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- The Multi-Hyphenate Approach to Creativity, Creation, and Innovation (and why it's our time ✨🪐)
The Multi-Hyphenate Approach to Creativity, Creation, and Innovation (and why it's our time ✨🪐)
Edition 5 - Dreaming across disciplines, the new era of creativity, 5 major FASHION x SPORTS moments, and the surrealist animated Disney film that took nearly 58 years to complete
Teodora Nicolae
March 18, 2025
✨🪐 THE MAIN POINT
This week, I want to take it a step further.
Because this isn’t just about connecting industries, commerce, and creative focus areas. It’s about disciplines. It’s about perspectives. It’s about people.
We’re in a new era of creativity. One where the old labels don’t fit. New-era creatives aren’t just designers or filmmakers, musicians or technologists, founders or strategists. We are multi-hyphenates—bridging disciplines, blending skill sets, shaping culture, and building what’s next.
The world has conditioned us to specialize, to stay in our lanes, to build within predefined boundaries. But the reality? The most transformative ideas, the ones that shape industries and move culture forward, don’t come from a single discipline. They emerge when divergent thinkers bridge the gap between seemingly unrelated worlds.
Think about it—how film shapes fashion, how music influences technology, how design is the invisible force behind every experience we interact with daily. The future isn’t about mastering just one (the present either, actually)—it’s about understanding how they all connect to create the world we experience.
Why This Matters & the Power of Connection Across Disciplines
Better Ideas, Better Solutions
Ideas evolve when they’re challenged by different perspectives. A designer thinks about user experience differently than a filmmaker, and a musician approaches rhythm and emotion in ways a technologist might not. When these minds collaborate, they create something unexpected and better than the sum of its parts.
Multi-Hyphenate Thinking Drives True Innovation
When you combine skill sets, you don’t just create, you innovate. The best solutions come from people who think in layers—who understand how film, music, fashion, and technology can merge into something culture-shifting.
Some of the most game-changing innovations happened because someone combined elements from different fields. The iPhone wasn’t just tech—it was a fusion of industrial design, behavioral psychology, music, and communication. Some of the best brand storytelling isn’t just marketing—it’s cinema, sound, fashion, and movement coming together.
Culture Evolves at the Crossroads
The moments that define generations—whether in music, fashion, or tech—happen when creative disciplines collide. Hip-hop changed not just music, but fashion and language. Social media didn’t just alter communication, but entertainment, design, and commerce. When we connect the dots in new ways, we shape culture itself.
A New Era of Creators & Builders
I believe deeply that the future belongs to the multi-dimensional creators, the ones who aren’t afraid to mix disciplines, to experiment, to create without rigid labels. A filmmaker who integrates design thinking. A musician who explores immersive tech. A strategist who applies storytelling to brand and business innovation. The best ideas don’t fit into one category—and neither do the people creating them.
And this is why we’re building this community.
We’re not here to replicate the old ways of working. We’re here to create a new blueprint—one where creatives, innovators, and builders from different backgrounds come together to solve challenges and ultimately shape what’s next. Because the most exciting ideas emerge when we stop playing by old rules and start creating from a place of integration.
The Dreamers isn’t just for filmmakers, designers, musicians, founders, strategists, or technologists. It’s for those who see beyond categories. Those who know that the future belongs to the ones who can weave ideas together in new ways, who aren’t afraid to cross disciplines and collaborate in ways that haven’t been done before.
My hope is that this community becomes a space for those of us who instinctively move between worlds, who know that the best ideas don’t come from working in isolation—but from merging perspectives, crossing boundaries, and finding the unexpected connections that lead to something new.
This week I’ll leave you with a challenge—to step outside your discipline. Go out of your way to have a conversation with someone whose work is nothing like yours. Find the common ground between what you do and what they do. Because the more we connect, the stronger and more expansive our collective vision becomes.
As always, thanks for reading and for being here,
✨🪐 Teodora
P.S. — you can always reply to these emails or email me directly at [email protected] with feedback, thoughts, ideas, feelings, hopes….wishes…dreams.
If our mission resonates and you want to tap into the ideas and insights we’re sharing here every week, or if you just want to show some good ol’ support, you can subscribe below and get our editions and updates straight to your inbox 👇
ANNOUNCEMENTS & UPDATES | A Founder Update
Now live….
The New Blueprint: A Deeper Look Behind the Scenes
Over the past few months, we’ve been building momentum with The Dreamers Community Newsletter—sharing the vision, mission, and values, connecting dots across industries, and starting to create the beginnings of a new space for visionary creators, new-era creatives, and collaborators.
Now, we’re evolving how we tell our story.
The New Blueprint, my new personal Substack, will serve as the behind-the-scenes, personal POV, where I’ll be openly and candidly sharing what I’ve learned, what I know, and what I’m still learning—insights from a lived experience, past and present. It’s also where I will share real-time reflections and the deeper thought process behind the vision for The Dreamers, the real inspiration(s) behind everything we’re working to create, and documenting the personal side of building beyond a traditional path.
Meanwhile, The Dreamers Community Newsletter will become even more community-driven, shifting its focus toward:
🔹 The Dreamers Updates—announcements, initiatives, updates on our community launches, and new opportunities within our ecosystem.
🔹 Industry + Culture Crossroads—news, trends, and key moments where creativity, technology, creative industries, and new ways of working converge.
🔹 Spotlighting Dreamers—the incredible people, projects, and collaborations shaping the future at the intersection of industries.
While The New Blueprint will be my personal dive into the real, unfiltered journey of building a new path, The Dreamers Community Newsletter will be the hub for insights and news at the intersection of creative industries, for community news, collaborations, and shared opportunities. Both are deeply connected, but each serves a distinct purpose.
If you’re here for the personal side of things—the raw process, the shifts, the lessons in real-time—The New Blueprint is where you’ll find it.
If you want to stay plugged into The Dreamers ecosystem, the people, the projects, and the future we’re building together—The Dreamers Community Newsletter is your space.
Two newsletters, two lanes—same vision, evolving in real-time.
✨🪐
CONNECTING THE DOTS | FASHION x SPORTS
This week….
5 BIG-DEAL COLLABS, LAUNCHES, and ANNOUNCEMENTS that prove the love affair between fashion x sports is not just a trend
1. Carine Roitfeld Launches 'Players' Magazine
Carine Roitfeld, one of fashion’s most influential editors, is stepping into a new arena—not just as a tastemaker, but as a cultural translator for the ongoing fusion of fashion and sports. Her upcoming bi-annual publication, Players, set to launch in May 2025, isn’t just another sports-meets-style glossy. It’s a statement on where luxury, culture, and athleticism are headed—and why high fashion can no longer afford to treat sports as an outsider.
This move isn’t random. It’s strategic. Roitfeld is well aware that sports are no longer just sports—they are powerful cultural drivers that influence how we dress, express status, and define aspiration.
Players | Launching May 2025
2. Louis Vuitton Becomes Official Partner of Formula 1
ILouis Vuitton’s landmark 10-year partnership with Formula 1 is more than just a high-profile sponsorship—it’s a strategic move that cements luxury fashion’s deepening relationship with elite sports. By becoming the Official Partner and title sponsor of the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, Louis Vuitton is signaling that the intersection of luxury, sports, and global cultural influence is no longer a niche but a dominant force shaping the future.
Louis Vuitton Official Partner of Formula 1
3. Nike and SKIMS Collaborate on 'NikeSKIMS' Activewear Line
Nike’s collaboration with SKIMS on the ‘NikeSKIMS’ activewear line signals a major shift in how sports brands are approaching performance apparel. By merging Nike’s legacy of innovation in athletic wear with SKIMS’ expertise in sculpting, fit, and inclusivity, this partnership is not just about fashion—it’s a redefinition of what sportswear means in a more lifestyle-driven, body-conscious era.
Nike Skims | Launch Image
4. Kiko Kostadinov x Fox Racing Collaboration
If high fashion’s love affair with traditional sports—think football, basketball, and tennis—wasn’t enough proof of the industry’s obsession with the intersection, the Kiko Kostadinov x Fox Racing collaboration marks the next evolution: the rise of avant-garde fashion in the world of extreme sports.
In January 2025, Kostadinov, a designer known for his experimental silhouettes and subversive approach to menswear, teamed up with Fox Racing—a brand deeply rooted in motocross culture—to launch a capsule collection under Fox’s new fashion-forward label, Fox Lab. This isn’t just another performance-meets-luxury collaboration; it’s a signal that alternative sports—BMX, motocross, skateboarding, and extreme racing—are becoming fashion’s newest playground.
Kiko Kostadinov x Fox Racing | Campaign Image
5. Chanel Sponsors the 2025 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race
When Chanel became the first-ever luxury brand to title sponsor the 2025 Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, it didn’t just attach its name to an event steeped in tradition—it made a statement about where high fashion and sports are headed.
Luxury’s relationship with sports has been thus far (generally) defined by glamour, spectacle, and star athletes—think Formula 1, tennis, and football partnerships. But with this move, Chanel is betting big on something different: the power of heritage sports as a symbol of timeless prestige.
This is more than just branding. It’s a strategic realignment of luxury fashion’s role in sports.
DO YOU KNOW A DREAMER? ✨🪐
We’re building our tribe of creatives, visionaries, disruptors, future-focused dreamers and doers — if this sounds like someone you know please consider sharing this newsletter and our community with them 🙏🏼
#INSPO | When Disney Animation x Surrealist Fine Art Collide
Destino | Disney
Destino: The Surreal Collaboration Between Salvador Dalí and Disney
Destino is one of the most fascinating and unexpected collaborations in animation history—a surrealist dream brought to life by Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney. Conceived in 1945, the project was meant to blend Dalí’s avant-garde visual style with Disney’s pioneering animation, creating a short film unlike anything seen before.
Dalí worked closely with Disney artist John Hench to develop storyboards, paintings, and concept sketches, envisioning a surreal love story set in a dreamlike landscape. However, due to budget issues and shifting priorities at Disney during World War II, Destino was shelved before completion.
Decades later in 2003, Roy E. Disney resurrected the project, using Dalí’s original artwork and notes to finally bring Destino to life. The finished film is a mesmerizing fusion of hand-drawn and digital animation, set to a hauntingly beautiful score, embodying the essence of both Dalí’s surrealism and Disney’s magic.
Though Destino was nearly lost to time, its completion stands as a testament to the power of creative vision and collaboration between two visionaries, even across generations—a rare moment where the worlds of surrealist art and classic animation collide.
Watch it on Disney+ or here.
A film still from Destino
A film still from Destino
A film still from Destino
🎶 🎶 🎶 PRESS PLAY 🎶 🎶 🎶
More music has been added to The Dreamers soundtrack, including this week’s jam MANIFEST by Mari Sugaware.
If you haven’t checked out the community playlist aka what I’m listening to right now while I work, wander, and just generally space out. Click here.
If our mission resonates and you want to tap into the ideas and insights we’re sharing here every week, or if you just want to show some good ol’ support, you can subscribe below and get our editions and updates straight to your inbox 👇
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