Sharp Notes
The handwritten note that arrives in your mailbox — in an actual paper envelope with U.S. postage in the upper right corner — is a dying art. Or already dead, supplanted by text, email, DMs or the e-card — digital communication that requires a modicum of thought, they are as ephemeral as the clouds, and often festooned with typos.
Enter Anna and Graydon Carter’s Electragram. Launching on Tuesday, the digital communication platform gives users the ability to create their own signature correspondence with a menu of colors, icons and illustrations that can be delivered via email, text, social media, or any messaging app. The start-up counts Jony Ive and Tory Burch (both longtime Carter friends) among its angel investors with founding investors Isabelle Harvie-Watt and The Cycladic Group founder Dimitri Goulandris. Harvie-Watt, formerly chief marketing officer at Valentino, has extensive experience in the luxury fashion world, including stints at Giorgio Armani, Versace and Tod’s Group. Anna Carter serves as cofounder and chief executive officer with Angela Panichi as chief design officer, John Tornow as chief technology officer, Cindy Sperling as chief operating officer and Alex Dickerson as chief marketing officer. Graydon Carter is chief creative consultant.
The seed of the idea was first planted in 2018, after Graydon Carter stepped down as editor in chief of Vanity Fair and the family decamped for a year to a rented villa in Provence, France.
“It was in France that we realized that the ways of keeping in touch with friends and family were really limited,” said Anna Carter. “We were big fans of handwritten notes, but it would take weeks for them to arrive. So your options were really email, which was very kind of work-y, and text, which is very casual. Phone calls were hard because first of all, nowadays, I feel like you almost have to text somebody to set up a time to have a phone call, otherwise, they feel somewhat intrusive. And what we realized is there was nothing in the digital space that was elegant and beautifully designed.”
Electragram will launch with more than a dozen designs (from the classic telegram to a pineapple, typewriter, lips, a martini, a takeout carton with chopsticks, palm trees, a teddy bear). There are is also a portfolio of customizable options for members that include illustrated monograms and icons, colorful backgrounds and borders, and designer fonts. The top-tier subscription offering is $10 a month and includes unlimited Electragrams and access to exclusive, limited-edition designs. Those unwilling to commit to a monthly membership can purchase fully customizable Electragram stationery at $1 per Electragram or a bundle of 10 for $7.50. Users who are not members will be able to send the classic Electragram design, without customization, for free.
Graydon Carter, a prolific illustrator, drew the first Electragram during the family’s self-exile in France. It is inspired by the iconic look of the oldfashioned telegram with a black border, and a globe icon on a manila background. The company’s catch phrase and branding proposition — “When snail mail is too slow. And email is too slight” — is meant to conjure a more civilized era when personal communication was not reduced to emojis, GIFs and acronyms.
“One of the things I really want to do is to revive an interest and love in the lost art of elegant communication,” said
Anna Carter.
It may seem like a lost cause in our current ill-mannered era. But during a Zoom chat last week from her husband’s desk at their home in Roxbury, Connecticut, Carter is effortlessly persuasive. The British-born fashion industry veteran (she started her career in communications at Giorgio Armani and went on to run U.K. press and advertising for Ralph Lauren before shifting her focus to the sustainability of the industry’s supply chain) merrily fields questions about her involvement with her husband’s post-Vanity Fair newsletter AirMail (none “at all, that’s very much his baby with Alessandra” Stanley, the former New York Times critic) and Graydon’s possible future involvement with Electragram.
“I’m sure he’ll have some fun, because, you know, from his Spy days, and now, his AirMail days and obviously, Vanity Fair in between, he’s got a good sense of humor,” she said. “And I’m sure he’ll give us some great content, too.”
Hanging from the ceiling above her (as if in a photographer’s dark room) are dozens of character illustrations drawn by her husband while they were in France. (“I think he’s got some plans for them,” she said.)
Her plan for Electragram includes recruiting influencer friends — including Burch, Derek Blasberg and Jill Kargman — as emissaries. There are plans for limited-edition designs by well-known artists and illustrators as well as collaborations with luxury brands. Through its website and social channels, Electragram will also cover the state of modern etiquette via contributions from writers and illustrators. (There are no plans for traditional advertising on the website or the Electragrams.)
“What we’re looking to be — in addition to the solution for sending elegant notes instantly — is a destination for exclusive editorial content,” she said.
There will be humor writing, she explained. “So we’ll have imaginary conversations between historical figures and historical rewrites, which could be something like, oh if only Electragram had been around when Romeo and Juliet were going through their whole things. When Juliette sent Romeo a message to say she wasn’t really dead, and he didn’t get it and then he arrived and thought she was dead and killed himself…
You know, all of that could have been avoided.”
Carter admitted that while she finds creative inspiration in the entrepreneurial ethos of the start-up world, it has its challenges, namely raising money and continually refining the pitch to raise more money. But, she said, “it just really felt like Electragram was going to fulfill a need.”
Plus, it’s by nature eco-friendly, which is a priority for Carter, who is a sustainable fashion proselytizer and 15-year board member of the Natural
Resources Defense Fund. (She transitioned to the honorary board last year.)
But with myriad free and low-priced e-card options including legacy brands Evite and Paperless Post, who is Electragram’s target customer? “I think we’re talking to a designconscious, sophisticated consumer who is looking for the ability to send a chic, personalized digital message,” said Carter. “And I think there are so many use cases for it. If you had a great dinner with friends who took you to a fabulous restaurant last night, typically you’re probably going to send an email or text the next morning to say, ‘it’s so great to see you, thank you for a fabulous dinner.’ Now, you’ll be able to send something that inspires the same delight as a handwritten note, but it’ll get there instantly.”
That personalization is key to Electragram’s selling proposition. “People can create their own personalized stationery and write notes in their own words,” said Carter, “whereas for most of the e-card services, there is one design level and it’s not particularly chic. They’ve written most of the text for you, so there’s minimal customization.”
And Carter is hopeful that Electragram’s potential customers will include nostalgiaobsessed Gen Z (the Carter’s have a 14-year-old daughter) and not just include those of us who actually remember when socalled snail mail was one of the few options for the thank you note.
“Gen Z really loves nostalgia,” said Carter, “And so, Electragram can be for them, the epistolary version of drinking a martini at The Belmond.”
— MARISA GUTHRIE