As more and more fashion and beauty newsletters crowd our inboxes, writers are expressing frustration with the platform. What’s the way forward?
In 2025, everybody in fashion has a Substack. At least, that’s what it looks like, judging by my increasingly crowded inbox. Has it reached a saturation point?
In March, Substack hit five million paid subscriptions, up from four million four months prior and three million a year ago. Fashion and beauty is a key pillar, ranking among the top 100 topics (out of over 350,000 unique tags analysed), according to influencer marketing agency Subalytics. Over the past year, the number of publications and subscriptions in the fashion and beauty category has more than doubled, with publishers collectively earning more than $10 million annually in paid subscriptions, says Christina Loff, head of lifestyle, writer and creator partnerships at Substack.
“This upward trend suggests increasing competition in the space,” says Timofey Pletz, CEO and founder of Subalytics, which specialises in alternative platforms (namely Substack, Bluesky and Medium). Angela Galvez, writer of Letters We Send Friends, joined Substack 10 months ago. “There’s been such a change from last summer to today,” she says. “It’s definitely way more crowded.” For those on the receiving end, a sense of newsletter fatigue is brewing. One user says they have burnout; another notes that it feels like a new ‘trend’. A third is simply “overwhelmed”. One reader asks the burning question: “How do I keep up?”
Substack promised an alternative to traditional media, drawing in notable writers and editors to self-publish while owning their audiences. Newsletters like Leandra Medine Cohen’s The Cereal Aisle to Jessica Graves’s The Love List to Emilia Petrarca’s Shop Rat have become fashion must-reads. They make money from a combination of subscribers, affiliate links and brand advertisements; Graves says she’s making more on Substack than she ever did as an editor.
With money to be made and media jobs drying up — plus the inexorable rise of the influencer-turned-amateur expert — Substack has grown increasingly crowded, making it increasingly difficult to discover the best voices. Now, brands are jumping on board, creating Substacks of their own and further crowding the landscape. “There’s still concern about our ability to, and being required to, weed out the bad from the useful, the entertaining, the insightful,” says Annie Corser, senior pop culture and media analyst at consumer trends agency Stylus.
At the same time, Substack is on a major growth push — and more closely mirroring the social platforms it once stood apart from. In January, it launched live video capabilities allowing users to share these as short-form clips in-app while capitalising on TikTok’s uncertain fate in the US. (Alongside a $25,000 TikTok Liberation Prize, promising to “rescue the smart people from TikTok”.) Substack is also recruiting creators from other platforms — like the ‘Throwing Fits’ duo from Patreon — and, with them, their large audiences.
For some, the cons are beginning to outweigh the pros. Graves, who joined Substack four years ago and says she’s now reliant on it, is considering leaving. Writers regularly ask where Substack users are heading next. On a user level, how many newsletters can any one person subscribe to, pay for and read?
As more and more writers (and non-writers) join Substack, coupled with existing users’ increasing dissatisfaction with changes to the platform, will this be the year fashion Substack hits a wall — before it even gets off the ground at scale?
Growth at what cost?
Loff believes that there’s still room for growth in the fashion Substack space, propelled by the rise in creators. “It’s not a zero-sum game; there isn’t a cap on the number of people interested in fashion and beauty content here. In fact, as the space grows, it becomes more dynamic and engaging.”
But is there really no cap? Erika Veurink of Long Live says that herself and fellow creators have clocked a recent growth plateau. “The people I know who write Substacks who have paid readership are sort of like, OK, I think I’ve plateaued. I think anyone I would convert to a paid reader is converted,” she says. With the competition of so many letters, writers have to work harder to maintain the paid reader relationship now, she adds.
And with a laser focus on growth, Substack risks overlooking what its existing talent wants — and needs — to continue building out their own platforms. User growth at all cost isn’t sustainable for Substack’s wider ecosystem. One editor who publishes work on Substack likened it to Buzzfeed in 2012. “This is a platform for writers, and always has been,” Graves says. “That’s not to say that video shouldn’t be supported. But the people who have been beating the drum since the beginning are not getting the basic things that we need.” Both Graves and Veurink have experimented with live video, to few conversions.
“Our goal is to give creators the tools they need to build sustainable, subscription-based businesses — whether that’s through writing, podcasting, video, or any combination of these tools that helps them tell their stories in the most powerful way,” Loff says. “We’re not asking anyone to change what they do best. Video is simply an additional option for creators who want to connect with their audiences in another way. And while it’s not for everyone, having strong video voices on the platform can expand discovery and bring new audiences that benefit the entire ecosystem.”
The tools fashion Substackers do want range from the ability to embed code (Tumblr has this) to build out sub-pages (WordPress offers this). The personalisation of branding on a Substack site is limited to swapping out a logo and playing around with, albeit limited, existing layouts. There’s even less flexibility in-inbox. “I’ve been begging for years to allow us some design freedom, which they say is coming, but I haven’t seen yet,” Graves says. Veurink, too, always thought customisation and increased ownership would get more attention. “What’s actually gotten that attention is video content and gamifying getting paid subscribers,” she says.
A Substack representative said that the company is currently exploring more customisable templates and design capabilities through a private beta, which includes “richer design, flexible branding and tools for larger teams”. The platform declined to share further information about timing or broader availability.
Owned and affiliated
As far as brands are concerned, Substack isn’t anywhere near saturation. Many of them aren’t even on it yet.
Brand interest has grown significantly since the early days. “In the beginning, when I initially joined it was more difficult, because you were just trying to get people to understand what Substack even was. It was really hard to get people to sign up and subscribe, let alone an advertiser,” Graves says. “That was a lark. That was a pipe dream.”
Now, The Love List is making advertisers big bucks — it’s generated Net-a-Porter about $135,000 to date. The RealReal didn’t officially partner with any Substack creators until the end of 2024. Once it did, it saw strong click-through (over 6 per cent) and twofold ROAS (return on assets), says The RealReal chief creative officer Kristen Naiman. Smaller newsletters like Galvez’s Letters We Send Friends are generating brand interest too; she’s had brands reach out for features.
Feature Image Credit: Phil Oh
