Ep. 114: Grisch

Hi, everyone. Welcome to NIMFA alumni. This is Biz and today we have a very special episode for you. But first, I wanted to thank everyone that has subscribed to my newsletter, American Style, which launched last week. I actually haven't had a chance to properly mention it on air. So if you haven't heard, it's a blog about what people are really wearing and why. And there's a special invite from NIMFA's on Patreon. So yeah, thank you to the NIMFA's that have sent me sweet messages. And without further ado, I'll introduce today's topic. In this episode, we'll be exploring Grish. Grish is a style that originates in Sweden, specifically in Stockholm's wealthy neighborhoods. It's mostly known as a style for young men and teenage boys. It's characterized by designer jeans, puffer, vest, and jackets, also designer, sort of like Ralph Lauren's sweaters and shirts, specifically the American flag sweater, or maybe even like the polo teddy bear sweater, luxury sneakers from brands like Golden Goose and Valentino. The color palette is, I guess, pretty classic scandy, navy gray, blacks and whites and creams. It's meant to be a sort of classic, welp, signaling look, and it's a look we first saw gaining popularity with boys on TikTok, presumably in America. Like I was reading comments that seemed to be from American boys. So we thought, wow, it's really tomatoed over the Atlantic. And we thought there were a lot of interesting implications when it comes to how teenage boys and young men are consuming fashion and also the evolution of things like quiet luxury, old money, aesthetics, and interesting those things, and characters that represent them like Chris Heinz Jr., who's a recurring character on this podcast. So when we started looking into Grish, we found that there wasn't a lot written about it, especially in our native, well, my native tongue English. So we decided to consult a few Swedes, and we wanted to give a special thanks to Charles from Sweden and Echo Park, who serendipitously emailed me a few days before this episode. And I was really feeling the stars in line because he gave us the most comprehensive, fascinating intel on Grish as a native sweet. But we wanted to start off today with a brief timeline of Swedish fashion and young men. He wants to start. So I can go ahead and start. I'm really excited to talk about this because I feel like they're, I don't know, it's just been very girl-heavy recently, but as we discussed with Azerbaijan Marcus, men are the new woman. And this kind of Grish style is the first time that I've seen such thought be put into like an aesthetic for men, just with some of the content that we've seen on TikTok. It's really the level of in-group signaling and chatting about it. It's been remarkable. And we're seeing these conversations about class and luxury being reflected on men. And I think it means something different to them as providers or earners of money as they claim to be. So it seems like Sweden actually has a long history of terms to describe young striver men who dress for the lifestyle they want. The first one we were able to find comes from the 1890s, and it's called Grilliana. Okay, I'm also sorry about any of our Swedish pronunciation. Okay, this is like our first time really trying to- This is our first time speaking Swedish. Speaking Swedish, I know. And so Grilliana comes, it's a portmanteau of Grill from this restaurant called Jones Grill, which is a popular hangout for the Grilliana. And Yana, which is a common lower class name for boys. And this was defined as a joking term for pretentious young scoundrels and dressed, synobish people, dandies with certain fitness-equal elements and decadent young men. So this is definitely related to like the dandy archetype. But I don't know, yeah, political cartoons and kind of newspaper articles of the time refer to this type of man at the turn of the century as being, you know, signal of modernism. People are definitely annoyed with them. There's a very strong journalistic tradition of Swedish people like making caricatures of kids who hang out in bars. So in the 1940s, there was another term called swing-piat. And this was more related to jazz music, it described jazzy young men in Sweden and Denmark who were into swing music. They were zoot suits and narrow-brimmed hats akin to those worn by American gangsters, walked with a relaxed posture and defied the expectation of being a healthy, fit, resilient and strong-willed young man who enjoyed playing sports, which was the Scandinavian ideal around the time of World War II. Big influences on them were American band leader Cap Calloway and Clark Gable and going with a wind. So they were really trying to emulate this like cool American laid-back nonchalant vibe, which has carried on to Grish today. To first, we're at about 50 years. It's the 1990s. Big things are happening in Sweden. The Swedish fashion miracle happens, which apparently is a real name for this phenomenon. So it is said to have begun with the Jean's companies, which this is not how we used to pronounce it, but I'm going to say like this anyways, Ackney and in Newtie, which were founded in 1996 and 2001, respectively. And so this was a time when Swedish fashion was being exposed to the international stage in a new way. There was a lot of innovation in what Swedes were producing. The Swedish fashion miracle revolving around jeans is, it seems interesting and important to me because obviously jeans are both kind of utilitarian, which is something Scandinavians are unknown for. And also later, they become really well known for their street wear in the 2010s and 2000s with the rise of fashion blogging. And then also, I like this idea. It feels very Swedish to like take a really basic garment like a pair of jeans. Obviously, which has very American roots and kind of like forged them in Swedish excellence. The jeans continue to be a thing to this day. Light wash jeans in particular. The Grish kids don't go dark. Yeah, I was trying to figure out what is the Grish wash? Light wash? Well, I've been seeing some dark wash jeans, but it's like an interesting wash seems very key, as well as like the skinny jeans. Like the cut of the jeans is crucial. And I feel like also applies to American versions of whatever Grish is. But I think a precursor to Grish, that's incredibly important. And something that we learned about through research in this episode and it was really exciting for me to like learn more about this because there is an American counterpart in bro culture. It's called staccare. Forgive me if that pronunciation was not correct, but staccare basically is what we would associate with an American frat bro of the 2000s. Maybe a lad in the UK in Mexico, we call them juniors. This is like a universal aesthetic. It's a universal sub culture. And they're typically posh upper class Swedes associated with wealth. House music is very, very important to this of Vichy, especially the region, the house music scene in the stirrplan region of Stockholm. And stirrplan appears over and over again in staccare imagery. And I think something that I found really interesting shared to us by lovely Charles who sent us an amazing email is that staccare blew up in a similar way that bro culture blew up in the United States. There is a satirical Swedish version of the lonely island called dead fit do. And they released a song called stirry pee, referring to stirrplan. And it's cultural ubiquity. It was akin to like a boss by lonely island. And if you watch the music video, it's a very similar almost like physical form of comedy that Andy Sandberg uses, making these really disgusting faces, sticking your tongue out. It's really, really interesting. And a key figure who was featured in this music video is a man called Grevin, aka the count who later reappears in Grishmeme. So that lineage is very, very clear. As far as I can tell, this man Grevin is just some guy who frequented pubs in the stirrplan square in the 2010s in Stockholm. And I guess that he was like such a lad on the nights out that the staccare boys took him under their wing and made him the face of their movement. And now he's like this spokesperson for a spokesperson born in the UK, which is kind of obvious whenever you look at him. But it's like very, very interesting. What is he Swedish or he's British? He was born in the UK but grew up in Sweden. But he has a very like the fact that his name is like the count is very evident in his physical demeanor. Like he looks very much like King Henry VIII or something, like very round, very red-faced in a way that I find really charming. The red face was really crucial. And staccare is it comes from the verb to fry or to grill and apparently this comes from the visual of the staccare as they're super tan because it shows that you can afford to leave Scandinavia and go on holiday year round. And this was also interesting to think about when we think of like big, scandy influencers today. There's definitely a scandy look that we see on women that is really tan like Matilda jerfs coloring of having a really light hair and like a really tan face. But I think maybe it's the illusion has been busted because we see these curls doing get ready with me and see that they're like just using a ton of self tan and con. door. So, yeah, there's a colloquial definition from Cora of Stekka, and it says, "A series of cool Stekka, as a brat." Also, this word "brat" keeps coming up, which is funny. - Brat keeps coming up, yeah. - It was a big drug to return for, basically, any annoying young person in Sweden. So, I wonder if Brat Summer, and Sweden had a different feeling to it. I would love if someone would chime in on that from a Swedish audience, which is massive, how many, yeah. Usually a 20-something Stockholmer, whose main purpose in life is to show off his or her wealth, perhaps more commonly, the wealth of his or her parents. It's somehow understood that the wealth comes from a successful businessman/socialman in the family, and that the Stekkaer is up to inherit the parents' company in wealth, which is why they stereotypically all have MBAs from Hondelshuggs, Skolen, which is the Stockholm School of Economics, or equivalent institutions in the US. Yeah, studying economics or just being related to that field is also something that keeps coming up, which I learned from one of our listeners that this kind of system of being like sorted into your profession or vocation comes really early on, because in high school, Swedes don't pick subjects like we do in the US. You choose a track where you get a fixed class. So, all of the economy track people are sequestered in one class. If you're doing site and you're all in one class, so the social division kind of starts young, and so I think that's where a lot of this comes from, is that the economics people develop their own ways? I have an observation on that. It's something that kept coming up in a conversation with various conversations with other Swedish listeners, was the uniformity of it, like the literal uniform of Grish and Stekkaer, and that's really interesting that it's such a closed, segregated social subgroup within the school system that it's almost like they're inventing their own uniforms to demarcate themselves against other people. From another listener named Elsa, who thank you also for applying to my questions, she gave us a really good list of things that are core behaviors for Stekkaer, and she also noted that partying and drinking are really integral to the Stekkaer movement as opposed to Grish, which I don't know, maybe that's just a trend of general, like Gen Z decline and partying and drinking, but yeah, these core behaviors include, to speak in pretty gay sounding Stockholm Square, which is Stockholm accent, even if they're not from Stockholm, playing golf, eating expensive seafood, lobster, and scalds, the scalds are flat to out, which is like a plateau of fruits to marry, just like a big seafood black, like raw seafood, which made me so happy because that's like one of our continental luxury images that we keep running into is just like a big ass plate of shrimp, skiing in the Alps, doing cocaine, having a red face, which I love that visual as well, saboring champagne, they even have their own nickname for Dom Perignon, which is Dom Pa, and they sabre champagne just to pour it out. So yeah, I love these like douchey examples of just like raging, partying, it reminds me a lot of London as well, but like you see these finance guys in London that wear uniforms and really go crazy, and I feel like the show industry really shone a light on that continental style of decadence. The first thing that kind of came up for me when I started looking into Irish was like, oh, this is so adjacent to sort of like the idea of the international school kid, like wealthy European international school kids, and sort of the lives they live going to ski in Switzerland and then going to the same boarding schools. And also when I spoke with Charles, he talked about how the grish are just like existing in their little finster bubbles hanging out with their pretty girls and staying for themselves at least online, and another meta-analysis ad here from Charles. The quietness/tibidness/low keyness of the grish to me and contrast the loudness of affluence that emerges through the stacari really speaks a bit to the IRL thing, the upper class kids adjacent to the grish do not seem to value taking up space, getting attention or making money by being celebrities. They do not think it's cool, it's not desirable. A generation growing up watching less financially blessed individuals try so hard online through reality TV, social media to become famous and make it or by making rap music or some other thing. But undoubtedly look down on it if you know you can achieve success by staying in your cultural and socio-economic lane, a grish thing is a peak into the fortunate and wealthy somehow. Yeah. So I just love kind of parsing the idea of the international kid archetype. And I think we have all seen this, but like ex-boyfriend. Oh my god, yeah. He's super grish and he's so like handsome and you know they all know a really good example of this is you guys know Laura Kostema, the beautiful blonde princess girl. Yeah like if you ever go and look at her friends accounts that are tied on her page, they all have private accounts with like you know 100 followers on them. Yeah, I also feel like I know a few people that are like this who went to boarding school in Europe. And you can see stuff like this if you look up like Larose on TikTok and see like what the kids are wearing, I mean the big thing is that like the amount of wealth in northern Europe is kind of crazy and like that's just like where people where rich people like want to send their kids to do anything and like meet other rich kids from around the world. Yeah. That was what something really crucial that I wanted to note about both Stekare and Grish is that luxury aesthetics are a lot more accessible in Sweden and in general like Scandinavia than other parts of the world because it's just such a huge upper middle upper class and countries like Sweden. I found the statistic which is so striking which estimates vary based on your definition of like median income and upper class which can be not really precise but this statistics as it in Sweden 7 million people count as upper class or above and Sweden's population is 11 million people so that's like the majority of Swedish people that have like a healthy discretionary income and obviously it's a really great marketplace for luxury goods and it also makes it less of a flex if you own it a little bit so I can kind of see why things like Grish which is by all accounts a much more like quiet muted and culturally more Swedish version of Stekare everyone is kind of like working with very similar financial resources you know so it kind of makes it a little bit less of a competitive thing and I can see why there's something more muted about Grish in comparison to Stekare which felt very influenced by like American culture and reality TV and was also what I was told by Swedish listeners that I spoke to but yeah I was really struck by that estimate of 7 million people being upper class in a country of 11 million that's like very striking. Yeah the thing that Charles said about this generation of kids that has no interest in like fame or cloud or anything is so true but I think it's an overall European attitude like with some of my coworkers in Germany like they are really freaked out by the idea of me having like a public Instagram account like I think just in Europe unless your career is to be an influencer it's kind of seen as like embarrassing to post in that way whereas like any story girl from the South that has like 2000 followers has like 15 story highlights and posts like she's a famous person you know so I think that is also kind of because European lives are like so photogenic they have too much to post yeah true I was just stalking someone today who was just this like girl that I kind of tangentially know and all of her posts are like skiing in Japan perfect body crazy outfit in Thailand but she has like kind of not that many followers and I was like well this is crazy that your life is just like this and you're not even an influencer but that's like average European behavior I don't know well just I was going to get into this later but just to jump off that sentiment I did a lot of research into um Yante Lovan which is a Scandinavian code of conduct which is colloquially used to disapprove of personal expression and individuality and Yante Lovan came up in every single conversation that I had with people about Grish and Stikari um and just to give a little more context where it was coined by an author Axel Sandemo's in a satirical novel called a fugitive crosses this tracks and it's a means to depict like the typical life of a small town in Scandinavia and though it's like a series of laws and I'll name a few of laws to give you a sense of what they're trying to convey so you're not to think that you are anything special you're not to think that you were as good as we are you're not to think that you were smarter than we are you're not to imagine yourself better than we are and there's a few more laws that I will read for a sake of time that are kind of like in the rest I want to read all of them the rest okay all right you are not to think that you are smarter than we are you're not to imagine yourself better than we are you're not to think you know more than we do you're not to think that you are more important than we are you're not to think that you are good at anything you are not to laugh at us you're not to think anyone cares about you you're not to think that you can teach us anything they should not listen to this podcast I know I could learn something from this though yeah I was after reading this I was really shocked that so many Swedish listeners I was like I'm so much from Charles so yeah but it was originally intended as a criticism of Scandinavian society which is really funny but now it's eventually been like reframe to criticize people who break out of the mode in Scandinavian society so fun fact like Greta Tumberg once said in an interview that she like loves Janthay Lohben because it's allowed her to live comfortably in Sweden without being approached in public Alexander Skarsgard has spoken about this before whenever he one in Oscar, he was like, I can't celebrate because it would be against Yante Lofan. Like, it would be very against my culture to be celebrating this big win. So annoying to say. He's so like, like, they're like the most working in America. They're the most booked and busy family in Hollywood. It's true, but this is a very like Northern European, like Scandinavians. This is a huge, like, foundational part of their society. And that made Sticcare, like doubly criticized. So I remember personally, Graham of the United States, Frappros were super, super criticized publicly. They were hated on, like, everyone was like, they're so annoying. But that was like doubled in Sweden because not only was it like a annoying frapprobe behavior, or whatever, they also like hated that they were so flashy. They were like, you were not special. Like, why are you showing off that you have like name, brand design, or clothing? That is very, very anti-Jante Lofan. Yeah, it's pretty attention to Sweden also because I think the Sticcare really got around the world as a series of Swedish culture. I think that was a problem. Yeah, there was definitely a stereotype. I remember encountering the 2000s of like Swedish party kids. You know what I mean? Like, Swedish people are so hot and they love the party. And I guess guys as well. Like I'm proud. I just am hearing like satisfaction, like playing, yeah. Jeremy fragrance, although German, I feel like is kind of an example of Sticcare, at least visually. Like his style is very much this to me. That era kind of slightly outdated Euro trash, party boy, brimming with sensuality and tan. He's brimming with sensuality. Well, that was such a, yeah, because a lot of you will mention Davichi whenever they were speaking about Sticcare. And I think also, yeah, bass hunter, which is more a Jason vibe, which we would think of as like kind of my space girl. But what was it called as like, furtists? Furtists? Furtists, yeah. Yeah, and a Jason style furtist. And I think Alexey, you spoke to a listener that said like, furtists for girls. Sticcare for boys. Furtists was kind of like a derogatory term for younger teenagers who just like, really tried hard to appear older than they actually were, which is interestingly enough, something that we see in the Grish Phenomenon is like teens that are dressing like they're in their 40s. But this was in a more derogatory way, I guess. When you look at pictures of it, yeah, it is kind of like my space girl's just like wearing a ton of makeup and super-tanned and like, trying to look adult, but in a way that was, yeah, basically kind of like Jersey Shore. I'm sure they were like wearing heels and many dresses and airvail, leisure and stuff. But yeah, one of our listeners, I think it was Justine and told me that it was Sticare for boys and furtists for girls. What was really striking to me is that these were international Phenomenons happening at the same time. And a lot of times whenever we analyzed, like we did a brocat and we analyzed a lot of this like 2000s, my space broy culture. I think in my head I was like, oh, it must be some sort of like economic thing. Like Bush era politics, like blah, blah. But it's like, this is truly like a global Phenomenon and I don't understand like why it hit the world stage like so hard. And I just find that really interesting, like how much universal appeal it had. And maybe it says something like the human experience or something like, I'm not really sure, but I found that really charming because yeah, we have a version of this in the United States at the exact same time as well. And I feel like Giarou in Japan is like a jace set to furtists. Yeah, very very striking. I think it was like the dawn of the internet, you know, girls wanted to like older, they wanted to, they wanted to be on my space and talk to boys and, you know, I feel like an older teenage girl that you looked up to in high school or something. Yeah. Well, I guess speaking of like kind of the tail on the 2000s, we can move on to the 2010s, which I think is really when Grish starts to take shape. So there's a couple of things happening here. One is the rise of streetwear and hip hop in Sweden as well as gangster rap. And then also the rise of Scandi Street style via bloggers. So obviously Sweden is known for its minimalist style, which was propagated via the popularity of Swedish and other types of Scandinavian fashion bloggers in the 2010s. And I liked this description of the Scandinavian style essence being utility without function utility without function said Hernandez Warner about his collection in the spring of 2013. It is a good description of the uniformed everyday Swedish fashion. Every day style Swedish fashion is known for functionalism that is not functional and sober minimalism that is sometimes affected by artistic delirium. I thought that was beautiful. And then Charles also pointed out to us as well as another listener Elsa. Charles goes and I'll end to depth about this in his notes. So if we share those, you can see it because it has to do like immigration and kind of much bigger things up play. But in the 2010s, gangster rap was kind of on the rise in Sweden for the first time. And Charles kind of lays out these these rappers and who they were and kind of their effect on Swedish culture and then he says sharing some photos. Now why is this relevant to Grish? Notice how they address how skinny it is, the vest, the fake Gucci and little side purse things, which we call in Swedish back Nervaska meaning drug dealer bags. This is so similar to the Grish thing, the vest, the skinny jeans. Grish is of course not about gangster rappers. It's about upper middle class white kids who wear vest and skinny jeans. But the thing is the average white upper middle class kid are just middle class zoomer and general TBH grew up listening to this type of Swedish gangster rap and a dystopian twist, which is depicted in Swedish shows like snabba cash. Not the film, there's a show too. And this rapper aesthetic rocking skinny jeans so on ironically, likely influenced by the countries many of these rappers originate from is to me it reflected in the Grish thing. I loved that and yeah, I saw like I said, if you look through his notes, he kind of lays out the circularity of all this this came to being it reminded me a little bit of road men in the UK and how there's actually, you know, this universal silhouette that young men are so attracted to, which is a slimpan and like a puffer jacket and how the slightest variation can indicate so many gaps of difference between someone's lifestyle. Our listener also also described a similar shift that happened where post-tacare, we got like the kind of Scandinavian hipster aesthetic. Then after that Swedish rap music and culture became more influential. She admits that Sweden was very late on that and with that came Beckner, which is slang for drug dealer style. This used a lot of brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, which definitely made logos at least to rich white people seem much more tacky. Also also says Keep in Mind Sweden is very segregated. Since this, we have a new conservative government and you know all of a sudden immigrants are deported and white boys style is back. So yeah, I was interested to see that globalization and the influence of hip hop had this effect on style, but it seems like, yeah, I mean European rap to me is so weird. Like I was talking to German teenager when I was there about, you know, what kind of stuff he's into and yeah, like all every European country has its own rap scene that young people are really obsessed with and in a sense like it is globalization, but in another sense it's so like hyper local and none of these rappers really blow up outside of these countries because they're rapping in languages that most people in the world don't speak. Yeah, I love that. Rap is really is the music of regionalism. Even in the United States, it can feel uncanny sometimes to see hyper regional US rappers like Young Sugg blow up across the pond and like in Europe and every other country imaginable because it's communicating such a specific experience that I barely feel in contact with and I live in the United States like, you know what I mean, but it communicates something universal. I don't know. I just like that. Yeah, Charles listed like I said a bunch of these rappers, these rap Swedish rappers and his email and like I've never heard of any of them. He says like this is I know the biggest rapper of the Swedish gangster rap wave who died from gang violence when he was like 18 for all this guy was amazing and then someone called VC bar and then apparently even an asthma. Fun fact, their cousins was stormsy and came out of his show at a Swedish festival a few years ago. I was there. It was hugely goosebumps raising. Yeah, it's also really funny, guys. Wait, did you guys see that interview with Azalea Banks today where she says she's moving to Stockholm? She's moving to Stockholm. Yeah, she did, yeah. Yeah, she's obsessed with Sweden. And that lady was like, do you like knitting? Do you want to knit with me? To me, Azalea's style is like in some ways so beautifully stuck in like almost the geometric era. You know, like I really think of her wearing like crazy, I don't know, circle circular sunglasses and like some beautiful bright pop of color at the music festival in 2012 or something. So I could really, I would love to see her on the streets of Stockholm wearing something. Yeah, she's definitely not really been, she doesn't really perform in the US anymore and has been yeah, just kind of like touring around Europe. I have friends that saw her in London. other places and it seems like she's not coming back which I kind of get it like they're are really talented producers in Sweden and obviously we talked about this in your dance yeah we talked about the rise of Swedish influence on American pop music but yeah I feel like Azalea has found some talented people there and we can maybe expect that she might change society. She might be she might pick she might reform the Jantel Oven. Yeah and the thing about listening to any of this rap is that like I had this German teen her to put me onto this German rap and I was like the language aside like the beats and stuff are really nothing impressive like it's all pretty derivative so it's like you would think that it's exciting to hear like rap from another place and like you would think that the production would be influenced by some kind of local sound but that's why it doesn't like blow up. Charles was talking about that too in his email this whole episode just like Charles's email like it's just we should call him Charles's email in like something something. It was a really inspiring email was one of the best emails I've ever gotten. Yeah it was like what was he saying about this he was saying it was is very yeah here it says the main high-brow thing is lyricism but the strong structure artworks music videos and aesthetics are very formulaic and don't push any boundaries. These guys are also lyrical but they're less genre-pushing. I hesitate to add to me here because I'm not a huge gangster rap historian but honestly this is a fact. Am I in that with European sentiments often valuing substance over style which is interesting you know I like that note on European sentiments. I think it's like American rap is so good and everything's gonna sound derivative to art years and we even just think about how like obviously UK rap has been huge for a long time but like Central C is like the breakout UK rapper and it's like 20 it was like 2023 2024 when he made that breakthrough you know it took us that long to really like embrace another country's rap in the US. Yeah I feel like Skepta was like big for like a second but I think he was so drake adjacent that people like through him under the rug or something they're like let's not talk about that because he's drake everything drake adjacent got yeah like memory a hold on to the internet but he was also he was never like they were never making the same like record or like placements on the charts though. I when I learned about like Central C's like actual record success it really it surprised me in terms of selling records in the US. Yeah definitely. I feel like that toy like Afrobeats has been able to go global is because I mean just like Swedish sometimes there are languages that are like really not widely spoken throughout the world but it has like that sound of another place whereas I feel like Swedish Rob. Also okay something about Swedish rap that is just super random but I just want to note is that like it seems like the biggest one of the biggest like most influential Swedish rap groups was this rap group called the Latin Kings from like the 90s which is crazy because it's like an American prison gang. Did John mention them on the podcast like I feel like that is for a year. I don't know the Latin Kings but I've definitely heard of them. You might be thinking of the prison gang. I just thought those really funny because I was like not the lot. I was like are there like Mexicans and Sweden that are like rapping right now but nose. Yeah it's really interesting to think about the parallel development of like what we think of a Scandinavian style now which is this really minimalist sleek thing and then the reality of what was blowing up locally in Scandinavia which was like loud luxury immigrant horror but I think yeah they've come together as Charles suggested in the form of Grish. Yeah let's move to the 2020s so we can talk a little bit more about contemporary context. So this is when we really saw the I think the biggest boom of Scandin style via international interest and things like Copenhagen based brands, socks, flats, they went out of business but you know they had these pastel furry coats that everyone wore credit be had one everyone had wonky candles in their rooms pastel mirrors to look like they were living in Copenhagen and also huge huge influencers like Matilda Girf who we've mentioned who is also Swedish. I think you know I don't think we really look at Matilda Girf and think like God is Scandi style just because her style has become so globalized as part of this clean girl look. I suppose if you really think about it it's still like a curious attendance of sweeter style and it's kind of utilitarian but not necessarily functional aspect and the other thing that happened is you know this real big interest in old money quite luxury and kind of quirky freaky uncles that come out of this like Chris Heinz Jr. and applying that kind of TikTok native boyish sense of humor to old money and quiet luxury is like what created I think Grish because it is it's like funny in a way that like clean girl was not at the beginning right it has a sense of humor within it that it wasn't contained and the the first iterations of girls doing this online. Yeah I think it makes it also a lot easier for young men to engage with fashion in a way that doesn't feel embarrassing for them is to add the sort of memeable like kind of ironic twist to it and adding like kind of gross outboy means with that guy Greven the talent who's just like a really gross like I don't know guy that frequents bars and has been immune for men and Sweden for decades now I think like at least like the 10 years it is really interesting because it combined Grish combines a lot of elements that whatever the American version of this is combines as well I found it really striking that the sort of like Swedish wrap effect of the way that people dress in the skinny jeans influenced the way that Grish manifest because to me the way that somebody like Chris Heinz Jr. dresses is very chief influenced and it is like a really funny combination of like kind of underground wrap with Connecticut so it's like I I appreciate that a lot and that's so true to like the the 2000s bro as well right like they were also obsessed with rap in like Rhode Island or wherever they are coming from yeah the combination of the visuals and the sound is really what's doing it for me because like that I mean if people were posting their Grish fit checks with like classical music or I don't know like I don't know what Swedish dads that they're trying to emulate we're listening to but there's this account that I'm really obsessed with called Eric underscore Ross to oh yeah and he uses Aisha erodica songs on like every single pose wait it's not the one that uses like the kind of AI sounding voice of being like he's done some of those that are like why did you have the best style but he really post these like slide shows of different like low profile fashion sneakers which are a big thing like Lon Von Valentino Kristen Louboutin sneakers that literally all have the exact same silhouette and like same white soul but he'll like post these slides of like giant collages of these shoes with an Aisha erodica song and like the one I'm looking at right now has like ten shoes in a row and then an equal sign and then like these like truck stop silhouettes of women like taking their underwear off well and it has this I don't know it has some like mannisfierish overlap he uses that panty dropping image a lot in relation to Grish and how it makes women feel and he also yeah just uses a lot kind of like broy like house songs but yeah his addiction to the Aisha erodica song needs to be studied do you know how old he is or do you know why do you know he really posts himself yeah because he's fucking grish he would never post himself his bio just says DM for sponsorships but it is really crazy like he did this post about someone who came up in my research a lot named Marcus Rolf who like that is such a basic name that like if I looked him up I couldn't actually find anything like I looked him up on TikTok I looked him up on the internet didn't find anything about him which is so grish and quiet luxury but he is really glazing him and saying like has basically written this essay and done like a slideshow of his fit picks and saying that he's a true pioneer of the Grish style it's biggest influence always ahead of its time like and the pictures are really like just a guy wearing a bumper coat and they're not even fit picks like it looks like these could be out from someone's mom's Facebook which is something interesting you know like he just doesn't really look that cool and I'm reading some Swedish comments where I don't even speak Swedish but I can tell that based on the combination of words like one of them is saying something like bro's doing tricks on it and saying one of them says "Aervi Dada's" which is like are we dead? I love to try to read Swedish comment sections because they always have the cutest shortest words like they're word for thank you which is like talk or something like T.A.K so it's like you've been going like a Swedish thought he is TikTok and everyone's commenting like you're so beautiful she's like talk all the time and so cute but wait on this I want to say that because obviously what you're describing is like a sort of you know funny juvenile boyish like he's the one who put us on like his videos no I know I know but like Charles said at the beginning of his email you also need to find someone who's a proper zoomer literally like a teenage boy to give more details because honestly when I saw the Grish stuff popping off on TikTok One, two years ago, while it was stuck on, it was literally posted by kids. - It's like a children's trend. Yeah, we need to be clear about this. - You can tell from this guy's books. - But we've learned so much about Sweden through this children's trend, guys. Like it, honestly, it's been a really great avenue to learn about Scandinavian society. - How would I learn about the swing piata? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, that love it. - And it's really interesting what people and their early teens are doing. And it's, it's, it's, it's typical to access that, right? - Yeah. - Because we're humburt, age. - We're humburted, yeah. But it's okay, something I wanted to mention also from Charles's email. - It's very Charles that we keep like referring back to him. - I'm actually doing this episode without Charles. - This is like my worst nightmare. - I don't think we could have done it without him, dude. - We're gonna get the comments from the Grishtick talk in Sweden, like, are you doing tricks on it? (laughing) Are we dead eyes? (laughing) - He's our Marcus Rolf right now. - He's our Marcus Rolf, yeah. My favorite part of his email. Because I was trying to think about like, the parallels with like, the, you know, the, I guess teenage boys up post on like, Chris and Junior on TikTok and how they're all obsessed with like, the nonchalant, dreadhead and like, being nonchalant. And Charles introduces to this world called Storkcooks Lugnet. I'm sorry if that's like a bad word. I don't know. But apparently it needs big dick calmness and it's like the Swedish version of big, big dick energy. So it's like nonchalant, but like, big dick calmness. And I found that really, really interesting because I think that is like the general sentiment for boys aged between like 12 and like 21, which I have cousins in Mexico that are very like, juniors like this thing that act in this way as well. But I find that really interesting that like, the extreme nonchalantness is like a meme throughout beyond like that kind of as emanated throughout young people's lives and like what that means for. I guess all these people that have speculated about sincerity for like, what feels like forever now, you know, and this, every year there's like a huge prediction of a return to sincerity, but it really feels like the kids are embracing nonchalantness, which I don't even know what that means, you know? Or speaking to some teenage boys in this age group recently. Oh yeah, and they, I was talking to you like, normy boys who were like 14 and 15, I think. And they were literally so nonchalant, it like scared me. Like I was like, so like, exactly like asking a question, like whatever question they were like, yes, no. And it was just like, it was so devoid of like, affect that it, the aura farming, is that aura farming to have like no human emotion? It makes me kind of scared because I do think that there's an extreme rise in like fear of seeming gay, which has always been a thing among teenage boys I guess, but it seems like it's, it's more now than ever. Like our listener Elsa made a note that nowadays Ticari would look pretty tacky and probably a bit too feminine slash gay to a grish guy, which I'm thinking like, even though this Ticari came off as gay, like they were happy, you know? And the extreme stifling of like any kind of self-expression or individuality is just kind of makes me sad. Like these guys don't even take fit pics. Like all the Marcus Rolf pics are just like, it looks like a screenshot that someone took from like his friend's Instagram story. Like they think that even that is like, trying too hard to show off about your style. And that's maybe why it's hard to find people that are like traditional icons or influencers in this style because it's just so anti that. But not in the way that like, you know, a hipster would never call themselves hipster. It's just like really, it's extreme. - Yeah, like that's something that my friends who are teachers complain about is like the flat affect of these young guys. And I always see these things on TikTok, like anti glazing sentiments and like weird trend. Like there's that one recent trend about like LeBron James, which is like people making a bronle in songs. Like yeah, like being upset at everyone, all the comments will just be like, bro, the glazing on LeBron is crazy in it. I don't know, in my head, I'm like, dude, it's like it's like a super human out there. - It's like super human out there. - I also saw a tweet about this that was just like, there's like a school teacher in New York being like, I gave my kids a project to like, write about someone they admire and they just like refused to do it 'cause they were like, I'm not glazing anyone like that. - Oh, we've got about PewDiePie. - He is not, but like, hmm, don't know. There's something about him. And he totally went down like a path of not grish, but like his abstaining. 'Cause I feel like he's like really low key now, right? - He's really low key, yeah. - So he has just like, it's almost like trad vibes. Like, I feel like he totally bunker down in Sweden and obviously could have like moved LA and like become this like, he got me. - Like, Marzia, Marzia Pai, Marzia Pai, for sure. And he was kinda historic. It's Decorian since I, I mean, I'm sure that Charles would not agree, but he was just a little effeminate, you know, and like, really over the top, but like handsome. - Mm-hmm. - But there is a universality of that with the bro, where like, I think the 2,000 tons bro was okay with like kissing the homies on New Year's Eve and like teabagging his friends. It's like a joke. - I think it was like a puny pie was doing that. - No, he, PewDiePie wasn't. But like the, whatever, like the Stekari were doing. - Yeah. - And I feel like PewDiePie maybe has like a adjacent energy because Stekari seems really tied to YouTube weirdly, like whenever I would ask people about it, they would just send me like YouTube videos, which was very lonely island era, where it's like, oh, I remember this viral early YouTube video of this guy acting like an asshole in public or something. Like, so I feel like maybe it was just like this YouTube affect of that time in Sweden that you adopted. - Yeah, he really returned to like, I don't remember what those laws are called, say I'm not being Swedish, but he retired because being the most famous person online is so unsweetish and he retired. - Yeah, no, he went back to his roots for sure, which makes a lot of sense. - Yeah, okay, let's talk a little bit about some of the clothes involved. We already mentioned the colors. It's like maybe blue, off whites. - It's very cool tone, I would say. - I don't really see them wearing brown. - It's very cool tone. - Yeah, and I wonder if that's because Swedes are natural summers, like if that's their natural color essence, because obviously Swedes look like tan, but I don't think they're naturally warm tone. I don't know. Alexi, you mentioned any logos that are, any logo featured are super simple, thank Yankee's hats, Ami Paris, sweater, super tiny, RL polo logo. You also mentioned low profile fashion sneakers, and I love these. I always wondered who Tiaf is buying these. I mean, a lot of this stuff has really made me, it's opened my eyes because I'm like, this is what is probably keeping LVMH afloat. Like you go into stores and every fashion brand has a version of these sneakers that essentially all look the same, and you're just like, why would someone buy this Valentino sneaker over this Farragamo sneaker? But now I'm realizing it's these kids, and it's not only that, but they also have these brands. Like Newtie Jeans, I mean, they have a store here, but there are also other brands that like are being exalted on Grish TikTok, like Jacob Cohen, Don Depp, Trauma Rossa, they all sell Jeans at work basically the same. And I'm just like, these are like this, I mean, when you're walking around Europe, you see these boutiques that sell just like, long sleeve shirts and jeans, and you're just like, what the fuck? How was that in business? It kind of gives like Zedigan Voltaire like all saints, that kind of high street, you know? - That's like boho, which we love. But I feel like it's totally that meme, which is like how Europeans make five Americans, and how we can stick out, but then it's like, you can immediately tell who's the French person on the train from Bushwick, 'cause they're wearing skinny jeans and sneakers, I like 80M with a puffer jacket, you know? - Yeah. - The other things involved here, stainless steel watches, silver watches, the wrist stack, totally, leather designer bracelets. So there's a specific brand, Cartier Stacks, fan cleaf stacks. We mentioned the light wash jeans, and then a few more brands that are popular. - I'm on Claire. Sailor Ron is definitely one. - Golden Goose. - We're just on phone. - Golden Goose, Stone Island. - Stone Island, I suppose. - Yeah, I've been saying Stone Island, yeah. - Yeah, and it's always the most simple kind of thing you can buy from these stores. - To me, it's like a real fashion killer moment, but like in the moment like you're killing fashion. Like, I-- - Yeah, oh, yeah, there is a quote from a listener. I think it Matilda's account, was it? Was she was saying, like, she says it whenever she's in Sweden, she will see packs of teenage ways in the exact same uniform, like, ten of them, it's such a no style. And that's what she said, like, no style, and I really love that term. - Yeah. - Which Matilda? - Friends, we have that picture of the guy in the kitchen, just wearing, like, a long sleeve. - Oh, yeah. - And it's just like, he looks like he's in 13 reasons why or something, and people use it just to meme people that have no style. But I mean, the Van Cleef bracelet is really weird. They also really love, I always see goyard wallets being included in this. That's the one kind of, like, loud luxury. But it's also kind of quite luxury, 'cause it's like an all-over print that's pretty subtle. I mean, sometimes Eric Roth gets a little out of hand and will post, like, a Louis Vuitton bag or a Burberry scarf. - He probably, like, whips himself after he does that. - Yeah. shame. We should definitely mention like the fact that young boys like these are the propagators of the style so important because the identification with sameness for really young boys is so important and so like and it informs so much of what they do whether that's like having the same haircut I mean the haircut is huge I mean it's not that different than what's quite common right now for boys in this age bracket anyways but it's kind of like the fluffy down down the middle curtain bangs curtain bangs yeah the the flow for sure is important yeah I think it is male curtain bangs yeah it's male curtain bangs and that is probably why yeah the style is so easy to pinpoint because you see boys in literal packs walking down the street where I get I imagine yeah I'm I'm very struck by this but yeah I think most people I spoke to they were like I am too old for this and and I feel like a couple of them were like 22 years old so it's like I feel like this is definitely like a trend for young boys whenever like things trend in boy world like it's such a rare occurrence for there to be such a distinct fashion trend that I just think that all of them adopted at the same time or there probably is something about male psychology that allows for group think a little bit more especially like young male you know young guys that are trying to fit in to whatever social group there and you know I wonder if you know there's all this hysteria around young kids getting into expensive high-end products whether that's like the four girls buying drunk elephant or this kind of hysteria around like I don't know teenagers wanting to develop archives of like tabbies in them but I do wonder like is this trend so specific to the social and economic conditions of of Sweden that we don't actually have to fear you know young boys internationally really desiring van cleaf stacks I mean I guess they really like tied to brands like I just saw this I'm just been swirling through Eric Eric's posts and he has this like whole collage that's saying like POV you use any of these brands aura equals negative and it's like vans Gucci essentials Canada goose Jordans Philippine Hugo boss and I'm just like you're not even talking about like what the clothes are like they really are just seeing clothes in the form of brands and feel like in the US fashion content is often like here's how to get this look for less or like how here's how to thrift this look or kind of showing people how to attain it but the idea that I mean he hasn't mentioned anything in any of these posts or there are no comments being like wow 700 dollar sneakers like how am I gonna afford that kind of a suggest that the price is not what if like this major government gives teenagers like universal credit to buy one of my fashion sneakers yeah to buy like one one van cleaf but the thing is is that these kids like I'm like this is definitely a international thing maybe not in the United States I have cousins in Mexico who dress exactly like the grish style they call it they're called juniors there and and these kids like they make money somehow like I it's a very like strange yeah no I'm not kidding like my cousin my cousins makes money on bet like he's very young and he he bets on NBA games and he makes like a ton of money and like I've seen it he showed me and he buys his own stuff and like we'll flip like ps5s and like shoes on eBay and shit and like infinex Arizona something like he'll like drive across the border and like you know it it is it these kids do the stupid ways are real though yeah like they they the thing is is that there there is something strange about this moment of hustle scammer internet stuff that Ezra Marcus is so familiar with is is that it is real and there are real ways that these young boys are making money and I think that that is driving maybe this trend proliferating among younger and younger people and that was something else that people kept mentioning is that like maybe stikari was like explicitly about this is daddy's money and then grish is trying to imply that it's my money not my dad's money that that type of thing whether that's true or not but there's at least an illusion of that I did also see I mean a couple of listeners that I spoke to said that stikari are genuinely like generally wealthy but a lot of the times grish seems like it's like middle class upper middle class kids that are trying to emulate this old money look which is something that we're very familiar with but okay wait one thing that I also want to talk about is like how this relates to women as I mentioned there is a frequent usage of this like panty dropping visual on the grish page and when I was like making this board on Pinterest like terms like boyfriend style kept coming up and I think this like unfortunately is not unfortunately but like it's really popular with like girls like this is like for a lot of and I can see why like for a lot of girls like how they would ideally want their boyfriend to dress because it's like fashionable but not in really crazy way embarrassing yeah what do you guys think about that totally it makes sense in like this weird dating discourse space that I wonder how it affects like young people rate is like this hypergamy like men should pay and this weird like financial transactional dating discourse that takes place on the internet constantly I wonder how it affects young people and their perception of relationships and I do think like it is kind of part of the reason why looks like this trend amongst women or draw in women because it signals wealth and stability and a certain type of masculinity that's like muted but gonna provide it like like signals like provider like the guy that you're going to the golf course to like me and like it's also a very book talk like I like it is yeah that they had that hair too great yeah the hair curtains really are what make it like a romantic style just like reminds you of like the 80s and it's a bit lot lost gen 3 yeah the boy shows is really important because you don't really see they're not exalting images like I'm seeing some pictures of like young Leonardo Caprio young Brad Pitt but I guess it's important that they're not actually showing pictures of like millions guys wearing the style because then it's it stops being grish so yeah and I reckon that I mean as a teenage girl your standards are so low because boys are so like random and disappointing for the most part that I think when a guy has like a little ounce of style it's really thrilling you know like that's that's something that can really propel the crush crush for it but yeah I don't really like to think about the hypergamy and old money discourse affecting are the young malleable minds I think that's really depressing yeah maybe I should edit that out no that's so it's like a good observation like no but it is sad yeah so that's something that probably doesn't matter and sweeten so much because like people are okay but in America that's really sad to think about there will always be some appeal of like the grungy boy you know like I got sad for a second thinking like oh wow our young girls these days no longer into like you know the idea of like a lower class bad boy and instead they're just fantasizing about this like grish I mean it all gives Nate Archibald to me but I think that the skater the kind of like drain gangy type guy will always have appeal right totally wait we should also mention that so I asked Tarls about young lean and and drain gang and oh yeah honestly I'll just mention this really briefly because it's not super relevant besides that they're like the kings of sweeten of Stockholm but he mentioned and I think we all knew this like intuitively that drain gang is so much more influential globally than like young lean and and sad boys are and that young lean has really like stuck to sweeten much more but the drain gang aesthetic it's obviously propagated so far and really been important but he did say that he felt like it's not something that you're constantly like encountering just amongst everyone in sweeten it's still like a bit in the now but it'd be so fun to like have a drain gang boyfriend in sweeten probably oh my god right the other thing that room that seemed notable to me is did you guys see the subway takes interview with young lean where he's basically become like normal now yes but that is like every but that's super easy like that's very yeah it's like every guy I've met because I'm young means ages like every guy I've met that is my age is like saying the exact same thing to recap for listeners he was basically just saying like no partying like do you just only to move to the woods and love god which I'm sort of fucking I rolled me I don't know I really hated that I thought it was sweet I think this is a generational difference Alexi like when you're there it's just so played out for I don't know maybe it's like a New York thing that like we've just heard people saying that since like yeah no that's so real but like I think young lean it's like he truly battled his demons right like the stuff that he went there was like really dark and I understand where he's at now and I also remember I was talking to to young good in like 2020 something or no like 2018 2019 and remember I'm just being like lean just like once to hang out with his family like eat oysters like with his grandma so I think that might be like his personality - Oh yeah. - I think that the hot takes format just pissed me off. Maybe, like, I mean, who doesn't want that kind of stuff? Yeah. - Like he might be like the actual polo Ralph Bear. Like he's kind of like thick and solid. - It wasn't what he was saying that pissed me off. I think it was more just like the delivery and the proclamation of it like it was something crazy. Like I don't know, it reminds me of like when people do their New Year's resolutions in every single year. It's like out cocaine, ketamine, being mean. And then it's like in drinking milk, loving your friends, like praying to God. And it's like, that is just your personal journey. And it has nothing to do with a trend forecast. Like you're just. - I think it's just, he's recently sober. So I think it is like he's like, yeah. Oh, like this is like crazy. - I was just showing me that I don't know. - I'm rolling in his sobriety journey. Like I, good for him. I don't know. - I think you have to, I think you have to like, you're gonna have to just get used to this 'cause I feel like New York has been so ahead of every like cultural curve, you know? That's like been big in the past 10 years. So it's like people are gonna keep being, you know, hypersensier as like their new rebrand or something. So. - I know, I know, but I'm so happy for him. I think like young lean is the artist that has influenced me probably most in my life. And I love him. So I'm like really happy that he's doing well. - He needs to be single though. - Now he does, I think. (laughing) - Those guys never gonna get a girl who's not Swedish. So. - God dang it now. - Good luck. (laughing) - But now I know so much about Sweden. It's like basic things in Sweden. - Yeah, I don't know. It's like the language barrier and the yonte-loven. - Yeah. - Final thoughts on Grish. Like I think if you had a son walk in to the room right now and he was dressed like this, like what's your initial reaction after everything that you've learned throughout the research process? - I would say. I would hope that he doesn't have toxic masculinity. Like I sound so Portland, but I'm just like, I hope he's not feeling pressured to dress in that style because he's a part of this like Grish bro pack where like they all have vanquished bracelets and stuff. Like I would maybe buy him a red sweater and see how he reacted. - Oh, that would be so cute. - A red sweater? - Maybe I would do something with a sweater in Banks. (laughing) - Yeah. - Because I was like, wait Scandinavia as this tradition was like kind of like the folks he saw at a Scandinavia, like I just hope that maybe they're gonna be like a folk Grish that's like fair-ile sweaters and. - But I feel like that would be. - It would get like, I love that. - Well, I feel like lean does that sometimes because he wears a furry hat a lot. Let me look at his Instagram. - Yeah, he used to wear it on the sun and. - About just like his build though, I think he's like a bearer. - Yeah, he is. I just want to say that I love that he has an album now that is his first name, Jonathan. Like that's so beautiful to me because we were talking about Sean a few months ago. Sean Mendez is self-titled. - No, I just think that like 28th, the right age for a self-titled to come out and learn how to do it. - I think he's been through. - And yeah, Edan's video that he directed forever young. I thought it was pretty fresh. Like, when he's dressed up as Uncle Sam, he's got a wide neck. I don't know. I just think that he's someone who truly shaped my life and I think the life of many others. - I like, I like the generational gap between me and you will actually probably be like young lean versus like blade, you know what I mean? Like I feel like that is like the difference of who like. - That's true. - And I did see blade and concert. - I just, I don't feel like I connected to any of the dryngang stuff honestly. - I see, that's what I don't, either. I've never felt super connected to their music, but they look really fresh. And I also think their body types are so much more, I mean, like look into the box, right? That body type is so-- - With the salamander of it all. - The salamanders are yeah. And like obviously like-- - I mean, they're extremely nonchalant. Like they, to the point that it gives like autism kind of. - Right. - Well, that's so of that time. But they're kind of like pioneers 'cause I feel like that nonchalantness is almost like younger than the bladey age. - We should just say real quick, like that. This is, they're like a boy gang. Like obviously that's like, you know, that's sad boys, that's dream gang, whatever else. Kind of, you know, groups they've had come out of their work together, which is so grish. - So grish, maybe boy gangs are really Swedish for some reason. - What creates the separation between men and women in Sweden? Because I'm, yeah, it's really just like, you see these big groups of men walking on the street, but-- - We need to go to Sweden. - You wear the girls, yeah. - I really want to make a brand or something. Because we can go to Sweden and study your boy gang. - No. - I will say that when I was trying to research Grish, like looking up Grish style Grish fashion didn't really work, but like, if you look up Swedish words like Grish Steelin, then I started getting, like, this is being reported on on like Swedish news channels. So maybe we can be called, yeah, we can be called on as talking hats on Swedish news. - Oh my God, I would love that. - I need the local media. Also wait, Eric Ross too, his bio simply says DM for promotions, so I think we should DM him. - Yeah. - You know, lean hanging out with Jack Donahue. You know, that probably was a big catalyst for him with some of these ideas, but I don't know. Great, great. It's a good thing for a 28-year-old men to do. Ultimately, this is what you want a 28-year-old man to do. You want him to lay down the gauntlet of Katamine. - Yeah, you also had like the Benzo generation, like the coming out of the zandemic, I think you really need some strong light to combat that. - Yeah, and I mean, just thinking about how young he was when he got famous, like 16 or 17 or something. So, okay, so let's wrap up with some much brothers. Okay, would you guys rather be the curry or Grish? - Honestly, stick curry. - Yeah, I really think that the idea of sabering champagne and the idea of having a red face and eating scald yours plateauat is really appealing to me. And it kind of gives people always make fun of like, there's this group of influencers that does like Lake Como kind of like Swiss Alps, Larpy old money content, wearing tuxedos in the snow. - They're so freaky. - They are freaky, but they're really freaky. I, obviously, like the stick curry, they're downstream from stick curry, but like trying to add a veneer of class to it, which is where, you know, it's either you show it off or you don't, you know? So I think stick curry one, yeah. So there's this brand called Chelsea Life Jocke. It's a London brand that's like all about the over top posh lifestyle and always film these crazy like sizzle reels of them riding around like popping bottles in Mayfare. And it reminds me a lot of what you're talking about Alexi with the kids that are like at Lake Como filming reels. That's always a really funny subset of rich kids. I think stick curry sounds fun. - Yeah, I hate to say it again, but I love tanning. So I feel like I would love the stick curry or like tan or then the grish. - Right, I feel like I could be grish right now, but you're kind of having to like go to another time to be stick curry, like that's why people, I think that's why young boys like Jeremy fragrance so much is because he allows them to shed their nonchalance, right? He's a proxy for their flamboyance. - Yeah, so I think I, I think we're all on the same page. - Yeah, maybe if I saw some grish kids smiling and laughing together, but they're always like stone faced on their van cleaf walks that they do around doing some trading on their phones. - Literally. - Would you rather party with Avici or dead vet do? - Avici. - No, grab in the count, get grabbing the count. - Avici, totally, I think he's so special. - Yeah. - See, I'm kind of scared. - Yeah, yeah. - He was a really big loss. - He was so beautiful, but no offense to him, I kind of want to meet Grevin. I just feel like he, he's like the kind of guy like people would be like hitting him on the back really hard and would be like, he's a legend, he's a legend. (laughing) - Do you guys think Grevin and Avici mad? - I am sure they did, 'cause it seems like Grevin has met everybody because-- - Totally. - As far as I can tell him about this guy, it's like he literally just goes to bar every night. He's like the guy. I don't know if you guys ever had like a local bar face. - Yeah, I mean, he's like a local alky. - Yeah, a local alky. Yeah, yeah, he's a bit world of T-shirt. He's the world of T-shirts of Sweden guys, like-- - Okay, I really like that. - My boyfriend. - That really just proves how small and like monocultural Sweden is. There's like, it's like a nationally recognized local alky. - Yeah, that's great. - There's also no, he has no SEO. Like, if you look up Grevin, - No, I know, you can't find him. - You can't find him. - It says Grevin is a medium-sized town in the district of Steinfurt in Germany. Like, yeah, but I went on Swedish Wikipedia and I found his Swedish Wikipedia page and translated it to English. That's how I know about his like personal biography. - Grish made me less embarrassed to wear my Rolex, 'cause like it really is a big part of all their fit checks is laughing like a really shiny stainless steel watch. - What? - That Rolex on and walk out into Times Square. - I will. - And own your truth sister. - I will. - And I'll wear A's a pup. (laughs) - You should wear a little Moncler. - Yeah, I do have like a Patagonian nanopuff. - Yeah, I'm gonna be grish on top. School girl on the bottom. - Oh yeah, we should just say like, it's so nanopuff. I love like a vintage puffer, like a big puffy one, but it's so nanopuff. Like a slim profile. - That's all a slim profile, totally. - Okay, it's body conscious. - I don't know if they have like body issues, 'cause you couldn't really dress like this if you're like, on the husky or side, I feel like. - No, no, Graven dresses like this. And he's, you have like Graven's in the old man. Like it's, yeah, he's not like a, - I don't know if they, I don't know if people fight, I don't know if people are fighting their weight in Sweden. - Yeah, that's true. - Yeah, that's true. - They're like long and lean. - To be overweight probably. - What if young lean, he's, huskier. - I don't know, he probably, he looked good in this, he looks good in everything. - He looks better in a really long time. - Okay, last, what'd you rather? - Would you rather be a judge on a Swedish rap television program or be a, an employee at Newtie Jeans? Oh, for a day, wait, that's like we're more boring. But like a group of grish kids comes in and you get to help them put Jeans on and like, - Well that sounds creepy. - That's when what you rather is are really uneven. Like it's like one terrible thing and one cool thing. It's like coughing, coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb. - Yeah, I don't know what that means, but yeah, I would definitely be a judge. I feel like I've listened to Swedish rap since I was a teenager and I would like it. - I would also be a judge because I feel like, I love obviously being a talking head. It's like one of my favorite things to do via this podcast. - You can never redo it. - Yeah, let's do both. - Okay, no, Swedish rap judge versus interim CEO at Girf Avenue. - Oh. (laughs) - Okay, I will say that I have been tangentially involved in the Girf Avenue drama like in a very directed way a few years ago. And I was like, I don't know if I wanna, I don't wanna be interim CEO there. My hair doesn't, it doesn't like make that shape, but I would be, I would, would you guys think she was abusive? - Like, no. - No. - I think that she was just Swedish. - She was just Swedish. - Yeah, but no, everyone that she was working was a Swedish, so if that was like acceptable behavior at that, they wouldn't set anything about it. - I think that she just like doesn't, I think that she was like an influencer and I mean, she admitted to this herself, like she didn't have leadership skills at all. So going from like a, being an influencer to like CEO of a company that stills to that extent. - It has been so often, yeah. - And it's a difficult path to be honest. So I think I'd still, I think I've always dreamed of being on like national TV. It's something that, we'll look kind of, it's similar to what we were describing with like, Grebin being a national inside joke, like the US doesn't have national inside jokes like that, or like kind of sort of campy national television programs, our stuff's also big. And I've always kind of dreamed of being on like a UK talk show or yeah, some sort of like channel for programs. So I think I would like to Swedish rap rock star judge still. - Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure, I've never watched Real Housewives of New York but I'm pretty sure Countess Luanne, like this literally was like an Italian pop. - Wow. - Like TV show judge and like that is kind of like led her to meeting her count husband somehow. I could be getting this wrong, but I think I read that somewhere. - Yeah. - I mean, it would be cool. - And you were except America is like actually a real job that makes you like locally famous. - Is it not how the Queen of Spain was literally like a journalist who interviewed the king and like he fell in love with her and got married. So I'm like, I just think like there are so many avenues being like a European TV person. Like you can, you're immediately like, you can date royalty. So like, I think like that. - Your book tour starts there. - My book tour journey starts on the Swedish rap TV show that I'm gonna be a judge on. - Yeah. - Okay. - I'll say in terms of you. I'm a told a jerk for that one just because I really was looking at those robes and I almost bought one the other day. And I almost came out all of the patterns that they could come in. And I have some ideas. So if they're ready, they can contact me. - Could you tell me what changes you would make the company? - I would. - I think her boyfriend is the CEO now. So I would just kick him out. - Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. - And I would make him-- - You made her a bald boy. - It was the avenue. That's a better name than Jerf Avenue. - I know. - It's just so simple. - It's like Smurf Avenue. - Yeah, her boyfriend's a bald, I'm pretty sure. I don't want Jerf Avenue to have a bald CEO. - A bald man is not gonna sell me a fucking fruit decorated robe, okay? I would turn it back into a woman owned company. - She has a homely boyfriend. - Oh, really? - How can she say that things are gonna change and then hire her boyfriend of 10 years that she had an ectopic pregnancy with? That's crazy. - I didn't know that tea. - I don't want to say it's tea, but she just talked about it. They've been together for ages. - How old is she? I thought she was like 22. - No, she's like 26 or something. - Oh. - It's very, very Swedish to have the same boyfriend from like age 14. - She looks like a sunny angel with a wig on. - Yeah. - She's 37. - Ooh, she's like young lean age. - Lots. - Do you ship it? - No. - I would do a collab with Alexi Avenue and young lean. It's despite all the terrible things I've said about it. - Yeah, he should be interim CEO. - I feel like he could do something. - There would be like some weird spray painted, like. - He's gonna put the sauna hats in. - Put the fruit pattern on sauna hats and sell them. - I don't know. - I don't know. I just think that he could run the business. He's got a lot of experience. - 'Cause it was supposed to be co-CEO and you guys could like pick her. - Okay. - You know Alexi is definitely your CEO. - Okay, thank you. - He can be on the board. - But he doesn't want to work. He just wants to like hang out and praise God. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay. - Okay. Well, thanks for listening guys. I hope that we have given you insight into not our native culture, and I think we have many thanks to give to all of the Swedes who chimed in. Like I really was so happy to see that we have such a worldly community and also happy to see that like, you know, we talk a lot about like trends and like how the internet flattens everything, but that's not true. Like there are amazing things happening in every country that sometimes you just have to learn about. - Yeah, open your eyes, open your mind. - You can make inferences. But, you know, you got to talk to the local, always talk to the locals, which is what I'm doing on my blog. - And we are so excited. I feel like it's gonna change the world, the type of journalism that you're doing. - I should change the name of it to Charles's email. (laughing) - Yeah, shout out to Charles. Shout out to TinyBrow and IG who I spoke to. Shout out to Jess Barry Klough, who I also spoke to, Elsa Barry, Iman, Matilda, Justin washing machine. - You guys are hard and soul. Like thank you so much for opening up your inboxes to our questions about your culture. (laughing) It's a very UN. And hopefully like we do more episodes like this, where we just get a bunch of information from listeners, 'cause you guys are also smart and like, yeah, it's really fun to talk to you guys. But yeah, I hope that everybody has a lovely day. Big things coming soon. We can't tell you what it is, but big things coming soon. We said that last episode, but stay tuned. Like huge, huge big things and you guys are gonna love it. But yeah, stay tuned to our platform. And chat soon. - Bye. - Aya, which is good-buy and sweet as yay, bye. (laughing)