truly, Julia 🤸🏼‍♀️

Drop your ideas here

📝 LINKS

• Article W Magazine asked Sofia Coppola to direct a cover shoot for their latest “Director’s Issue”. As an ode to her 1980’s muses, Kirsten Dunst, Rashida Jones and Elle Fanning pose in front of Zoë Ghertner’s camera ❤️ Made me feel like dressing up instantly and to dive straight into a movie night with some “The Virgin Suicides” or “Somewhere” throwbacks (LINK)

• Article Fashion designers and tech start-ups are working to improve sustainability and interrupt the path to the landfill. Can’t wait to test the H&M recycling machine, to feel that mushroom leather or to grab a garment that is made out of algae yarn (LINK)

• News Apolitical put together a list of Top 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy. The Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP) is the only (!) institution listed for Germany & the UK - guess there is still lots of homework to be done (LINK)

• Social Media If you want to step up your diversity game on Instagram, you might be inspired by Nike van Dinther’s recent collection of accounts to follow. Very much loved the variety in topics, characters and mind sets - THANK YOU (LINK)

• Beauty Playful and practical - that is the approach of Violette_fr and another example of community-focussed relevance in a Marketing DTC context. The french beauty influencer has been around for a decade and charmed her followers with that “je ne sais quoi” appeal since the beginning. She just launched her own product range, funded with a 2.75 mio dollar investment led by the Female Founders Fund (FFF), Felix Capital and Greycroft Ventures (LINK)

• Podcast Is the dream over? Two experts, whose work I adore for a long time now, speak about the downfall of the Silicon Valley as we know it: Jeanette Hofmann, Professor of Internet Politics at the FU Berlin and Research Director of the HiiG and Adrian Daub, Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford University & author of “What Tech Calls Thinking” share their thoughts about a potentially uncomfortable truth (LINK, German only)

• Innovation Speaking of the re-invention of agriculture last week: Benedikt Bösel, CEO of the farm “Gut & Bösel”, held an inspiring speech about his ideas on sustainable biodiversity that goes beyond the hype of digitalization during the “Dialogforum Landwirtschaft” in January 2020 (LINK)

• Online course Very tempted to try this pottery class with Soyeon Starke-An at The Floox. You can also paint your own Bauhaus masterpiece if holding a brush instead of your phone sounds like a better option (LINK)

• Music Just a woman and her guitar: Lianne La Havas and her appearance at the Tiny Desk (Home) Concert comes very close to a Lauryn Hill medley (LINK)
  

📚 BOOKS

Felt like escaping into someone else’s mind set that is as far away as possible from my current surroundings. This new novel by Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro “Klara And The Sun” takes you to a fictional future world of Nabokovian estrangements, where KI robots, so called “Artificial Friends” (AFs), serve as digital toys for children that care for and play with them. At least they pray to the sun for help as a last remainder of unusual humanity. The New Yorker published a great long read on the author and explains how artificial intelligence can reveal your own limitations (LINK).

A crowd of passersby had formed right outside our store, not to look at us, but because, for a moment, the sidewalk had become so busy no one had been able to move. Then something changed, the crowd grew thinner, and I saw standing before us a small woman, her back to us, looking across the four lanes of moving taxis to the waving man. I couldn’t see her face, but I estimated sixty-seven years old from her shape and posture. I named her in my mind the Coffee Cup Lady because from the back, and in her thick wool coat, she seemed small and wide and round-shouldered like the ceramic coffee cups resting upside down on the Red Shelves. Although the man kept waving and calling, and she’d clearly seen him, she didn’t wave or call back. She kept completely still, even when a pair of runners came towards her, parted on either side, then joined up again, their sports shoes making small splashes down the sidewalk.

📌 PIN BOARD

Jobs (all m/f/d)

• Showroom Assistance, full-time in HH. CHANEL // Tasks: Coordinate showroom activities and set-up, manage parcel operations, handle press communications and support PR team in general (LINK)

• Gardener, full- or part-time in Berlin. The Plant Box (Website) // Tasks: Support with production, buying and maintenance processes. Drivers license is required, early risers are welcome, a dedicated love for plants and expertise in the field is a must. Send your CV to jk@hey-woman.com

Other

• Office Space Carpet startup The Knots is looking for a small store with a window front in Prenzlauer Berg or Mitte, approx. 50 m2, 1500 Eur max. Please contact Katrin directly via Email if you have any leads or ideas 🙏🏻

• Call for Submission (Re)building trust in the digital age - Change makers, activists, technologists and creative minds can hand in their ideas on how to make free knowledge more inclusive for the UNLOCK Accelerator program by Wikimedia until May 16th (LINK)

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📆 CALENDAR

• Friday, April 2nd, 19:30h // Concert: Elbphilarmonie organizes their Easter treats in a different way this year. In an old church in Aix-en-Provence they set up a live stream for their annual “Matthäus-Passion” concert by Bach, played by the french ensemble Pygmalion, conducted by young super talent Raphaël Pichon (LINK)

• Tuesday, April 6th, 20h // Reading: London Review of Book hosts a digital conversation between Rachel Kushner and Hal Foster, where they speak about her latest book “The Hard Crowd” (LINK)

• Thursday, April 8th, 19h // Reading: Writer Emilia Roig presents her latest work “Why We Matter” at Literaturhaus Berlin (LINK)
  

👯‍♀️ FRIENDS

Let’s celebrate the brave minds who dare to go all in for brick & mortar projects these days:

• Melanie Dal Canton opened a new store next to MDC Apotheke and it is as beautiful as everything else she touches (LINK)

• Carolin Dunkel celebrates her fifth year anniversary with her curated brand boutique April First. You will receive 15% off for five days on all online sales with the code 5YEARS (LINK)

• Klaus Zinsmeister is back for the summer and Tribeca Ice Cream is open again. Try to make a difference when consuming sugar aka the crack of our time and go for immune system friendly alternatives like you find here (LINK)

💌 THE END 💌