We gather, we record, and we publish, with the Global South at the centre.
Subject Matter Labs is a media and advisory firm working at the intersection of storytelling, brand, and culture — tracking emerging trends around the world, with the Global South at the centre.
Subject Matter Labs operates
across three properties.
I. Custodians of Crafts
Our Podcast spotlights the intersection of heritage, business, and innovation across the craft and fashion ecosystem.
We seek out the founders, makers, and thinkers who are keeping cultural crafts alive and commercially relevant in the age of mass production and AI.
Season 1 of Custodians of Crafts is now live on Youtube and Spotify, covering founders and innovators from Tunisia, South Africa, to India and Laos.
II. Subject Matter
The front door of Subject Matter Labs is our Substack newsletter that we’ve been writing since 2024.
Subject Matter is a bi-monthly newsletter about the cultural forces reshaping global commerce and the stories of their origin.
What we love to write about.
Culture leading commerce, especially in the world’s youngest, fastest-growing regions. The Global South is our focus; we love to hear stories from this part of the world and how they impact the world around us.
Whom are we writing for?
This newsletter is for people building brands, making investments, or crafting strategies in a world where the center of cultural gravity has shifted.
Readers who want culturally intelligent, commercially useful insight about the future of fashion, craft, media, and marketing.
Ep. 8 Why India’s Heritage Textiles Are Becoming the Future of Fashion: Inside Jiwya’s Plant-Based Studios
Ep. 7 Inside the Mind of the Founder Challenging Fashion’s System: Ahmed Zaidi | Hyran Technologies
Ep. 6 Adeyoola Adenusi on Nigeria: Past, Present and the Future
Ep. 5 From Tunisia to the World: Craft, Diaspora & Fouta Harissa
Ep. 4 Inside COP, Culture & the Climate Fight from the Global South
-
SHEIN Arrives in France: A Brand Strategy Blunder or A Paradox Between Cultural Ideals and Economic Reality?
-
Fast-fashion Players Are Leveraging "Sustainability" Credentials To Launch Premium Collections
-
Apple TV's 'Severance' is a Masterclass in World-Building
-
What International Brands need to know about Indian Consumers: To sell in India is to deeply understand it's Colonised Legacy
III. Advisory
Most agencies will tell you what worked elsewhere and apply it to your market.
We do the opposite.
Subject Matter Labs Advisory works with brands, founders, and creative enterprises who are building in, or into, multicultural and rapidly evolving markets. We bring editorial intelligence, cultural fluency, and strategic clarity to the questions that matter: how you position, how you enter, how you tell your story without losing what makes it true.
Our clients tend to come to us when the standard playbook has stopped working, or when they know their market well enough to know that it never applied in the first place.