Welcome to The Blonde Roast

One of my first published pieces was about how I keep up with the fashion industry. It was easy for me to list the magazines, the social media pages, and the podcasts I use. Yet, in actuality, the most creative and mindful I’ve ever been in terms of fashion, music, and pop culture has come from something else entirely. 

My mornings as a student in Toronto began with mindless scrolling until I'd eventually make my way into the kitchen, where I'd find Liam in his Lady Gaga t-shirt. No words would be exchanged until one of us started a pot of coffee to share. We’d use our janky Betty Crocker coffee maker and sit on the couch, mugs and phones in hand. Our Toronto apartment which was decorated with Janet Jackson album covers, Studio 54 stills, Beyoncé on the fridge, and fuzzy handcuffs hanging on the wall beneath the disco ball, was our epicentre of gossip and culture. These coffee-couch rituals poured so much significance into the ambiguity of our early 20s. In those three years, the two of us have discussed every aspect of pop culture. From dissecting every month’s magazine covers to the breakdown of an entire artist’s music video discography. 

After graduation and moving home, we both instantly felt the loss of these intimate and important gossip sessions. In the past couple of months, our FaceTime calls and messages have been overheating my phone. Every award show red carpet and album release can be found in our DMs with details, callbacks, and points that could suffice an academic essay. (I’ll note every essay the two of us wrote in school is somehow about Madonna or Beyoncé.) So, we realized that these nothings-off-topic conversations, discussions, and arguments fill us with so much creativity and fulfillment, and with so much to say, we were sweating to turn it into something more. 

In these industries that can be so overwhelming and loud, the best way to be knowledgeable and have fun is, in fact, through these over-coffee chats with friends. The Blonde Roast brews this energy into an online space with meaning and flair, covering everything we love that excites and energizes us, from music to art to fashion to film, and everything in the cultural zeitgeist. So next time you see a post that makes you think “I have nobody to share this with” we invite everyone to join us in this space of highly caffeinated and (mostly) tasteful conversation.