Bathroom Camping and Labubu Backlash
after school monday edition
Welcome back to After School Monday Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. 🫶
In today’s letter:
Keds comeback watch
Why fans got “the absolute ick” from the Rhode Summer Club
The new “it” water bottle is the mini Hydro Flask
Yearner girl summer
Vibe-based budgeting
“Banksying” as a dating trend
Tan lines as self-care
Jake the Rizzbot
Grindset culture is so back
Aura photography
The older sister side part
The AI band going viral that no one knows is AI
Why weighted vests are all over your FYP
And so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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Here’s an emerging microtrend I can’t stop thinking about: Keds, I believe, are about to have a big moment.
Last month, I noticed Audrey Gelman wearing them in her recent New York Times profile. Say what you will about Audrey Gelman — many have! — but the woman has taste. Could this be the new (old) “it” shoe, I wondered…
But Audrey is 38 and hasn’t been in the public eye, at least not in the way she used to be, since she resigned from The Wing in 2020. Many Gen Zers have never heard of “The Wing,” much less “Audrey Gelman.” And while a trend doesn’t need Gen Z to exist, it does need them to scale.
Then I heard the How Long Gone guys mention the Prada Keds in an episode a week or two ago. They are also not youths, per se, but their chronic online-ness makes them a bit more Gen Z-coded than Audrey.
And then Lana Del Rey wore them over the weekend. Like Audrey, Lana is a millennial — I just learned that she’s 40??? — but she has a very large young fanbase, making her something of a Gen Z trend whisperer.
(Upon closer inspection, I’m not confident Lana’s shoes are actually Keds. Vogue identified them as Keds, but they have five eyelets instead of the Keds’ customary four, so they may be these Walmart Keds knockoffs? But dupe or not, the signal remains!)
Further research revealed that many of the big fashion Substackers have also been (or never stopped?) espousing the pleasures of the low-profile canvas shoe — in fact, Jess Graves, Becky Malinsky, Leandra Medine, and Elizabeth Tamkin have all mentioned them in the last six or so months.
The trend has yet to hit my TikTok FYP, which means we’re somewhere between insider re-adoption and algorithmic tipping point…
Last week, Hailey Bieber’s billion-dollar skincare company Rhode debuted a branded beach club takeover in Mallorca to launch its Lemontini Lip Tint. The brand invited a number of models and influencers to attend — I spied Romee Strijd, Julieta Gracia, and Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who also styled the campaign. There were custom sun loungers, branded floaties, and a color-coordinating Pucci-clad Hailey Bieber. She called it a longtime “brand vision board” moment.
While the Rhode-branded beach club is technically open to the public, making the whole thing ostensibly inclusive (…if you happen to be vacationing in Mallorca between July 9 and 23 and can afford a sun bed at the swanky Gran Folies, where Rhode’s pop-up takes place), the backlash across the brand’s biggest fans was swift.
Hosting a lavish brand trip after raising prices, owing to tariffs and the “global supply chain,” is not a great look, and if Rhode thought their fanbase wouldn’t notice this, they don’t know the Gen Z consumer as well as they thought they did.