Two Years of The Citizen’s Poste: The Editor’s Note
Mackenzie Ostrowski, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of The Citizen’s Poste
Two Years of The Citizen’s Poste: The Editor’s Note
You wake up one morning with the realization that you’re not the same person you were yesterday. This makes you smile because you ate a whole pot of penne alla vodka last night, but now that’s a problem for yesterday you. You roll out of bed, try not to look at your cellphone because you’re decidedly one of those people today, and shrug off the pile of laundry awaiting your attention because that’s a problem for tomorrow you. Time is relative until you want it to be something else, and then it’s exactly what you make it. Art is everywhere. It’s in the way you dance through your kitchen and dollop yogurt into a little bowl you’ve reserved exclusively for the hour of 7:00am. It’s in the way you wander into your closet and bask in the opportunity (or the terror) of realizing that you get to decide exactly which character you’re going to play for the next twenty-four hours. It’s in the way you sip your coffee and breathe in the morning air, whether it be metropolitan smog or soft dew– subway vents or the bakery around the corner. The whole world is at your fingertips, if not resting in your purse or tucked into your back pocket. You probably take this for granted, but ignorance is bliss.
Who are you when nobody is watching? I’ve been trying to ask myself this question more often. We live in a world where no detail is spared, and somehow simultaneously overlooked and botched by whatever opinion is trending right now. I approach a fork in my life and think, “What would I do?” A new idea. A new concept. Or is it? Since when is having your own opinion avant-garde? Unfamiliar? Since when do we need to go out of the way to get to know ourselves instead of just accepting what’s innate and kicking everything else to the curb? I think this is bulls**t.
Who am I, really?
Today, I woke up with a renewed sense of self. The 2025 Grammys were last night, and I have yet to articulate my opinions on the red carpet because I’m making the counterintuitive decision to digest it first. Because that’s what I would do. It’s a little hypocritical, because I tell people all the time, “When you work in fashion, early is on time, and on time is late. Anything else is unacceptable.” But that notion has always tasted a little bitter in my mouth– like fruit that hasn’t quite ripened yet, or coffee that’s too hot to sip and burns your tongue and numbs your palette instead.
The longer I’ve spent in fashion, the more I’ve realized that the line between vulnerability and deceit is so blurred that sometimes we don’t even know which side we’re on. How morbid is that? ‘Hey, I’ve spent my whole life infatuated with an industry that’s actually the thief of everything it’s supposed to stand for.’ Inclusivity, originality, creativity, freedom, communication. We have all this content shoved down our throats then to have it immediately chased by everyone else’s half-baked opinions. I mean, seriously, does nobody else find it insensitive that think-pieces about red carpet looks and runway collections start hitting the media not minutes after they debut? You can’t honestly tell me that you absorbed and processed what you’re looking at long enough to share legitimate input. And I’m not ashamed to say that.
Creativity takes time; bona fide artistry cannot be expedited. There’s a natural swell of things that requires space to breathe in the intersection between a pipe dream and a tangible product, and even then, it’s rare that ideas are ever executed to perfectly mirror their preceding concepts. Modern editorial explicitly thwarts this. The excess availability of information in the media has desensitized us. We want something, and we want it now. And if we don’t get it, we move on to the next best thing, even when it means sacrificing quality. Designers, directors, producers, and adjacent creatives in the fashion industry spend sometimes years poring over their work just to have it publicized for no more than twenty-four hours of fame. I’d be insulted.
Take this with a grain of salt: of course, there’s a difference between publishing and critiquing news. Yes, I agree that preserving accessibility to the fashion industry demands timeliness in sharing objectives. But that’s not what I’m talking about– there’s still the fact herein that instant gratification is not half as satiating as authenticity.
And, yet, here I am, reposting someone-or-other’s most recent collection twenty-two seconds after the fact with a string of starry-eyed emojis. We all have our vices– things we can’t walk away from. This is mine: sitting here desperately trying to preserve my individuality despite the urge to be in vogue. Namely, trying not to Google the countless other Editor’s Notes available to me in the next tab because I’m still trying to figure out: “What would I do? What do I think?”
There’s that matter of image– interpersonally, digitally, introspectively… because that choice is available to us every day– which character we’re going to play. But how often do we make that choice for ourselves, and how frequently do we unknowingly pawn it off to the algorithms of our respective lives? Not just on TV or social media, but in our circles, workplaces, neighborhoods, and education. Are you dressing for you, or the woman at the grocery store who looked at your shoes funny the other day? You’ll probably never see her again, but you care. Why?
Being a product of your environment isn’t a crime, but it is something to grapple with. Because the idea of “when nobody’s watching” is hard to conceptualize when you’ve made every detail of your life readily available to the world and vice versa. People are always watching, observing, mirroring. Still, humor yourself; consider it. You wake up one morning and realize that you aren’t the same person you were yesterday. But today– just today– there’s no audience. There’s nobody to judge or critique. Nobody is going to like, or comment, or dissect. It’s just you and the temporary and delicious absence of external factors.
Who are you?
Now comes the part where I’m obligated to talk about The Citizen’s Poste, because alas, this is still an Editor’s Note, and I have a title to live up to. Only, I don’t– not really. Because I haven’t delegated who I am or what I do to someone else’s whims. Nobody else is setting my deadlines and dictating my schedule. I may have an audience, but I don’t have a ringmaster. And this piece of information probably would have gutted two-years-ago Mackenzie, because for whatever reason, at the time, I was under the impression that I needed some suit-and-tie form of management to legitimize my potential.
Today, however, I’m choosing to gloat. Because nobody is here to tell me that I should be force-feeding myself Grammys media rather than writing my Editor’s Note simply because I can. No, I am here. And I am here because I chose to be here.
I founded The Citizen’s Poste just over two years ago with the unshakable certainty that by today (more accurately, last night), I’d have been on the Grammys red carpet interviewing throngs of A-listers myself. I’d have an entire C-Suite and a laundry list of investors and advisors. My schedule would consist exclusively of Fashion Weeks, launch events, cocktail parties, and board meetings.
Apparently, I was completely delusional. Starting strong with the fact that barricade interviews aren’t even in my job description.
I will say, however, that over the last two years, I have successfully integrated most of the aforementioned into my life, but not at all in the way I expected, and entirely at the expense of everything I thought I knew about myself. I’ve rubbed shoulders and connected with industry names I still gawk at when I scroll past them in my contact list. I’ve navigated the world of editorial, creative direction, production, publishing, styling, business and brand management, financial scaling, and last-minute-dinner-reservation making (subjectively the most intense; Friday nights in Paris will test you). I’ve navigated hiring teams and assistants and consulted with firms and seasoned professionals. And yet. Yet. Fashion Weeks are underscored with all-nighters and squeezing in a protein bar for lunch while rushing between campaign shoots and runway shows. I spend more screen time on Gmail than anywhere else. I’ve had to learn and re-learn what it means to propagate a website more times than I care to admit. Industry events are punctuated by sitting uncomfortably near an outlet on the floor of a hotel lobby, typing up coverage because the window of relevancy is closing. Parties, meetings, flights, shows? Network! Network! Network!
In becoming the CEO and Editor-in-Chief I am today, I’ve had to learn to scrap expectations and demand the thing I’ve been trying to circle back to since I started writing this: authenticity. One of the most commonly advertised moral goals to date; “be yourself.” We romanticize the concept of originality even when our instincts favor likeability– a cycle I could admittedly drone on about for hours, but I’ll spare you the antics. The point is that I like to think I want it just a little more. Two years ago, when The Citizen’s Poste was just a brainchild, and my goals were more ballpark than strategic, I can honestly say I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But I knew that I was hungry— and not for bitter fruit or too-hot coffee.
Today, I am still hungry. I’m hungry for something real and raw and new. I’m hungry for the process more so than the result. And I have some clue what I’m doing, but I’m not above admitting that growth has cost me my security, and in two more years from now, I might look back at this stage of my career with the same retrospective sympathy you might reserve for the version of yourself who was sitting down to eat that whole pot of penne alla vodka last night. The process of creating a brand from scratch is notorious in itself, not to mention a name and a legacy. I love to learn and unlearn. To absorb and understand. To question, and challenge, and debate. To build something up and scrap the whole thing in the name of curiosity. And while, yes, there is still an infinite amount of learning to do, my vision hasn’t changed (save for barricade interviews, but who knows?).
I hope to give back to The Citizen’s Poste what it’s given to me, and I hope to do it authentically, intentionally, and on my own terms. My goal in pioneering this new era of editorial isn’t to create an empire, but an embassy— something that quietly and confidently resides everywhere, all at once. I want to bleed into the cracks of the fashion industry and shake it a little. I want people to try and fail to bleach me out. I want to be controversial and disruptive, and I want to inspire you to be the same.
Find yourself here. Fashion is one of the few industries that everyone is a part of, whether or not you give a damn. If you’re leaving your house with clothes on your back, you’re a member of the fashion industry— an active participant.
With that in mind, The Citizen’s Poste wasn’t designed to bring you into an existing fold or lacerate your individuality with a cookie cutter, but to give you the tools to make space for yourself on your terms. I want this to be a platform where you can be inspired by the beauty of the fashion industry and equally liberated to defy it. Where the curtain can come down, and you can honestly bask in what’s in front of you and consider what it means. I want you to bite into a piece of ripe fruit and let the sweetness drip down your chin, and I want you to decide what you honestly think of it. I hope not to compete animosity but to suffocate indifference. I don’t care if you hate what you see, as long as you feel something.
So why don’t you take off your shoes, hang up your coat, and stay a while? We’re all citizens here– I’m just indiscreet about it.
Cheers.
Mackenzie Ostrowski
Founder, CEO, Editor-in-Chief