Softgrit 01, Spring 2025
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Softgrit is based in Toronto, with a gaze that wanders. They publish work shaped by curiosity, clarity, and an interest in how people express who they are — through language, through image, through surface.
From the Softgrit team on their inaugural issue:
In our first issue, we explore the quiet codes of style, intimacy, and cultural memory.
We consider the figure of the loser — not the online type, but the original, charming, socially out-of-step figure — and ask where they’ve gone. We speak with Frances Shoemack, founder of natural fragrance house Abel, about constructing a scent around Parisian interiors and upcycled cherry. We examine the dramatic flair of orgasms in recorded music, the objects we’re currently coveting, and what’s climbing — or falling — in our Hot or Not index.
Softgrit also introduces a series of recurring columns. In Local Haunts, we visit The Scribe, a Toronto bookstore where the printed word still matters. Tastemaking offers recipes for the most fussy tea party imaginable — doilies encouraged. Throughout the issue, we highlight independent brands that are doing something different.
We also present a data-driven look at pubic hair: who’s waxing, trimming, growing it out, and what it all might suggest about sex, style, power, and how people are quietly negotiating intimacy in 2025. There are statistics. There is theory. There is a surprising amount of nuance.
Toronto, Ontario; 215mm x 280mm; 72 pages; Issue 01/Spring 2025