PLEIN AIR
WRITING + EDITING + BRAND NARRATIVE
When an ex-Clinton staffer watched a
plane hit the Pentagon in real time, the
experience simmered alongside his summers
immersed in backcountry Wyoming—
and years of tense conversations coordinating
the President's schedule with Secret Service
officials. What would be the 9/11 of
America's wide open spaces?
The first book in his Sage Mendiluze series,
Rockets' Red Glare, released in Spring 2025
from Blackstone Publishing.
(That's what we call the inciting incident.)
PLEIN AIR was an e-boutique and online publication
operating from 2023 to 2025 centered around getting
women outdoors in style, inspired by factors such as:
The stratospheric success of brands like Halfdays,
Yardsale, and Hikerkind.The prevalence of run clubs and gal-centric meetups
across the country proving a hunger for nature
experience IRL.Affiliate journalism and performance marketing were
peaking, with publications earning via whitelisting,
paid promotional posts, and high affiliate conversion
rates rewarding editorial perspectives.
First, PLEIN AIR needed to establish its voice:
elegant, warm, but almost irreverent.
Pithy headlines and striking UGC imagery.
Visually, you'd immediately understand the
aesthetic family of brands beneath it ranging
from girlhood to gorpcore.
Customers were likely high-income, even if
they didn't grow up jetting off to Aspen.
Readers may have been comfortably settled
into Denver, Jackson, and Honolulu, sure, but
also could be the ones moving to a "granola"
town for the first time—or they could be the ones
always having to bribe the group message to
engage in any activities not involving asphalt or Aperol.
The outdoors didn't have to be all-or-nothing.
GOALS
