I’m Sami Reiss, a writer from Ottawa, Ont. based in Brooklyn. I have covered vintage clothing, furniture design and strength sports for GQ and these and similar topics for The Wall St. Journal, ESPN and Ssense. Perhaps you saw my IG or you bought vintage from me in the 15 years I have been selling and sourcing. I started my newsletter, Snake, a decade ago, for five years it was about vintage clothing—this is now collected in a book—now it is about furniture and health.
What is Snake?
Snake is a regular oversight over design, bringing to light the cornucopia of good furniture and design that doesn’t get covered in consumer-facing media. It’s also a way of getting it into readers’ hands: highlighting canon and obscure and sleeper items for sale or on auction. My interest as a vintage buyer and seller and reporter was in items with the most resale value or best story, and I scour thousands a week (literally) and pass those onto readers. There is an endless supply of it out there. It can be bought; it’s just hidden.
Free subscribers can expect a dozen to 20 items on auction a month with context, history, provenance and price history about them. Paying subscribers can expect many more, as well as regular profiles of designers and houses with brand histories and price guides—what to pay at a flea market, at auction, in a store—and where to buy retail. There are also Q&A interviews—with vintage sellers, artists, designers, writers… interesting people—and essays.
Read now for an education in design, covering every style from this past century, and enter the collectible furniture market for cheap.
Reader (and media) testimonials:
"Snake is the best newsletter around if you are looking to understand and learn about design. Or outfit your dwelling."
"Reading your newsletter has elevated my understanding of interior design and opened my mind to better ways to buy furniture and objects"
"Hey, wanted to say i appreciate the work you've put into this. It's been a real pleasure learning about all of this. This newsletter feels like a part of a lost internet, people don't write about STUFF with this much earnestness anymore. Like, vintage furniture, design, clothes etc. is a wild place and no one talks about it. Any way, please keep it up and please make more hats! "
"Invaluable info, much love from Houston"
“A guy who knows more than anyone about furniture tells you what auctions to bid on.”—Matthew Schnipper, Deep Voices, quoted here.
Book and merch:
I began this newsletter in 2014 covering vintage clothing. In 2023, the first 100 newsletters I wrote were collected in a book, Sheer Drift, on Shining Life Press. Read about it above or on GQ.com. You can order the book through Shining Life Press; it is also in stores.
Snake merchandise is available on snakeUSA.bigcartel.com when the store is up. It can also be purchased at the following stores, stock permitting: Fantasy Explosion (NYC), Supply Tokyo, Varsity Los Angeles and Lower East Coast (Miami).
Contact me:
I am available here or on email at sami.reiss @ gmail.com, or on social channels @ samisreiss.
Rest in peace Wade Allison and Riley Gale
