Fifty Bottles of Love Me
Curtis Kulig started writing "Love Me" on walls around New York years ago—the lettering clean, the demand perfectly ambiguous. A plea, a command, a threat depending on the hour you encounter it. That opacity is what made it travel: from Lower East Side walls to gallery shows, clothing collaborations, and eventually the side of fifty limited-edition liqueur bottles.
One of those bottles found its way to me, and I can’t bring myself to open it. Not because I think it’ll appreciate into something valuable—it won’t—but because the object is genuinely considered, and Kulig’s lettering gives even a bottle of amaretto something to say. Amaretto is already a sentimental drink, the kind of thing you pour at two in the morning when you want to feel soft and warm and slightly ruined. "Love Me" on the label feels less like branding and more like the bottle’s natural emotional state.
Most artists who cross into commercial territory come out diluted. Kulig has somehow kept the phrase intact through all its migrations, which is harder to pull off than it looks.