Clayton Chambers

On Sprezza's content-activation flywheel

At the end of last year, we sat down with our friend Clayton Chambers to talk about the rise of his inspirational menswear platform, Sprezza, and to hear his perspectives on the state of online content and media. We first connected with Clayton in early 2023, right after he had landed in Amsterdam, where he was planning to stay for a few months. We had discovered his inspiring newsletter sometime the year before. Sprezza had launched as a side project during the pandemic, delivering weekly dispatches of Clayton’s (micro-)trend-focused observations, outspoken opinions on style, and his personal tastes in contemporary menswear. In many ways, it reminded us of the blogosphere, translated into today’s digital landscape. A few months after our initial meeting, we collaborated on a dinner activation for Atelier Munro during Pitti 104. Soon after, Clayton’s time in Amsterdam ended, but in the second half of that year, Sprezza really started to take off.

If your content endeavors are not being algorithmically pushed — which happens mostly for the wrong reasons these days — you need to be in it for the long haul, maintaining a consistent work ethic to build any significant audience. Clayton succeeded in doing this, despite moving around and managing more than just one business and an expanding family. He also moved Sprezza beyond the online space, finding new audiences and validating and strengthening his core activities. The big offline move began at the end of 2023 with a one-day event in his former hometown of New York City, where he presented a selection of brands to a few hundred visitors. In 2024, he returned with a similar concept, but on a larger scale in London. Having now also made a long-term move to Amsterdam with his family, he is ready to take everything to the next level.

Here are some of the things we talked about >

You started Sprezza in 2021. What’s the story behind it?

I’ve loved clothes for as long as I can remember. Two core memories from growing up contributed to that. First, my Mom used to dress us for church every Sunday. The weekly look was a navy blazer, an Oxford shirt, khakis, a tie, and penny loafers. Looking back, I loved (not at the time!) the idea of a uniform. The repetition of that uniform is ingrained in me; and I still think those items are some of the best pieces you can wear (even though my personal style has changed).

Second, I remember my Dad (who was a Southern Baptist preacher) would only go shopping once a year, on New Year’s Day. We’d drive 45 minutes to the nearest Dillards or JC Penney, and he’d stock up a few suits that were 80% off. I’ve always been fascinated with clothing’s place in the culture, and how it’s moved culture forward. Sprezza was just a natural extension of things I already loved. So, I launched the newsletter on Substack a few years ago when I was between day jobs; it was a creative outlet for me to curate and share things I liked learning about. The rest is history. I grew up in a small town in Florida, so I never really had much access to the culture until I went to New York for college in 2012, at age 18, that was the first time I really understood that clothing could be a form of self-expression.

That was the peak #menswear era.

Yeah, that was a different era. You had Four Pins, Milk Studios, Complex felt new and fresh, all these media brands at the forefront. Before Instagram you had blogs, Tumblr, Style Forum, etc. And it was probably the last moment (excluding pre internet of course) when you could discover new brands and products from a niche perspective. Subcultures meant something. There was a real sense of pride in discovering a specific brand, product, or idea because you found it on the edge of the internet.

But Instagram changed everything for us. Personally, I had a menswear blog that took off and gained a huge international following, and it opened so many doors for me. I got to travel for trade shows, visit fashion weeks, and travel internationally. But yea, that wave of content shaped my understanding early on.

That was completely new at the time: bloggers and people with followings on social media being invited into those worlds.

Yeah, making money as a content creator was a novel idea. Over the years, it’s now seen as the career that zoomers and younger people want to have, but it didn’t start that way. Writing and working in clothes fell off a bit for me. I spent most of my career working for other companies, but during the pandemic, when I was burnt out from my day job, I picked up writing as a way of working on something that didn’t feel like work. That’s when Sprezza was born. I started it first as a Twitter account, sharing random thoughts and observations on menswear, which eventually morphed into its own weekly newsletter.

A lot of newsletters that started during the pandemic have already faded away.

Yeah, it comes and goes. On Substack, there’s been a boom of fashion focused newsletters in the last year, but not everyone will keep up with that, and that’s ok. The first boom on Substack was mostly driven by individual writers who were let go by big media companies (NYT, WSJ, etc), but very few of them were focusing on the consumer side of things. In my eyes, that aspect really took off about a year ago.

GQ using Sam Hine as the exclusive voice of their Show Notes newsletter is kind of trying to do what you’re doing.

In a way, yeah. People don’t really care about GQ’s voice anymore. They care about Sam Hine. They care about his taste. The same goes for Will Welch. His persona plays a big role in how people perceive a platform like GQ at this point. He’s the face of the brand. He isn’t on the cover, but he has an important presence. Anyone I know who consume GQ, mostly do it for the interviews and cover stories. The same goes for all the other media brands. People trust people.

These titles don’t succeed in representing something that is entirely their own. Or maybe it’s because the audience only looks for that in other individuals, at this point in time.

I mean, people’s needs, tastes, preferences, and interests change over time. And I accept that people who followed me in the beginning when I was more anonymous behind the writing, stopped following at a certain point — that they’ve moved on to something else, for whatever reason. That’s fine; I can’t be everything to everyone.  But those who do follow me do it because I have a clear POV about what I like and don’t like. And that means something in 2025.

Tell me about the activations you’ve done in London and Paris under the Sprezza brand.

The activations in New York [2023] and London [2024] have been my favorite parts about building Sprezza. Having a selection of brands I admire in one space, with hundreds of people attending — it still amazes me to think about it. I will never take that for granted. I’ve always wanted to do events. I’ve always wanted to meet the people who read my work — people who have an opinion about the things I have an opinion about.

To have a platform and make that happen feels really special. The activations Michael Williams did with his platform, A Continuous Lean, were a huge inspiration for me, and I wanted to recreate that experience in my own way with my own brands and followers.

How would you describe the relationship between activations and sharing content in today’s environment?

I think both have become connected in an endless loop. You create content on the internet about something you care about, and in doing so, you connect with people who like it. They start sharing things, and your audience begins to grow. At that point, as a creator, you start learning about your audience — what they like and what they don’t like. You nurture an audience that appreciates your perspective. The next natural step is to take things to a different medium. Whether that’s a new form of content like video, a physical product, or hosting an activation.

These have all become natural evolutions of your core online activities. The online space has become a means to an end. Once you’ve moved to the offline realm, you realize how great it is, but in the end, more people will learn about it online than actually attended. It will speak to the people who only discover it online. From that point on, the activation becomes a means to an end as well. That’s when it turns into a flywheel. The online content fuels the activations, and the activations, in turn, do the same once they’ve taken place. It’s supposed to keep on going, and going.

Considering that you started with an activation in New York, where you’ve lived and still have a large network, and made it bigger and better in London — a city that was completely new to you in this regard — it shows that the Sprezza “flywheel” is in motion. What does that tell you for the future?

Everything is incremental. When I did the New York event, I made it free for both the brands and the visitors, and got a sponsor to cover the costs. I knew it would work, but I also felt a little insecure about whether I could really bring in the people to make it a success for everyone involved. It was a huge success. So, for the next one, I decided to charge brands. I felt confident I could bring in the crowd, despite never having done it in London before. I never expected 700 people to turn up. And I don’t believe you could achieve that with paid advertising for a one-day event.

As a result, I now know what I’m capable of activating, and that will help me offer more value when I charge brands next time around. This helps me think about the future more clearly and the types of projects I’d like to launch going forward, like a magazine, merchandise, collaborations, and so on. This year, I’m planning stuff in New York and London again, and I am looking to do activations in Amsterdam and Paris, later on. Everything is incremental. You use the momentum and it helps you take your ideas to the next level.

Make sure to follow Sprezza on all different platforms here >