“Die Hot With A Vengeance” Author Sable Yong On Why Writing About Beauty Has Been Therapeutic

There are few content mediums Sable Yong, former Allure and xoVain writer and editor, hasn’t taken on.

She started her Substack, “Hard Feelings,” in 2016 and launched a podcast, “Smell Ya Later,” in 2020 with fellow beauty writer Tynan Sinks. To date, the Substack and podcast have drawn over 4,000 subscribers and 300,000 downloads, respectively.

Yong’s first book, “Die Hot With a Vengeance: Essays on Vanity,” is making its debut today. In the book, she delves into her decision to go blonde, problematic wellness trends, pretty privilege, the complicated digital media landscape and her fascination with fragrance. In tandem with the book, she created a limited-edition fragrance with independent perfumer Joey Rosin.

Ahead, Yong fills us in on the fragrance, intriguing perfume brands, her career, an episode of “Smell Ya Later” exploring the smell of death, how beauty media could improve, and why chronicling the beauty industry has comforted her.

You got into media because an xoVain employee reached out to you after spotting a Craigslist ad you posted about your apartment. Prior to that, had you thought about becoming a writer?

I studied theater and playwriting in college. Right after I graduated I was like, what was I thinking? This is an insane industry. If you think media and the beauty industry is crazy, the theater or film industry is a hundred times bad.

I’ve always written, just not necessarily in the professional capacity. I was into LiveJournal. I had a Blogspot. When I wrote that Craigslist, I was feeling very pressed. I had two weeks to find a roommate, so I needed this ad to stand out. It was quite long actually, and it was trying to make my apartment and all of its quirks sound as attractive as possible without overselling it.

You started at xoVain and then went to Allure. Why did you want to work there?

Allure, to me, was the top of the top of beauty editorial. At the time, Phillip Picardi had been appointed the new digital editorial director. They were doing a revamp of the digital presence of Allure. Previously, they hadn’t been prioritizing it. He had a bit of freedom to build his own team.

We were never super close, but we had parallel careers. We were always aware of one another. I think I interviewed for his job at Teen Vogue. He just DMed me on Twitter and was like, “Hey, I am working at Allure now, and I wanted to talk about if you’d be interested in joining the team.”

I had gotten into a nice flow with freelancing after xoVain folded, but, at the same time, when am I ever going to get this opportunity? Also, if it was truly a bad fit, I could quit, but it came to me in a way that no job ever has. Initially, I was the makeup and skincare editor. Then, I just took makeup. Someone else took over skincare.

Why did you leave?

I was there for a little over three years, which in digital media years is like seven years. There was almost a complete staff turnover in that time. There were so many confusing changes. No one really knew what their job was, myself included.

Every other week we were told to concentrate on something new, so it was really hard to get anything that I wanted to accomplish done. All of the features I wanted to do had gotten pushed to the side because we had to prioritize what corporate wanted to see.

It got to the point where I’m like, what are we doing? Why can’t we do the things that were previously green lit? I wasn’t getting answers, so I was like, I’m just annoying people being a squeaky wheel, it’s time to go my own way.

What was the process of writing a book like? 

I was very, very humbled. The standard timeline is you get a year after you sell a proposal and sign the contract to submit the first draft of the manuscript. It was not enough time. Having given myself time as a freelancer because I had more flexibility to stave off other work to work on this, I milked it a little, too. I was being too patient waiting for the inspiration to come. I ended up submitting it 15 months after the contract signature. I was told that is extremely common and normal.

This was a project that was personal to me. This wasn’t just an assignment. This was my project with my name on it, and I would have to be promoting it for the next few years. I was like, this really needs to hit. That pressure made it harder to feel good about the completed pages. I was constantly self-editing when I had to be finishing the chapters.

In your book, you write about press trips you’ve taken, from Costa Rica to Singapore. There has been a backlash to over-the-top influencer trips. What’s your take? 

You are spending a hundred grand to take maybe six editors to this very lavish resort. I truly don’t understand the ROI, just from a business perspective.

The fatigue is real for sure. From the influencer angle, you are getting taken on this amazing trip. It is for content. It makes the influencer career more aspirational because you get to go on trips you probably wouldn’t be able to easily afford otherwise. It puts the pressure on to chase this lifestyle that’s very unrealistic.

It’s not really helping anyone, not that it’s meant to. I understand marketing. It’s meant to make the brand look aspirational. In that sense, I guess it’s working, but, for the regular consumer, I think it’s creating a bit of a disconnect.

You freelance write now and have your own Substack. What topics do you prefer writing about?

I love to write about what’s going on in pop culture or culture in general, but with a silly angle. I feel like a lot of what we read in media tends to be quite judgmental and a bit alarmist. People absorb the alarmist perspective and mountains are made out of molehills. You step back and realize how unserious a lot of it is.

I get it. I’ve worked in media. I know that this is for clicks and virality. I can see behind that a bit. All these things purported as the new beauty standard or the new trend, it was one TikTok video that went a bit viral. We won’t be talking about this in two weeks. What I find interesting is what it reflects about our behavior. I love to write about that.

In the book, you describe the digital landscape as the Wild West. How do you think the digital media landscape in beauty can improve? 

I think beauty readers or consumers would love if we bring back writing about beauty in the way people write about culture, which is to say more thoughtful, critical features and fewer commerce pieces. As these corporate entities realized that beauty sells, they pushed product roundups, they pushed affiliate links—and it works. Because of that, people pushed hard in one direction, but they’re not thinking about variety, the identity of the brand and the site.

I would love to see more publications or even a dedicated beauty publication that talks about it in a personal, experiential and a critical way that’s also fun. Sure, product recommendations are always going to be a part of it, but focus on features that don’t have to sell you things or don’t have to be some identity exploitative piece because that’s the only way that you can get a lot of these pieces green lit is that it has to align with some marginalized group or identity.

You’ve run the podcast “Smell Ya Later“ since 2020. What was the genesis of it?

I’ve always been a fragrance lover. Smells tend to affect me very strongly. They affect everybody strongly, I just think our schedules keep us pretty busy, so we don’t really give the time to think about them. Right before the pandemic, me and my co-host Tynan Sinks had talked to this podcast studio in the Canal Street Market, and they were pretty jazzed about the idea of hosting us there.

Then, the world shut down, and it took until September of that same year where I was like, you know what, if all these other people can have just casual podcasts where they just chat, we could do this. Because Tynan is also a very talented beauty and fragrance writer, we both have a lot of contacts in the industry and have been able to secure compelling guests, which makes us look very official, but we keep it pretty unserious.

We’ve grown organically a lot. Neither Tynan nor I put a lot of effort into marketing. [Listeners] are like, “I was searching if there were podcasts that talk about scent and I found yours.” It’s nice to confirm my hunch that everybody loves talking about scent, but there aren’t too many avenues where people can gather to talk about them.

When we launched, no one is doing a scent podcast, and I would argue that is still true, except there are many perfume podcasts. We are a scent podcast. We like to talk about all facets of scent, not just fine fragrance. We tend to do a lot of fragrance because it is the easiest reach for us from our backgrounds, but I would love to do more broad scent things.

What’s an example of a broad scent thing?

For our first Halloween episode, I was like, wouldn’t it be fun if we did something like scary smells or the smell of death? I did a precursory Google search for the smell of death, and I found a blog post from a scientist who had researched the smell of death. He was based in the U.K. I emailed him, and he was so down to be a guest. That’s one of my favorite episodes to date.

He explained that there are literal death farms in the U.S. When people donate their bodies to science, they put cadavers in different environmental tableaus just study the process of decay.

You made your own fragrance tied to the book. What was that like?

I’ve always wanted to make a perfume, and I was really excited to think about book merch ideas. The world doesn’t need a new tote bag. If I’m going to do merch, I want to do something people are going to enjoy, use and love, and that gives me the opportunity to flex some creativity.

So, it was like, well, if I was ever going to make a scent, it would be this one because it’s a tax write-off. This is what the advance is for. They’re literally giving me money to write this book, and I can use it to make this fragrance.

You would think having all these connections in the perfume industry would make it easy, but it absolutely doesn’t. I don’t have venture capital. All the big perfume houses, they’re working with Calvin Klein, Diesel and Kate Spade. They’re not dropping everything to make me one little perfume.

I had a listener of the podcast who is a perfumer. He DM’d me and was like, “Hey, I would love to work on this with you.” Having a person, [Rosin], volunteer for it made it seem doable. He’s also based in Brooklyn, and we have similar taste in fragrance.

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What was the brief like?

I said I really love orris, violet, leather, patchouli, amber. Visually, I told him, ‘Think of a cyber futuristic film noir like ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Drive.’ Think of a disgraced villainess with a stolen Birkin bag that she spilled wine into.” I was painting him a picture of this character or tableau. Through the visual elements, he was able to get the direction I wanted to go. I wanted it to smell alluring, dark and evil, but in a compelling, fun way.

What fragrance brands are you excited about?

I’ve always been a diehard for D.S. & Durga. I love that they do quirky stuff, even if it’s not necessarily wearable or commercial. I love this French brand called Matiere Premiere. They have really beautiful scents that are simplistic thematically. Also, I get so many compliments when I wear them.

Boy Smells. They do unique scents. Elorea. They’re a Korean American brand, and their collections are based on Korean heritage. They just released a new collection, and I feel it’s the most heritage-facing one. I don’t think anyone has smelled anything like them. They’re doing such interesting cool stuff.

You wrote in your book that beauty felt out of range for you as a kid growing up. Does it feel more in your range now?

When you’re a kid, your entire world is your school, parents, family and friend group. Seeing so much of the world now, it’s comforting and a relief to see so much more diversity like, oh, the things I thought were weird for me are very normal in the rest of the world. It’s almost like working in the beauty industry was immersion therapy for me. Because I was able to try everything, it kind of dulls the glamour. At the same time, it delays the pressures.

As a beauty editor, I’m not paying for this stuff. I don’t have to deal with the ethical dilemma of saving up and budgeting my life around injectables. I can get an injectable and realize, oh, it doesn’t matter. No one noticed this thing, or it doesn’t make a huge difference, it doesn’t change my life.

Knowing that now, I’m like, I would never pay for this. I think of it almost like an antidepressant where it doesn’t make you happier, but it doesn’t make you sad. It evens out the landscape so I can more clearly see the forest beyond the trees.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.