Cobwebbing and Chaotic Customization
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! 💫
Today we’re talking about:
The great catalog renaissance
A theory on the rise (and inevitable fall) of the Birkenstock Boston
Tattoo blush
The brand trying to be the Supreme of the beauty industry
The Aritziafication of Gap
What Nuuly’s doing right (also, the president of Nuuly is the son of Dick Hayne, Urbn’s cofounder??? did we know this?)
I didn’t think I cared about Brian Jordan Alvarez's “silly little TikTok dances” but I was wrong!
Work wife extinction
Hello Kitty TA drama
Plus everything else that happened in trends and what I’m buying, reading, and listening to. First, my favorite TikTok of the week:
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I was duped by sponcon
In Thursday’s letter, I linked to what I thought was an interview with the singer-songwriter Towa Bird about her personal style but was in fact — as one commenter pointed out — a Dr. Martens ad:
I did not, in fact, realize that Dr. Martens was now owned by private equity, just like I did not realize that I’d linked to an advertorial.
The timing of this — “this” being my getting got by sponcon — feels karmic. Just last weekend I ranted to you about the proliferation of sponsored content, along with my theory that Coach’s “comeback” is little more than a narrative perpetuated by paid media and influencer campaigns.
I couldn’t figure out what I’d missed with this Towa piece until I realized that my ad blocker (I didn’t even know I had an ad blocker!) had removed the “sponsored by” disclosure.
With ad blocker:
Without ad blocker:
Still, the signs were there. In hindsight, I understand that no one would say this unless they were being paid a lot of money to do so:
If they’re resorting to sponcon, Dr. Martens must not be doing great.
The great catalog renaissance
Last week, Hillary Kerr, whose excellent Substack you should subscribe to if you don’t already, DMed me: “Okay so Amazon cleverly sent us a catalogue of kids' presents and it is the most loved thing in our house right now. They'd never seen such a thing and they've been pouring over it. Fighting over who gets to circle what in what color pen.”
Hillary’s kids, who are 5 and 7, “are seeing a world of toys they didn't know existed,” she added.