Boy Smells and Ice Buckets

after school weekend edition

Welcome back to After School Weekend Edition, a not-so-brief trends debrief for paid subscribers. Your support keeps this newsletter going!

In today’s letter:

• The corporatization of Coachella

• The ice bucket challenge (it’s back!)

• Why all the kids are calling each other “good boys”

• Gen Z money dysmorphia

• The doomscroll-to-checkout pipeline

• Girls on TikTok are seeking out “old Lululemon”

• Warby Parker straight-to-consumer millennial core

• Tory Burch is bringing back Revas

• The viral Chelsea Parke claw clip updo

And so, so much more, plus everything I’m buying, reading, and listening to. But first, my favorite TikTok of the week:

@dylan_anthony27The Broccoli Haircut. #broccolihaircut, #fashiontutorial, #hairstyleinspo, #hairtrends, #barberlife

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It’s possible that Coachella’s first few years were untouched by corporate overlords, but brands have had a presence at the festival for more than a decade. In fact, brand trips to Coachella predate the term “influencer.” I went twice while working at Teen Vogue: once in 2013, invited by a Unilever-backed popsicle brand, and again in 2014, when a tech company paid for my trip. We didn’t use the word “influencer” back then, but even if we had, I — for the record — was not one. But I was an editor, which, at the time, was one of the few ways brands could reliably reach their target audience. My, how things have changed.