The Ex-Hipster Behind Substack’s Elite Tastemakers |
A few years ago, Chris Black reached out to Max Stein, whom he’d come across years earlier when Stein was a downtown scenester and self-described “loyal devotee of the late-era Beatrice Inn.” In the intervening period, Stein had refashioned himself as a manager for a certain kind of multi-hyphenate tastemaker. “I was like, ‘Hey, I think we’re leaving money on the table,’” Black says. “And then he called me and was basically like, ‘You are.’” Black is a co-host of the How Long Gone podcast, a creative consultant for various clothing brands, and a magazine columnist, which made him a perfect client for Stein. “He’s a manager for people who don’t really know what they need managed because they’re sort of strange creatives,” as one fashion writer puts it. Or as Stein, 39, tells me over breakfast recently at the Chelsea hotel, “Sometimes I feel like your mom’s friend is like, ‘How can my daughter be an influencer?’ I don’t know how to make someone an influencer. I know how to take someone that has created something really unique and interesting and is hopefully singular and then monetize it.”
A decade ago, Stein was one of the first to see commercial potential in the stylists, bloggers, and consultants with buzzy followings online. These influencers, who gravitated to Substack and Instagram, now command large sums for partnering with brands and advertising their products. Stein’s agency, Brigade, represents some of the most popular of these talents, who often straddle the divide between the new world of direct-to-audience content and the crumbling empires of legacy media. They include the established fashion influencers Arielle Charnas and Leandra Medine as well as the newer shopping-newsletter writers Becky Malinsky and Laura Reilly. Then there’s Emily Sundberg, who writes the super-successful business-minded newsletter Feed Me, and Casey Lewis, who chronicles youth trends in her After School newsletter. Celebrity stylist Danielle Goldberg is also a client, as is principal ballerina Isabella Boylston, food-and-beverage consultant Alex Delany, and jewelry designer........